Sometimes I think I might be a bad influence.
My grandson Beckett, almost 7, and I finally made it out to Fort Barrancas recently, on the one day of the month that the fort is open to the public. He’s been wanting to go forever since I told him about it, he got excited, and we rode out there one day just to find it closed.
When we finally got in last week, it was fun and he learned a little history and the only time he got a bit freaked was in one dark area of a corridor where thick, black worms had crawled out a big crack in the steps leading down.
Afterward, we drove through Navy Point to visit the little beach there on Bayou Grande and make a sand fort in the soft, wet sand on the waterline. We made cannons out of sticks and pointed them toward the water and made believe that our fort was keeping all the speeding (enemy in our minds) Jet Skis and such out on the water away from our shoreline. Fort Beckett was too formidable for them to even try.
But then, we drove over the Navy Point Bridge toward Navy Boulevard and I told him about how when we were young we would stand on the bridge rail and jump into the water. His sweet eyes lit up and I could see the gears churning thinking “I want to jump off a bridge!”
Instead, he asked “Is that legal?”
“Not anymore.” I didn’t tell him it was probably illegal in the 1970s too, we just didn’t, you know, check to see. Back then, you just kinda did things because, you know, Kirby hadn’t been invented yet (that’s a 6-year-old thing apparently) and there wasn’t much else. But then pretty much every teen on the westside could have probably bragged about bridge jumping at Navy Point. The youngsters might still be bridge jumping, but if so they’re not as audacious about it because the world governments have added more consequences in recent decades. We’d stand on the railing waving at passing cars before jumping. And grownups driving by would honk and yell “Do it” because grownups were different then.
Then I thought of the other stories I’ve told him about the olden days. Stories of riding bikes off of ramps over our brothers and neighbors and later letting them jump over you, of course, with no helmets. Remember, this is the time when even football players like George Blanda were only wearing panty hose on their heads as helmets. It was so long ago that we had to whittle our own toys, because everyone just whittled for fun back then.
About swimming out to the “Poles” in Bayou Grande half way across from Naval Air Station Pensacola on the other side. They were big water-anchored power lines with a platform around it that you would dive off of. Doesn’t look like there’s a platform around the poles anymore and we’ve never seen anyone swimming out there in the times we’ve visited the Navy Point beach.
But Navy Point was different then. Not as nice as it is today, at least in my mind. For one thing, there’s no Navy Point shopping center any more. Yes, Navy Point had a shopping center with groceries, a barber shop, a beauty shop, sporting goods, drug store, laundromat and theater. Navy Point Stores opened in November 1948, in the post-war years that saw military families making Navy Point their home.
The Pensacola News Journal called it a “Mecca for Shoppers” at the time, and the enterprise advertised Navy Point as “City of Stores.” A lot of people remember the theater.
Ah yes, the Navy Point Theater, though by the 1970s the movie house had devolved to become Navy Point Adult Theater, showing all the XXX-rated films that were the rage, from “Schoolgirl’s Exams” to “Playboy Takes a Wife.” But don’t think it was just the lonely single guys in raincoats attending the raunchy movies. When the 1972 XXX-rated surprise hit “Deep Throat” came to town, many curious couples went to see the flick. Yes, our parents and our friends’ parents went, leaving us traumatized with the knowledge that our parents were into that kind of stuff. Yuck.
So we have to be careful with what we pass on to the younger kids. So not telling Beckett about visiting now-gone Bob’s Go-Carts off Entrance Road in Warrington is probably smart, since we used to play demolition derby there when you’re supposed to just drive around the track. One time my brother got rammed and wrecked into a chain link fence and both him and the cart were caught underneath. I don’t want Beckett trying that at Fast Eddie’s. I love him too much and don’t want him to end up a former delinquent knucklehead like me.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Navy Point Bridge jumping, our parents’ dirty secret and other stories from old westside
Reporting by Troy Moon, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
