UPDATE: Before we headed south to PC, I stated I'd update readers on a couple of my recent "page view" metrics, which I'm monitoring like a hawk these days.
My story from a week ago on "The Curious Substack Leaderboards" has generated only 3,380 page views in a week, which is the lowest "page view" metric I've had in probably two years.
I don't think the algorithms were amused.
My story on "Mayor Pete" joining Substack's All-Stars generated approximately 3,800 page views, which is about 700 fewer than I've been averaging in the past month.
My story "In Praise of Transcriber B" did better, generating about 4,500 page views. I was interested in monitoring these numbers as two years ago I published another story about Transcriber B. That story generated 18,500 page views and 52 new subscribers. My latest story generated 4 new subscribers (1/13th of my previous number).
But Mayor Pete has added 25,000 subscribers since I wrote about him.
Personally, I like the unvarnished truth. We cannot afford timidity, as censorship has destroyed careers, income, left people in the dark whose uninformed decisions cost them dearly, even taken lives.
Others may relate, learn from him or offer solutions.
Certainly subjects like fibrous clots, vaccine injury and sudden death are not seen as positive or welcome, but what is, is.
Bill - when I said I couldn’t “like” your comment it was because your comment was not a positive comment about your metrics. It wasn’t because I was having issues with Substack not allowing me.
We need another choice such as “acknowledged” when someone posts a comment that is negative or heartbreakingly sad.
For a fun game/geography lesson, I told the kids we should take note of where all the license plates were from. I can confirm that we identified license plates from at least half the states in the union. I think Alabama might still have been the most-common license plate, but nothing like it was when I used to come down to the beach in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Back then, at least half of the license plates would be from “the heart of Dixie,” which is not overly surprising if you realize the Alabama border is only about 45 miles from Panama City Beach.
Back then, Alabamians might as well have considered the beaches of the Florida Panhandle as an unofficial part of our state. This is because state residents in every large city and small town seemed to own rustic beach houses and cabins (which are now all giant condos and strip shopping centers).
At some point, perhaps when MTV started doing weeklong specials from PC Beach, everyone else in the country discovered “our” beaches.
It was actually always a point of state pride that so many Alabamians once owned “beach places” as the national stereotype said that Alabama was the nation’s second poorest state, perhaps behind Mississippi.
This might have been true, but a huge number of poor Alabamians had places at the beach, which mean that, even if your family didn’t have a beach place, you’d be invited to stay with friends whose family did.
Also, when I was in high school and college, you could still find several “roach motels” where you could stay for $40 or $50/night.
Those days/places are also gone with the wind.
I recently read that the “Panama City” metro area is the fastest-growing metro area in the country.
I think northerners who used to retire to central or south Florida have now also discovered northern Florida, which, culturally, used to be more like a Southern state than the “Northern” areas of south and central Florida.
My wife told me a distant cousin lives in Panama City (not the Beach but the town, which is 15 miles east of the beaches) and recently listed her fairly modest home. The asking price is $1.4 million!
Take-away: People are definitely re-locating to the “Free State of Florida,” even the once “Redneck” area of the state. But the rednecks that used to come down to Florida all the time were actually pretty refined and not that different than people from anywhere else - maybe even nicer.
Still, when 50 percent of the car tags used to say “Alabama,” that figure today might be 10 percent.
The good news is that large percentages of these beach visitors must drive through … Troy, Alabama (via Hwy 231) on their way to and from the beach.
In today’s article, I note that our family used to go to the beach fairly often and Dad would rent a condo or house for a few days and take us to nice restaurants like Captain Anderson’s. He was able to do this because he was a gasoline distributor for Gulf Oil and owned a couple of gas stations.
The profit from this business came from motorists going to and from the beach, which we used to think of as our “our beaches” but not anymore.
One can buy the nicest mansion in Troy for $1.4 million. I wonder when and if people from “off” are going to discover this.
Another one of my observations is that more and more Americans are
I've heard that section of the panhandle referred to as lower Alabama for as long as I can remember. At least since my days at FSU anyway. Was just up there for the first time in 30 years a month ago. Really enjoyed the beach, still don't have to pay to park, and not overcrowded, at least where we were which was a little bit west of the main PC Beach area. I frequent the beach where I live in south Florida but it is just all high rises, hotels and you get fleeced paying for parking. I can see the allure of the panhandle which is still a more old Florida feel. St. George island and Apalachicola are also a nice place to check out in the big bend area just east of PC if you get the chance. It's even more quaint there.
What a great story. Making stories and memories with your children is simply the best. And I want that T-shirt. Does he sell them or can I steal that phrase and get one custom made? I'd rather buy from him, if possible.
I think Mark is sold out. But you can email him and ask. And, yes, you could make your own shirt with the same saying, which would tickle Mark. I didn't wear it when we hit a couple of gift shops, including one place (Purple Haze) that seemed to have a niche for politically incorrect T-shirts and gifts. Their buyer might have been very interested in stocking this particular shirt.
Mark's email is:
forecheck32 at gmail dot com.
Or you can contact him in the reader comments of his Substack.
I only wore it on the last day ... just in case someone wasn't amused. Two people said "love it." One said, "You are brave to wear that." One man looked at me in the elevator like I had leprosy.
The cute little guys that scurry around on the beach sounds like they might be what you're referring to. They do seem like ghosts is why I say that. In the surf, we get mostly a bigger "speckled" crab, big enough to eat. And occasionally a blue crab, which are a little bigger, so better for eating. We see more blue crabs along the bay beaches than the surf though. But when the crabbing is good, there are a lot of those speckled ones in the surf.
Glad you did it! My wife and I started out going to PC when we were married 44 years ago. After several years switched to Destin. PC was fine, but for us Destin seemed a little better for years. And the west jetty at Destin is an amazing fishing spot. Thinking of going to PC again now that Destin has grown so much. We tried Captain Anderson's and never went back. There was a restaurant on St. Andrews Bay called Allen's I think. Their fried grouper was the best tasting fish we've ever had, and we've eaten a lot of fish. We were really bummed it burned down a long time ago - we'd drive from Destin to eat there it was so good.
Love the beach story. Our family was Gulf shores only from 1958-1965 and then we got the Nimrod camper and went all over Florida. Meme’s in Bon Secour was our must go to restaurant.
Your story brought back memories of a family trip in 1967. We we were driving back from Jacksonville FL (having escorted my brother back to his senior year at JU.) We stopped in Myrtle Beach in August. The way I remember it, we had gone to a dirt track where a kid above the age of 12 could drive a King Midget car, by himself. It had a 7 hp (or was it 10?) Wisconsin lawnmower engine. Anyhow, the way I remember the date is the local newspaper had a headline story about the assassination of George Lincoln Rockwell. I asked my parents who he was, and they said he started the nazi party in the U.S. Weird memory, huh?
Two other heart-warming anecdotes from our outing:
As Maggie and I left the beach one afternoon, we stopped at the station where you can hose all the sand off your feet. While Maggie was doing this, one of her nice sandals fell off the fence underneath the deck. The opening was too small for me or Maggie to reach the sandal and there was no other access to rescue this important beach accessory. While I was bemoaning this sad event, an Asian man hosing off next to us, noticed what had happened. He then asked his 8-year-old, very petite, daughter to see if she could climb through the crack and reprieve Maggie's sandal - which she did in about 30 seconds.
Not long after that we had finished a swimming session at the condo pool and decided to explore the facility and go look at the other pool, which was 150 yards on the other side of the unit. After the long hike, we noticed the pool and hot tub were twins and were heading back to our room, when a Hispanic man came up to us.
"I think you dropped this, ma'am," he said.
Carrie had left her driver's license at the first pool and the man had walked all that distance to give it back to her.
So nice people, eager to help, still exist in the world.
I also appreciate everyone in the jam-packed elevators, which barely or rarely worked, letting us get in an elevator when one did finally stop on our floor.
what a great story. I'd never heard of she crab soup. Now I sort of know, even if some of the terms call for RFIR. requires further investigative research.
She-crab soup is a rich soup, similar to bisque, made of milk or heavy cream, crab or fish stock, Atlantic blue crab meat, and (traditionally) crab roe, and a small amount of dry sherry added as it is plated.
It is a regional specialty from the South Carolina Lowcountry.
The soup is named for the "she-crab", or female crab, originally a gravid (roe-carrying) crab, as the orange crab roe comprise a chief ingredient in traditional she-crab soup.
America is still here. Costs more but still here. the few times I've been in the South, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee I always found people to be very polite and friendly.
I did the same research, Wilson. She-crab soup seems to be particularly popular and famous in the low country of South Carolina. I was surprised that seafood gumbo wasn't on Captain A's menu. If it was, I was going to order it.
Next time, try The Back Porch in Destin :). It started much Iike Schuckman’s (which we love), but when a disgruntled employee opened an identical shack next door (June’s Dunes), they upped their game. We swore NEVER to eat there…a pledge we have broken often because who doesn’t like a nice beach walk and a chili dog sucked down while wearing a bathing suit? But the Back Porch really is wonderful. We’ve never been to Captain A’s…will have to give it a go. Captain D’s was always our go-to.
We’ve summered in Destin since the early 70s…and we still love it.
And the best part? I doubt I will ever run into Mayor Pete there.
Just drove my grown kids to Shuckums tonight and told them it was “the place” to be seen when we were in high school! Do you remember the tshirts??? Anyway, it was so packed that we could not even get on the waiting list! Maybe next time!
UPDATE: Before we headed south to PC, I stated I'd update readers on a couple of my recent "page view" metrics, which I'm monitoring like a hawk these days.
My story from a week ago on "The Curious Substack Leaderboards" has generated only 3,380 page views in a week, which is the lowest "page view" metric I've had in probably two years.
I don't think the algorithms were amused.
My story on "Mayor Pete" joining Substack's All-Stars generated approximately 3,800 page views, which is about 700 fewer than I've been averaging in the past month.
My story "In Praise of Transcriber B" did better, generating about 4,500 page views. I was interested in monitoring these numbers as two years ago I published another story about Transcriber B. That story generated 18,500 page views and 52 new subscribers. My latest story generated 4 new subscribers (1/13th of my previous number).
But Mayor Pete has added 25,000 subscribers since I wrote about him.
Ugh Bill. I can’t “like” this comment. 😩
I was going to then I realized your comment was better.
I couldn’t like one of Elizabeth hart’s comments/posts.
Can you tell us the reason you ‘can’t like’ Bill’s comment?
It must be tough to want to report a problem, yet feed the idea that any discussion just draws the same.
Pamela - because Bill’s comment is unfortunate - not positive.
Substack needs an option like “acknowledged”
Personally, I like the unvarnished truth. We cannot afford timidity, as censorship has destroyed careers, income, left people in the dark whose uninformed decisions cost them dearly, even taken lives.
Others may relate, learn from him or offer solutions.
Certainly subjects like fibrous clots, vaccine injury and sudden death are not seen as positive or welcome, but what is, is.
Laura has a substack just devoted to the clots. Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet. It is very important.
Bill - when I said I couldn’t “like” your comment it was because your comment was not a positive comment about your metrics. It wasn’t because I was having issues with Substack not allowing me.
We need another choice such as “acknowledged” when someone posts a comment that is negative or heartbreakingly sad.
For a fun game/geography lesson, I told the kids we should take note of where all the license plates were from. I can confirm that we identified license plates from at least half the states in the union. I think Alabama might still have been the most-common license plate, but nothing like it was when I used to come down to the beach in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Back then, at least half of the license plates would be from “the heart of Dixie,” which is not overly surprising if you realize the Alabama border is only about 45 miles from Panama City Beach.
Back then, Alabamians might as well have considered the beaches of the Florida Panhandle as an unofficial part of our state. This is because state residents in every large city and small town seemed to own rustic beach houses and cabins (which are now all giant condos and strip shopping centers).
At some point, perhaps when MTV started doing weeklong specials from PC Beach, everyone else in the country discovered “our” beaches.
It was actually always a point of state pride that so many Alabamians once owned “beach places” as the national stereotype said that Alabama was the nation’s second poorest state, perhaps behind Mississippi.
This might have been true, but a huge number of poor Alabamians had places at the beach, which mean that, even if your family didn’t have a beach place, you’d be invited to stay with friends whose family did.
Also, when I was in high school and college, you could still find several “roach motels” where you could stay for $40 or $50/night.
Those days/places are also gone with the wind.
I recently read that the “Panama City” metro area is the fastest-growing metro area in the country.
I think northerners who used to retire to central or south Florida have now also discovered northern Florida, which, culturally, used to be more like a Southern state than the “Northern” areas of south and central Florida.
My wife told me a distant cousin lives in Panama City (not the Beach but the town, which is 15 miles east of the beaches) and recently listed her fairly modest home. The asking price is $1.4 million!
Take-away: People are definitely re-locating to the “Free State of Florida,” even the once “Redneck” area of the state. But the rednecks that used to come down to Florida all the time were actually pretty refined and not that different than people from anywhere else - maybe even nicer.
Still, when 50 percent of the car tags used to say “Alabama,” that figure today might be 10 percent.
The good news is that large percentages of these beach visitors must drive through … Troy, Alabama (via Hwy 231) on their way to and from the beach.
In today’s article, I note that our family used to go to the beach fairly often and Dad would rent a condo or house for a few days and take us to nice restaurants like Captain Anderson’s. He was able to do this because he was a gasoline distributor for Gulf Oil and owned a couple of gas stations.
The profit from this business came from motorists going to and from the beach, which we used to think of as our “our beaches” but not anymore.
One can buy the nicest mansion in Troy for $1.4 million. I wonder when and if people from “off” are going to discover this.
Another one of my observations is that more and more Americans are
"voting with their feet."
I've heard that section of the panhandle referred to as lower Alabama for as long as I can remember. At least since my days at FSU anyway. Was just up there for the first time in 30 years a month ago. Really enjoyed the beach, still don't have to pay to park, and not overcrowded, at least where we were which was a little bit west of the main PC Beach area. I frequent the beach where I live in south Florida but it is just all high rises, hotels and you get fleeced paying for parking. I can see the allure of the panhandle which is still a more old Florida feel. St. George island and Apalachicola are also a nice place to check out in the big bend area just east of PC if you get the chance. It's even more quaint there.
Great looking family!
And I love hearing about the 3-item menu place...
Thank you Bill for sharing a glimpse into your oersonal life.
God has truly blessed you my friend. 🥰
What a great story. Making stories and memories with your children is simply the best. And I want that T-shirt. Does he sell them or can I steal that phrase and get one custom made? I'd rather buy from him, if possible.
I think Mark is sold out. But you can email him and ask. And, yes, you could make your own shirt with the same saying, which would tickle Mark. I didn't wear it when we hit a couple of gift shops, including one place (Purple Haze) that seemed to have a niche for politically incorrect T-shirts and gifts. Their buyer might have been very interested in stocking this particular shirt.
Mark's email is:
forecheck32 at gmail dot com.
Or you can contact him in the reader comments of his Substack.
I will contact him. Thanks very much!!
Is that ending what's known as a cliffhanger? You must relate those stories of the conversations the shirt started!!
I only wore it on the last day ... just in case someone wasn't amused. Two people said "love it." One said, "You are brave to wear that." One man looked at me in the elevator like I had leprosy.
Ditto to this comment
Did you take the kids to the beach after dark with flashlights and crab nets to catch those little guys? That's fun, even at my age!
Ghost crabs! One of our family’s all time favorite activities!
The cute little guys that scurry around on the beach sounds like they might be what you're referring to. They do seem like ghosts is why I say that. In the surf, we get mostly a bigger "speckled" crab, big enough to eat. And occasionally a blue crab, which are a little bigger, so better for eating. We see more blue crabs along the bay beaches than the surf though. But when the crabbing is good, there are a lot of those speckled ones in the surf.
No, but I should have.
Glad you did it! My wife and I started out going to PC when we were married 44 years ago. After several years switched to Destin. PC was fine, but for us Destin seemed a little better for years. And the west jetty at Destin is an amazing fishing spot. Thinking of going to PC again now that Destin has grown so much. We tried Captain Anderson's and never went back. There was a restaurant on St. Andrews Bay called Allen's I think. Their fried grouper was the best tasting fish we've ever had, and we've eaten a lot of fish. We were really bummed it burned down a long time ago - we'd drive from Destin to eat there it was so good.
I love Harbor Docks in Destin.
A wonderful write up of what a family vacation is supposed to be.
I may link to it in a post on my own substack to contrast with my own experiences.
Thank you.
Love the beach story. Our family was Gulf shores only from 1958-1965 and then we got the Nimrod camper and went all over Florida. Meme’s in Bon Secour was our must go to restaurant.
Your story brought back memories of a family trip in 1967. We we were driving back from Jacksonville FL (having escorted my brother back to his senior year at JU.) We stopped in Myrtle Beach in August. The way I remember it, we had gone to a dirt track where a kid above the age of 12 could drive a King Midget car, by himself. It had a 7 hp (or was it 10?) Wisconsin lawnmower engine. Anyhow, the way I remember the date is the local newspaper had a headline story about the assassination of George Lincoln Rockwell. I asked my parents who he was, and they said he started the nazi party in the U.S. Weird memory, huh?
Two other heart-warming anecdotes from our outing:
As Maggie and I left the beach one afternoon, we stopped at the station where you can hose all the sand off your feet. While Maggie was doing this, one of her nice sandals fell off the fence underneath the deck. The opening was too small for me or Maggie to reach the sandal and there was no other access to rescue this important beach accessory. While I was bemoaning this sad event, an Asian man hosing off next to us, noticed what had happened. He then asked his 8-year-old, very petite, daughter to see if she could climb through the crack and reprieve Maggie's sandal - which she did in about 30 seconds.
Not long after that we had finished a swimming session at the condo pool and decided to explore the facility and go look at the other pool, which was 150 yards on the other side of the unit. After the long hike, we noticed the pool and hot tub were twins and were heading back to our room, when a Hispanic man came up to us.
"I think you dropped this, ma'am," he said.
Carrie had left her driver's license at the first pool and the man had walked all that distance to give it back to her.
So nice people, eager to help, still exist in the world.
I also appreciate everyone in the jam-packed elevators, which barely or rarely worked, letting us get in an elevator when one did finally stop on our floor.
We've been struck by how happy and genuinely nice people are in that area. Very noticeable difference from here.
what a great story. I'd never heard of she crab soup. Now I sort of know, even if some of the terms call for RFIR. requires further investigative research.
She-crab soup is a rich soup, similar to bisque, made of milk or heavy cream, crab or fish stock, Atlantic blue crab meat, and (traditionally) crab roe, and a small amount of dry sherry added as it is plated.
It is a regional specialty from the South Carolina Lowcountry.
The soup is named for the "she-crab", or female crab, originally a gravid (roe-carrying) crab, as the orange crab roe comprise a chief ingredient in traditional she-crab soup.
America is still here. Costs more but still here. the few times I've been in the South, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee I always found people to be very polite and friendly.
I did the same research, Wilson. She-crab soup seems to be particularly popular and famous in the low country of South Carolina. I was surprised that seafood gumbo wasn't on Captain A's menu. If it was, I was going to order it.
🤔 Did you mean seafood Gumbo?
Yes!
That’s good parenting right there !!!!
Next time, try The Back Porch in Destin :). It started much Iike Schuckman’s (which we love), but when a disgruntled employee opened an identical shack next door (June’s Dunes), they upped their game. We swore NEVER to eat there…a pledge we have broken often because who doesn’t like a nice beach walk and a chili dog sucked down while wearing a bathing suit? But the Back Porch really is wonderful. We’ve never been to Captain A’s…will have to give it a go. Captain D’s was always our go-to.
We’ve summered in Destin since the early 70s…and we still love it.
And the best part? I doubt I will ever run into Mayor Pete there.
We've been to Destin many times too, but I'm not sure we've ever eaten at the Back Porch, but we need to next time as it has a great reputation.
Just drove my grown kids to Shuckums tonight and told them it was “the place” to be seen when we were in high school! Do you remember the tshirts??? Anyway, it was so packed that we could not even get on the waiting list! Maybe next time!
Dang. This is a big beach weekend. I do remember the t-shirts. They are still selling them.
This was a nice article Bill.
For some reason I read this comment as saying that you 'had a big b**ch weekend' and you got a t-shirt saying so.
I must be tired lol.