The Blue Delilah Hotel died and was reborn. You can never be too sure that it's over with.
life can surprise you. Sometimes it-s worth hanging on, not always, but sometimes…
The sun was brighter than usual this seemed to be the case to me. The beach day had proven to be busier than usual. The young, too young, postcard beauty was at her “see me” spot, must be a new bikini. No, it is a new bikini. A black-and-white striped couple of almost non-existent pieces whose black stripes promptly disappeared into dark, gently rounded crevices. Places a guy at my age aren’t supposed to look, nor imagine too much about.
… Aren’t supposed…
The judges’ daughter called out: “Hey Mister Connor, you’re early today. Must be some fish out there…” she chirped as sweet as a fresh-baked pecan pie.
“Well, I sure hope you’re right, Leah. Looks like it will be a beautiful day today.” I blurted. Hope I wasn’t too damn obvious.
Obvious about what, I asked myself, she could easily be my daughter, a stretch might be that she could even be more likely my granddaughter. During tourist season Leah opened the small flower shop on Magpie Lane, her mom helped. Now going on almost three years, people said the store was a success. Her flowers now graced The Delilah, changed fresh every week.
Tourist season was just around the corner and Beach Dale filled like old times. Now that the refineries were closed down, the white sands were once again pristine, the waters perfect. Leah wouldn’t be beach sitting for too much longer. I shouldn’t think about those things, damn it.
Just about every morning as the sun brightens now I walk to the Beach Dale pier, toss some lines into the surf, see what happens. Got a sandwich and a small thermos full of orange juice. Things at The Blue Delilah Hotel haven’t always been this way, as you’ll soon see. And no, I don’t go to the pier to eyeball Leah, but it is what it is…
Rise early, breakfast in my busy restaurant, place buzzes with other customers, the aroma of hotcakes and honey and warm butter along with fresh coffee gets folks talking, low at first, then picks up. I make a point of stopping by to welcome my local regulars along with my room guests. I check my front desk. Rooms all sold, all thirty-five of them, been that way now for quite some time. A quick walk down to my laundry and storerooms, kitchen, and head housekeeper’s office. I always do a quick bar inventory and make sure the staff sees me doing this.
A slight ocean breeze blew in from the East, almost warm, humid it seemed, like a baptism. Not bad. Being baptized this way on such a frequent basis. The palms stirred slightly, enough to announce their existence. A lone coconut fell with an echoless boom. On a sales trip to a St. Louis factory many years ago, an obliging and otherwise bored engineer accepted a challenge. He calculated using a predetermined weight for a single coconut and an agreed-upon height what it meant in pounds if one was struck by one of these falling fruit. Incredible! Yes, it would kill you were it to strike directly.
I made slow progress down the pier.
I carried three rods on my shoulder, two of them brand new Fenwicks, and in the other hand my tackle box. Yesterday I’d gone to Freds Bait and Fish and got some new mullet plug lures along with some fresh Twisters, supposedly a new ultra-flexible plastic. I thought of the ultra flex plastic and my mind immediately tucked into and around the honey-like curves of the too young beauty. “Hey, ass hole yer gonna ruin yer damn day, get on with it.” My buddy Frank, the pier manager, called to me. A smile and a shake of my head as I continued further out onto the public pier.
Frank called out again: “Hey Tom, Corvina are moving pretty good on the north side about fifty yards from the end. Must be some baitfish holding there. George come through here bout two hours ago, still dark, packed it in after limiting out three big ones, one easily twenty-five. Said he was using eight-pound line. Gonna make mama happy today.”
“You believed him too, didn’t you, Frank? I’ll bet you one of your fresh cups of coffee, the way I like ’em, that George was surely using live bait too, that isn’t fishing, you know that.” Frank laughed.
I never fished with a steel leader, never have. You either catch ’em right or not at all. No judging here, just saying. It’s about settling the mono between the needle-sharp teeth with a snook, then handling just so, so that the fish doesn’t spook and slice the line. Work ’em long enough and they’ll eventually throw in the towel.
Limit right now was three corvinas in a certain weight. Every day I’d usually limit out and take the fish to The Delilah for that day’s lunch special. I’d keep fishing for a couple of hours, catch and release for the sheer pleasure. Norma, my ‘kitchen magician’ had some mouth-watering recipes. My absolute favorite is her pan-fried filets, slathering butter, and a hint of garlic curry if I felt like it; don’t forget the thick lemon wedge.
Maria left me back in 1979, seems a lifetime ago. My two children, boy and girl all grown up, and both married with young families, live not too far from here. We try to have Sunday lunch every week. My wife went to fuller pastures. It was a classic thing of poor timing.
This guy named Vincent from what I hear. Drove a fancy car. From Miami. Maria didn’t hurt too bad. Her built-in self-preservation modes will always keep her from hurting. We’d somehow found each other in Miami. She was an exotic, severe beauty from Nicaragua. She rocked the Bianca Jagger look. Maria was itching to leave for a number of years. She tired of helping with the rooms and once the refineries came it just got worse, no money for shopping. Saw that coming. Had she hung on for a couple years, her life would’ve changed. Funny how life settles its own unevenness.
Can hardly blame her hell. The hotel my parents passed on to me after they passed was doing well. Back when they opened the hotel, they couldn’t change the sheets fast enough for the waves of people escaping the cold north. It was the classic case, unique as it may be, of a hotel being built way ahead of its time. My folks put their hearts into it.
But once the refineries came in, they died mostly broke. The hotel had never done well after the refineries came to our area in ‘73… None of the few hotels in this beach area had done well because of the oil contamination. The fucking refineries never tired of saying that they had never, not once suffered an oil spill. Damnably and technically so, they were right.
The refineries came in and it was almost overnight. The newspaper printed that the tourists complained that oil was sticking to their legs when stepping into the light surf.
They were right. It was the drip by drip that would happen every single time a pipe connection shifted or disconnected from the tanker ships to the refineries storage tanks. It was virtually impossible to avoid. Soon after a short time period of operating, the drip by drip eventually accumulated. Floating black tar just hovering like threatening storm clouds, not visible from the beach, just above our white sandy bottom in our ocean fronts up and down the coast.
The tourists ran! That was it, like lemmings, only these ones going in the wrong direction.
Forever sealing the beach’s fate for any hope of being a place for tourists. Or so it seemed. Dipping into the small waves, the pungent, nose burning oily smell was immediate. As soon as one got out of the water and got back onto the beach oily streaks covered ones’ body and swimming suit. The sand stuck stubbornly to children's legs. It took hours scrubbing it off. It wasn’t until the unsuspecting swimmer entered the water and had stirred up the black thin sludge on the sand floor did one realize they were swimming in oil. Soon there were no tourist beaches usable for at least thirty miles radius around Beach Dale.
No matter how much we and nearby communities fought the powerful refineries, our hired ecologists against theirs, they just couldn’t help that the oil leaked into the ocean forever destroying the local habitat. Their lawyers held us off for too long.
The tropical lobby furniture in The Delilah, thick and plush, rich to the touch, had a kelly green plant pattern printed, and sitting in them gently coaxed you into a wondrous nap. Once the oil flowed, all my furniture got thrown out and replaced with utilitarian wooden structures. It was impossible to clean the oil stains off the cushions, even the natural wicker soaked it in. The worst was having to rip out all carpeting throughout the hotel so that unsightly oil smudges disappeared. All it took was a single, playful child rolling around on our soft carpet floors and the smudges were immediately visible. I saw guests tiptoeing around the dark splotches.
Our walls through-out all public areas I painted dark, almost black to hide the disaster from the tankers. Ever tried wiping light walls clean of oil marks? Can’t do it.
We were lucky if we sold five rooms on any given night. There was a time I considered changing the hotel’s name. Reason is the hotel had become a place for whores and thugs who came to rest and love after a long day. One day as I was standing in my dead silent storeroom. I was filling in as steward as my regular, full-time guy I had to let go a couple of years in. Near the sheets, near where I always kept a lit votive candle and a picture of my Mom. She spoke to me, she said: “Son you don’t need to change her name, she is still so strong, have faith in her. Care for her and in time you will see.”
Egyptian sheets lasted longer than some of the stuff in The Delilah, the plated silver was stolen almost overnight, the monogrammed pillowcases gone, the little motorized boot polishers on each floor gone, the original art in all the rooms and hallways, one by one gone, all the in-room coffee makers in each bathroom gone, the small throw rugs, Persian, were rolled up and goned. The eight-pound Chihuly crystal ashtrays set about the palm festooned lobby next to the plush wickers, gone.
Things got tough. There was a time when there wasn’t enough fire in the wood, so to speak, to keep my hands warm. The sage blew hard in the wind and swept us off the land along with the straggly, whiskered bison. What I’m saying is that there was a long stretch that The Delila dies, or almost died. She was a petite, grand lady. Being one of the first on our small strip there in Beach Dale. Nearby, further in-land, the cattle were still filling the grazing fields in south-central Florida. But once the refineries came in that was it for Beach Dale, story over, slam the doors shut, shutter the windows.
My parents died in 1979. First my dad of a stroke, then my mother from a nasty fall off her ladder pruning an overgrown orange tree. She fell and smacked her head into the concrete outcropping of a set of short stairs entering the back door from the yard. They had the foresight to have prepared papers for their only son, me, Tom Connor, as the proprietor of The Blue Delilah Hotel. Beach Dale in case you don’t know is a small town, just off Highway 1, on the coast close to Cape Kennedy.
I inherited a place fully paid for. The refineries had destroyed the hotel and tourist trade. We lived day to day from our slower than a trickle bar trade and the few rooms sold each night. I shut the restaurant down. My parents told me to hang on to the hotel because you just never knew. It was good to have in case I needed the cash too.
The simple fact is that just up until 1973, just before the refineries moved in, our town was a magnet for the snowbirds. These were the tourists arriving from the winter cold in the north. Refineries weren’t a problem in the forties, fifties, sixties, even the first two years of the seventies. Once they started operations, the business died.
Miami overflowed with partying vacationers. Instead of finding peace and quiet and perfect waters, we greeted with open arms those peace-seeking travelers who wanted no part in wild drinking parties and music that roared all night long. They soon discovered Beach Dale.
When my folks took over the place, leased it, then bought it, the sheets their guests insisted on and gladly paid for were Egyptian, 400 count, cotton.
The restaurant and lounge specialized in top-shelf only mixed drinks. The evening menu was lobster in several presentations such as Lobster Thermidor, Grilled Lobster with Wine Sauce, Lobster Malay Curry. Every Friday night we featured a lobster plate, not on the menu. Of course, we offered fresh fish, fresh crab.
My parents loved quality.
Silverware was silver plate. Those were the days.
It’s as though a magic wand tapped us on the shoulders. It was magical. As though all of a sudden Beach Dale got a conscience. The ecology people got voted into positions of power and no sooner had slapped the refineries with impossible to pay fines and massive cleanup fees. Their only option was to go belly up and pull up stakes.
Beach Dale, there about 1981, came into its new renaissance. Our hotel, The Blue Delilah Hotel (my blessed Mom’s name), constructed in the art déco fashion of its time. Our building was three floors, thirty-five tastefully appointed rooms, art deco dripped visibly all about the rounded corners, pinks, and light greens, mints, overhead active with gentle spinning ceiling fans. Over our staired entryway in a new, (old-fashioned style) neon marquee proclaiming with a subtle blink: ‘Blue Delilah’, when it rained its rich purple glowed off the street.
We had a timeless design, and now in ’81 as the oil mess left us people took notice once again and came back. Now the customers were young moneyed either college kids whose parents bankrolled them and young, wealthy Wall Streeters choosing some quiet rather than the noise of Miami and Lauderdale. I assure you, this entire Hodgepodge was a fluke of place and timing and smart, just graduated ecology types and sharp ecology lawyers all hired to roust the oil people. Changed our lives. My life.
Once again life flowed through The Blue Delilah.
I jumped on the marketing train and hired a small, hungry firm, more like kids, wizards, who specialized in web sites and follow-up marketing strategies.
Before the refineries left, we were in the doldrums. The memories are impossible to shake.
I caught one guy around three am, drunk as god can make em was unscrewing the chandelier hanging over the center of the lobby, yes a Tiffany from New York. The fine carved mahogany Florida cattle scene hanging on the wall behind the front desk disappeared one long lonely night a hurricane blew through.
That storm took part of me somehow, more ways real than otherwise, as that’s when my beloved said I was a coward and up and left me. I walked, slowly, the wind howled, after I assured my three guests, three old ladies, that the hurricane won’t ever hurt The Delilah. I said God watched over her, settled on my big Florida, wood-floored, wrap-around porch, had a bottle of my favorite rum, Nicaraguan. My other favorites were Puerto Rican, Guatemalan, Jamaican, but they were all just floating empties now.
The howling wind tore through, my old ten-gallon flew away, wet t-shirt stuck to my sides. The winds were both hot then cold and seemed to toss in all directions. I’d screwed the big Adirondacks to the porch floor that day. My khaki shorts soaked and old leather cowboy boots overflowed. Took another big pull of sweet rum. There for a moment, it came to me that if ever you’re going to be down-and-out and in the shit, well, this wasn’t such a bad way. Then my damn street transformer blew all to hell and lights went out. In the darkness and in the thrashing wind my hurricane shutters upstairs broke loose and slammed an erratic beat against their frames.
In the struggling darkness I could still make out big chunks of pieces of houses and palm tree branches swept down the white-capped river, what was usually the boulevard. When my folks rented this place, then called The Winds, they asked the owners why and they just said: ” you’ll see”.
My father never gave it a second thought. “We’ll call the place The Blue Delilah Hotel”.
“Why Blue?” My mom had asked.
“You’ll see.” all’s my dad said.
Not a bad way to suffer as I settled into the convenient thought, took another swig.
The rivers flowed every which way, around Delilah as though wrapping her in one big sloppy comforter, wasn’t gonna let her go. I sat there as the water rose some more. A boat floated by, a tattered flag blowing. The boat bumped into my front steps with a big bump and off jumped a shaggy dog and a Siamese, immediately coming over to me for comfort. The old, wooden dingy as though dropping off paying passengers no sooner had let the animals off then shoved off back out into the maelstrom.
I named the dog Shaggy and the Siamese is Manny.
As was their routine Shaggy wagging his tail and Manny rubbing up against a tattoed calf muscle had stopped to greet Leah.
Friday and we’d have a full house again. Had to catch those fish and have them back in my kitchen in plenty of time for my evening customers.
I kept walking towards my fishing spot.
