By John B. Chisum
To be young with no responsibilities, we didn’t know how good we had it.
My buddy Jake and I worked in the cotton fields during the summers when we were in college. He was in the Louisiana National Guard and I was in the Marine Reserve so we both got help from the GI bill. However, then, like today, college wasn’t cheap. Working for ag minimum wage, long hours, in the Louisiana heat was not easy but we appreciated the steady paycheck.
That year the Fourth of July fell on a Monday, resulting in us having a three-day weekend. Jake and I decided to spend some of our hard-earned cash and take a road trip. Unfortunately, Louisiana has very little to offer in the beach department, and our neighbors in east Texas and Mississippi don’t have much better. So, we headed for the redneck riviera that is Orange Beach, Alabama. Cold beer, bikinis, and boiled shrimp seemed like heaven after working 14-hour days in 100-plus degree heat.
After spending a day on the beach and enjoying the scenery, we had to decide what our nighttime festivities would entail. We soon reached the only logical choice, Flora-Bama. Flora-Bama is an institution. It is probably the most famous beach bar between Galveston and Pensacola. It has multiple bars and venues for live music. We entered the main bar and ran into some active duty Air Force guys, all of them were wearing neon pink flamingo hats. Everyone was drinking, but they let us know they had a pretty low opinion of the guard and the reserve. We didn’t let it bother us and moved on outside to enjoy the fireworks.
When the formal fireworks show wrapped up, we were good and primed and decided to shoot our own fireworks. I had brought a Willy Pete pop up flare, which is also used as a scribe tube in basic. Buzzing on liquid courage, we went down to the beach to light things up.
For those of you unfamiliar with this type of flare, it is a white phosphorus flare suspended from a parachute. White phosphorus burns under water. I am lucky not to still be in prison today for what we did next.
When I sent the flare up over the ocean, a very audible “Oooooohhhhh!” erupted from the bar behind us. Jake and I were caught up in our “Fuck yeah, ‘Merica” moment, proud of the show we were putting on. As the flare slowly started its descent an onshore breeze picked up, carrying the flaming-hotter-than-the-sun flare back towards the packed-to-capacity Flora-Bama. At that time of this incident the top bar on Flora-Bama was a tiki bar, generously dressed in multiple layers of thatched roofing. I’ve never sobered up so quickly. God, however, looks after drunks and fools. In a turn of events nothing short of an absolute miracle, about three feet before the flare hit the roof, it went out.
As Jake and I made our way back up the steps to the bar we ran into a group of frenzied cops headed to find the culprit of the unauthorized firework display. Without missing a beat, Jake stopped one of the officers and told him about a bunch of drunk Air Force guys in flamingo hats who were bragging earlier about shooting off flares at the beach. We bid Flora-Bama a fond farewell and continued on with our night.
