About a hundred some-odd years after fisherman Leonard Destin founded the "Luckiest Fishing Village in the World" in 1850, I first fell in love with the sugar-white sand and blue-green waters. I was very young, passing through with my mom and dad in our green '53 Pontiac Chieftain. We were on our way to Tampa, to bring my gramma to our house for a visit. On the way back, we spent a day and night in Destin.

In the '50s and '60s, only a few concrete-block rental cottages stood where high-rise condos dominate the beach today. It was an incredible time; yours just might be the only footprints in that fine, fine sugar-white sand.

I used to swim-tow my Gram on her inner tube out through those clear, beautiful waves to the sandbar. She was always a good sport, ready to hit the water. I paid her a fortune in sand dollars, and she promised to make me one of her prized apple pies. I recall the occasional flavorful whiff of the Hav-A-Tampa cigar my dad would smoke on the beach-the only time of year he indulged. Mixed with the refreshing salt air, it was a vacation smell I'll never forget. Gram was a cigar packer for fifty years for the company, while raising three kids as a self-sufficient widow! What a feisty hoot of a girl she was, especially on that inner tube! She once fussed at me for picking sea oats even before it was illegal!

Since then, a year without going to the beach-the Emerald Coast or the Beaches of South Walton-is, fortunately, one I've never known. There's an immediate exhilaration at the first glimpse of that emerald water over that Ft. Walton bridge. The sea-oat-dotted dunes seem so mountainous to us St. Tammany flatlanders, and the water's so much clearer, blue-greener, and more inviting than our lakes and rivers. The beaches beckon us to stay awhile and relax. Works for me, for sure.

When I first met and fell in love with Cathy, we joined a group who rented cottages in an unspoiled section of the coast. We bonded as friends on the beach. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, eat your hearts out! I made her laugh, she made me go gaga. She shared my enthusiasm for the pristine beaches, and we had a fun courtship through the coming year.

Once, Cathy told me she was going to Sandpiper Cove in Destin with girlfriends for a weekend. I got a condo nearby, bought a magnum of a special designer edition of Taittinger Champagne, and a little split of Taittinger regular, in case she said "No." I proposed, on my knees and all. She accepted, we enjoyed both bottles of Taittinger, and the rest is family history. As always, the beach is a high point.

We've returned every year since. Both daughters learned to swim at Sandpiper Cove. We have fond memories of the huge Green Knight statue that stood before a liquor store. Our daughters would wave "hello" upon arrival, and "goodbye" on departure. His teardown led us to a search for his remains a few years ago. It was sad to see him in disrepair, on his back in a storage yard. Progress shouldn't have dismissed such an imposing landmark.

The search for less traffic congestion and beaches with fewer footprints have taken our family away from Destin proper through the years, as we've rented homes or condos off the beaten path for a week or so of beach-bummin' pleasure.

Our girls have always swum like fish, spending more time in the emerald surf than most would, but mine is a totally different take on beach bummin' pleasure. While Cathy chats with her sisters or my cousins, I enjoy sitting close to the water's edge under a beach umbrella with a cooler of ice-cold beer and a radio softly blaring blues or smooth jazz, never louder than the magnificent sounds of the crashing waves.

At the proper time, I begin my annual beach therapy: alligator sand sculptures. I make 6-to-10-foot gators that bring me great personal satisfaction, to the gentle consternation of my wife when bikini-clad art aficionados stop by to compliment the sculptor. Undaunted, I like to sit under my umbrella near my artistic efforts, soaking in the sun, surf, and digging my toes into that supafine white sand, all the while listening to WWL's traffic reports at evening rush hour in the city. I laugh my whatchamacallit off and take another sip, first toasting that glorious Gulf of Mexico that brings me back each year.

My wife knows me well. One recent Christmas, she gave me a present I'll always treasure: a fall-asleep white-sound machine that has the glorious sounds of waves crashing. I'm pretty sure they're the same waves I love hearing each year at the beach. Lemme check. Yep. That's the same ones.

Life is good-but it's even better at the beach!.

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