By Ken Lass
It’s a perfect late October morning in Orange Beach, Alabama. Temperature is in the low seventies, partly cloudy skies, a soft, cool breeze is wafting off the Gulf. Sharon and I are taking our daily early morning walk down one of the area trails. We get down this way a couple times each year. We come here to vegetate on a beach chair all day, but to justify our laziness, we always start out with a good walk.
Ken Lass, Tribune columnist
On this morning we are strolling down Cotton Bayou trail. It’s a flat, narrow, paved pathway through palm trees and swampy-looking brush. The trail head is right under the huge, blue Orange Beach water tower. The one with a needle nose shark painted on it. We’ve hiked this course several times before. It’s one of our favorites. There are plaques telling us to watch for everything from oak toads and white-tailed deer, to box turtles and raccoons. Even alligators. In truth, we’ve never seen any of those critters. Just a lot of chirping birds, and the occasional brave little squirrel who runs up to your feet and stares at you, hoping for food morsels. The tourist season in these parts ended months ago, so the trail is very peaceful on this morn. For long stretches we don’t encounter any other walkers or bikers.
But we are not alone. Not by a long shot. We are welcomed and greeted all along the way by the friendly ghosts of Orange Beach. They’re always here, seated on the resting benches, which are inscribed with their names, and other little tidbits about them. I love to imagine seeing these contented souls as we mosey on by, speaking to us through their wood-carved words.
Gene and Marianne Grant have one of the very first benches. They smile and say “Welcome to Paradise”. John and Mary Mikkola of Hancock, Michigan are next. “Enjoy nature’s gifts” is their message. We will, thank you. The Orange Beach Lions Club thought so highly of Miss Iris Ethridge, they gave her a permanent place to sit and relax. She’s looking good. Tommy and Renea Jones of Brookwood, Alabama, who died in 2014, pass the time in style with a swinging bench mounted on a wooden arch. Sharon and Bill Turriff are jokesters. Their bench says “Woke up today. Already ahead of the game”, followed by a box with a check mark in it.
Phil and Dawn Baker of Pontiac, Illinois want you to meet their ten year old son Bryan, who passed away in 2010. Yes, I see him. He is riding a bike slightly too big for him, struggling to control it, wavering back and forth across the trail in front of us. Phil and Dawn apologize for him, but I laugh and say he’s fine. Barb and Dale Orchard once celebrated their fiftieth anniversary a while ago with this heavily weathered bench. Congrats. Members of the Wisconsin Snowbird Club are here to greet us. “Hey youse guys, how ya doin’?” I hear them declare in a heavy, midwestern brogue.
The next morning we amble down the nearby Cat Man trail. Here I see Grady and Charlie Coleman, quoting a bible verse from the book of Micah. “He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Thanks for the inspiration, folks. Wayne and Joan Law dedicate their bench “to our children and grandchildren”, and wish for them to be “forever young.” Amen to that. Denny and Judy Psick commemorated their fiftieth anniversary in 2013. Then just below the year, they scratched in “60 years, 2023”. Many more to you. An unnamed couple created a place of rest for their late daughter Zoe “for you to laugh and dream”. I picture her there, in pigtails and a white dress, holding a doll and teaching it how to draw.
On and on it goes for miles. Benches every couple hundred feet. Each one engraved with precious lives, most of whom have crossed over the bridge. I once heard it said that you’re never really gone, as long as someone thinks about you. I like to imagine that, in some sentimental way, I help to keep all these happy souls alive.
By week’s end it’s time to pack up and head home to Trussville. Time to say good-bye to the friendly ghosts of Orange Beach. We’ll be back in the spring, and I know they’ll be here to welcome us upon our return. Because good memories, like good people, live forever in our minds.
