SPRING IS IN THE AIR!
 Yellow Daffodils and Purple Japanese Magnolia Blossoms!
TIME TO CELEBRATE THE SEASON AND HEAD FOR THE BEACHES!

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
 Ecclesiastes 3:1
 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

  Much of Panama City has changed over the past sixty years. An international airport, modern highways, shopping centers and high rises have replaced much of what was almost a wilderness just after WWII. Change has been a certainty and our adaptation to change a necessity but some things haven't changed. The sun has its cycle, the moon its phases and the tides ebb and flow and in the month of March, the sun's warmth renews our world once more while the cobia move west just off Panama City Beach's shoreline along their ancient migratory path. As I write this column in the middle of January, most cobia are feeding in deep waters south of Panama City but in the next few days an ancient genetic program will trigger a secret and unique navigational system within each of these fish and the cobia will activate some sort of unknown compass needle to lead them through their spring spawning migration to breeding grounds in the Northern Gulf off of the Mississippi River delta. The sun passing over the equator on the first day of spring; the full moon on March 27th; the gradual warming of Gulf waters; all of these factors probably put the cobia on its path to migration but regardless of why they begin their journey, the maritime trail of the cobia leads through the water just off Panama City's shoreline and somewhere, somehow, exactly the same factors that lead the cobia to our beaches trigger the detonation of a DNA timebomb within each one of us and we drop everything we're doing and HEAD FOR THE BEACHES!

"It started long ago in the Garden of Eden 

When Adam said to Eve, baby, you're for me

So come on baby let's start today, 

come on baby let's play

The game of love" 
lyrics to THE GAME OF LOVE by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders 

Everyone has their priorities. College students need to study hard for an exam for that business course called HOW TO SPEND ALL MY PARENT'S MONEY. The family man worries about the possibility of his mother-in-law moving into his house and staying forever. It's spring. The IRS wants to have a talk with you. Your yard already needs mowing. Your kid's failing math. The house needs painting. The air conditioning is on the blink and it's gonna get hot soon. The bills are overdue and the credit card's cancelled. The human race is facing runaway inflation, third world starvation and nuclear terrorism. Another "useless jobs" bill is being passed in Washington, D.C. and to think you could hardly wait to become a grown up but locked within your DNA is an innate impulse that explodes within you at this time of the year and you decide just to leave your troubles behind. You pull out all the  beach stuff you stored before Thanksgiving and head across AMNESIA BRIDGE for another new year's adventures at the beach. It's the siren song of the surf, the salt and the sand that draws you back in a seasonal ritual. 

Some of you might be wondering where AMNESIA BRIDGE is located in the Panama City area but remember that before the advertising slogan, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," folks have crossed Hathaway Bridge and suddenly lost their memory of the 9 to 5 Suburbatory they just left and 48 or 72 hours later they go back to the same Suburbatory across the same bridge, automatically erasing all the files pertaining to what just recently occurred in Panama City Beach. 

Not only does this innate and cherished seasonal urge to merge at the beach occur in the genus species Homo sapiens who are natives and locals from Panama City but it also occurs in our neighbors to the north and the month of March begins a not so ancient migration south by many members of our own species who live as far as 150 miles north of Bay County. It is quite true that no one truly understands what kinds of unique navigational systems humans may have but it may be argued that just about everybody raised in an area as far north of Bay County as Greenville, Alabama and as far east as Albany, Georgia are imprinted with a homing instinct that works like clockwork. 

IT'S ALL THE SUNSHINE'S FAULT!

Perhaps you remember the movie CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. It may be contended that like the characters in the film, those raised in Southeast Alabama and Southwest Georgia have cultural influences from childhood that have pre-programmed each and every one of them, imprinting them with a homing instinct to return to the Florida Panhandle when March arrives.

Many tax dollars have been spent to study the migratory corridors utilized by the cobia as they move west through the gully between the first sand bar and Panama City's beaches but little has been spent to learn about the spring migration of our own species back to the panhandle. Could it be possible that we could reawaken the migratory spirit within "best and brightest" of these springtime voyagers to the Panhandle and channel them this way so that Panama City Beach becomes their destination of choice each spring?

The origins of the spring migration to Panama City by humans is cloaked in mystery, however, as far as we know, it can only be traced back about 60 years. Harvey H. ("Hardy") Jackson, Eminent Scholar in History at Jacksonville State University and a columnist and editorial writer at The Anniston Star, discovered an interesting 1960 Mobile Press-Register article that is an important document confirming that the onset of March's migration of our neighboring teenage "Goths and Vandals" from the north began as early as 1954.

Feb. 17, 1960, edition of the Mobile Press-Register, under the heading “News from Florida.” Headlined “Liquor Restriction,” it read:

“Panama City (Special) — The sale of beer and alcoholic beverages will be curtailed this year at three beach municipalities during the Alabama Education Association days March 15-20.
Panama City Beach Mayor Roy Martin, Long Beach Mayor J.E. Churchwell and
Edgewater Beach Mayor M.C. Buckley have joined in the move to ban the sale during the time several hundred Alabama teenagers are here at the beaches.This will mark the sixth consecutive year when sale of these beverages will be prohibited during the meeting time.”


In researching the veracity of this 1960 newspaper clipping, Professor Jackson interrogated several Bay Countians who lived through many A.E.A. Holidays from the Fifties and Sixties. They concluded that this news article couldn't be completely true and even if it was true, it wouldn't matter because,"Those kids could find cold beer in Saudi Arabia."

This teenage need for fake IDs during the month of March presents unique challenges for any Panama City Beach tourism development executive because it only takes one viral video of  Bluto yelling "Go Bulldogs" while urinating off of a PCB balcony to "negatively impact our brand."

Regardless, the month of April will get here soon enough and the job of any self respecting tourism executive is to effectively overcome all obstacles so the challenge is clear. We have a mandate to scientifically identify the SPRING BREAK MIGRATORY PATTERNS of our neighbors to the North and help them get in touch with their "homing instinct for the beach" so they can experience the joy of expectation which occurs when you know that within a matter of less than three hours, you'll have left all your cares behind and that your very own ten toes will soon be in the sand and you'll be looking south over the gorgeous Gulf of Mexico saying to yourself," MAN, I AM SO GLAD TO BE BACK AT PANAMA CITY BEACH!