The Jetties

     1966 was a good year, I was dating the most beautiful girl in the world, I was living ( at the invitation of the U.S. Navy ) at the beach in Cocoa Beach, Florida, what more could a guy want ?
     Linda and I were head over heels in love and we took every opportunity to be together. My duties with the Navy didn't have normal hours and Linda was still in high school plus she held down a part time job  to boot. Some how we managed to find time for dates but the hour of the day may have varied though that didn't matter to us. The next hurtle was where to go on our dates.
     We had bought a 1958 Chevy Impala convertible for $350, it was rusty, had about five different colors of paint, three of the four side windows were cracked, the rear plastic window was yellowed but it did have a hot engine. Yea, it was a mess and got a lot of laughs but it was ours.
     As for the places to go on a date they were plentiful.
     There was a small lake, not far from Linda's home, by the name of  Clear Lake. A local civic club of which her father was a member, cleaned up the lake several years earlier. They removed all of the debris and captured all of the alligators and with county funds built a concession stand and picnic tables, the county staffed and managed it. The water was very clear and it was a great place to swim.
     Then there was a drive-in theater, for about fifty cents each we could see a double feature and make out during the intermission or just make out, not all of the movies were interesting. There were good things about the drive-in and not so good, the good was you could take a break anytime to go to the restroom or grab a burger. The bad thing was the mosquitoes, they were horrendous, if you rolled up the windows the heat and humidity was unbearable and the mosquitoes always found a way to get in. The drive-in sold a little repellent device that you lit with a lighter and set on the dash, it smoldered and put out some sort of repellent but here again you had to roll up the windows but then once you got heavy into making out a few hundred mosquitoes were a minor irritation compared to the rivers of sweat we worked up.
     Cocoa Beach was a great place. Back in the 60's the town seemed to never shut down, it was, after all, the height of the Apollo space program. The beach was almost as good as Daytona Beach, it was not as wide but you could drive on it for a couple of miles. Sand, sun and surf, a Florida staple.
     Then there were the "parking areas". Any place you could park your car and make out without being disturbed was a parking area and there were lots of them in failed subdivisions or turn outs along the river road or the beach.
     I need to stop here and layout a little background. I had a good relationship with Linda's Mom, her Dad was a different story but Mom, as I called her, liked me. Sometimes I would be at Linda's house waiting for her to get off work, when she called I would go get her  and save Mom the trouble. As I walked out the door I would jokingly tell Mom "don't wait up we are going to South Carolina to get married", she would smile and say ha ha. Now that I have laid out the above background I will tell you about one of our favorite "parking " places - "The Jetties".
     Port Canaveral was a dividing line between Cape Kennedy which was restricted and the civilian city of Cape Canaveral, it also was a canal connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the inter-coastal waterway and or Banana River. The south side of the port held a small fleet of trawlers and a couple of tug boats. The north side was taken up by the U.S.Navy (this is where I worked ). They had a ship called the USS Observation Island, it monitored all Polaris missile launches from the Polaris submarines that came in for testing. The civilian side also had "The Jetties"they were piles of big rocks on both sides of the channel  that stretched out into the ocean and served as a breaker for the channel and provided for some great fishing.
     The Jetties as we called them were a prime "parking area", they were wild with over grown palmetto bushes, palm trees and sand dunes. the chances of getting stuck in the sugar sand were very good but not a deterrent. Any given Friday and Saturday night would find a steady stream of bouncing headlights as cars carefully navigated the ruts we called a road into the jungle of the Jetties. The great thing about the Jetties was the offshore breezes  that kept the mosquitoes at bay and quickly dried perspiration. When talking about taking your best girl to the Jetties we sometimes said we were going to watch the "submarine races", the fact there were nuclear submarines at the port had nothing to do with races.
     One Friday night I was at Linda's house, she was working till 11:00 pm. I got up to leave and as I walked out the door I told mom "see you tomorrow  Mom", she laughed. I picked Linda up and we decided to go to the Jetties. To make a long story short, things got a little hot and heavy, the next thing we knew it was around four in the morning before we headed home. The sun was coming up when we pulled into the drive, Mom was waiting up when we walked in and in no mood to talk. After that we were careful about when we got home and I didn't joke around with Mom too often. The irony is that with all of the problems she had with the preparations for our wedding, she told us if she had it to do over she would have paid us to go to South Carolina.
     As with many things from my past they exist only in my memories now. The drive-in is long gone, I am sure Clear Lake is still there but somehow it has probably changed. The space program is not as exciting as back in the sixties. Port Canaveral has expanded, a Disney cruise ship sails from there and there is a good sport fishing business and several swanky restaurants. The Jetties, well now  they are a county park known as "Jetty Park", there are paved roads, with paved parking, picnic tables and flowering bushes. Every weekend families gather for a day at the beach, fish on the jetties and hope to see a big ship sail down the channel.
     Some people don't handle change too well, I have to admit I am one of those people but as I have gotten older I realize change is a fact of life.  My "Jetties" are long gone except in my memories, there they are as clear as ever.