Food Feature: Water wars

Tybee celebrates summer with a sound drenching

I like luxury, but there’s something special about a salty island where bare feet are welcome. Like a throwback to the ’60s, Tybee Island off the coast of Savannah is beach bum paradise. Where else in the world is Memorial Day marked by a Beach Bums Parade, aka, “the world’s longest rolling water fight”? Every year, at 6:30 p.m. on the Friday before Memorial Day, the manmade downpour draws hundreds of revelers and includes more than 30 “floats,” mostly comprised of decorated flatbed trucks and boats on trailers pulled by pickups.

This year, my children and I experienced our first Beach Bums baptism. Arriving just in time, we filled our water blasters and gathered at the corner with locals preparing hoses, buckets, basins and water guns of all sizes.

A police escort announced the arrival of the Big Kahuna (an important parade dignitary wearing a tuxedo) and his entourage. Then came the floats decked out with palm trees and costumed characters — hula girls, pirates and clowns among them — joined by free-roaming water shooters determined to take no prisoners.

Beachwear and bare feet were de rigeur. Brigades of children under 6 years old, teenage guerilla fighters and family units armed themselves with the latest liquid launching equipment. A number of grandparent types dragged their water hoses from a block away. The bombardment from all sides was nonstop. Everyone was committed to excess; no one within 50 feet of the parade was spared.

After the freshwater deluge came a weekend of saltwater treatments — long walks on the beach, body surfing, building sandcastles. One morning very early, my son stood in the shallows not five feet from a school of feeding dolphins. Magic. Why would anyone want to grow up?

Throughout the holiday weekend, there was live music on the pier each night, and the restaurants were slammed. The kids ate their weight in shellfish at the Crab Trap and Fannie’s on the Beach. Could there be any better way to mark the beginning of a long hot summer than with a big splash of cool water and a plateful of crabs???






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