The Jack Marshall Collection™: The Beach and the Famous Family Resort

Jack Marshall's photograph of the giant "Holiday" sign taken in front of the "Famous Family Resort" near Pensacola Beach, Florida, sometime in the late 1950s, is sure to evoke memories of family beach vacations for anyone who might be called a Baby Boomer.

No doubt "Holiday Homes" is long gone by now. But, just as certainly, that wonderful beach is still there.

Stretching eastward from somewhere near Gulf Shores, Alabama, to an indefinite terminus past Panama City, Florida, the white sands and blue-green waters of The Beach comprise, in my humble opinion, one of the most perfect and wonderful places in the world.

Now I will admit I haven't seen all of the world's great beaches. But I have seen some pretty nice ones ... from Waikiki and the Big Island in Hawaii to various ports of call in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, to the Santa Monica pier and Point Reyes in California, to the Hamptons and the Jersey Shore near my adopted home in New York City.

But nothing is better than The Beach, our beach. The sand is blindingly white and so soft and tight-packed that it makes little squeaking sounds when you walk across it barefoot. There are no rocks or pebbles or tufts of grass between the dunes and the water. And the water -- well, if you've never seen it I can't expect you to understand. But it is the most wonderful shade of translucent blue-green that exists on this earth. There is no name for that color.

In my memory, no beach vacation ever will surpass my first trip to Holiday Homes. In those pre-Disney theme park days, from the way my parents talked about The Beach, we believed we were going to a magical place, where children could run and play and where our fun was to be paramount and endless.

And it was ... for one glorious week at a time. We woke up early to the smell of bacon and eggs in the kitchen of the little rented home. During the day, we played in the surf and the dunes, we flew kites and built sand castles and chased sea gulls, and we stopped only long enough for one of my mother's peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. At night, we had roast beef or hot dogs or salmon croquettes. No restaurants for the Marshall family ... the vacation itself was the big expense.

And then we slept hard, lulled by the sound of the surf, only to awaken the next day and do it all over again.

I remember standing on The Beach as a little boy and thinking ... these waves have been washing up here, every few seconds, day and night, since before I was born. Heck, since before my parents or grandparents were born. Maybe even when the dinosaurs were here! And, I thought, if I had been here way back when, and gazed out at the sea as I was doing right then, it would have looked just ... like ... this.

Then, as the Marshall kids got older, we started taking more exotic vacations ... like honest-to-goodness camping trips way out West -- Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, California.

And I don't remember another family beach vacation after those first few.

When my own children came along, I could not wait to take them to The Beach. And for years, we did just that. This time, we made a tradition of the extended family meeting there every summer, and most of the children of us four Marshall siblings got to know their cousins in a very special environment.

This next generation of Marshalls, I have no doubt, some day will give their own little ones the same sense of wonder that our parents made possible for us. As I examine Jack Marshall's photograph of the Famous Family Resort, I am struck by the fact that apparently there is no air conditioning. All the windows are open in the main office, to better admit the cooling sea breezes. Can you imagine a weekend at the Gulf of Mexico now without air conditioning?

I was back at The Beach last weekend. Staying in an expensive "inn" with air conditioning and ceiling fans so efficient and cold you need a down comforter at night to stay warm in the Egyptian cotton sheets. There are fancy beach chairs, too -- for a price. And dinners every night at restaurants with the best food and wines from around the world.

But The Beach itself has not changed. Not one bit. Not since I was a youngster ... perhaps not even since the dinosaurs roamed the Florida Panhandle.

And that brings me to this entry's final photo (below). I study it closely. It is of a little boy -- me -- at the edge of the water, testing my courage, and learning first-hand about how great and vast and wondrous that big ocean really is. And now, silently thanking Jack Marshall for taking me there, and making that memory possible.