Nolan and his family set out on the all day drive. He was glad that he’d saved up to buy the little handheld video game system, it made the drive bearable. When they got to the Mississippi coast Nolan caught his first view of the ocean and suddenly didn’t care about his game. Offshore oil rigs dotted the horizon and the water went further than anyone could see. Seafood restaurants and boat docks began to appear next to the road. Nolan was enthralled when they passed the banana port. He never really though about how bananas got into the country before.
He heard his parents say that Beauvoir was up the road and some of the family was going to try and take the tour tomorrow. Nolan had never heard of Beauvoir before and asked about it. His mom told him it was the home of Jefferson Davis. Then he had to ask who that was as well. His dad told him that was the president of the south during the civil war. Nolan thought it was a little odd that everyone was excited to go see that guy’s house but it did seem pretty historical.
A few miles down the road, they pulled into a cheap little motel. Their family had rented almost every room and was swarming around taking the place over. There were already cousins in the pool, cousins throwing the football around outside, cousins headed to the beach and there was much planning going on about what to do in this new fun spot. Nolan quickly decided the first place he wanted to go was the beach, he’d never been on a beach.
After they unloaded and checked in, Nolan went with a group down to the beach. He tried walking in the sand with his flip flops kicked off but he soon found out that it wasn’t the best idea to walk the shores of Long Beach without shoes. There were all sorts of glass shards and sharp sea shells to be stepped on. So he put his flip flops back on and went to wash the sand off in the ocean. There were huge pipes every hundred yards or so that were covered in algae. Nolan couldn’t tell what they could be for but the group decided they were probably oil pipelines. Some of the kids thought they might be sewer pipes but that didn’t seem likely.
The cousin crew had to be careful crossing the four lane highway to get to the beach and back. Nolan got a tight grip on his flip flops with his toes so that he didn’t end up going back for a shoe in the middle of the highway. After getting back across they decided to go to the pool where there weren’t any sewer pipes. But some kid had pooped in the pool and it was floating in there! It wasn’t one of our kids of course, must have been one of the handful of strangers.
Practice Outlaw 