REDNECK RIVIERA: Pass the gator tail and beer and get ready for

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REDNECK RIVIERA: Pass the gator tail and beer and get ready for the mullet toss

This story was published 5/18/2001

By DAVID L. LANGFORD
AP Travel Editor

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. -- Sitting smack-dab on the Florida-Alabama state line is a rambling beachside roadhouse called, unsurprisingly, the Flora-Bama. It's Ground Zero on the Redneck Riviera, the place where songster Jimmy "Margaritaville" Buffett spent a lot of time wasting away before he moved on to Key West, Fla.

Key West may try to claim Buffett as its own, but this part of Gulf-lapped Alabama is his home. His sister has a restaurant up on U.S. 98 overlooking Weeks Bay, Lulu's Sunset Grill, where a specialty is "redneck caviar," a mixture of black beans, onions, peppers and seasonings, served on crackers.

Tourism brochures call this stretch of glistening white Alabama sand on the Gulf of Mexico the Azalea Coast. The busy port city of Mobile on the other side of Mobile Bay, where the early French settlers first brought Mardi Gras zaniness to North America, is prepping for its tricentennial next year with all sorts of cultural events featuring its glorious gardens, concerts and museums.

But out here on Pleasure Island, the 32 miles of beach that stretches from the Florida border to Fort Morgan on the eastern side of Mobile Bay, the locals have a saltier take on the area.

They sell tourists "Redneck Riviera" T-shirts, there is a joint in Foley called the Redneck Rendezvous, Gulf Shores has Bubba's Seafood House and there's lively club for the younger crowd called Live Bait in Orange Beach. The big social event of the year is the annual Mullet Toss the last full weekend in April at the Flora-Bama. Contestants vie to see who can toss a mullet (a slimy fish scorned by sporstfishermen and gourmands alike) the farthest across the state line.

A local giveaway newspaper is called "The Mullet Wrapper."

Fodor's new "Gulf South" guidebook, describing the coastal regions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, reports tongue-in cheek:

"Right off Alabama's shore, though not listed on any map, is the Barrier Island Republic. The coup, so secret the U.S. hasn't got wind of it, from which the Republic was formed, took place at a beach keg party in the late 1970s when a group of hard-partying locals seceded from the United States. The seagull, the flying rat of the coast, is the Republic's official bird. The Republic has no government, the locals just wanted to let people know they weren't willing to succumb to condo-fixation."

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If you're planning to party with these folks, you'd best line your stomach. A good place to start is Tacky Jack's Bar and Grill, a two-story weathered establishment hanging over the marina on Cotton Bayou in Orange Beach, with the bar on the top floor overlooking the water where you can watch pelicans patrolling for their dinner or maybe spot a school of dolphins. Like the Flora-Bama, it's a local institution.

Breakfast at Tacky Jack's is an exercise in gluttony. If you order the Farmer's Omelet, you get enough scrambled eggs and cheese to feed the New Orleans Saints' front four -- a staggering amount of food dumped atop a plate-size, inch-thick bed of hash browns.

But get there early. There's usually a sign-in sheet outside the door and a bunch of folks on the dock waiting to get in

Lunch is also a challenge at Tacky Jack's. If your taste goes to gator, the menu offers "Chunks of Croc." That means alligator tail, fried or blackened, which perhaps just came from the nearby swampy delta country.

"Gator is our bestseller," says Mike "Chopper" Schaffer, owner of Tacky Jack's and creator of its colorful menu. "But it's a labor-intensive. To tenderize it you've got to beat it to hell and back with a mallet."

Another option is "Mudbugs on a Railcar," translated to mean a sandwich of crawfish (crayfish) tails on a po'-boy bun.

Since Tacky Jack's is slightly out of the way, away from the view of tourists cruising the Pleasure Island beach strip along Highway 182, Chopper says 70 percent of his customers are locals, many of whom arrive by boat. They can dock right there and gas-up.

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But enough about that, on to the party.

It's 4:30 on a Monday afternoon in late March and the main lounge in the Flora-Bama is packed, mostly with snowbirds, "empty nesters," middle-aged and retired men wearing baseball caps and their women with permed hair, Midwesterners who migrate to this part of Alabama by the thousands in the off-season. The snowbirds are so numerous in these parts each state has its own social club.

Country singer Ken Lambert, who sounds a lot like Willie Nelson, is strumming his guitar and singing a song he wrote titled, "We Can Kill 'Em," a diatribe against politicians of whatever stripe.

"String 'em up and run 'em through," he sings. "Politics may not be the oldest profession, but the results are the same ..."

The audience of Social Security recipients whoops and claps.

"I'm glad you folks stopped here and not some trashy place down the road," Lambert deadpans.

The crowd howls again.

During Spring Break and on summer weekends, the Flora-Bama scene can get downright wild, with hundreds of college-age kids and twentysomethings chugging draft beer from giant plastic pitchers, the crowd spilling out onto the beach. Since it opened 40 years ago, the club has added patios, bar rooms, game rooms, lounges and a liquor store. Like fresh raw oysters? You got 'em. Lottery tickets? No problem.

As many as three bands can play at the same time on indoor and outdoor stages and it's open from 9 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. (Young kids are welcome until 5 p.m.)

If you're sitting at the main bar, you're one foot into Florida, informs a blonde barmaid named Debbie from Pensacola, Fla. It was laid out that way, she says, because the Sunshine State has looser liquor laws than the Heart of Dixie.

"We call it our five-star roadhouse," says Bebe Gauntt, spokeswoman for the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau. "You can find something going on there anytime day or night. You might even walk in on a wedding.

"After a hurricane you'll likely see folks wading out of there in waist-deep water with their drinks in their hands. People will call from out of town asking, 'Is the Flora-Bama still standing?"'

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Ready for some sunshine and fresh air, which is why most folks go to the seashore to begin with?

A respite from the condos, beach houses, hotels, convenience stores, bars and tattoo parlors is Gulf State Park between the towns of Orange Beach and Gulf Shores. Here are 6,150 acres of public land with 2 1/2 miles of beach and dunes along Highway 182. There are a'golf course, tennis courts and swimming pool, an 825-foot fishing pier, a beachfront resort hotel with moderate prices, a nature center, boat launch, playground, game room and camp store, along with hiking and biking trails, campgrounds and cabins and three lakes with canoe rentals.

It's a popular place for the retirees who descend on the place in their RVs.

Want to wet a hook?

The creation of more than 200 artificial reefs off the Alabama Gulf Coast -- with junked cars, Army tanks, refrigerators and such -- has made this a nautical Nirvana for anglers. There are some 15 fishing tournaments each year from June through September, culminating in a month-long rodeo in October.

The Alabama deep-sea fishing fleet has more than 100 boats available for charter, each equipped with fish-finding and navigation devices. (A fishing license is a must.)

From May to December, the deep-sea anglers go after sport fish such as tuna, barracuda, wahoo, bull dolphin, sailfish, mackerel, sharks and blue and white marlin, many weighing up to 700 pounds.

From the piers, jetties and the beach you can catch redfish, bluefish and pompanos. Freshwater fishers can head for the Bon Secour River, the 700-acre Lake Shelby, or 395,000 acres of other rivers, inlets and coves where speckled trout, black and striped bass, bream and red drum abound.

Golf your game?

There are more than 13 championship courses within an hour's drive of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach and the subtropical climate invites play year-round. The newest Arnold Palmer-designed course is Cypress Bend at Craft Farms, recently rated the "most playable new course in the U.S." by Golf Digest magazine.

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If you're a history buff, go west. Head a couple of miles inland and take a left on Highway 180, the road 20 miles to Fort Morgan at the tip of the peninsula and overlooking the mouth of Mobile Bay.

On your way to Fort Morgan you'll pass the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, 4,000 acres of rolling coastal pinelands and tall sand dunes where bird-watchers enjoy a visual feast, especially in the spring and fall when migrating birds arrive. It's also a stopover for migrating Monarch butterflies. Other regulars include sea turtles, alligators and snakes, some poisonous.

Fort Morgan, named for Daniel Morgan, hero of the Battle of Cowpens in the Revolutionary War, was completed in 1834 to guard the entrance to Mobile Bay, along with Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island on the opposite side of the bay.

This brick fortress was the scene of one of the most important naval battles of the Civil War, one in which a Union admiral went into the history books for a famous quotation as well as his exploits.

It was a face-off between Confederate admiral Franklin Buchanan, commander of the ironclad Tennessee, and Union admiral David G. Farragut, who commanded the wooden Hartford. The mismatch of their flagships would not portend the outcome of the battle.

On the morning of Aug. 5, 1864, Farragut sailed into the mouth of the bay with 14 wooden ships, four ironclads, 2,700 soldiers and 197 guns. Buchanan waited inside the bay with his one ironclad, three wooden ships, 427 soldiers and 22 guns.

Led by the ironclad Tecumseh, Farragut's fleet sailed into the mouth of the harbor two abreast as the guns from forts Morgan and Gaines blasted away, to little avail. Then the Tecumseh struck a mine ( called a torpedo in those days) and started to sink. The federal fleet faltered. Having had himself lashed to the rigging of the mainmast, presumably to get a better view and keep from falling overboard, Farragut shouted the order, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"

(Historians still quibble over whether that's a precise quote, but who's to ever know? Davey Farragut had no cellphone.)

Within three hours the Confederate fleet was all but destroyed and Buchanan's Tennessee was badly damaged and unable to maneuver. He surrendered.

Today you can wander around the imposing old fortress, with a few of its guns still in place, and get a feel of how miserable it must have been like to live there and fight there. There's not much to see from its ramparts except a lot of open water, with oil rigs here and there. But you can browse its museum, which has displays containing photographs, uniforms, weapons and other artifacts dating from the War of 1812 to World War II. In August there is a Civil War reenactment.

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Now it's time for some shopping.

Head back east on Highway 180 to Highway 59 and take a left for a short drive to the azalea-bedecked town of Foley, which is shopper's kind of place. The Riviera Centre Factory Stores is a complex of 120 outlet stores with name brands and designer fashions. Not far away is the huge Souvenir City (need more be said), inviting you in through the jaws of a giant shark.

Ready for some scenery?

Take U.S. 98 west out of Foley and head up the eastern shore of Mobile Bay to Fairhope. It's a visually sumptuous drive through magnificent old live oaks dripping Spanish moss and (in the spring) azaleas blooming in seemingly every yard. Fairhope is a town of some 12,000 friendly folks and home to a fine arts academy, the Eastern Arts Center, which has galleries featuring the works of some 800 students and faculty.

It's also home to an annual festival called simply Arts & Crafts, held on the third weekend in March, and usually attracting some 100,000 visitors. The town has numerous upscale boutiques, many fine restaurants, golf courses and the quarter-mile-long Fairhope Pier where folks come to fish, or just sit and look out over the bay at the lights of Mobile.

Locals like to say, "If you don't live in Fairhope, you might as well live in Alabama!"

Here on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, there's a strange occurrence several times a year between June and September. On these special nights -- usually between midnight and dawn -- crabs, fish, shrimp, rays and other sea creatures swim to the shallow waters on eastern shore of the bay. The cry goes out: Jubilee!

The locals grab their flashlights and lanterns, ice chests, scoop nets and gigs and go out to harvest a feast. By daylight all the creatures have gone back to the sea.

Scientists explain the phenomenon this way: The late summer heat combined with the heavily nutrient-rich bay bottom deplete the oxygen levels, knocking the marine life unconscious.

So, from the Flora-Bama to Fairhope, there's always something wacky going on in coastal Alabama, whether you want to toss a mullet or net one.

You just have to be there at the right time.

If You Go ...

GETTING THERE: Mobile Regional Airport is served by Continental Express, Delta, Northwest Airlink and AirTran Airlines.

Greyhound has 11 buses daily to Mobile from both New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La., eight from Pensacola, Fla., five each from Atlanta, Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., and Montgomery, Ala., and three from Birmingham, Ala.

Amtrak provides service to Miami and Los Angeles (and points in between) on its Sunset Limited, departing on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. There is daily service to Chicago on the City of New Orleans, changing trains in New Orleans.

If you're driving, Interstate 10 runs east-west and Interstate 65 runs north.

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GETTING AROUND: To explore the 32-miles of seashore communites and parks of Pleasure Island, you really need a car. Most major rental car agencies have counters at Mobile Regional Airport and Avis and Enterprise have offices in downtown Mobile.

There is also the Pleasure Island Trolley which goes along Highway 182 from near the Flora-Bama Lounge in Orange Beach to West 11th Street in Gulf Shores and north on Highway 50 to Courtyard by Marriott. The Gulf State Park is the transfer point between the Gulf Shores and Orange Beach lines.

LODGING: There is a wide choice of chain motels, with rates ranging from $45 to $250, depending on the season, and some seaside bed-and-breakfast inns.

The Gulf State Park Resort Hotel is a full-service beachfront resort with a pool and restaurant. All rooms are on the beach and have a balcony. Rooms are $49 to $99, depending on the season, and suites are $99 to $199, with a three-night minimum on holiday weekends.

DINING: It would be a shame not to sample the seafood here on the Gulf of Mexico and the choices of places are many, from hole-in-the-wall diners to elegant restaurants. Highly touted is the Original Oyster House, which curiously is at two different locations, one on the causeway near Mobile, where the battleship USS Alabama is parked as a tourist attraction, and the other on a bayou in Gulf Shores. At whichever one you figure is the "original," try the amberjack sandwich or the bountiful seafood platter. If you wake up starving, the Farmer's Omelette at Tacky Jack's in Orange Beach will keep you fueled for the rest of the day.

WHEN TO GO: During the winter months, the off-season, the Gulf Shores area is heavily populated by retired snowbirds from the Midwest. While this is not the climate of Miami Beach or Boca Raton, winters are relatively mild as compared with Des Moines or Toledo. The busy season runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day, when the beaches are likely to be crowded.

INFORMATION:

Gulf Shores Welcome Center, 3150 Gulf Shores Parkway, Gulf Shores, AL 36542. Phone: (334) 968-7511 or (800) 745 SAND.

Orange Beach Welcome Center, 23685 Perdido Beach Blvd., Orange Beach, AL 36561. Phone: (334) 974-1510 or (800) 982-8562.

Alabama Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, P.O. Drawer 457, Gulf Shores, AL 36547.

ON THE NET: http://www.gulfshores.com