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    Bay Boy: Stories of a Childhood in Point Clear, Alabama
    Bay Boy: Stories of a Childhood in Point Clear, Alabama
    Bay Boy: Stories of a Childhood in Point Clear, Alabama
    Ebook149 pages1 hour

    Bay Boy: Stories of a Childhood in Point Clear, Alabama

    By Watt Key, Murray Key and John S. Sledge

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    About this ebook

    A charming, humorous, and colorful coming-of-age memoir

    Bay Boy is a collection of essays by award-winning young adult author Watt Key, chronicling his boyhood in Point Clear, Alabama. During his childhood, Point Clear was not the tony enclave of today with  its spas, art galleries, and multimillion dollar waterfront properties.  Rather, it was a sleepy resort community, practically deserted in the winter, with a considerable population of working-class residents.
    As Key notes in his introduction, “Life in Point Clear is really about being  outside. . . . I have never found a place so perfectly suited to exercise  a young boy’s imagination.” Key and his brother filled their days  collecting driftwood to make forts, scooting around the bay in a sturdy  Stauter boat, and making art and writing stories when it rained.

    In a tone that is simple and direct, punctuated by truly hilarious  moments. Key writes about Gulf Coast traditions including Mardi Gras, shrimping, fishing, dove hunting, jubilees, camping out, and bracing for hurricanes. These stories are full of colorful characters— Nasty Bill Dickson, a curmudgeonly tow-truck driver; I’llNeeda, a middle-aged homeless woman encamped in a shack across the road; and the Ghost of Zundel’s Wharf, “the restless soul of a long-dead construction worker.” The stories are illustrated by charming and evocative artwork by the author’s brother Murray Key.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity Alabama Press
    Release dateOct 1, 2019
    ISBN9780817392635
    Bay Boy: Stories of a Childhood in Point Clear, Alabama
    Author

    Watt Key

    Albert Watkins Key, Jr., publishing under the name Watt Key, is an award-winning southern fiction author. He grew up and currently lives in southern Alabama with his wife and family. Watt spent much of his childhood hunting and fishing the forests of Alabama, which inspired his debut novel, Alabama Moon, published to national acclaim in 2006. Alabama Moon won the 2007 E.B. White Read-Aloud Award, was included on Time Magazine's list of the Best One Hundred YA Books of All Time, and has been translated in seven languages.

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      Book preview

      Bay Boy - Watt Key

      reasons.

      THE NEW OLD POINT CLEAR

      I SUDDENLY FIND MYSELF AT the age where I’m telling my kids how it used to be when I was growing up. I remember when my father and grandfather told me these same kinds of stories. And they successfully convinced me that life in Point Clear, Alabama, was more interesting back in their day. It’s certainly true that my six siblings and I grew up with paved roads and we didn’t have to ride a ferry to get into the city. But, with hindsight, it seems every generation has some interesting stories to pass down.

      Scenic Highway 98 was asphalted by the time I was born in 1970, but there still weren’t many people living in Point Clear year-round.

      It used to be a dirt road! one of my kids exclaimed.

      That’s right, I said. When your great-grandfather built this house.

      Of course, the summers were still full of vacationers, and having grown up across the bay in Mobile, your grandmother knew most of them. Since we were always around, her friends would bring their kids by. Between me and all your aunts and uncles, there was always somebody the right age to play with. And there was plenty to do.

      Like what? my son asks.

      We’d swim in the bay and fish and build forts and rope swings. Ride in the boat. You know that little wooden boat I fixed up for you? That used to be mine. It had an old motor that would run most of the time. But sometimes we’d break down or run out of gas.

      You broke down out there?

      Sometimes. Part of the fun was getting home. It’s shallow enough to walk your boat in from just about anywhere.

      But you didn’t have video games, right, Dad?

      No, we didn’t have video games.

      Man, my son says.

      Did you have a pool? my daughter asks.

      The Grand Hotel had a pool, and we’d go up there sometimes, but we mostly swam in the bay.

      But it makes your underwear brown, my son says. "And there’s

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