The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-05-30
with what St. Andrews Bay has

with what St. Andrews Bay has to offer.
 If you do like water and do not like fishing, there are just exactly twenty-two launches waiting for you to take trip in. The compe- tition among the boatmen is keen and boat hire is almost by-word now. You can hire launch big enough to hold you, your wife and children, the nurse and still have room for your mother-in-law, for a few dollars a day and travel all about a land-locked bay, on still water, for fifty miles.
 When one stops to compare the for mality. exorbitant rates. and inane stupidity of the Florida East Coast with what the West Coast has to of- fer, one stands apalled at the number of fools that can be found on the Am erican Atlantic shore below Georgia.
 One months expenses spent at an East Shore hotel, dressing for dinner so you can watch Aigy DeMasherVils go by in a motor car, will pay TOT SIX months of rest and happiness on St. Andrews Bay. and leave you enough over to pay the butcher and grocer the bills that you got when you left town.
 And then the surf bathing. aon't forget that. There is some class to the surf on the Gulf Coast when warm. balmy south wind is blowing. the sand is so white and heavy and clean that you can see bottom all the time Hurricane Island, at the mouth of the bay is only a few miles from the mainland and there are dozen laun- ches plying between 1t and snore. tax ing bathers down to the surf oeech. There is not the slightest suspicion or an under tow. the only play or the cuF- rent being up and down the neech. and think of it! There is not sewer emptying into the water within 100 miles. The fiotilla of tin cans dead cats, watermelon rhines, crates or decaying vegetables and other horrors that one meets face to face In the bath ing places along the upper Atlahtlc Coast, are unknown at St. Andrews Bay. The water Is clean, cool ana pure all the time.
 Talk about fun--a confirmed pessi- mist with un-curable heart burn would make a stab at the vaudeville stage after three weeks at St. An irew's Bay. There Is something to do all the time. You can fish all the time for the tide only falls a foot. and therefore you can bathe all the time. If you drop a ring of a bracelet overheard von can see 1t on the bottom and find if. There is only one trouble with the place, its so confounded hard to get away from.
 It's as good as circus to see fam jlv that has been down for a week or two preparing to take the train Tor home. A tanned man will hold on to the back rail of the train. the rail of the very last platform. telling a friend just exactly how many pounds his eighteenth fish of the day before weighed. A little further up the plat form his wife will be scufning with the children. who straining back and making the platform air hideous with their howls, are trying to break away and keep from going home. Yes, it has that drawback, it's a mighty hard place to leave.
 And you ought to see the way the drummers come in. Heaven pardon their poor perjured souls for the tele- grams they send their houses. For instance:
 Dear House:
 Have an important engagement with the biggest merchant in town, obliged to stay over until tomorrow. will write"
 Yours for more business
 "A. N Gler"
 And that Important engagement" Is to do nothing more than so with the merchant in a boat trawl fishing and wind up at the outer beech for cold bottle (which of course you have to bring with you) and just one more dip in that magnificent surf.
 Oh yes the travelling men have found out all about Panama City and St. Andrews, and all the mill settle ments about the bay, and they come in and take a launch (and fishing tac- kle) and go to see the merchants who keep 6 stock consisting of one case of smokeless tobacco a box of soda biscuits. three rusty blow shears. two coon skins and unlimited cord and fishing hooks whose stores are ten miles up the bay and who order their stun once a year from St. Andrews Or Panama City. Its cinoh, and they work 1t to a frazzle.
 But you can't blame them, or the children. or anyone else who does not want to leave, 1t is the most delight full place you ever saw, from sprawling in a hammock on a hotel piazza. to