The older I get the more I realize that stories that start with the phrase "I remember when..." usually have a point to make. My story is about Tybee Island, one of the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia, USA. A place where "nature lovers mingle with movie stars, bird watchers [and] good ol boys". I'm sure you're wondering how I ever found myself in such a place.

Turn the clock back to the early 1990s. That's when I visited Tybee Island for the first time. My brother was living just 18 miles up river in Savannah, GA. I lived in California (and still do), but I'd spent some formative time in Georgia. So I used my bother's place of residence as an excuse to return. In those days Tybee Island was a beautiful but odd place where tacky t-shirt shops lined a 3 mile stretch of buff colored sand– simply referred by the locals as Savannah Beach.

I remember small cottages and bungalows laid out in a grid just steps from the Atlantic ocean. Many were turn of the century clapboard houses with a vaguely Victorian vibe. Others were very Southern in style with wide wrap-around screened porches. Mish-mashed between these were simple 1950s cement block homes. The mix of styles gave the area a very funky charm. The only activity in those days (besides the beach and ocean) was an old lighthouse (original structure c.1736), a small military monument, and ice cream parlors every which way you turned. Barely drinking age myself, I remember watching locals pedal through the short main drag that passed as town with beer holders affixed to the handlebars of their bicycles.

I'd done a little research on Tybee before I arrived that long ago summer. So I knew it hadn't always been just a sleepy little beach community. Way back before I could possibly remember it was a well-known Southern resort town– Tybee.

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