30. Bayport Parties

 

Bayport Parties

When I became a teenager, Bayport took on an entirely different meaning.

It was no longer just a place for exploring canals, riding in boats, and childhood adventures. It became a place where we gathered at night, where friendships deepened, music played, and life began to feel exciting in a new way.

Bayport sits where the Weeki Wachee River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Many of my friends’ parents had summer homes there, and one of the boys opened his parents’ house for weekend parties.

Most of the group were recent high school graduates who were already in college and came home on weekends.

There was music, dancing, laughter, flirting, and the feeling that we had entered a new stage of life.

The boys were old enough to drink, so alcohol was around, but I did not drink. Partly because I never really liked alcohol, and partly because I was underage and knew my mother would be waiting up for me when I got home.

And she always was.

After dates or parties, she would sit and talk with me for a while, making sure I was of sound mind and body before finally going to bed herself.

Looking back, I realize how much she cared.

Even though these parties sound wild by today’s standards, they were actually remarkably innocent.

We even had a chaperone — one of the boys’ older cousins, who was twenty-seven years old and somehow became responsible for all of us.

Questioned by Deputy

One day, I was unexpectedly called into the principal’s office at school. Sitting there was a deputy sheriff who wanted to question me about the Bayport parties.

He asked if there were drugs there.

I remember thinking how absurd the question sounded.

“No,” I told him. “Absolutely not.” We hardly even knew what drugs were back then.

Then he asked if there was “wild sex.”

Again, the answer was no.

We were not nearly that uninhibited. Mostly we danced, laughed, flirted, talked, and enjoyed being together.

Nothing ever came of the questioning, and to this day, I’m not entirely sure what prompted it.

Moving On

Eventually, life shifted. I started dating a boy from Hill ‘n Dale, on the east side of Brooksville, and drifted away from the Bayport group for a while.

But after I went off to college, whenever I came home, we would gather together again.

That group became one of the most memorable parts of my youth.

It felt like I had found my tribe.

There was something deeply comforting about belonging to a circle where everyone simply enjoyed each other. We bonded through laughter, friendship, music, and shared summers by the water.

Bayport gave me two childhoods in a way.

One as a little girl exploring the canals and searching for arrowheads…

and another as a teenager discovering friendship, belonging, and the first feeling of becoming an adult.

Poem

The nights felt endless then.

Music drifting across the water,

bare feet on old wooden docks,

laughter rising into the warm Gulf air.

We were not trying to escape life.

We were stepping into it.

Young,

hopeful,

and certain somehow

that these friendships

would always live inside us.