Siesta Beach

I grew up on Siesta Key in the 30's, 40's and early 50's. I wrote about it in my book and watched crop dusters land their airplanes there on the beach to have a Sunday picnic when I was a kid in the thirty's. It was called Crescent Beach then and my late brother and I used to go skinny dipping there because there was no one there. I just saw on the evening news that it has been voted the best beach in the USA...also was voted best beach anywhere last year. Wide, clean clear water, and sand like white powdered sugar. About six miles long. Siesta Key is off the coast very near Sarasota. After the war I landed many times there in front of our little cottage but that section of beach and the cottage are now gone. Crescent Beach was about half a mile south. Many good memories of beach parties, spear fishing, riding aquaplanes tied to cars that ran down the beach, and living a good life. Things quickly changed when the war started and brought thousands of airmen down to Sarasota Air Base. I can't go back there now.

 

Body surfing was great because of the long gentle slope of the shore. The waves hardly ever "broke", they just rolled and rolled for yards. The best surfing was during the storms. It took a lot of work to swim out where they were building and the ride in was for 100 yards sometimes. We would walk up the beach for about 1/2 mile and let the undertow takes us out for a nice long surf ride back in to the front of our house. My brother and I were the only guys on the beach most of the time.

 

Landing there had to be evaluated as it happened. Sometimes the sand would be soft enough in patches to "grab" the wheels and this was a signal to power up and not allow things to go any further. Other times if the tide was out you could land in the "dark" places of firm sand and be okay. It was always fun to set up a landing approach out in the Gulf off shore and try to gage how much the breeze would drift you in-land to a landing on the beach. Didn't always land but it was a good exercise in gaging wind drift. The only time that I didn't worry was when I was flying a Cub instead of a Stearman. They were so light and had fat tires that didn't respond to the sand so much. They required aggressive cross- wind applications to keep the up-wind wing down . Those days are gone forever not only for the airplanes but the beach, one would not dare to land an airplane there now! I appreciate greatly those early days. Things that are in my memory bank that only I can revisit and I do so many times.

 

If you can imagine those scenes without the hotels and people you could see what it was like when I grew up there. That long sweep in the distance coursing off to the right terminates at Point Of Rocks, from what I can figure, about 3 miles away.