Through the 1970s, the entire month of October created a unique annual challenge for the Ponte Vedra Club youth directors in planning activities for the families of full-time resident members and guests as the ocean temperatures suddenly started dropping. The Olympic pool was wrapping up for the season and every window of every building east of the lagoons and on the oceanside of the Surf Club was covered daily with a new haze of sea salt and the winds weren’t the least bit favorable for golf and tennis.
It was the “October Slide” and as PV kids, like kids everywhere, we were focused like a laser beam on Halloween. Thanksgiving was a month away and Christmas was still too far off to have any meaningful impact on our thoughts about the Lake Vedra Christmas Tree Lighting Party the adults were planning.
Youth activities had turned inward. Bingo was popular, as were the youth dancing lessons being offered. “Saturday Night Fever” premiered in 1977. Etiquette lessons happened. Evening movies were being shown weekly. The youth directors were trying just about anything they could think of to help mitigate our seasonal eagerness.
The annual Ponte Vedra Club Youth Pie Eating Contest was a popular event, and it brought together resident members and visiting guests around long folding tables on the west lawn that stretched behind the old Racquet Club next to the Inn. This was before the remodeling when the area was still being used for adjunct parking along the facilities alley behind the post office. It was the location of lawn games and the annual Easter egg hunt before that April tradition was relocated to the Inn’s south and front lawn.
For those of us who were feeling the sudden loss of summer friends and September visitors and lamenting the downsized Surf Club amenities due to weather, it was a welcome diversion before Halloween.
Ponte Vedra / Palm Valley Elementary had offered several autumn mini-festivals in early October for various grades and there had been get-togethers in Palm Valley that had brought together kids from both communities for backyard taffy pull carnivals on Roscoe Boulevard. Throughout the ’70s, October was a great month in PV.
But the Pie Eating Contest took the prize. It was the highlight of the Ponte Vedra Club’s October field day activities featuring three-legged races, relay games and burlap sack races. Newer kids hardly knew what to expect. For the older kids, they knew EXACTLY what to expect.
The kitchen at the Club prepared the small pies and the rule was “no hands or utensils allowed.” Kids were seated on either side of the long folding tables, and the pies were placed in front of us. A swim coach’s whistle started the event. There were two heats divided by age. Younger kids first, then the older.
It was pure excitement for 45 seconds to the two-minute mark. Heads down, chocolate pies with whipped cream in front of us. There was more smashing than actual eating. The head doorman from the Inn was there to watch and take note of the who’s who of young faces. Parents were there, and a photographer for The Recorder took pictures. These were the Ponte Vedra kids, and the challenge built character. If we couldn’t make fun of ourselves and enjoy each other’s company, then we weren’t a community, and Ponte Vedra Beach has always been a close-knit community. It was a fun mess and everyone knew it.
Halloween followed shortly after field day and it was the Bowers’ house at the first full curve on Pablo Road right before the oak hammock that drew the trick-or-treaters. Only a few clusters of houses in PV offered candy. A few around the Circle and a few farther down on Pablo. Some houses on Solana Road and Rutile Drive offered candy and a few down the Boulevard toward our end had their welcome lights on as well, but not many.
By and large, it was the Bowers’ house where everyone gathered. Mrs. Bowers would host the night and the most mysterious exhibit of all was the ventriloquist doll sitting in a small rocking chair outside the French doors on the left of their front walkway. This was Dr. Bowers’ specialty, or was it Alison, or John? We never knew. Suzanne and David weren’t telling.
The doll in the chair would rock on its own to answer, yes or no, to questions from the trick-or-treaters. Mrs. Bowers would ask, “Is the weather going to get colder? Rock for yes, sit still for no.” The small rocker suddenly began to move. The younger kids inched closer to their parents. Halloween night in PV would be in full swing.
But don’t take my word for it. Talk to some who were there for the Pie Eating Contests and the haunted rocker. They’ll tell you. Ponte Vedra Beach in late October was a favorite time of year to be a kid. We’re all much older now, some are no longer with us, but we’re still the same kids with pie on our faces. Many still consider the ’70s as the best years of our lives in this smartly casual place of all places Ponte Vedra Beach.
Mrs. Grady W. Jones’ delicious Chocolate Pie
Melt ¼ lb butter and two squares of unsweetened chocolate in a double boiler.
Mix together 1 cup of sugar, ¼ cup flour and ¼ teaspoon salt.
Beat two eggs, combine with the dry ingredients, then pour into the double boiler and mix with the chocolate.
Pour into a greased pie plate. Bake about 20 to 25 minutes at 350 degrees. Serve while warm topped with whipped cream. Any left can be run in the oven the next day, heated, and it cannot be detected from freshly cooked. Serves 6.
Double the recipe and cook with a thin crust using small pie tins if there’s a Pie Eating Contest coming up. Happy Halloween Ponte Vedra Style.
