By late June and into early July throughout the 1970s, the summer seasons in Ponte Vedra Beach would begin to wear thin on the patience of some of the older year-round residents.
Things were moving fast. The speed limit on the Boulevard was raised to 35 for a time, then lowered to 25. Some lobbied for 15 mph while others wanted no outside vehicular traffic whatsoever.
The rush to recreation was reorienting leisure and pointing PV in a direction that some felt was a departure from its roots. Traffic was heavier, and with more cars, there were fewer available parking spaces at the Club. New faces began appearing and then disappearing just as quickly.
Some year-round residents would retreat from Club activities entirely and leave the day-to-day programs to others. Some took the opportunity to drive up to the mountains and join family in Flat Rock, Hayesville, Black Mountain or Sugar Mountain. The Woodpecker Trail was a popular route north through Georgia for many Ponte Vedrans wanting to head up the old way.
But a good majority of the year-round residents, however, would decide to wait out the season locally by leisuring-in-place.
For kids growing up in PV in the middle of it all, there was a certain excitement brewing and many of us would leave our houses barefoot in the mornings and not return until dusk.
During the summer rush, we’d people-watch more than anything. Many year-round residents would give visitors and guests priority at the Club to enjoy the amenities throughout the day. These residents would surface for off-hour, “off menu” activities because at times, there did seem to be just too many people.
Some days, the Olympic pool was so crowded by late mid-mornings that the lifeguards found themselves struggling with head counts. By noon, every table on the patio was full, every lounger in the adult pool area was in use, and the Racquet Club was at capacity. The new grandstand had become a popular breezy hangout from the heat. The sight of available golf carts gave everyone an indication of how many golfers were out on the course.
There were lines at the Surf Club snack bar, and four lifeguard chairs had been pulled down near the surf. The level of activity was exhilarating, but it also set the tone for social exhaustion, even for eager kids.
The itch of adventure, whatever that meant for each one of us individually, was becoming overwhelming. New rounds of visitors had already come and gone during this early summer rush. The Club had reset the youth activities calendar several times and scheduling was designed to be fresh for new families arriving weekly. Emphasis was placed on their concentrated needs. Wherever they were coming from, the guests were here to enjoy the best of what Ponte Vedra Beach had to offer, and in nearly every case, it was the space to enjoy what the full-time residents had available to them year-round.
Our urge was to keep pace, but that was a recipe for disaster.
Mrs. Landrum would remind us, “Slow and easy wins the race.” Our mother demonstrated this pace by growing African violets and her efforts were rewarded when Alice Landrum nominated her plants for the Garden Club State Championships where she won Best in State in that category. There is an art to leisure.
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.” This John Steinbeck sentence opens his novel, “Travels with Charley: In Search of America,” 1961. A copy sat on our family bookshelf. Once the excitement of the first volley of summer was behind us, it was time for reflection, for settling, for reading, not as an assignment but as leisure itself, out of necessity.
Summer reading in PV was essential for perspective. It provided a quiet alternative to the rush of the season, and in most houses, including the seasonal rentals, there were small libraries of shelved books that had for whatever reason settled there as keys to the cures for the inevitable emptiness that surfaced annually at this time of year in the form of the dreaded phrase, “There’s nothing to do here.”
Who could have imagined that Mark Twain wrote “Joan of Arc,” and that he considered it the best of all his books, unless it was discovered on a shelf, picked up, read and the lessons of the story internalized? Some visitors attacked their feelings of boredom with business precision and their desire to experience as much as they possibly could, simply because they wanted more. They couldn’t turn “it” off, whatever “it” was.
Others took the opposite extreme and settled on the idea that there wasn’t anything more to discover. The pendulum swinging between these two poles, at times, would amplify the dread. What if the summer slips away too quickly? What if we can’t find satisfaction here? Should we drive to St. Augustine for the day? Why is everything so expensive?
Ponte Vedra Beach has always been a community devoted to leisure and hospitality. It is a place where those from other communities would come to experience the very things the year-round residents enjoyed the most. We weren’t the special ones for growing up in PV in the ’70s as kids. We just found ourselves as part of the community. But PV in the’70s was a special place. Our parents, our parents’ parents, and in some cases, great-grandparents, had created a unique place for us and others, and it was certainly a community built on the idea that very little should ever be left to chance. Ponte Vedra Beach is a community of choices.
Kids who live within the boundaries of PV act as junior hosts whether they agree with the label or not. It’s been this way since the very beginning. For kids in PV, etiquette has always been expected from them. “What to do, when and why.” In other words, “white gloves for girls” and “blue blazers for boys.” There were expectations and those expectations needed to be learned.
In downtown Jacksonville in the ’60s and ’70s, “Coh’ns,” as our grandmother called it, offered youth courses by Marjabelle Young Stewart on manners and etiquette. If there was ever any question about how kids were expected to act at the Club at any given time, it was covered in these courses. The Ponte Vedra Club required manners. There was no doubt that kids were encouraged to be kids but if their behavior crossed the line, they would be asked to leave for the rest of the day. If they returned the next day and the behavior persisted, their parents would be called.
If youth executive function was expected to be developed, and it was, the muscle memory of manners needed development first. Manners and etiquette were the template, and the lessons taught us were the same manners and etiquette taught in courses designed for “Embassy, Cabinet and Congressional” dependents in Washington. Very little was left to chance.
By today’s standards, it was rigorous. But in the 1970s, the desire was that these expectations of behavior would lead to the executive etiquette in the future workplace. It was a belief that understanding and participating in corporate conduct would launch and develop anyone’s career. Some kids broke entirely from this tradition and preferred outlier status. But the standard was that if you were going to join your parents at the University Club at the top of the Gulf Life Tower, attend the October Fest at the Florida Yacht Club, enjoy lunch inside at the Surf Club, or have dinner at the Inn, manners mattered.
An outing to Bill Morgan’s Children’s Museum under its new name, The Jacksonville Museum of Arts and Sciences, required manners. A trip to Utsey Shoes in Avondale required manners. The Cummer Museum: manners. The Lightner Museum: manners. If we were on a Club-sponsored trip to Marineland, riding in a vehicle with the Club emblem, expectations were that much higher.
As year-round residents, we were reminded that we were in many ways representing the Ponte Vedra Club itself and reputation mattered. No one wanted their parents to receive a call from Mr. Harrison.
Every situation had its own circumstances. Watching the adults clean ducks on the small dock by the pond near the Lodge at the end of Neck Road was a feathery mess, but it carried its own etiquette. Forming plum-sized balls of hamburger, cornmeal and raw egg and dropping them off a dock into the canal at night as the tide reached peak, then waiting shortly for the water to turn and recede; and then, by lantern light, flinging a casting net and pulling in many handfuls of shrimp the size of a grown man’s thumb carried its own etiquette.
Politely accepting ice-cold sweet tea made with heavily sulfury water in Palm Valley and being thankful for the refreshment required manners. Being scooped a handful of warm taffy from a cast iron pot over a fire and working it with buttered hands until another pair of buttered hands could be found to begin helping pull it apart, stretch it and fold it back on itself at a birthday party along Roscoe Boulevard required both manners and etiquette.
This was something that Marjabelle Young Stewart could never have planned for, but something she certainly would never have shied away from experiencing.
Manners and etiquette do not mean privilege and exclusivity. They mean respect and consideration, making our actions with others smoother for everyone involved. It is not about gatekeeping, and it never has been.
Manners and etiquette are tools for everyday life and in Ponte Vedra Beach in the 1970s, everyday life meant very much the same as it means today: navigating social settings with confidence while showing kindness in a structured way.
In other words, a good handshake and good table manners matter. Some skills will open doors regardless of background and building character as youth reflects broader values and this signals reliability and respect. It’s a framework that still holds value today, and will most likely hold value tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, in this smartly casual place of all places, Ponte Vedra Beach.
