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Romeo said we would learn to hate people from Hattiesburg fast. If you own an eating establishment, they are the worst form of humanity alive because they come to the beach on Saturdays and Sundays by the carloads and bring their own lunches. If they rent a cottage, they bring their own groceries.
    My daddy is not a man to let little things upset him. He looked upon this news as a challenge, but Momma is worried. She told Daddy he should have known all this before we moved.
    Later we sat down and figured out a plan to turn our business into a profit-making organization. The first thing we did was todecide on a name for the place. We settled on Harper’s Malt Shop and ordered a big pink neon sign with a big blue neon arrow pointing to the door.
    One of the things Daddy told Momma in order to get her to marry him was that one day he would put her name up in lights. I don’t think Harper’s Malt Shop is what Momma had in mind. Daddy barely got Momma to marry him. She thought he was ugly, too little and skinny, but he wouldn’t leave her alone. He wrote her poems and when she said she didn’t want to marry him, he cried and carried on so, everybody felt sorry for him. He would spend all night hollering on her front porch.
    Her mother said she better marry him because he wasn’t going to leave. I’m sure glad she said yes. Look at all the free movies I’ve seen, not to mention getting to live on the beach.
    Daddy and I have been working to get ready to open. We changed the names over the bathroom doors from “Men” and “Women” to “Buoys” and “Gulls.” We also painted a lot of signs that say “Harper’s Malt Shop and Delicatessen.” He and Momma argued a lot about the word “delicatessen.” She said it was a Yankee word and nobody in Mississippi knew what it meant, including her.
    Daddy has some great ideas about merchandise. He feels that we shouldn’t just limit ourselves to food, especially since most people bring their own. We took all the tables and chairs out of the middle of the room and left the booths. We built huge display shelves where we are going to have souvenirs, sunglasses, suntan lotion and everything you can think of.
    We’ve ordered hats, beach balls, inner tubes, sand buckets and shovels for young children, cigars and cigarettes, Zippo see-through lighters that have fishing lures and dice right in them, and every kind of headache and stomachache remedy you can think of. We ordered magazines, and Kodak film, mosquito repellent, fishing equipment and candy. We even sell a joke. It is a jar that says “Old Indian Hemorrhoid Medicine.” When you open it up, a rubber finger pops out!
    Daddy let me pick out the water floats. I think our biggest seller will be a Moby Dick or the Howdy Doody inner tube, but the things that will really sell are the shells stuck in pink plasterof paris, with a pink plastic flamingo or a cross on them. They also have a light and can be used as a lamp or a centerpiece, and there’s a gold decal on them that says “Shell Beach, Mississippi.”
    We also ordered a lot of little antebellum women made out of shells. We’re going to get all the latest magazines and I can read them if I don’t get them dirty. Our jukebox has “Wheel of Fortune” by Kay Starr and “Too Young” by Nat King Cole and my favorite, “Come ona My House” by Rosemary Clooney. Momma loves to play “Blue Tango.” I wish I hadn’t told Rose Mary Salvage I was going to Russia so she could hear I had my own jukebox. Momma is going to be the hostess and cashier. Daddy is going to be the cook. I am the buying consultant.
    We met some more people yesterday, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Dot. They live at the beach. I don’t like him very much, but I like Mrs. Dot. She had on a big hat and never lets the sun hit her face. She said she would rather take poison than ruin her skin. She has a club that she wants me to join called the Jr. Debutantes’ Club. It meets in the back of the live bait store