This Month

“Everything is quite perfect,” I said to the waitress, “but this coffee does seem to me weak.” We were breakfasting on a terrace outside the rambling white lodge, or main building, just above the highwater mark on a Florida beach. The December sunshine was genial and so was the little waitress in her gay flowered uniform and starched cap.

“I am sorry you did not speak of it before,” the waitress said. “We always have three kinds of coffee. I’ll bring you the strong coffee after this.”

It was at that point, our second breakfast, that I realized suddenly the good fortune which had brought us, on the casual advice of a friend, to this particular place. It took the whole two weeks of our stay to acquaint me with how good the place really was and why it was so.

For a Northerner who wants to follow the sun, a short winter vacation is something of a gamble. The travel itself uses up time and money. Every day must be made to count. There is no margin for correction or experiment. The main investment is in weather, and cold or rain will spoil that. Prices, with fair allowance for seasonal values, must be decent; better to stay home than find every charge a battle for your pocket book and your self-respect as well. Finally, the traveler needs assurance that he will have privacy or pleasant company when he wants it, and not be lodged next door to an all-night radio or a champagne party.

To schedule a Florida trip for the Christmas holidays instead of later on at the peak of the season is a wise choice, I believe, in point of weather and prices. To hit upon the right place is chancier. I ought not to name the place where we stayed, for it is undoubtedly full up for this year and next — a semi-private club, accommodating about 150, hidden away on a long, otherwise vacant beach about midway between Miami and Palm Beach.

The pastimes at the Dalesboro Club — call it that — are conventional: game fishing in the Gulf Stream about three miles offshore; an easygoing beach life (water about 75 degrees); incredibly fine tennis courts (usable a half hour after the one thunderstorm of our fortnight); movies at night, but most of us turned in early. These are commonplace attractions, certainly, and one could match them elsewhere. But I have never seen at home or abroad anything to equal the hospitality, the good feeling, and the managerial skill and subtlety with which the Dalesboro Club was run.

I cannot help mentioning a few of the fine points of hotelkeeping which we enjoyed there. I shall not report the prices we paid, since, like the price of everything else, they must have gone up. The basic charge for two rooms and a bath, American plan, was less than even secondcategory hotels were charging for rooms European plan. The food was perfection, the service on every occasion incredibly quick and agreeable. None of us ever signed a chit for anything, and there were no “mistakes,” no surprises on the bills.

The Club had no bar, served no liquor. “We can get you anything you want in town,” the desk clerk explained. “We send down every hour. Of course we serve fruit juice or setups if you wish to have drinks in your rooms. Is there anything you would like from town?” I ordered some magazines, bourbon, and an evening paper, and I found them all on my table an hour later. No bar equals no hard drinking equals no hubbub.

The next morning, I inquired about the fishing. The cost of a boat for a half day was precisely half the charge for a full day — by no means the normal Florida rate. “I suggest that you try it out for a half day,” said the clerk. “If the fishing is good, you can get all you want in three or four hours. If the fish aren’t there, you probably won’t do any better by staying out all day.” If I wished to split the cost with another guest, that could be arranged, the clerk told me. Result: excellent company, negligible costs for the best game fishing on the Atlantic coast — an immaculate thirty-foot cruiser, captain and mate, everything supplied. The guests simply announced when they wanted to fish; a car was waiting to take them up to the inlet; the boat was ready to cast off ihe moment they got there.

There were a dozen or two children at Dalesboro, and our small daughter was offered games, beach parties, and early evening dances under the guidance of a wonderfully adept hostess. “It’s like summer camp, only more fun,” was her finding.

I had always counted picnics as a laborious and uncomfortable way of taking a meal and I was saddened to hear that Dalesboro served its Thursday night dinner as a beach picnic. I should have realized by that time that Dalesboro knew better than I how to make me happy. The “picnic” was set up as a circle of comfortable chairs surrounding a vast bed of glowing charcoal. It began with a lavish cold buffet — hors d’oeuvres, towering rib roasts of beef, legs of lamb, ham, turkey, and various salads. At the bed of coals, a chef was turning at intervals a grille about three feet square. He kept looking at something in his hand and I asked him about it. “Just a stop watch,” he answered. “Thirty seconds on each side and then a minute on each side.”

All the bread at Dalesboro was baked daily in its kitchens, and the homemade buns looked very attractive indeed. I informed my family that fine hamburgers were coming. Wrong again. The “hamburgers” were thick slices of beef tenderloin. I accounted for three, as did even the most elderly of the “picnic” guests. “Those sandwiches cost me 95 cents each,” the proprietor told me later, “but they are so much better than people expect them to be that I enjoy serving them.”

The “club” aspect of Dalesboro involves a tendollar membership fee, a legal device by which the proprietor can refuse or eject the obstreperous. He had just turned away an expensive caravan, the clerk told me, when it began to unload hampers of wine to be served in the dining room. The visitors finally offered to forgo it, but the proprietor, for his part, decided to forgo them.

I tried to express to him, when we left, what I thought of the place. All I could say was, “If you charged three times as much, and if I could afford it, I should count it a bargain.”

C. W. M.