Send Down the Rain(21)
Seven fire trucks surrounded the site; three were sucking and pumping saltwater onto the core. I rolled up my window. The heat was still intense.
A few miles north I got a room at the local motel, stashed my stuff, and headed out to the Blue Tornado. It had been a long time, and I wasn’t sure how she’d respond, but I knew I needed to check on Allie.
12
The Blue Tornado was the product of an unlikely union between a Detroit-based, cold-calling vacuum salesman with an entrepreneurial bent and a homespun west Florida girl working the checkout counter at Tops Hardware. While Mr. Tops wasn’t too interested in Billy Pine’s Blue Tornado vacuum or his research-backed promises that it would suck the carpet off the floor, his daughter, Eleanor Dane Tops, found the new and updated Tornado II a fascinating modern marvel; she sat pleasantly through the forty-five-minute presentation and ordered seven for the main store and four for the annex two counties over. Billy, six weeks on the job without having actually sold a single vacuum cleaner, and having now made his quota for the next four and a half months, invited Eleanor Dane to dinner, which she gladly accepted. The two shared a burger and a milk shake and then took in the latest double feature. The first was a John Wayne movie entitled Rio Grande. The second was an animated Disney film, Cinderella. During the movie, Billy bought Eleanor Dane a popcorn and soda and acted the total gentleman. Following the movie and a quick ice cream, he returned her home three minutes before her ten p.m. curfew.
Three weeks later, when Billy delivered the eleven shiny new vacuum cleaners to Mr. Tops, he quickly learned that Eleanor Dane did not have the authority to order eleven vacuum cleaners. In fact, she couldn’t order a stick of bubble gum without the old man’s signature. Stuck with a trunk full of inventory he might never sell, Billy Pine sat in his borrowed car and stared from his gas gauge to a map. He didn’t have the money to get out of Florida. His destination was clear. All roads led to unemployment.
A bit of an optimist, he straightened his tie, walked back into Mr. Tops’s office, and said, “Sir, I’d like to apply for a job.”
This bravado seemed to both surprise and impress Eleanor’s father, though he tried not to let on. He raised an eyebrow. “Other than not sell vacuum cleaners, what can you do?”
Billy adjusted his tie. “Sir, if you teach me, I can do most anything.”
Thus began Billy Pine’s employment at Tops Hardware. In two months he was managing the annex. In four months he and Eleanor were engaged. With Mr. Tops’s permission, he set up a Blue Tornado display at the front of the hardware store. By the time of their wedding, Billy had sold ten vacuum cleaners. The eleventh he gave to Eleanor as a wedding gift.
The couple were married in 1950 under a setting sun and honeymooned on Cape San Blas, where they walked the beach and promised each other they would return and purchase property. When Mr. Tops died just a few weeks after their wedding, leaving Eleanor a few thousand dollars in inheritance, the newlyweds did just that. They bought a home, a car, a dishwasher, and an oceanfront piece of property on a sliver of land most found worthless.
Ever the entrepreneur, Billy pointed to the sunset falling over the Gulf. “With that view, good food will bring people from most everywhere.”
And he was right.
What started small grew into two stories, beachfront tables, seating for over a hundred, live music, romantic lights strung across the outdoor porches, a waiting list on weekends that eventually spread across the week, a venue for weddings, and even a few small bungalows or weekend cabin rentals. In honor of their first meeting, Billy and Eleanor named the restaurant the Blue Tornado. And because patrons loved knowing the history of what birthed so unique a restaurant, Billy retired the actual vacuum cleaner and installed it in a glass case just inside the front door. Above it, Eleanor posted a handwritten sign: How my husband stole my heart.
Love had come to Cape San Blas.
In 1955, five years into marital bliss, Eleanor gave Billy a blue-eyed, towheaded wonder they named Allie.
The Blue Tornado became a cash cow and put Cape San Blas on the map. The heyday lasted about five years; then Eden gave way to the secret Billy had kept hidden from his wife.
Billy loved a challenge. Sales. Eleanor. The hardware store. Marriage. The Blue Tornado. But when those measured risks paid off and prosperity came, Billy learned he wasn’t in love with money. He was in love with the challenge of getting it. The chase.
The lure of gambling was strong. Cards led to dice, and dice led Billy to the realization that he was a terrible gambler. Pretty soon the jewel of Cape San Blas, the resort he and Eleanor had built with their own two hands, only earned enough to service the interest on his debt.
None of which Eleanor knew about.
The combination of insurmountable debt and an unwillingness to share his secret with his wife led Billy to find comfort in the bottle. And while it did little to comfort, it did cause him to forget—temporarily.
Billy was both a terrible gambler and a belligerent drunk.
He managed to lay off the bottle Monday through Wednesday, but come Thursday he’d start tipping it back and by Friday morning he would erupt into a full-blown binger that would last through Monday morning, when he’d start the cycle over again. For Eleanor, the Blue Tornado became a safe haven away from the storm at home.
A FEW MILES AWAY, my father returned home to my mom in 1955 from service in the Korean War and promptly gave her me as a homecoming present. I only had a few years to get to know my dad, nine to be exact, but during those few short years he was a hard, silent man. What tenderness I knew, I learned from my mother.