Baltimore agency pitching Myrtle Beach Tourism. To assure the client we knew the territory, I was asked to wax poetic on my days in the South Carolina sand.

BLUE BUCKET HAT.

Just the act of loading up the car made us giddy.

We stayed every year at the Tricia Lynn Motel Apartments. I can still see the calligraphed flourish of the “T” on the sign. While my parents checked in, my brother and I would pore over the rack of attraction brochures that could send a kid into orbit: Water slides, go-cart tracks, fishing charters, dolphin cruises, reptile farms, jungle golf. And of course, the thrills and spills of the OD Pavilion Amusement Park.

The motel pool was the centerpiece of the complex, you could look down on it from every room. My first diving board. I imagined everyone was watching me. At age eight, I was king of the cannonball. A total show-off.

But the star, of course, was the beach. White sand as far as you could see. Footballs and frisbees. Transistor radios. The intoxicating effects of coconut oil. Moms and Dads holding squealing toddlers by both hands, lifting them over each wave. Teenagers riding boogie boards. My dad floating on his back, his toes just breaking the surface.

My castles were legendary. My painstaking drip towers impossibly high. A protective seawall, a moat system stocked with little rubber alligators.

My work done, I would sit back, exhausted, and wait for the incoming tide. I would watch my walls breached, my towers tumble, until my kingdom slipped back into the sea.

In photos I’m wearing a light-blue bucket golf hat. My dad in black Wayfarer Ray Bans. My mother, a cream-colored one piece and a grin. My brother puffing his six-year-old chest out and making muscles like Charles Atlas.

My father taught me the art of body surfing. I would completely exhaust myself riding wave after wave, drop onto my blanket and fall asleep on the beach.

My mom was a beachcomber. She had a great eye for shells, but sand dollars were her specialty. She tried to teach me how to stand on my hands in the water and feel around for them in the sand, but I always lost my balance and flopped over before finding anything.

The trip to the Gay Dolphin Gift Cove was a biggie. The mother of all gift shops since 1946. A high-rise wonderland of shark teeth, plastic sunglasses, glow-in-the-dark frisbees, aforementioned rubber alligators, boxes of taffy, and 10,000 other things you’d want at the beach.

But we were there for kites, a ceiling filled with flying dragons, bi-planes, ships and sharks, debating the massive inventory. We went home with a black delta triangle with stick-on eyes, yellow and bloodshot. A crazy flying stingray, looking for a victim. My dad believed in a lot of string. He showed us how to gather in line fast by the arm-length, and then let it all go to make the kite do dipsy doodles.

After the gift shop, it was time for the Pavilion, the legendary boardwalk-style amusement park. The family fave was the Himalayan, a whirling dervish runaway bobsled in July. “Do you want to go faster?” they’d ask, with my brother and I yelling our heads off, “Yes!”

And then off to Treasure Island putt-putt. Through the waterfall. Under the volcano. Into the mouth of the hippo. Between the stick legs of a pink flamingo. The family competition was hot. My mother was the champ.

Dinner was a sleepy drive through hanging drapes of Spanish moss to Thomas of Calabash. Fried shrimp platter was my go-to. Hush puppies and cole slaw. Cocktail sauce was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted.

For dessert, a stop at Painter’s Ice Cream, the cinderblock sensation of the strip. The line was long, but so worth it. A cup of homemade peach with a wooden spoon would make you swoon.

Then a walk on the beach. Kicking out of our shoes and leaving them together in a pile. Waves crashing in the dark. A bottle rocket here, a flashlight party there. Breeze off the water. My parents held hands.

A few years ago, I drove with my brother and parents back to Myrtle Beach for my dad’s seventy-fifth and Old Crow Medicine Show at the House of Blues. The Tricia Lynn was still kicking, the neon flickered “No Vacancies.” And I almost ran the car off the road when I saw the yellow fluorescents lit outside the order window for Painter’s Ice Cream. TO MY GREAT JOY, THE LINE WAS LONG.