FORT MORGAN, AL – It wasn’t a cold afternoon, but not exactly warm either.

Bill and Mary Ross were cozy in their den looking out on Bon Secour Bay within sight of Mobile Bay. Way across the water north of them you can just make out barges and fishing boats going to and fro on the Intracoastal Waterway.

“We saw that ship come through here, the one they took out in the Gulf and sunk it,” Bill says, the TV playing a daytime talk show in the background.

In 1949 when the couple bought four lots about 11 miles west of Alabama 59 on the Fort Morgan peninsula, Bill heard lots of questions.

“They said ‘why’d you buy way down there?” he said with a laugh. “’There’s nothing down there.’ I said, ‘Yep, you’re right. There’s nothing down here.’ And that’s just exactly what we wanted.”

Well, the world has caught up with them now. Before you get to the turn on North Road for the short connector to Bayview Drive, you have to pass the gleaming Beach Club Resort with its luxurious accommodations.

If you drive a little past the turn on North Road you’ll come to the impressive golf resort, Kiva Dunes.

Houses of all kinds – large expensive newer ones and some there for a long time – now dot the way in neighborhoods along Fort Morgan Road. When families seek large houses for beach vacations, then can find them in Fort Morgan. Now.

“There was nothing down there,” Bill said. “The road was just two lane and narrow, but there wasn’t much traffic so it didn’t matter.”

Now they see plenty of traffic.

“It could be four lane now,” Mary said. She said snowbirds, some of whom are best of friends, drive too slow on the road now.

They both laugh and look out at the amazing view. Nothing, even snowbird driving habits, can spoil the years of memories on Bayview Drive, the fondness for the place twinkling in their eyes.

There wasn’t much to their place in 1949, either. Just a cabin-sized home. It met their requirements.

“We were looking for something on the water,” Bill said.

The little spit of paradise has water views from three sides.

“We just enjoy living here,” he said.

To start with there were just three rooms to the place. With their two daughters along in the early days they had a bed stored against one off the walls.

“We’d come over here on the weekends and we’d have to bring the bed out and set it up so everybody could have a place to sleep,” Bill said.

Mary’s love of the place and the times – which they enjoy to this day – is evident as she talks about the early years.

“It was one big room, a bathroom, a bedroom and this was a big screened porch,” she said. “It was tiny.”

It pretty much stayed that way until Bill retired from his job as the welding and body shop manager for the City of Mobile. Sometime in the 1980s they decided it was time to build a second story.

It worked out. But there was one problem.

“I couldn’t see,” Mary said. “The roof was there and two little windows there.”

A move back downstairs was in order. After freshening up the design and taking the porch in as livable space – with big windows looking north toward the water – they moved back down.

“So we remodeled down here, closed in the porch down here and moved down here,” Mary said.

It’s where they spend most of their time at home. The view is just as good from there as from the swing hanging from the water oak or the one on their pier.

“In the summer he spends a lot of time in the swing,” Mary said.

Through the years they have seen a variety of wildlife and still do.

“I’ve seen an old red fox, possums, coyotes,” he said. “All kinds of stuff out here. Plenty of dolphins. Alligators. We got an alligator over behind this place over here and he comes out every once in a while. I imagine he’s about five feet. Big enough to keep me away from.

“We just love it.”

Bill’s 88 now having lived fulltime on the place since retiring at 61. He doesn’t fish much anymore, but he sure had some good times hauling in huge nets full of fish back in the day.

“I had one about 1,200 feet we’d set out straight out,” he said. “In the wintertime we had waders on and it would be cold. I don’t know how many fish we caught.

“I’d take ‘em to the market and sell ‘em. I had a commercial fishing license and we caught lots of fish. Mostly it would be mullet and speckled trout.”

Bill would attach the nets to the end of his dock and wade out with the 1,200-foot net and the water even that far out, never got more than a few feet.

“You can see everything in here,” Bill said of the variety of marine life. “Everything that’s in the Gulf comes in here, too.”

About that time a roar broke the peaceful quiet of the waves lapping at docks and bulkheads.

A glance up revealed a formation of Navy Blue Angel planes streaking by. Apparently Bill and Mary’s little bit of paradise comes with free air shows, too.