This article is from the winter 2024 edition of Mobile Baykeeper’s print quarterly, CURRENTS. The magazine is mailed to active members who have given more than $50 in the past year. To get on the magazine’s mailing list, donate here.
By Hanlon Walsh
My grandparents epitomized Southern hospitality. In Sally and Rock O’Neill’s eyes, no one should ever spend a holiday alone.
Growing up, it wasn’t uncommon for our family to have random family friends, acquaintances, or downright strangers join us for Thanksgiving or Christmas meals. Both were usually standing-room-only occasions, but my grandparents never seemed to mind adding one more seat (or pair of feet) to the chaos.
I later learned that some of these folks were my grandfather’s friends who he mentored during his time in Alcoholics Anonymous. If bringing someone into the family meant they didn’t have to spend the holiday alone, then my grandparents left no stones unturned.
Known as “Sa and Ricky” by their 17 grandchildren, their Southern hospitality also extended at our family’s home on Little Lagoon. Come one, come all. But don’t you show up empty handed … that’s all.
Today, my mom and her siblings occasionally threaten to host a “Come One, Come All” open invitation party to anyone who has visited the Lagoon since the original house was built in 1948. It would be an invite list that could rival even the most elaborate Mobilian Catholic wedding.
The Lagoon party’s humble beginnings, however, started long before many of us were even born. On a summer weekend in 1966, four couples retreated to Little Lagoon for a weekend getaway: Sally and Rock O’Neill, Happy and Judy Henson, Tommy and Carolyn Martenstein, and Jack and Venetia Friend.
While the women sunbathed on the beach and wrangled the kids, the men concocted a wild idea on a whim: a floating screen porch, fully equipped with a bar and motor. Brilliant, right?
And so, the “Kon-Taca” was born. Who knows if it was the beers talking or the engineers in the group, but I like to think it was the former. It was probably the first — and maybe the last — floating screen porch of its kind to cruise around Little Lagoon.
The “Kon-Taca” was composed of nine 55-gallon drums, a large sheet of plywood, and a makeshift screen porch powered by an outboard motor in the stern. Colorful flags proudly draped the exterior while an expansive array of liquor bottles lined the interior with little room to spare. Business on the outside. Party on the inside.
As I heard it, the name came from my grandfather’s stock in Taca Airlines and a nod to Thor Heyerdahl’s 1948 book, Kon-Tiki, which detailed a man’s journey across the Pacific on a balsa raft. Ricky had a quirky nickname for everyone, including all 17 of his grandkids (call me “O’Possum”), so of course he too named their motorized screen porch masterpiece.
Judy Henson remembers it like it was yesterday.
“Our husbands built the Kon-Taca right on the beach, in front of the Lagoon house, in just one day,” she says. “Tommy Martenstein was an engineer, so he and Jack Friend were the brains behind it. Rock O’Neill and my husband, Happy, were there for moral support … and cold beer.”
Can’t say I’m surprised. Besides my uncle Stewart and his son Steven, who can build or fix just about anything, most of our family didn’t exactly inherit the handy gene. But we’ve never been accused of having a bad time (see AA reference) and will gladly support any beer-inspired waterfront project from the sidelines.
The younger generation at the time — my mom, Shannon O’Neill Walsh, and her close friend Katherine Dexter Allen — still laugh about the Kon-Taca today.
“I can picture a bar table with quite a few liquor bottles standing on it. How those grown men got on and off without sending those bottles flying through the screen is beyond me,” says Allen.
“The Kon-Taca was a booze cruise for the adults, but also a built-in playpen for us kids,” my mom adds. “I was only six or seven, and I remember going on sunset cruises with my parents and their friends all the time.”
After countless cocktail cruises, the Kon-Taca’s final voyage came when an afternoon storm and a loose anchor put it out of commission. And so, the Kon-Taca era on Little Lagoon closed the curtain.
Those who were there credit the Kon-Taca as the original party boat — well ahead of its time.
“It really did kick off the cocktail cruise we all love today,” Henson says. “It felt like we were floating on a screen porch. We had so many wonderful times with Sally and Rock at the Lagoon.”
I’m not sure when pontoon boats became popular, but I like to think the Kon-Taca started the whole party boat movement — at least on the grassroots level — thanks to four couples, a few too many beers, and one genius waterfront creation.
