Archie's Info

In 1947, Archie's was established as a military shack that served beer to soldiers stationed on South Beach.

In 1994, Patty McGee purchased Archie's and has invested her life, heart, and soul into making Archie's what it is today. . . a "feel at home" place where you can put your feet up, relax and enjoy an Atlantic breeze, Live Entertainment, a fresh delicious meal and a refreshing beverage.

We invite you in. . . to enjoy. . . "The Jewel of the Treasure Coast" - Archie's!

Archie’s Word of the Day
By Bernie Woodall
News Tribune Writer

Archie Summerlin, the unofficial “Mayor of South Beach”, has become a poet. Yes, the same Archie Summerlin Fort Pierce natives know as the crusty guy who owns and operates Archie’s Seabreeze on South Beach now writes poetry. Those who know Summerlin,58, always knew the Fort Pierce native had opinions about almost everything but until about a year ago, no one know he would ever write them down. The poems are always short, often sentimental and sometimes the words in them rhyme. Many of them contain words that can’t be reproduced in this publication. Regulars at Archie’s Seabreeze – a beer, wine and sandwich place he owned for 20 years - and the Jetty Lounge, also on the South Beach in Fort Pierce, know Summerlin’s scribbling as “Archie’s Word of the Day.” At Archie’s Seabreeze, bartenders Kitty Clark and Dolly Priest transcribe Summerlin’s writing from scrap paper onto chalkboards for the patrons to see. “Some of them are good, some of them are terrible, but all of them are Archie.” said one of Summerline’s closet friends, Tom Quina of Fort Pierce. “Archie’s Word of the Day” usually contains common sense advice and a “live and let live” cracker philosophy. He usually signs them, “JAS” for his given name, Joseph Archie Summerlin. An example of such an approach is “Don’t criticize”, one of the few poems to have more than a day, month and year as a title:

If you haven’t traveled his roads
Or carried his loads,

Then you don’t know what it’s all about.
So give the devil his dues,
Until you’ve walked in his shoes
Give him the benefit of the doubt.

Summerlin, a self-proclaimed heavy drinker and hell raiser for most of his life, has had to slow down in recent years due to health problems. Some say his major illness, cancer of the throat diagnosed four years ago, is the reason for his often reflective mood and subsequent poetry writing. Summerlin’s South Beach friends say there’s always been a sensitive man inside his rough exterior yearning to show himself. “He always tries to be rough and gruff but he’s not,” said Shirley Cole, a bartender at the Jetty Lounge and a fan of “Archie’s Word.” Summerlin and Cole have been pals since the latter was a young bartender at the St. Lucie Inn 13 years ago. “He’s really very soft and probably doesn’t want people to know that,” Cole said. “He’ll fuss at you but he likes you to fuss back at him. He respects people for that.” Summerlin has, he says, whipped the cancer, but his life has changed. The most obvious change is audible - because of a tracheotomy performed in a Lakeland clinic four years ago.

I made another year the other day
I guess the Lord didn’t want me anyway

He didn’t know what to do with my soul
So he left me here to aggravate you a------s

An operation that placed the hole in his neck may have saved his life but it took away his voice and how is heard with the aid of a “voice generator box” that amplifies his spoken words. “Four years ago this summer my ears started hurting real bad and my throat was always sore,” Summerlin said. “Doc (Dr. William Bosley of Lakeland clinic) said I had a 50-50 chance to survive this type of operation and he told me, “If you don’t do it, you’re gonna die.” I said, “Have at it, doc”. Summerlin under went nine hours of surgery September 1982 to remove a cancerous larynx. Said he was “lucky as hell” to survive additional surgery five days later to correct an ulcer just below the stomach in the digestive system. After almost three months in the Lakeland clinic, Summerlin returned home. Summerlin has since had to make regular visits to Lakeland and Fort Pierce hospitals. Late last year, he kept losing blood and it took another trip to specialists in Lakeland to figure out that he had varicose veins in his esophagus. Summerlin’s health problems - which also included a battle with tuberculosis 12 years ago - are minimal now, he said. He does drink and smoke much less, though, and he has a difficult time when people don’t understand him because of his mechanical-sounding voice projections. Summerlin’s voice is often drowned out by the noise at his bar or at the Jetty, which causes people to think that, since they have trouble hearing him, that he must have trouble hearing them. “A lot of people yell back at me,” Summerlin said. “I have to tell them, Hell, I’m not deaf, I just can’t yell like I used to” The sound the box creates created a headache for Summerlin a few years ago. “I talk the same all the time, just like a robot”. Summerlin said. “These kids would call up all the time to listen to the robot. My wife at the time (Summerlin has been married and divorced twice) told them I was the robot as a joke and that’s all it took. The phone was ringing all the time. Finally, she had to tell them no, we had to send the robot back to the factory.”

Summerlin used to sit in with band members at Archie’s Seabreeze back when he had his regular voice. “Archie used to have a silver tongue and he used to scream and yell a lot” Quina said. “He only knew three cords on the guitar but he could really play and sing loud.” Quina suggested that “Archie’s Word of the Day”, is a type of replacement for the man who always sand loud because he wanted to be heard. Those who have know Archie Summerlin since he was one of Dick and Claudia Summerlin’s 10 children say he’s always been a carefree fellow.
“He’s always been a happy-go-luck guy, as long as I can remember,” said his younger brother Herman Summerlin. The Summerlins are one of the area’s largest pioneer families and Claudia Summerlin still lives in the house on North Indian River Drive in St. Lucie Village where Archie and his siblings grew up. Not a large man (about 5 feet. 5 inches tall and of average build), Summerlin has “always been the littlest banty rooster around,” Quina. He was quite a football player during his days at Fort Pierce High School and he said his coach at the school, Ben L. Bryan Sr., tried to get him to attend the University of Miami or the University of Florida to play college ball. But Summerlin didn’t attend college or graduate from the Class of 1946 because he had to work to help support the family. “My two older brothers (Dick Summerlin Jr. and Astor Summerlin) were sent to war,” Archie Summerlin said. “I was the oldest boy at home and I had to help data fish so I quit high school.” Summerlin said his father had a sensible attitude toward work: “If the fishing was good, we could make enough money in three days that he would say, “To hell with it” or make some excuse about the weather or something. One hundred dollars went a long way back in those days.”

I don’t know why, but for some reason,
Today I thought of my dad and some

Of the things he used to say
“Live and let live.”
But the one that I think of
And smile
When the weather was bad
And fishing wasn’t

Worthwhile
“You can’t fight God and the elements,”
He’d say
So we would go and get drunk
For the rest of the day

Summerlin drove a beer truck for the distributor Schlitz beer at the age of 18. The legal drinking age for any type of alcohol in Florida was 21 at the time, he said. “We would walk into a bar and they wouldn’t serve me and then I would show up with the beer the next day,” Summerlin said. “I laughed my butt off.” He traveled to California with his sister Mary Ann and her husband, George Price, to find work he figured didn’t exist in Fort Pierce. The trio stayed with another of Summerlin’s sisters, Manetta, and her husband in Hollywood. Summerlin worked at a plastics company that made garden hoses and for a utility company before coming back home and marrying. He was 20 and Betty Jean Woodard became his bring. The marriage lasted 25 years and brought the couple two children, a son (Jay) and a daughter (Becki). The newlyweds moved to Pompano Beach. Archie Summerlin worked fro about: 17 years for oil and gas companies in Broward County. He transported gasoline from Port Everglade to an area that covered the Keys, up to Naples and over to Okeechobee. In 1966 he got a good deal on a bar that had been in existence on Fort Pierce’s South Beach since 1947. “It was getting to be a rat race down there,” Summerlin said of Dade and Broward counties. “It got to be too much hassle and I figured it’s be best if I came back home.” Friends and customers began calling Summerlin “The Mayor of South Beach” during the first few years he owned Archie’s Seabreeze. At the time Chuck’s Restaurant (still open), U-Tote-Um (now Cumberland Farms), the Gulf service station (still standing but a vacant building) and Archie’s were the only businesses on South Beach. Summerlin remembers the days when the St. Lucie County Commission used to meet in downtown Fort Pierce and often Adjourned to Archie’s for lunch. “Half the decisions of the county commission were made at extended lunches over here,” Summerlin said. And Summerlin was often asked his advice on the doings on the beach, especially when the construction of the St. Lucie nuclear power plant was in full swing. “A lot of the plant supervisors would come in and talk to Archie,” Quina said. “The white hats (non-union workers) would come to Archie’s to see what was going on at the plant.” Summerlin said the bar is quiet now. He and Quina, who helps Summerlin run the place and often takes over the bookkeeping end when Summerlin leaves town for a spell, say Archie’s “never has to have the police come out.” The bar does attract a good number of “bikers” but Summerlin and Quina say it’s a misnomer when Archie’s is given a “tough bar” tag. “These bikers don’t bother anybody here,” Summerlin said. “Everybody thinks they’ll mess with you but they never do. Not here. You should have been here a few years ago when the ironworkers were all down at the power plant. Those guys would fight themselves if they didn’t have anybody to tangle with.” Summerlin doesn’t get behind the bar at Archie’s anymore but he holds court there and at the Jetty fairly often. He has cut down on his drinking, but he isn’t about to give it up.

While sipping on a beer last week, Summerlin said,
“There’s a lot more old drunks than there are old doctors.”