On Friday, longtime patrons, local politicians and emergency workers found the Flora-Bama Lounge & Package Store hammered, strewn apart and filled with tons of sand that reached bar tops and over pool tables. Hurricane Ivan - like many visitors to the Panhandle - didn't come to the Gulf Coast without a visit to the famous bar on the state line that has served everyone from George and Barbara Bush to Jimmy Buffett.

``I just said, `Oh my God,' '' said Shelia Adams, a bar employee who decided to ride out the storm just across the highway in a country music recording studio called the Silver Moon. Dressed in trademark Flora-Bama short shorts and a black halter, she led visitors through the bar's liquor store (with much of its stock still intact in ditches across the road) and out to the unscarred but sand-filled oyster bar.

``I don't think we'll be back in before the shrimp thaws out, but we will reopen,'' said Pat McClellan, part owner of the Flora-Bama. ``Other people have beer and music, sure. But it's the characters who come here. I've never seen so much humanity in one place. We have highway robbers to Blue Angel pilots, shrimpers to movie stars. This is a place that a lot of people call home.''

The bar does more than $1.2 million in payroll a year and has 30 employees as stockholders, McClellan said. ``For everyone, this place is just too much fun.''

``We're very loyal,'' said Paul Bell, 47, a bar supervisor.

Bell, who was already standing guard at the doorless building, said he's ready to start the shoveling.

``There is no question we'll rebuild,'' Bell said. ``I suspect every politician in Florida and Alabama will be here in days and be horribly disappointed.''

McClellan, who had seen the damage only from the air, downplayed the devastation, bragging about employees shoveling out sand after Frederick in 1979. ``A hurricane can clean out the place, but we hope not too much. We don't want that sanitized smell.''

As the battered employees tell it, the last drink served before closing early Wednesday night was a Miller High Life. Johnny Rue, a grizzled construction worker sporting an old, leather hat and long, gray beard who was watching for looters Friday, had the last drink and remembered how good it tasted.

Inside, a bottle of Wild Turkey liquor was left on the bar and despite the sand filling the room up to 6 feet, the bottle remained.

Adams proudly pointed at it.

The Flora-Bama gift shop contained big sand dunes running through overturned and broken glass cases. T-shirts, thong underwear, visors, Hawaiian shirts and teddy bears littered the ground, and some stayed put on shelves.

Even though the front door and walls had been ripped away, bottles of champagne and butterscotch liquor waited on racks.

The tacky decor still hung from the ceiling: old dollar bills, NASCAR T-shirts and lacy bras.

``We've been here 40 years and we'll be here 40 more,'' said Adams, who called the bar her chance at a second youth after raising two children.

Adams thinks they may start serving beer again by the end of the week.

``You can go anywhere in the world and people know about this place,'' said Chuck Norwood, a 13-year resident and local Realtor, as he looked at the twisted shape of the old building. ``I love that place.''