(Second of two parts)
Good morning!
The trip was a quick-hitter, two days down and three days on both coasts starting in Jupiter where the historic lighthouse was closed for the holiday. Its closure spared me the $12 it cost to see the view from the top. The 108-foot high tower was designed in the 1850s by George Meade, a civil engineer and army officer who rose in rank and defeated Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg.
Ships at night can see its 1,000-watt beam flashing for 1.2 seconds and then darken from as far as 24 miles. It would have been helpful to the Spanish vessel that sank a half-mile offshore in 1659. Tourists are greeted by its anchor and iron cannons salvaged from the wreck 30 years ago in ten feet of water. The plaque explains that 33 crew members swam ashore and lived with the natives until a rescue ship sailed down the coast from St. Augustine.
Over the drawbridge at Harbourside Place, shoppers can sample the frozen yogurt at Johnny Swirls or sip $15 cocktails at “The Woods Jupiter” owned by Tiger Woods. The controversial high-end shopping center has drawn the ire of wealthy Jupiter residents from across the water who can hear the noise and festive music for 18 hours a day.
The property once housed a nondescript medical building and the Burt Reynolds Museum. Reynolds (who turns 81 next month) was the local-boy-makes-good who played halfback at Florida State and became a Hollywood star.
Ruggedly handsome, he made the front pages of the tabloids for his flings with Tammy Wynette, Dinah Shore and Chris Evert among many others, and his six-year marriage to actress Loni Anderson, the blonde bombshell from the TV series “WKRP in Cincinnati.”
The museum housed those memories but to me the most memorable was the canoe that was used in “Deliverance” about mayhem on the Cahulawassee River. James Dickey wrote the book and the screenplay and played the sheriff who told Jon Voight at movie’s end: “Don’t you ever do nothin’ like this again. Don’t ever come back here.”
Florida is a blue collar paradise, the New Jersey of the Caribbean. Cars cruise the Interstates at 85 mph and the two-lanes are crammed with pickup trucks, Harleys and hot rodders all waiting to step on it when the two-minute stoplight turns green.
Perhaps that and the out-of-town plates is why South Florida was named the road rage capital of the U.S. by AutoVantage for three straight years.
AAA reports that nearly one-fifth of the 554 motor vehicle fatalities that occurred in 2015 were motorcyclists. The state doesn’t require helmets, only protective eyewear and $10,000 in medical insurance (as if it would matter in the ER.)
Next month the bandana-heads will converge on Daytona for Bike Week but the mud-loving ATV set will go further inland to Plant Bamboo near Lake Okeechobee. Last year thousands of knuckleheads showed up for Muddy Valentine, three days of mud, love and beer. Inevitably somebody got run over by an ATV, a 30-year-old man who according to tcpalm.com, “sustained broken bones and was uncooperative.”
I was driving across the state in a Hyundai Sonata with 500 miles on the odometer, bouncing over railroad tracks on State Road 714 toward Sarasota. Tractor-trailer rigs buffeted the car and buzzards vied with vultures for road kill, hopping into the weeds next to shredded strips of retread with exquisite timing.
Canopies of oak and pine bordered both sides of the road near vast spaces of farmland where cows and horses grazed.
In Okeechobee I parked on a side street, bought a soda and paid 75 cents for a copy of the Okeechobee News (Vol. 108, No. 1). Inside the 16-page tabloid was a list of AA meetings, a $5 coupon for the Yeehaw Music Fest and an article about a stolen 2013 Honda Civic. In the classifieds, a “Vietnam vet” said he was looking for an acre of land to build a camp.
The town common has enough armament to hold off a small invasion, including a battle tank, Vietnam-era helicopter and anti-aircraft artillery. What struck my eye was the 12-foot black submarine torpedo with a yellow warhead (indicating it was a practice torpedo), flanked by a half-dozen granite markers listing every sub that was sunk in both World Wars. “Dedicated to perpetuate the memory of the 65 submarines and some 4,000 submariners on the eternal patrol … RIP Brothers of the Phin.”
The only stoplight for 65 miles between Okeechobee and Arcadia is the intersection of Route 70 East/West and Route 27 North/South. It’s one of the few desolate areas in Florida and a place where motorists can gas up and use the restroom.
A Sarasotan named Bobby Osborne was standing a few yards from the pumps under a makeshift tent where he was hawking Donald Trump paraphernalia. “I’ve been doing it since February,” said the tall and lanky Osborne, “trying to chase the rallies as good as I can.
He wore a One-Eyed Jacks T-shirt and was standing next to a stack of baseball hats with a handgun over the bill and the words, “We don’t dial 911.”
A trunker honked and Osborne turned and waved. “I get honked at a lot. A few minutes ago I turned but they were giving me the finger. It happens. Sore losers. Whiners.”
In Sarasota my former college roomie Peter Dailey and his buddies were winding down from a long weekend of watching college and pro football. Paul Beitlich had gone to the Outback Bowl in Tampa to watch his alma mater, the University of Florida, whip Iowa at Raymond James Stadium. “Beers were $9?” I asked.
“Nine-fifty!” he answered, “and tickets were $170.”
“I got a story for you,” he added. “They only sell these gi-goomus 24 ounce cans at Amalie Arena (where the Tampa Bay Lightning play). Tickets cost a bajillion, so I asked the guy to throw in a couple of Koozies. It was $56! Wayne and I figured for what he pays for his Busch Light he could’ve gotten 106 beers.”
We were at Harry’s Sports Bar & Grill after an afternoon at the dog track. Don’t let the name fool you, the Sarasota Kennel Club is an anochronistic heap of rubble. The dogs’ racing blankets are frayed and discolored, trackside bettors sit in cheap plastic chairs and surly tellers punch out wrong tickets.
The hardest worker and clearly the most animated was a skinny, smiling fellow named Iron Perkins. He was dressed in a red shirt, black shorts and wearing colorfully-striped knee high socks. After inspecting each dog during the post parade he saluted the crowd and followed the lead-outs down to the starter’s box. After each race he hopped on a tractor and made two trips around the oval to smooth and water the trampled surface.
Greyhound racing has been called “animated roulette” because the dogs usually either go to the lead and win, race with the rest of the pack or collide on the first turn. At a cheap track like Sarasota, however, any dog straining on its leash was worth considering and only three met that criteria in the 14th race. “Six, seven, eight,” I told Peter, and we both bet $6 in quinielas and trifectas and wound up winning $530.
The No. 4 dog burst to the lead and gave the track announcer fits — Atascotica Estel led by three lengths on the backstretch, but our dogs had also cleared the first turn and all three passed her on the frontstretch.
Afterward we went to a small beach on Siesta Key called Bay Isle, where two young women were posing on the sand as mermaids. It was worth a few pictures, and so was the sunset with a ship headed out into the Gulf on a dinner cruise in the foreground.
The following day at Tampa International Airport I noticed a smoking area inside the TSA checkpoint. People were puffing inside a caged porch and staring at the parking garage. How did they get matches? I wondered.
On the flight home I was seated across from two young kids named Dylan and Eizabeth and their parents, Mike and Elizabeth McManus of Enfield. Mike said his grandparents — named Corbiere — had lived in Turners Falls.
“Doggies on the plane?” said Mike, trying to get his screaming childrens’ attention. “Doggie. Doggie barking.”
The dog was a Shih Tzu named Zoey. Its owner had paid $100 to get her aboard and the passengers were getting an earful.
The guy in front of me was retired U.S. Navy. “Somebody on this plane’s gotta say, ‘Shut the dog up right now. I’d do it, but I’d be charged with animal cruelty.”
After takeoff the kids stopped screaming and the dog quieted down. It was a smooth, uneventful flight and it landed on time at Bradley International Airport.
A few mornings later I was with my 5-year-old grandson Chase waiting for the school bus when I showed him the two mermaids.
“They’re real,” I said.
He took a step back and said, “No they’re not.”
“Santa Claus is real,” I said.
“Yeah, but they’re not.”
Chase’s winter fantasy is the North Pole but mine’s further south. There’s only a month till spring training, and guess who’s counting the days?
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.