(First of two parts)
Good morning!
The car started in the eerie darkness of a cold Saturday morning in February. Half-a-foot of snow had fallen and melted since my last trip south, a half-a-foot more was on the way.
In Hartford, I turned right onto I-84 through western Connecticut and into New York, past the foreboding Fishkill Correctional Facility that opened in 1896 and was called the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Today, it holds 1,800 convicts who are stacking time and likely yearning for the freedom of the open highway.
Over the Hudson River and into Pennsylvania near Scranton the highway merged with I-81 and I followed it down through a patchwork of rugged farmland and massive distribution centers. Near Gettysburg I took a long look at a John Deere pulling a manure spreader over a stubbled cornfield and thought of early spring, but west of Richmond on I-64 the Shenandoah Valley was brown and dormant.
The next morning I stopped for gas off Exit 4 near the North Carolina border and continued east for a mile over a railroad crossing into a mud-puddled parking lot next to white clapboard building. A few minutes later, Lindsey Vinsent parked his late model van on the other side and strode across the breezeway to open the Good Earth Peanut Company.
The family-owned business has grown and sold peanuts off its 30 acre farm since 1985. The Virginia nuts grown in the calcium-rich soil are crunchy and large, and have more flavor than store brands. The showroom reminded me of an old kitchen pantry with shelves full of salted and unsalted peanuts, peanut brittle, chocolate covered peanuts, mixed nuts, almonds and roasted pecans.
I plopped down a bag of raw unshelled peanuts for my young grandchildren to roast in the oven. Baseball-sized cotton bolls clung to branches stored inside a wicker basket, and I purchased one for $3. “I’ll tell ‘em it’s a pussy willow,” I joked. “They can bring it to school.”
Outside, bells jangled, the crossing gate closed, the locomotive shrieked and a 100-car freight train shook the building. “How often does that happen?” I asked Vinsent.
“Quite a bit,” he shrugged. “Thirty times a day.”
These Florida trips are routine — same motels, same Cracker Barrels, same gas stations. A cheap coffee maker stays in the trunk for places where the java flows like road tar.
In South Carolina, the dark clouds and bright headlights coming from the opposite direction warned of a torrential storm that began near Savannah and didn’t stop until I reached Florida. Drivers pulled into the breakdown lane and an SUV spun out on an overpass. The violent clash of warm and cold signaled a change of seasons, and so did the Washington Nationals team truck with its loopy red “W” on the cabin door. The driver stayed in the right lane, careful not to shift the load of baseball cargo bound for West Palm Beach.
About 60 miles south of Jacksonville, I eased off the highway and drove along the ocean in Ormond Beach to where Bob Weiss and Carol Bresciano had rented a second-floor apartment for two weeks. One ham sandwich later, I was back on the road, tuning into the Super Bowl and leery of frenzied drivers who were late for the party. An Audi sped past with a Florida license plate that read: SBNFL.
At the Holiday Inn Express in Viera, a small gathering was in the lounge anxiously watching the Patriots and Eagles trade touchdowns. It reminded me of a scene from Lifeboat. Two female Philly fans dressed in Eagles’ jerseys sat on a couch hissing “Yes!” A cocky Patriot fan sat at the bar drinking a draft beer, while his 12-year-old son sat on a stool and nervously gripped a football. Another guy at the bar had his back turned from the screen and quietly listened to the woman slouched next to him.
Upstairs, the air conditioner gave me two choices; either deal with the humidity in quiet, or get cool air and lots of noise. “It sounds like a snowblower,” I told the girl at the front desk.
“We’re sold out tonight,” she chirped, “but I can put you in another room for tomorrow night!”
My Florida itinerary began with an eight-day stay at the Tequesta Palms Inn, a refurbished mom-and-pop place that was built before the interstate crushed businesses along Route 1. It had an office, manager’s residence, and nine rooms — one after the other.
My room was clean, the rate was reasonable and the motel was sandwiched between a church and nursing home, ensuring the quiet night’s rest that manager Cynthia Brier had promised me.
The Florida weather in winter can be cool and windy, but during my stay calm and cool mornings transitioned into 80-degree afternoons with bright sunshine, soft winds and puffy cumulous clouds. Vacationers from Orlando to Miami were bowing to the sun gods.
During World War II, the U.S. trained soldiers how to use radar on 20,000 acres of desolate scrub land five miles north of Tequesta. After the war, the government ceded it to Florida which named it after a shipwrecked castaway. At Jonathan Dickinson State Park, visitors eschew shell collecting for camping, bike riding, kayaking, horseback riding, hiking and — in my case — jogging over miles of soft, sandy trails.
Working in a state park would be the best job in the world if it wasn’t the worst. “This is not a U.S. coin! It’s a Canadian penny!” the harried clerk inside the park’s modest gift shop yelled to a foreigner.
Realizing his tantrum, he softly added, “That’s all right though.”
When I asked a park volunteer the name of the small yellow and pink flowers I’d observed on the trails she sniped, “We have them in Tennessee, we call them weeds.”
A park biologist was more accommodating when I inquired about the giant birdhouse on stilts near the Loxahatchee River. “It’s a bat house,” she said. “They’re attracted to it.”
“They’re indigenous,” she added. “They eat insects and help to pollinate.”
One day in the outer reaches, a woman parked her SUV and left to use the bathroom. Her passenger — likely her mother — stayed in the car and squawked on her smartphone, “I’m in a place that has snakes and alligators!”
In Tequesta, the American Legion hosts drinkers downstairs and AA meetings upstairs. A hundred yards north, Judy’s Highway Cafe is a popular biker hangout, and pizza lovers frequent Baldino’s where the proprietor spotted my New York Post sports section and exclaimed, “Rangers! I love the Rangers!”
It’s hard to avoid tourist traps like the Dune Dog Cafe or Guanabanas, and the food at the Time to Eat Diner caused me to think it was time to eat someplace else.“I have come to the conclusion that the food in Florida sucks,” said Paul White, a sun worshipper from Providence who caddies during the winter at Dye Preserve in Jupiter.
White’s regaled me with stories about Michael Jordan and Michelle Wie, but his best was about the assistant groundskeeper who shot a python that was swimming toward him in a pond near the ninth fairway. “Don’t know if I told you,” he recently texted, “I had MLB commissioner (Rob) Manfred’s son and his pal. Nice guys! They paid me very well.”
We’d wanted to get together for breakfast at Harry and the Natives in Hobe Sound. The food’s good, the mood’s irreverent and friendly waitresses pour copious amounts of fresh coffee.
“I understand your problems,” says a sign over the bar. “I’ll be glad to help you out. Which way did you come in?”
One morning, I joined Bill and Sharon Melnik, and Bill and Gladys Jarvis. “Have you seen Jack?” asked Jarvis, referring to my former boss from the sheriff’s office, Jack Phelps and his wife Lois.
No, I said, prompting me to visit them two days later for coffee and Krispy Kremes.
The Tequesta Palms Inn had suited my needs and I booked a room for next winter. On the trip over to Cedar Key I saw a sign that said, “You Exercise. You eat right. You Die Anyway … Are You Ready?”
After a long winter I was ready for baseball, and Crosby Hunt would lead me on the road to Damascus.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached by email at sports@recorder.com.