| General Fiction posted August 2, 2020 | Chapters: |
...7 8 -9- 10... 
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Parents
A chapter in the book Attack of the Fifty States
Attack of the 50 States: Florida
by Bill Schott
Florida is a place that meant almost nothing to me until 1973. Before that, it was the location in America that Ponce Deleon entered to search for the fountain of youth. That made the place seem enchanted when I was nine, and Mrs. Thompson taught us what passed for history in the sixties. I say sixties, but I am sure our text books were assembled by Rosey the Bookbinder back during the second world war.
It wasn't until after I graduated from high school that Florida's importance was made clear to me.
My parents had planned to retire in the same year that I was out of school. Being eighteen, it was assumed that I would be off to pursue my dreams somewhere. The other five children had headed off to make their futures; it was now my turn. This, however, came as a rude awakening to me. Retirement? Why was I the last to know? Had they discussed this at some time before now? It seems that I had been either left ignorant of this huge move, or, more likely, simply too self-involved to realize that the times, they were a changing.
My parents packed up the Oldsmobile with what they needed to drive south. I was left in the care of my second oldest brother, Bob. He had bought our family home from my father and he would be partially funding their retirement with his mortgage payments.
One proviso that they had insisted on was that he, my brother, allow me to stay with him, rent free, until I was ready to move on. This nugget was not shared with me, however, so my brother accepted rent and food money from me to live there.
Life and its dramas went on from there. I left to join the Marines a year later, in 1974, and visited my parents in Punta Gorda, Florida a total of four times in twenty years. We did see each other when we met back in Michigan each summer, but Florida was never much of a draw for either my first wife or the second one. The latter might say that the third one won't like it either.
We did go and visit my parents there one year as part of a circular vacation. My wife and I had looked at some time-shares in North Carolina. We survived the high pressure salesmen and left with a weeks vacation in Orlando and four tickets to Disney World. While we were there we decided to make the most of it, so we booked a meeting with developers in Kissimee to look at some time-shares there. We prevailed again and scored tickets to the Universal Theme Park. The kids and us had a great time.
During this trip we also visited my parents on the other side of the state. This was looked at as somewhat of a survival mission, since my parents had no air conditioning or drinkable water. Summer in Florida, even though we lived in North Carolina, was a test of endurance. The humidity and my having to re-enter the parent/child relationship with folks was a strain for me. In retrospect, I see it now as my selfishness in wanting to be an adult, while my mother simply wanted to dote on us, and my father only wanted to control every situation.
My kids enjoyed their time with my folks, and the feeling was mutual. My son climbed up into the orange tree in the back yard and pulled down grapefruit-sized juicers. All the fruit we ate came from right there, but the water we drank was brought from the other side of town, since their well was polluted with sulfur.
There were two times I visited Florida that stand out above others.
In 1995, while I was serving in Haiti, I learned that my father had been hospitalized for some reason, no one knew. I asked my commander if I could take a week and visit them. It was arranged. I flew to Miami and rented a car to drive across Alligator Alley, which is a part of Interstate 75 that crosses the Everglades. My folks lived on the west side of the state above Fort Myers and south of Tampa.
When I got there, my mom greeted me at her door gasping for air. I immediately drove her to her doctor and she was seen right away. I discovered that her mind was not clear and she had overdosed herself on heart medicine. The doctor didn't impress me as overly concerned, and I assumed he was simply the doorman for the final exit.
When we got home, I left her there and walked a couple of miles uptown to the Punta Gorda Hospital, or whatever it was called. My dad had undergone exploratory surgery and had been waiting to be discharged. He didn't know I had come to Florida and had expected to leave the hospital and go home in the car he'd driven there. He could barely walk.
After getting home I discovered that he had been told that he had cancer throughout his body and it was inoperable. I extended my stay there for ten more days to ensure my mother was recovered and stable and that my father was able to function alright. Then, I had to leave.
It was a couple of years later, as we expected our dad to succumb, that our mom died suddenly from a heart attack. One year later, my brother Bob and I sat with our dad, in hospice mode at his house, and marked his passing.
Before he died, my dad, never wanting to let the government get any more of his money than could be avoided, divvied it out to his six kids over a two year period so that no one paid any taxes.
That would be an ending for my relationship with Florida, but my in-laws also wintered there each year in a home in Zephyr Hills. My wife's brother, Tom, had been a professional football player and, subsequently, a successful businessman. He was able to buy my wife's folks a home and keep it up for years. He also used it for intermittent golf outings as part of his business.
My wife's parents, my second parents really, were two of the greatest people you could ever hope to meet, let alone be legally related.
Unfortunately, on what became their final visit up from Florida to Michigan to see Tom, who had had a heart attack, my father-in-law suffered a brain hemorrhage and passed away.
We've never returned to Florida since the end of the millennium. I understand that they currently have the record as the dumbest pandemic awareness state in the United States.
I have to add that to the hanging chads in the 2000 election, where the final tally was decided by Jeb Bush, then governor, and his Secretary of State, Katharine Harris, who was George Bush's campaign chairman. No conflict of interest there.
Cape Canaveral. I remember that all the rockets left from there. They called it Cape Kennedy for a while, but it's since reverted to the original name. Remember the The Right Stuff? Remember when we went to the moon in 1969? Then, we had to stop doing that and fund the Vietnam War. After that they went commercial with the space shuttles. They're all up on blocks in somebody's palmetto field now, since the corporate race to have the first private business on the moon has begun.
We cannot leave Florida without acknowledging hurricanes. I took a look at the list and the one that stands out for me was Charley in 2004. It wiped out Punta Gorda, where my folks had lived. If they had still lived there, they would have likely died there.
I know this seems out of place, but I have to admit that I never got the capital of Florida right until I actually drove through Tallahassee. I can't be the only person who thought Miami was the capital. Tallahassee? It's like a trick question on Jeopardy.
"Davy Crocodile wore his alligator boots to Florida's capital."
"What is Miami?" Haaaannnnnkkk!!
On that note, I will ease up north a bit and pick a peach in Georgia. See you there.
Florida is a place that meant almost nothing to me until 1973. Before that, it was the location in America that Ponce Deleon entered to search for the fountain of youth. That made the place seem enchanted when I was nine, and Mrs. Thompson taught us what passed for history in the sixties. I say sixties, but I am sure our text books were assembled by Rosey the Bookbinder back during the second world war.
It wasn't until after I graduated from high school that Florida's importance was made clear to me.
My parents had planned to retire in the same year that I was out of school. Being eighteen, it was assumed that I would be off to pursue my dreams somewhere. The other five children had headed off to make their futures; it was now my turn. This, however, came as a rude awakening to me. Retirement? Why was I the last to know? Had they discussed this at some time before now? It seems that I had been either left ignorant of this huge move, or, more likely, simply too self-involved to realize that the times, they were a changing.
My parents packed up the Oldsmobile with what they needed to drive south. I was left in the care of my second oldest brother, Bob. He had bought our family home from my father and he would be partially funding their retirement with his mortgage payments.
One proviso that they had insisted on was that he, my brother, allow me to stay with him, rent free, until I was ready to move on. This nugget was not shared with me, however, so my brother accepted rent and food money from me to live there.
Life and its dramas went on from there. I left to join the Marines a year later, in 1974, and visited my parents in Punta Gorda, Florida a total of four times in twenty years. We did see each other when we met back in Michigan each summer, but Florida was never much of a draw for either my first wife or the second one. The latter might say that the third one won't like it either.
We did go and visit my parents there one year as part of a circular vacation. My wife and I had looked at some time-shares in North Carolina. We survived the high pressure salesmen and left with a weeks vacation in Orlando and four tickets to Disney World. While we were there we decided to make the most of it, so we booked a meeting with developers in Kissimee to look at some time-shares there. We prevailed again and scored tickets to the Universal Theme Park. The kids and us had a great time.
During this trip we also visited my parents on the other side of the state. This was looked at as somewhat of a survival mission, since my parents had no air conditioning or drinkable water. Summer in Florida, even though we lived in North Carolina, was a test of endurance. The humidity and my having to re-enter the parent/child relationship with folks was a strain for me. In retrospect, I see it now as my selfishness in wanting to be an adult, while my mother simply wanted to dote on us, and my father only wanted to control every situation.
My kids enjoyed their time with my folks, and the feeling was mutual. My son climbed up into the orange tree in the back yard and pulled down grapefruit-sized juicers. All the fruit we ate came from right there, but the water we drank was brought from the other side of town, since their well was polluted with sulfur.
There were two times I visited Florida that stand out above others.
In 1995, while I was serving in Haiti, I learned that my father had been hospitalized for some reason, no one knew. I asked my commander if I could take a week and visit them. It was arranged. I flew to Miami and rented a car to drive across Alligator Alley, which is a part of Interstate 75 that crosses the Everglades. My folks lived on the west side of the state above Fort Myers and south of Tampa.
When I got there, my mom greeted me at her door gasping for air. I immediately drove her to her doctor and she was seen right away. I discovered that her mind was not clear and she had overdosed herself on heart medicine. The doctor didn't impress me as overly concerned, and I assumed he was simply the doorman for the final exit.
When we got home, I left her there and walked a couple of miles uptown to the Punta Gorda Hospital, or whatever it was called. My dad had undergone exploratory surgery and had been waiting to be discharged. He didn't know I had come to Florida and had expected to leave the hospital and go home in the car he'd driven there. He could barely walk.
After getting home I discovered that he had been told that he had cancer throughout his body and it was inoperable. I extended my stay there for ten more days to ensure my mother was recovered and stable and that my father was able to function alright. Then, I had to leave.
It was a couple of years later, as we expected our dad to succumb, that our mom died suddenly from a heart attack. One year later, my brother Bob and I sat with our dad, in hospice mode at his house, and marked his passing.
Before he died, my dad, never wanting to let the government get any more of his money than could be avoided, divvied it out to his six kids over a two year period so that no one paid any taxes.
That would be an ending for my relationship with Florida, but my in-laws also wintered there each year in a home in Zephyr Hills. My wife's brother, Tom, had been a professional football player and, subsequently, a successful businessman. He was able to buy my wife's folks a home and keep it up for years. He also used it for intermittent golf outings as part of his business.
My wife's parents, my second parents really, were two of the greatest people you could ever hope to meet, let alone be legally related.
Unfortunately, on what became their final visit up from Florida to Michigan to see Tom, who had had a heart attack, my father-in-law suffered a brain hemorrhage and passed away.
We've never returned to Florida since the end of the millennium. I understand that they currently have the record as the dumbest pandemic awareness state in the United States.
I have to add that to the hanging chads in the 2000 election, where the final tally was decided by Jeb Bush, then governor, and his Secretary of State, Katharine Harris, who was George Bush's campaign chairman. No conflict of interest there.
Cape Canaveral. I remember that all the rockets left from there. They called it Cape Kennedy for a while, but it's since reverted to the original name. Remember the The Right Stuff? Remember when we went to the moon in 1969? Then, we had to stop doing that and fund the Vietnam War. After that they went commercial with the space shuttles. They're all up on blocks in somebody's palmetto field now, since the corporate race to have the first private business on the moon has begun.
We cannot leave Florida without acknowledging hurricanes. I took a look at the list and the one that stands out for me was Charley in 2004. It wiped out Punta Gorda, where my folks had lived. If they had still lived there, they would have likely died there.
I know this seems out of place, but I have to admit that I never got the capital of Florida right until I actually drove through Tallahassee. I can't be the only person who thought Miami was the capital. Tallahassee? It's like a trick question on Jeopardy.
"Davy Crocodile wore his alligator boots to Florida's capital."
"What is Miami?" Haaaannnnnkkk!!
On that note, I will ease up north a bit and pick a peach in Georgia. See you there.
It wasn't until after I graduated from high school that Florida's importance was made clear to me.
My parents had planned to retire in the same year that I was out of school. Being eighteen, it was assumed that I would be off to pursue my dreams somewhere. The other five children had headed off to make their futures; it was now my turn. This, however, came as a rude awakening to me. Retirement? Why was I the last to know? Had they discussed this at some time before now? It seems that I had been either left ignorant of this huge move, or, more likely, simply too self-involved to realize that the times, they were a changing.
My parents packed up the Oldsmobile with what they needed to drive south. I was left in the care of my second oldest brother, Bob. He had bought our family home from my father and he would be partially funding their retirement with his mortgage payments.
One proviso that they had insisted on was that he, my brother, allow me to stay with him, rent free, until I was ready to move on. This nugget was not shared with me, however, so my brother accepted rent and food money from me to live there.
Life and its dramas went on from there. I left to join the Marines a year later, in 1974, and visited my parents in Punta Gorda, Florida a total of four times in twenty years. We did see each other when we met back in Michigan each summer, but Florida was never much of a draw for either my first wife or the second one. The latter might say that the third one won't like it either.
We did go and visit my parents there one year as part of a circular vacation. My wife and I had looked at some time-shares in North Carolina. We survived the high pressure salesmen and left with a weeks vacation in Orlando and four tickets to Disney World. While we were there we decided to make the most of it, so we booked a meeting with developers in Kissimee to look at some time-shares there. We prevailed again and scored tickets to the Universal Theme Park. The kids and us had a great time.
During this trip we also visited my parents on the other side of the state. This was looked at as somewhat of a survival mission, since my parents had no air conditioning or drinkable water. Summer in Florida, even though we lived in North Carolina, was a test of endurance. The humidity and my having to re-enter the parent/child relationship with folks was a strain for me. In retrospect, I see it now as my selfishness in wanting to be an adult, while my mother simply wanted to dote on us, and my father only wanted to control every situation.
My kids enjoyed their time with my folks, and the feeling was mutual. My son climbed up into the orange tree in the back yard and pulled down grapefruit-sized juicers. All the fruit we ate came from right there, but the water we drank was brought from the other side of town, since their well was polluted with sulfur.
There were two times I visited Florida that stand out above others.
In 1995, while I was serving in Haiti, I learned that my father had been hospitalized for some reason, no one knew. I asked my commander if I could take a week and visit them. It was arranged. I flew to Miami and rented a car to drive across Alligator Alley, which is a part of Interstate 75 that crosses the Everglades. My folks lived on the west side of the state above Fort Myers and south of Tampa.
When I got there, my mom greeted me at her door gasping for air. I immediately drove her to her doctor and she was seen right away. I discovered that her mind was not clear and she had overdosed herself on heart medicine. The doctor didn't impress me as overly concerned, and I assumed he was simply the doorman for the final exit.
When we got home, I left her there and walked a couple of miles uptown to the Punta Gorda Hospital, or whatever it was called. My dad had undergone exploratory surgery and had been waiting to be discharged. He didn't know I had come to Florida and had expected to leave the hospital and go home in the car he'd driven there. He could barely walk.
After getting home I discovered that he had been told that he had cancer throughout his body and it was inoperable. I extended my stay there for ten more days to ensure my mother was recovered and stable and that my father was able to function alright. Then, I had to leave.
It was a couple of years later, as we expected our dad to succumb, that our mom died suddenly from a heart attack. One year later, my brother Bob and I sat with our dad, in hospice mode at his house, and marked his passing.
Before he died, my dad, never wanting to let the government get any more of his money than could be avoided, divvied it out to his six kids over a two year period so that no one paid any taxes.
That would be an ending for my relationship with Florida, but my in-laws also wintered there each year in a home in Zephyr Hills. My wife's brother, Tom, had been a professional football player and, subsequently, a successful businessman. He was able to buy my wife's folks a home and keep it up for years. He also used it for intermittent golf outings as part of his business.
My wife's parents, my second parents really, were two of the greatest people you could ever hope to meet, let alone be legally related.
Unfortunately, on what became their final visit up from Florida to Michigan to see Tom, who had had a heart attack, my father-in-law suffered a brain hemorrhage and passed away.
We've never returned to Florida since the end of the millennium. I understand that they currently have the record as the dumbest pandemic awareness state in the United States.
I have to add that to the hanging chads in the 2000 election, where the final tally was decided by Jeb Bush, then governor, and his Secretary of State, Katharine Harris, who was George Bush's campaign chairman. No conflict of interest there.
Cape Canaveral. I remember that all the rockets left from there. They called it Cape Kennedy for a while, but it's since reverted to the original name. Remember the The Right Stuff? Remember when we went to the moon in 1969? Then, we had to stop doing that and fund the Vietnam War. After that they went commercial with the space shuttles. They're all up on blocks in somebody's palmetto field now, since the corporate race to have the first private business on the moon has begun.
We cannot leave Florida without acknowledging hurricanes. I took a look at the list and the one that stands out for me was Charley in 2004. It wiped out Punta Gorda, where my folks had lived. If they had still lived there, they would have likely died there.
I know this seems out of place, but I have to admit that I never got the capital of Florida right until I actually drove through Tallahassee. I can't be the only person who thought Miami was the capital. Tallahassee? It's like a trick question on Jeopardy.
"Davy Crocodile wore his alligator boots to Florida's capital."
"What is Miami?" Haaaannnnnkkk!!
On that note, I will ease up north a bit and pick a peach in Georgia. See you there.
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