NIMBY

Five years ago, BH and I dared to take the Snowbird flight to Venice. Why Venice? Because spring training is in Sarasota where the Baltimore Orioles spend February and March.  Why not Sarasota?  Not one for planning, the only hotel rooms BH could find were in Venice.

Serendipitous, I might add.  Venice is one beautiful, historic town, developed in the mid 1920s, designed in Mediterranean architecture style.  Unfortunately, the town went under during the Great Depression, but was saved by the Kentucky Military Institute, which wintered in its hotels.

Miraculously, the town is 80% preserved.  I say miraculous because Florida never met a developer it didn’t sleep with.  Those local commissioners just roll over and look the other way, as bulldozers raze every shred of natural beauty and replace them with cookie cutter gated and not so gated communities.

I should know.  I live in one.  And, I love it here.  This development, however, has preserved areas for the gators, birds, armadillos, panthers, boars and bunnies to coexist peacefully.  That comes at a price.  These wonders of nature are completely surrounded by crazy humans, who get incensed if one blade of grass on their perfectly manicured lawn is disturbed.

Just ask the poor mother boar who had the nerve to walk her eight babies around the pond in front of the community center. Every day she’d come out and every day, a few of those baby boars disappeared.  And, then, there were none.

But, I digress.  The second year we came, five more local developments were in progress and the next year, 10 more.  And, next year, the Atlanta Braves are moving their spring training camp three miles down the road from us.  NOOOOO!  STOP!!!

This area has become the fastest growing area for retirees in the country.  I can’t stand it.  Does it impact my quality of life?  Well, yeah…the traffic during the winter rivals the Washington Beltway, the wait times for the early bird specials are ridiculous, and the happy hour reduced rates conveniently disappear.  I am a bonafide NIMBY….not in my backyard, PUHLEEZE.  But, it’s Florida where every commissioner has a open wallet for developers.

I remember the Real Florida.  Actually, the Real Old Florida.  My grandparents moved to Orlando in 1926 way before concrete houses and before anyone owned cars.  My granddaddy walked five miles from the country into Orlando to sell shoes.

My parents married in 1945 and my granddaddy gifted them a lot down the road, where my uncles and Daddy built a two bedroom house out of a barracks from the local air force base.
It was completed just before I arrived.  The front porch was added for my sister’s birth and the back porch two years later for my brother.

Our house was on a paved road but most of the houses were on sand roads.  Not all of them had indoor plumbing.  I remember walking a lot….down to my grandparents, to the lake, to our little town of Pinecastle.   The whistle blew at noon every day loud enough for the entire state to hear.  The railroad traveled though our town, stopping at a little depot next to the feed store.
It was a dairy farming community.

There was a five and dime store where I remembered my mom buying me a lucky rabbit’s foot.  I carried it everywhere.  I remember getting my hair permed at Miss Quimby’s beauty salon.  Why? I have no idea.  I was born with curly hair.  I remember getting chocolate malts at Doc’s drug store.  There was Lonnie’s grocery store that we frequented every single day because my mom wasn’t a dinner planner.  Nor could she cook.  I grew up on Chef-Boy-R-Dee spaghetti.  ‘Nuff said.
There was no air conditioning.  Yep.  NO AC!!!  We depended on fans and lake breezes and shuttered windows.  Sleeping was brutal….it wasn’t enough that it was boiling but there was always a mosquito or two feasting on you.  Once, I got bitten on the lip by a spider, went to the bathroom and started screaming my head off.  My lip was the size of a heirloom tomato.  It was grotesque.  But, the swelling soon disappeared and I survived.

Much of Florida was still a jungle back then.  We were country kids, roaming freely to friends’ houses and playing tag, Mother May I, and games created on the spur of the moment. Of course, we ran into possums, raccoons and snakes.  One of my earliest memories is watching my mom hacking a coral snake to death with a hoe.

The only time I remember wearing shoes was to school and to church.  Obviously, the reason I have wide feet today.  My mom made all my clothes with the exception of underwear, socks and pajamas.  At the time I was embarrassed by it because so many of my friends wore store bought dresses.  But, now, I’m really proud of her.  Some of my best memories are of us going to fabric stores and picking out patterns and fabrics.

Naturally, this was all pre-Disney.  OMG!  What did we do for family entertainment before Disney?  Endless possibilities.  Gatorland on Orange Blossom Trail.  Cypress Gardens and the waterskiing show.  Glass bottom boats at Silver Springs.  Sanlando Springs with the huge slide that I never ever got up the nerve to go down.  The one movie showing at the Beacham Theatre on Orange Avenue.  Many nights, we played the piano and sang songs or listened to the radio shows, like The Lone Ranger and I Remember Mama.

This was back when Orlando truly was the City Beautiful.  Now, I’m nauseated by the overdevelopment and overwhelming traffic in my hometown.  But, there’s no stopping “progress,” especially, when “progress” equates to greed.

So, yes, I have my little piece of paradise here in Venice, and, no, I’m not thrilled at the pace of new construction.  I got mine and, now, I want to shut the door.  Yes, I admit I’m a true hypocrit, but, after all, I’ve seen up close and personal what happens.