Florida Signs

On the way to the Keys. This is pretty far south. Florida has plenty of roads but they are still crowded and driven on by mostly maniacs.

Although the roads were crowded the beaches were not, at least in Fort Lauderdale. I don't know where the spring breakers were hanging out. This pale girl must have just arrived from somewhere in the cold north.

Turtles were allowed privacy but humans were encouraged to let it all hang out. Hmm.

These were the signs that we were looking for on the southeast side and on the Gulf side and also up around Tampa and Orlando.

These folks offered really good food in the Fort Lauderdale area, especially catfish, but other seafood as well.

This must be very boring. Lucrative I suppose but very boring. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that because our medical specialists only do one thing they necessarily must do that one thing better than the others.

I found this sign, dated 1933, on an old stone filling station, on a back road near Ocala. The son was the father of the guy I talked too, a real Florida native, at least for 4 or 5 generations.


I found this near the driveway of a Special Forces paratrooper and Vietnam vet who now teaches in a middle school. The kids don't fool around with him. And he seems to get all the hard cases.

These are the Five Ringling Brothers of circus fame. The last and richest of the lot left his stuff to the state of Florida. It is on view in Sarasota. I had no idea that circuses could be so lucrative.

From an airboat, a part of the equipment used by John and Adam McCormick out of Ocala and Crystal River. They run a good business. Recommended.

This seemed like a good idea, especially during Lent. And as a fund-raiser for the school. I like the neon sign as part of the advertising. Churches in Florida do things differently. Though the awful architecture of the late 50s and 60s probably shouldn't be blamed on the churches themselves. I think it was something in the schools that did it.

That's right, we are on our way to a Braves baseball game right here in the middle of Disney's Wide World of Sports. They play all kinds of games here. I knew it was a high class place as I'm sure I saw a lacrosse team walk in with us.

I guess the manatees move slowly, so slowly they have trouble getting out of the way of the boats. I wonder if there are vets who specialize in propellor injuries to manatees. I wouldn't be surprised.

Maybe a sign of the difficult economic times even the big guys are suffering from.

These Signs Always Make Me Smile

I guess it comes from growing up in a farming community in the 40s and 50s. By the way, one thing I did find out after perusing a little ballet on the grass and dirt was that Tom Wolfe's magnifcently funny description of the mating of thoroughbred horses in his big book on Atlanta high mucky-mucks, A Man In Full, was probably a reasonably accurate description.

I found this out from a native Floridian in the Ocala area. Yes, Virginia, there are such people.

Earl and Jane Turnipseed's family have lived in Florida for 4 and 5 generations. That is Earl on the left and my brother Russ on Earl's left. That is some of the detail of the stonework to the right.

There apparently is something about the natural way of breeding horses that is required in order to certify that the foal is also a thoroughbred. He also told me the grass around Ocala is similar to that around Lexington, Kentucky.


















They live in this lovely stone house, above, built by his grandfather. I'm not sure who ran the stone filling station, below left, close to the highway. The inscription on the front reads J E Turnipseed & Son, 1933, and Earl is the son of the son referred to. As you can see the filling station still stands but is no longer used.

Welcome To Spring Training

The Twins practice baseball in Fort Myers in the spring. My brother Russ and I went down there from our Sarasota lair in the house of George Loessig late this morning without tickets. An elderly couple kindly provided us with 1/2 price tickets in the shade, which are the seats near the back.

The only problem was the uncomfortable metal seats probably the right size for 6 year old butts. And the fact that 18 people were trying to squeeze into the space for 16. And the fact that the yahoo announcer had to ham up every announcement made as in most minor league parks. Oh, wait a minute this is a minor league park.

This was a good-sized crowd of about 10,000. We could only stand the seat for 5 innings. Saw a number of home runs by the Twins. And a fair number of Minnesota folks come south to live out their days. I'm pretty sure this Fort Myers area must look and feel like Paradise to them. It was 27 deg in the Twin Cities.

The mascot from the Twin Cities apparently came down to scare kids up close. From a distance this critter is fairly appealing but up close he scares them.

There were at least two other games going on in the surrounding fields. Apparently the lower minor league players belonging to the Twins and the Tampa Bay Rays.

They looked to be playing some exciting baseball, what other kind is there, though some goofy errors showed up too.