The Best Show in Florida

For years Sunday nights were special for my siblings and me because The Wonderful World of Disney television show with its fascinating and funny stories from the life of animals out in the wilderness to cartoons showing the misadventures of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. Up until the early 1970’s the show was my family’s only connection to the world and characters Walt created.

Some nights the show would highlight the Disneyland theme park out in California enchanting my younger cousins, siblings, and myself with images of the fantastic rides and amazing sights for anyone lucky enough to live near it or able to afford the trip to such a fantastic place. As much as my kinfolk and myself may have desired to see the home of Mickey and Donald at that moment in time such a long journey out west might as well as been on the other side of the planet for us given money and time demands that our parents faced.

The opening of Disney World outside Orlando, Florida in 1971 changed all that. I do not believe news filtered down to children then as fast as it seems to do now but when the announcement of Disney World’s construction reached us I do vaguely remember something akin to a small riot erupting with only my grandmother threatening to make us pray all afternoon bringing back some order. Other small kiddy riots and celebrations occurred in the neighborhood and school among our friends with the spreading realization that Disney World’s location would allow us a chance to experience what we all saw on television. After that, it just became a waiting game for everyone to see when the parents would finally breakdown and take us.

The summer of 1972 was the magic moment for my siblings and me with our mom and dad loading up the Chevrolet and beginning the drive south to the Sunshine state. Now as much as the marriage between our mom and dad was an utter disaster on par with major earthquakes and killer tsunamis I have to give them credit for even attempting such a trip. Having them sitting so close together confined in a hot car for hours with four small children in the back was just asking for trouble.

Being the oldest kid, I remember some of the drive but unlike today travelling along I-95 with its countless opportunities for bathroom breaks and convenient place to eat, I recall very long stretches of nothing but billboards and trees lining the roadside. Only when we crossed over into Florida do I remember seeing the ramshackle souvenir and fruit stands that sold dead baby alligators dipped in lacquer frozen in menacing positions and countless bags of Florida oranges stacked far higher than I was tall at that age. Arriving in Orlando back then was a very different world as compared to the huge city that exists today. There was an absence of other flashy tourist traps and while I could be wrong, to me the town retained a hint of the rural atmosphere that existed before Walt discovered the place.

Driving into the parking lot of the motel my dad picked for our stay in the Orlando area was a huge disappointment. The first thing I noticed was the lack of a pool that every motel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina just thirty miles up north from my hometown had in abundance. The place looked rundown and a little scary for some reason but that may have been because it somehow reminded me of the Bates motel which I knew about from seeing the movie Psycho at the hometown drive-in with my uncle and his date.

My parents, who never missed a chance to argue, really went at it in that parking lot with my mom wanting us to find another place so we could have a pool. My dad’s position was that the trip was already way to expensive and that the whole purpose was for us kids to see Disney, not swim in a pool which we could do a lot cheaper back home. What decided the matter was the radio, which almost at that moment began reporting a hurricane moving toward the Atlantic coast of Florida. Some serious dark and intimidating clouds even then were floating by with the wind picking up speed seemingly by the minute.

It was not long before that motel was providing refuge from howling winds and blowing rain but neither my siblings nor I were worried about that. We had heard our parents discussing the possibility the hurricane could derail the entire trip, forcing us back home without actually making it inside Disney World. For me the stage was set for a long night’s vigil to wait out the storm willingly saying prayers to the point my grandmother would have been proud.

Cooped up in the room for so long I clearly remember the fake wood paneling on the walls that for some reason was popular back then. The two creaky queen sized beds with frayed blue blankets that had my mother and baby sister in one and my dad and youngest brother, Peter, in the other. Middle brother Bobby and I were sharing a lumping rollaway bed that the old lady who ran the motel, along with her husband, brought us after we checked in. In the corner of the room was a huge wood paneled console television with a fuzzy color picture that not only had the standard three national networks broadcast through local affiliates but some sort of strange, to me, independent station that aired movies and ancient shows that my parents remembered from their teenage years.

As the night progressed old movies and archaic reruns came and went on that independent station broken only by and occasional tired and worried weather guy in a rumpled suit giving an update on the storm.

Sometime that morning the wind and rain that at times shook the entire motel stopped so suddenly that its absence was actually scary in itself. It had been a good while since the rumpled weatherman had interrupted whatever show was on to update where the hurricane was heading leaving the big question of whether we would reach Disney World still in some doubt. With the wind and rain apparently over, I opened the room door to peer outside seeing only the parking lot with minor debris lying around and the motel owners gathering it up. Feeling the need to satisfy my concerns over how the hurricane might have ruined our trip, I decided to ask the old man and his wife what, if anything, they knew.

The old couple had taken seats underneath the awning directly over the entrance to the motel office and for the most part just seemed to be enjoying the return of calm weather and the lingering breeze. Both saw me approaching them but neither seemed overly concerned about a young boy they did not know leaving his parents behind in a motel room early in the morning after a hurricane. I actually remember taking this as a good omen figuring if they were going to hassle me they would have said something earlier.

“What can I do for you this fine morning young man?” The old man said looking at me with a friendly twinkle in his eye. The old lady looked towards me and just smiled then turned away returned to her thought.

The man’s accent was the first thing I noticed the second was how genuinely friendly he seemed. Grownups forget that many kids have a natural ability to know when their presence is only tolerated and my instinct was telling me this man truly being sociable.

“Sir, I was wondering is the hurricane coming back, my parents have said that if the storm stays we will have to go back home without seeing Disney World.” I said hoping the answer I would get would be the good one.

The old man laughed and slapped his knee just like I had seen in several Western movies. “Don’t worry little one, the storm is moving up the coast and will be memory before long.”

That of course was just the answer I wanted leaving a big smile on my face. I began to turn away and head back to my room but the old man stopped me.

“Please, sit down and talk with me for awhile. We can enjoy the nice breeze, which will be gone soon, and we all will be sweating like pigs again. What type of soda do you like?” He asked and after telling him grape the old man yelled out to his wife to get me a bottle of what I wanted.

With a bottle of grape soda in my hands we began a conversation that had him asking as many question about me as I asked of him. He asked me about my school, my favorite subjects, what foods I liked, what I thought of my younger siblings, what I wanted to see at Disney World, and many other things. From the questions I asked him I learned he was German, that he and his wife had come to this country a few years after World War Two. Since my knowledge of the war at that age came primarily from “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns I think he forgave me for asking him if he fought for the bad guys, which I believe he did. I have no idea for certain if he did fight for the wrong side and if he did what he may have done, seen, or knew about during those bloody years, all I do know he was a kind man to me and was clearly enjoying my visit.

Our conversation eventually drifted to the Apollo program and it was then I learn he had seen most of the rocket launches at Cape Canaveral since they began using that site. He had even seen the Apollo 11 launch that had taken the astronauts to the surface of the moon. We talked about what we would like to see next happen in space and my hopes of what would be common up there when I grew up.

Just when things were starting to wind down there was a rather large splash across the road from his motel and it was then that I noticed the full moon reflecting off the water of large pond.

“Young man, you came all this way to see strange creatures and a fake castle, you need to see the best part of Florida before it is paved over and forgotten.” The old man rushed inside the office and grabbed a huge flashlight but before coming back out turned off all the outside lights. With only the glow from the moon we both walked across the road that the entire time we talked was completely devoid of any passing cars. As I was taught, I looked both ways before crossing and noticed how isolated his motel was, the only lights I could see were to a small gas station a few miles down the road.

“I know it is hard for active young boys like you but be silent and watch the water and the sides of the pond.” He said to me as we stood on the far side of the road.

The first thing I noticed was the gently swaying trees on the edge of the water. Their long dangling limbs seemed to be dancing in the breeze painting ripples on the water where they touched the pond. In the water gentle swirls showed where bass played and occasionally jumped looking to catch a flying insect themselves returning after the passing of the storm. After turning on the old man’s huge flashlight sinister pairs of eyes were spotted in the water cruising along like submarines stalking unknowing merchant ships. And like castaway survivors on small deserted islands bands of turtles clung to limbs of fallen trees sticking out of the water.

Using the beam of light to probe the shore of the pond brought the snorting sounds of wild pigs roaming around. At one point the light reflected off the eyes of some species of wildcat lounging on the limb of a tree, an angry snarl resulted in me disturbing it and it jumped from the tree and disappear back into the darkness. It was only when several pairs of those sinister eyes cruising the waters began coming our way did the old man pull me back across the road and turn his business lights back on.

“Well young man, remember this night for me and what I showed you when you are all grown up and have children of your own.” He said shaking my hand as if I was a real adult and with that he sent me back to my room where I found everyone still sleeping.

We did indeed make it to Disney World and even with my parents complaining my siblings and I had a great time. Many years have passed since that old gentleman showed me the true wonder of Florida and each time I find myself in that area I think of him and that pond. I have no idea where his motel was located and figure since it was only twenty minutes from the entrance to Disney World some giant resort or outlet mall now occupies that location. Such is the price of what we call progress but the show on that pond with a full moon hanging in the sky will stay with me until the day I die.

Looking At My Golden Years

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While in no way do I consider myself “old” physically, emotionally, or mentally a bit of a mild shock hit me the other day concerning what until recently was strictly the abstract concept of old age retirement. Now understand I retired from the National Guard in 2005 after twenty-one years of combined service in both the active army and National Guard but the great fiscal guardians of taxpayer funds, both elected and bureaucratic, proclaimed long ago that such veterans (read: fools) like me cannot receive compensation for our services until the age of sixty. Even with National Guard retirement kicking in, I am looking at the year 2033 before I can even begin thinking about hanging up the “Gone Fishing” sign. Since two pillars of my retirement plan rely on government-managed money, the other being Social Security, that 2033 date is something I have only penciled in, so the real date could be something closer to next to never unless I happen to hit the lotto. This leaves me largely dependent on whatever private retirement nest egg I can build up and put it in the hands of monetary experts for investment like those trusted gentlemen from Goldman Sachs who testified before Congress yesterday claiming that their raping of the country was really cool and above board. This is why once a week I will fall to my knees before the lottery kiosk in the convenience store and before picking out my five numbers pray to Mighty God in Heaven for both a smallpox outbreak on Wall Street and for that week’s winning numbers.

Now I bear a huge chunk of responsibility for not being prepared as I should for old age. In my “younger” years working in the manufacturing segment of the economy I jumped from one electronic technician job to the other trying to stay ahead of that thing called global free-trade economics by the high paid but soulless syncopates on the business news networks. Despite my best efforts to build a 401k over those years I still had to ride out two economic-driven layoffs and a plant closing that had me part of the skeleton crew boxing factory equipment for the slow boat ride to China. Other things generally falling in the category called life happened as well like a couple of kids showing up, the purchase of transportation so I could get to work, repairs to the house, medical bills, and even vacations to get over the stress of living the glorious American Dream. This brings me to the recent event that shattered my complacency concerning my private retirement fund.

One of the neat things about working at a hospital as opposed to working the manufacturing field is that people will always be getting sick or injured and needing treatment as long as their health insurance isn’t suddenly canceled. However in manufacturing there are a finite number of widgets people can buy which results in layoffs or factories being sent overseas so the suits can squeeze out every cent in profit using slave labor.

Given this relative dependability at the hospital my 401k was merged with the other pitiful survivors from my previous jobs and for a while was doing okay. However, the economic meltdown and resulting stock market collapse played Hell with my retirement funds. As the financial world fell apart I was left with the thought that I would have liked to have been kissed first before serving as some bitch for a Wall Street metrosexual suffering from delusions of godhood.

However, not having friends in high places I lived without my bailout and soldiered on watching my beleaguered funds very slowly recover as the same shits who got us in this mess reward each other with colossal bonuses.

My employer transferred management of our personal retirement funds to a different company requiring everyone at a minimum to contact the new company so new investment strategies could be worked out. So the other day like a good subordinate with no other option being caught in the wheels of global banking I introduced myself to the nice lady who would guide me to my retirement dreams.

As I took a seat we exchanged the required small talk and got down to the business of figuring out how I would live out my golden years. It took several minutes for her to review both some stuff on her laptop screen I could not see and some papers I had brought with me.

“Well sir,” she said punching keys on the laptop with some sort of program on the screen reflecting off her glasses, “let’s see how we can get you to your retirement goals. I see we have your age, your other sources of retirement income, and how much you have it your 401k right now.” Some sort of unhappy number appeared on the screen because her professional honed mask of perky optimism collapsed like a house of cards for several seconds.

“Is there anything wrong?” I asked but I figured since she only makes money if I keep an account she would never tell me.

God bless her training because the perky mask of eternal optimism reasserted itself and she looked up at me with a smile that while friendly would have scared babies given how fake it was. “No sir, we are a team and I will see that you get as close to your goals as possible.”

Despite the opinion of many and I admit some actual evidence I am not a complete fool, I figured the news was bad and after reviewing the retirement printout I made my trip back to the convenience store to pray again for smallpox and winning lotto numbers.

How is talking from one's butt news?

Some caterpillars essentially talk with their rear ends, scraping oar-like structures on leaf surfaces to signal turf ownership to intruders. Now researchers have found the butt-talking evolved from crawling behaviors.

Now if only some National Science Foundation research grants could be created to explore the bizarre nature of politicians and their communication habits since they have been talking from their asses since the beginnings of human civilization. I purpose that all elected officials be captured and tagged allowing an in-depth study on the nature of anal communications. I am sure that since this activity originated from crawling behavior that plenty of their more evolved predecessors can be found simply by looking under any slime covered rocks for comparative studies.

Business Theater of the Absurd

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Since I am already working with a severe mental deficit at the best of times, the cumulative effects of working third shift makes watching the morning news shows with the hosts explaining the theater of the absurd that passes as normal human affairs an added threat to the weak underpinning of my sanity. Nevertheless, the last hour of my shift will have me in front of some television in the company of my bagel and cream cheese trying to make sense of the verbal offal put forth by the talking heads. For me the morning news shows on the business networks are the worst with high paid heralds of free-market global capitalism almost daily making some outrageous remark that is either condescending to us working folks or showing blatant ignorance about matters outside their area of knowledge.

As a kid growing up in the South I got use to traveling preachers working the revival circuit during humid summer evenings standing in front of us sweating sinners with a fanatical gleam in his eye declaring someone a “Good Christian” and praising God that such people walk the earth. Such declarations by strange men faded into background static during my teenage years as summer revivals became less a chance to get on the right side of Jesus and more an opportunity to get on top of Savannah out behind the bushes. However, I must admit to be taken back a few months ago when I saw the same fanatical gleam in the eyes of one of the business journalist babes on a discussion panel declaring someone a “Good Capitalist.” I have known for a long time that the high and mighty business and investor class have long since sold their souls to the god of Profit but I was surprised to see such a similar religious zeal on someone whose job it is to inform and investigate instead take on the mantle of an acolyte, or better yet syncopate.

I would be terribly remiss if I did not bring up the words of the brunette hottie who is nearly drop dead gorgeous in her own right without having to resort to the silicone implants and countless bottles of peroxide like her Fox Business Channel cohorts. This fine example of a business journalist once declared that China was doing us a favor by selling us toys with lead paint and food with poisons. That earned her my lifetime award for heartless corporate shrill babe. I just hope when she gets around to having a few hatchlings of her own so she can really show her appreciation to China by giving them such toys and food.

The latest winner for me though was yesterday morning when one of brunette hottie’s cohorts was whining about all the money the airlines were losing in Europe being ground by the volcanic ash hanging over the continent. The dude openly wondered why they had not sent planes up in the air to see if there was any way over, under or around the ash produced by the volcano in Iceland. Now understand I have nothing against capitalism except when all common sense is abandoned. This guy’s worry was not over the thousands of people stranded in airports struggling to find other means to get home but over the hundreds of millions and possibly billions these airlines will lose with their planes staying on the ground.

Now dude should have been able to guess that all sorts of meteorologists and aviation experts were constantly pouring over satellite data concerning the ash and when it might clear out. A report I heard from a completely different source hours later did say a few planes were being sent up to check whether flights could start again; so dude had no need to get his knickers in bind because the experts knew what they were doing. I have to admit though to thinking the fun thing to do would be to throw whiner dude forcibly onto one of those planes checking out the ash levels in the atmosphere and then see how much he worried about the airlines losing money.

I'm sorry, I've just seen too many sons of bitches lately and this song came to mind:

America Still Lost in Space

Not too many weeks ago, I made a promise to myself to stay away from American politics for good. The slime infesting the halls of government and narrow-minded sycophants seeking only their interests at the expense of everything else had turned my stomach to the point that I finally realized the rot had gone to the core making any attempt at reform the same as shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. However, I find myself once again forced to comment on the swirling cesspool, this time for my own narrow interests.
I voted for President Obama largely on the idea that he could lead the country into the 21^st century in spite of stagnate views and festering apathy from far too many people who are fanatically holding onto an America that really last existed fifty some-odd years ago. Now to be fair, the suitcases of his family were not even unpacked in the White House when a storm of entrenched forces opened fire on him and have yet to let up. However, instead of the president rallying his forces and heading into the fire at least from my view he sat back and became more a sedate university professor observing the mud throwing and sausage making from a distance. Only recently after his health care reform looked to be roasting on an open fire with Republicans gleefully dancing among the flames like children from Lord of the Flies did he finally jump into the mix.
Along those same lines, I at least think the man is falling short again of the reasons I voted for him. Tomorrow Lord Brainiac will travel down to Florida to once again like all the presidents since Reagan and rededicate the country to some national goal in space. This is after canceling the Constellation program with billions already spent and some actual metal being cut. In its place, the president will propose that commercial companies will act as taxi drivers for American astronauts taking them to and from the International Space Station. Companies whose "space taxis" are at best full size display models but more than likely nice slides on a Power Point presentation.
However long it takes these vehicles to be built we will spend years paying the Russians 50 million dollars a seat to do it for us on their simple but very reliable Soyuz spacecraft. It is supposed by those people running things now that going with commercial spacecraft will be easier, cheaper, and push the boundaries of possible human space exploration finally out of low Earth orbit. While that may be the case a letter signed by the many former American astronauts, in my mind more reliable experts, differ:

NASA is budgeting billions of dollars to support the development of U.S. commercial spaceships that could help fill the gap. The beneficiaries of those billions would include smaller aerospace ventures, such as California-based SpaceX and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences. In their letter, the astronauts say that the availability of such craft "cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope."

The real experts go on to write:

Armstrong and his colleagues complained that the cancellation would amount to wasting the roughly $10 billion that has been allocated to Constellation over the past five years. "Equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to re-create the equivalent of what we will have discarded," they wrote.

It would be wrong for me to ignore the problems with the Constellation program; it was over budget, behind schedule, and lost in a NASA bureaucracy that can make cold molasses look like running water. My point in all this is that after several administrations all making goals but never reaching them it is a sad state for a country that decided to land a man safely on the moon when it was still finding it difficult to launch a damn satellite into orbit.
Hell, I'm all for going to the real space explorations experts, the Russian, and ask them to teach us how to do it. More than likely it will be faster and cheaper in the long run. If the scattered brained American collective has post Cold War issues with the Russkies we can just wait for the Chinese and buy tickets on their flights. They have stated in no uncertain terms that they will land a man on the moon sometime in the 2020s. Even the Indians have it as a goal to reach the moon appearing far more determined and brave than we are right now. Then again they are not fighting two wars essentially over oil, have a decent education system, and a population a little more interested in something other than reality television and Tiger Woods screwing around.
Yes, Lord Brainiac will come out smiling tomorrow and give and impassioned speech saying that America will keep leading the world in manned space exploration by making our goal going to Mars. So excuse my cynicism if I say all he should do is replay the speeches by his last four predecessor on the subject because they are all empty words. I'll skip the speech and read up on former great powers that choked on keeping up with the future and thinking about more than immediate concerns and got left behind by those that could.

Under A Silver Moon

Author's note: Wanted to write some more but I really did not want to jump back into the vampire stuff just yet. Drifted over to the Writer's Digest website and found this prompt:

"You and a friend break into your neighborhood swim club late one night to go for an after-hours dip. While splashing around in the pool, you go into shock when a dead body floats to the top. Worse yet—it's someone you know. Write this scene."

The full moon shining above lighted the way as Katie and Zane walked the narrow path through the woods that paralleled the length of their neighborhood on the way to the pool house. The only sounds beside their footsteps were of lonely crickets still singing for a mate and small animals skittering through the underbrush.

As they walk beside each other, Katie is clearly uncomfortable about sneaking out of her house so late and nervous about the dark woods around them and seeing this Zane puts his arm around her. “We will be at the pool in a minute babe and it will just be us.”

Katie rewards him for easing her fears by leaning her head over and kissing him. The kiss is short but from the moonlight reflecting off her eyes he sees her silent promise of what awaits once they get to the pool.

The young couple had known each other since elementary school having grown up in the same neighborhood and been a part of the same social circles. Still though, they had never been more than friends until the summer before college. Something always seemed to push them apart, namely Zane’s father who never thought much of Katie or her family for some reason that he would never really speak about. During their senior class trip to the Bahamas though, Zane and Katie, away from their families, began to see something special in each other.

However, college loomed before them so those feelings were set aside and as the years passed they keeping in touch through letters and the occasional phone call. Relationships with other people, some serious, flared and then died as the college years passed but the two rediscovered each other by chance after returning home.

Zane easily climbed over the old wrought iron fence surrounding the pool house as Katie slipped around to the fence door where he lets her through. The pool water sparkled in the moonlight with the two staring at each other longingly before falling into each other’s arms. Their kiss was passionate and long with the couple eager to fulfill years of pent up desire and dreams about each other. As the young couple entered the chilly waters of the pool the full moon whose light had provided a sort of comfort during their walk slide behind a large bank of clouds with a deeper darkness enveloping the two.

Their world becomes the feel of each other’s skin, the taste of each other’s lips, and the sound of words spoken they had only imagined. Feeling the security of the darkness wrap around them their bodies find each other and the world they know shrinks even further to one of primal lust and the joy that they had at last found each other.

Their moment passes, the fever subsides and Zane and Katie become children again swimming and playing in the pool while the passing clouds allow the silver moon to reappear. The returning moonlight illuminates the area allowing Zane to see a dark shape floating in the short segment of the L-shaped pool. Zane cannot completely tell what the shape is gently bobbing in the water is but he has an instinctive foreboding.

“Katie, get behind me and turn around.” Zane said as Katie is suddenly nervous and clasps her arms tightly around her naked breasts.

“Zane, you’re scaring me,” she says as he lets her go and edges closer to the dark shape floating in the water. Zane finally gets close enough to realize it is a man floating face down, the splayed arms and lack of any movement confirming in Zane’s mind that the person is long dead.

“Katie,” he said in as calm a voice he could manage, “I need you get out the water and call the police from the phone mounted on the wall next the pump house.”

As Zane heard Katie begin to wade through the pool back toward the other end he flipped the body to see whom it was. Staring back at him with lifeless eyes was Zane’s own father. The scream that came out of Zane was instinctive, hearing his pure and utter sorrow Katie turned and rushed back to the man she now knew she loved.

As the couple embraced naked in the water seeking only comfort from each other next Zane’s dead father, a figure emerged from the shadows.

“I really hated to kill Edward although he was always able to sense something of my true nature,” a male voice said stepping out into the moonlight. “But despite my efforts all through your life Katie I knew there was nothing I could do to stop Zane from eventually soiling you beyond any usefulness. You two were simply meant for each other”

Both Zane and Katie are shocked to see her father stepping out of the shadows. Even more disturbing was the manic look on his face and the almost lyrical tone to his voice as if he could start singing at any minute. Knowing something was very wrong they held each other closer feeling a growing danger.

“My backers had such plans for you Katie my darling; it really is a shame that you are lost to us now. However, with a little more work on my part either one of your younger sisters will do nicely.” With that, Katie’s father throws the electrical disconnect hanging on the wall beside him that ran to the underwater pool lights. As the lever falls completing the circuit both Zane and Katie saw the broken lights and exposed wires under the water.

As the current raced through the pool and through Zane and Katie’s bodies they sink into the water still holding each other. Katie’s last thoughts before the final darkness engulfed her were terror filled as she saw her father step back into the shadows with his eyes seemingly glowing red.

The next day as police arrive after the discovery of the bodies everyone saw how distraught Katie’s father was at the sight of his lifeless daughter. Without any effort on his part the general census of the authorities present was that Zane’s father had discovered the lovers in the pool and in a fit of mindless rage thrown the switch since it was well know he had issues with his son seeing the girl.

“You two are all I have now.” Katie’s father says as friends lead him away from the pool with his two younger daughters by his side.