May 20, 2019 - Nothing Much Going On. The last two days have been quiet and still. The weather has been nearly perfect, clear skies and temperatures in the mid 80s. We've walked around the villas, the beach and had lunch at the Old Florida Fish House. We've swam in the pool, read on the patio and watched Larry the Lizard change colors and blow up his pink chin. Google says he does that to frighten off predators or as part of a mating ritual.
We are winding down our stay here at Seagrove. We leave Friday for Gulfport, Mississippi. We will be there eight days. I understand our condo there is next to a casino. I will have my hands full keeping Annie out of that sin palace. She gets a spark in her eye, a roll of nickels and settles in on a stool in front of a slot machine. Woe to he who gets between her nickels and that one-armed bandit.
It is storming tonight back home. Today is May 20. It has been 62 years exactly since the Ruskin Heights tornado. It was an F5, half a mile wide, which was on the ground for an hour and a half, killed nearly half a hundred and injured half a thousand people. From our perch a thousand miles from home, we hope you are all safe.
Goodnight.
May 17, 2019, The Beach, Destin and a Walk Around Beachwood Villas. The time passes slowly here on the beach at Seagrove. There are sections of the beach which are not populated. There are other sections with color coordinated beach chairs and umbrellas. After walking a while yesterday, Annie suggested we sit in the prearranged chairs. I noticed that some were marked reserved. Others were not.
Annie found a couple of chairs which were not reserved. We sat in the chairs and looked across the white sand and out on the emerald water. We were just settling in when a young man came up behind us and asked if we wanted to rent the chairs. Well, no, we just figured that someone with a Midwestern sense of generosity had set them out for aging beach walkers.
He said that he gets paid to set them out and his boss expects him him to collect rent from the people who sit in them. So, how much to rent them for an hour, I asked. Twenty dollars per hour and fifty-five dollars for the whole day. I didn't tell him, but that was half a month's rent in the first house we rented in Belton. I had a little trouble getting out of the chair, but get out I did. Annie was a little slower, so I gave her a hand. That's what we do it in the Midwest.
We drove to Destin today, 25 miles west of here, to have lunch at Dewey's Destin seafood place. I started to call it a restaurant, but that glorifies it too much. You enter the parking lot by driving along a gravel road ruled by Herons. The drive in isn't very appetizing. However, the food is really good and most of the patrons dine al fresco, on the water. We like Dewey's. We like the food and we like the fact that it is named after Annie's dad.
We walked around the villas tonight. It is well maintained although I'd judge it to be 30 years old or older.
We have no plans for tomorrow. Maybe we'll go east tomorrow. There is a dog festival in St. Andrews. Maybe we'll go there. Maybe we won't. That's the wonderful thing about having free time. It really doesn't matter how you use it.
Goodnight.
May 14, 2019. Biking to Seaside. I go on vacation to get away from the problems at home. You know, the security system stops working, electric switches stop working or the cable goes out. We were watching the evening news last night and the cable went out. That isn't supposed to happen on vacation.
So I called Pat in Starkville, Mississippi. Pat owns the condo we are in - or - in which we are, if you are one of those grammar freaks who believes that it is always wrong to end a sentence in a preposition. She gave me the name and number of the cable company. So I called and got Grace with customer service. Grace is a fine American name, but this Grace had an Asian, perhaps Pakistani accent. Wherever she was, she knew her stuff. She instructed me to turn off the cable box while she pushed some buttons on her end. When I turned the cable box back on, the TV worked. Pretty amazing.
Today, we biked the two miles from here to Seaside. Seaside is a beautiful community with some pretty tight ordinances about construction and maintenance of buildings. I took the usual quota of pictures, a few of which appear above. I'll show you some more in a future blog.
Do you notice anything unusual about the lizard in the final picture? Most of the lizard's body is in the shade of the banister. However, his tail and part of his left rear foot are in the sunlight. Do you see how they've changed colors. He was too small to be a chameleon, yet he exhibited chameleon-like characteristics. Pretty cool.
We don't know what tomorrow will bring. We have no plans yet. We'll figure something out. Goodnight.
May 12, 2019. Seagrove, Florida. We left Trumann Friday and it is now Sunday evening. We traveled through Memphis, Birmingham and Montgomery on our way to Seagrove. We are staying in Beachwood Condominiums. The unit is a one-bedroom, ground-floor affair with a patio looking onto the tennis courts. There are two pools and a total of fourteen buildings, each containing four or more units. The beach and Gulf of Mexico are just across Highway 30A, a short walk from our accommodations.
We arrived too early to check in so we went to - say it with me - the Walmart Supercenter. I knew you knew that. Faithful readers will recall seeing many pictures of Walmarts across America, including Alaska.
After unloading and unpacking, we took a walk around the complex then crossed the road and walked to the beach just in time to see the setting sun. The fourth picture shows the porch attached to our unit. There are three Adirondack chairs and a rocking chair. Annie Farkley and I may have to arm wrestle over the rocker. The bicycles are stored there until the rains stop.
So, here is where we'll be until May 24. I'll be in touch. Goodnight.
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May 10, 2019. Biking the Streets of Trumann, 60 Years Later. We are traveling again. This time, we are headed to the Gulf of Mexico. We will be in Seagrove Beach, a mile from Seaside, Florida for a couple of weeks. We will then move to Gulfport, MS, for a week.
I have shown you a few of the usual barns along the route from home to Paragould. We intended to stay in Jonesboro, but discovered that this is graduation weekend at ASU. It worked out very well, because Paragould is 15 miles from my grandparents' farm near Dixie, Arkansas, where I would spend 2-3 weeks each summer. The fourth picture is the house my grandmother lived in after Grandpa Renard died. The old two-room house I remember from my youth was torn down and this one was constructed on the same site.
I added an extra day to our drive down hoping to bike the streets of Trumann, the small town in Northeastern Arkansas where I lived the first 13-plus years of my life. That plan nearly imploded before we left home. As I was loading the bicycles, I noticed the rear tire on my bike was flat. Two weeks ago, the bikes were in the shop for tuning. Among other things, the rear tire on my bike was replaced. I expected the bikes to be in tiptop condition.
There is an unfounded rumor among my family and friends that I am not very handy. Well, sit down. I stopped at the Paragould Walmart and bought a size 26-inch inner tube and small air compressor. After unloading at the hotel, I turned my bike upside-down in the parking lot and fixed it. That's right, I fixed it! After removing the old tube, I reset the wheel on the bike. I filled the new inner tube to 90 PSI and peddled it around the parking lot. I even rode it in front of the window in our room, so Annie could see that I fixed it. Proud, I was.
My older brother and I had a paper route in Trumann from the time I was in the second grade until we moved. I biked the streets of Trumann delivering papers, meeting up with friends and, generally, using a bicycle as my principal mode of transportation.
Annie Farkley was not excited about riding around Trumann. To be fair, I was raised on the wrong side of Trumann. The neighborhood north of Speedway was the poor part of town. It was rehabbed in the 1970's, but many of the homes I remember are still there. Most are run down and dilapidated.
So, we began our ride at the community center which is across the street from the Scout Hut where I attended scores of meetings. We stopped at the school and I took a picture of the football field where I was a two-way starter as an eighth-grader for the Trumann Junior High Wild Kittens in 1959.
The next picture is the house which now stands where our old house at 512 Kentucky was in the 1950s. Dad gave our house to the First Baptist Church as a parsonage. The house there now is 2-3 times larger than the one I was raised in.
As we zigzagged the streets of Trumann, I took pictures of houses which were standing when I lived there. Most are at the end or near the end of their usefulness. Most are vacant, but a few are still homes for present residents.
As we rode the streets, I overwhelmed Annie with information about this house or that, this building or that and what or who used to be on this or that vacant lot. I was chattering along several times when I noticed Annie had fallen far behind me. No problem, I just kept chattering. The final picture is the old First Baptist Church. It is the church in which I was baptized. There is a new church now, but I was happy to see that the old one is still being used and kept up.
After an hour or so, we reloaded the bikes on the rack and left Trumann. I had a wonderful time. Annie, not so much. But, she was a good sport and I am lucky to have such a congenial traveling companion. Thank you, Annie. You gave me a great day!
We will be on the road two more days. I'll be on the lookout for more barns. For now, goodnight.
