One year ago today: December 8, 2014, not getting 90%.
Five years ago today: December 8, 2010, we met at Soyka’s.
Nine years ago today: December 8, 2006, who’s not invited.
Random years ago today: December 8, 2013, a grumpy day.
MORNING
Hello from Lakeland. I told you we’d make it there. This is the order of biscuits & gravy I get on the road whenever it is available. And it usually is when you get out of the Miami-West Palm corridor and out into the parts that still represent the real Florida. In as much as it still exists. You get the chronology as normal, because this is not a travel blog and I have no idea what might catch your interest. But if you want touristy things, I probably cannot help you.
On the money side, this was easily the most expensive “business” trip we’ve taken because we had twice the budget. So we took the scenic route through Lake Placid again. We only casually examined the landforms, since JZ does not have a scientific mind, or maybe it’s more accurate to say he is not all that scientifically curious. I can be the other extreme on that count.
So north of Lake Placid, we jogged thirty or so miles west to avoid Highway 27 north of Sebring. That’s where you hit every red light for 80 miles. We wound up going through Zolfo Springs to a place called Ona. JZ wants to “ona” house there. He’s finally catching on how much more interesting these country lanes are compared to the sterile freeway experience. It is apparently a mining community, but strip mining, not underground. We saw a lot of spur line railway tracks and massive stockpiles of (phosphate?) fertilizer.
What’s this JZ reports? Some kind of treasure ship found of the coast of Columbia. I have no details yet, but if JZ knows about it, somebody was foolish enough to announce the discovery before they could secret away the lions share. Now the Columbians will move in with their [version of] treasure-hunters, also know as politicians and lawyers. I’ll have to get back to you on that.
Shown here is a painting of the San Jose exploding. The English attacked when the Spanish ships set sail without their French escort, which was late arriving. The San Jose was a "behemoth" of a ship, full of gold, silver, and emeralds extracted from the mines of Peru by slave labor. The ship, built in Spain, was full of leaky holes caused by tropical rot and worms. The English, not wanted to sink these ships, fired cannon above the waterline. But the galleon caught fire and the weakened structure allowed the flames to drop into the magazine. The resulting explosion killed an estimated 600 men.
[Author's note 2016-12-08: the treasure ship contains an estimated $17 billion in booty. The dispute hedges over the Columbian claim that the shipwreck, found in 1982 by an American company, is not in the exact location where they said it was. The Columbian government refuses to define what they mean by "exact location".
At first, it was thought the gold and jewels were worth only a billion, but Columbia, with an estimated 1,220 of these sunken ships, pushed through a law in 2013 saying these were "heritage sites". I guess that makes sense, considering the immense amount of heritage Columbia has contributed to the world, that they would need all they could find. Including those who salvage under maritime law.
Spain, on hearing the true value was much greater, filed a claim, presumably based on the usual Spanish premise that it belongs to them because they stole it first.]
NOON
Before noon, we rolled into Mulberry. I’m about to tell you the part you won’t find on Wiki, so don’t fall in love with that cute name for a town. You know, some of this stuff you read here is a result that JZ and I are always the center of attention wherever we wind up on these trips. We got the scoop on Mulberry from a 69 year old lady running a thrift.
This would be northbound, north of Ona, bearing Mulberry. There used to be a large Mulberry tree in the center of town. They used to hang people from that tree when certain activities were considered automatic lynching offenses. Actually, they still are, but these days, white Americans are bent on politically correct self-destruction.
The tree was famous and for years was featured on the cover of the Mulberry telephone book. Until somebody killed the tree in more recent years. So, no picture. JZ likes the town, I assured him it is far too small to even consider. He’s clinging to that over-idyllic concept of rural life. Man, you get into a town too small or too far away and you’ll be bored within the month. And stuck with a house that there is nobody to sell it to at any price.
I keep repeating to my pal about the dangers of knowing what you are doing before living in ta small town, but I don’t think the lesson is being learned. JZ has absolutely zero no hobbies or interests that could prevail or sustain more than a brief stay in an under-populated area once the novelty wears off. On the other hand, I have just begun reading a 600 page text on the rise and fall of empires since 1500. Which is roughly the date most scholars would say the modern age began.
It follows the theme that Europe came to dominate the world because it was originally weak and disunited. Each nation had to strive for its neck to avoid being absorbed into the one big empire as found in other parts of the world. Within those empires, uniformity was enforced. But in Europe it was every small nation for itself. The need for small efficient armies with the best of weapons thus exploded upon the world one the industrial revolution took hold.
And the uniform nature of the earlier, greater empires was lost against invasions by much smaller countries. Like England, which could not directly be attacked by the more powerful land armies of its European neighbors.
AFTERNOON
Tomorrow, I’ve write up a treatise on small-town living for the uninitiated. Why, JZ is still struggling with the art of “interpretation” when speaking to locals. You read this blog, so you know more about it that he does. Locals who will stand in front of the post office or library and swear that no such thing exists in that town. You recall that theory that every 1,000 feet you go up a mountainside, the plants and weather change the same as moving 1,000 miles further from the equator? Well, people get that much stoopider by 10 IQ points every 100 miles you get from the urban centers.
Lying is lying, so often any question you ask that sort of person will be on a topic where they have an opinion contrary to yours. Ask for a light and they will not say they don’t have one. They’ll tell you they don’t smoke, because they think that is good public relations. Take this picture, nearby where we got a motel. Always get you motel before 2:30PM in a small town. Never wait until dark, because what I’ll say next gets even worse.
The motel owner said there was nothing in Plant City. So we paid higher rates to get accommodation near this lake. There are countless lakes in mid-Florida, it’s a rare town that doesn’t have a ring road around a couple. These birds are so over-fed and tame, it is doubtful they could survive in the wild. Also, you should be aware that any bird that eats “people food” very quickly becomes infected with parasites. That’s JZ way over by the water.
But I had read somewhere that Plant City was the oldest town in the area, so took a chance and told JZ to travel west on Main Street, Lakeland, until we found the place. We found a dozen motels on the way and a half dozen honky-tonks. One of which we stopped in because it got dark. And within moments all the barmaids were clustered around us. It’s a fact of life around us. Plant City has a far quainter but much more lively downtown than Lakeland.
I may come back to this topic, but JZ is slowly learning not to ask directions, or anything, from anybody unless that are white, well-dressed, and have great teeth.
NIGHT
JZ found Plant City to be “too shady”. I know he meant that there were so many trees, but I got great mileage on that. JZ, compared to south Miami where you live, nothing is “shady” around here. Or, JZ, you just think that because we go there after dark. Ha. But I got him to visit the local library, where are farm girl purposed bumped right into me. Full frontal, but I brushed it off as an accident, it wasn’t, she did it on purpose. This was really the only public building we visited, but it is comparable to the best places we have over here.
After dark, when looking at houses becomes tricky, we searched around for a honky-tonk. Neither of us care for the expensive, pretentious nightclubs that seem to enthrall the Millennials. We found nothing until I spotted a bowling alley that had a small sign for a Tiki Bar. It was actually three huge beer-drinking condominiums large enough to service the whole city. Once again, we were the focus of attention of the women, particularly the staff. Alas, none of them were my type, but that is hardly the point when we have all six or seven of the available women in the place clustered around our table.
Now, JZ and I have rules about picking up women, so nothing happened. The guy who picks up the first one has to go get his own hotel room, the lucky guy. As usual, I have more rules than JZ but in the end, none of the gals were “worth it”. The catch of JZ is that being around me you learn a lot more about the women than most guys would in the same spance of time. For instance, the one that rubbing up to him, I leaned over and asked her how many children she had. She proudly said, “Four”, just before JZ decided he had to go to the washroom. Across town.
Last Laugh
