I’m sure most of you remember those horse rides where the really bored looking horses go around and around in a circle while little children with sticky cotton candy fingers hold on to the reins for dear life, taking their little buckaroo for the ride of their life (and yes, that’s me in the photo).
I admit that I have been one of those horses. I have willingly let myself be led around and around, afraid that if I didn’t, I would be buggy whipped. That’s how I ended up on the East Coast of Florida.
The tale really parallels the Green Acres show almost perfectly. But instead of being Oliver (Eddie Albert), who was in love with the country, I was Lisa (Eva Gabor) who loved life in the city. Now, before we head off to the Florida equivalent of Hooterville, I have to say that I’m not exactly “blonde” like Lisa. I only end up in these comical situations because my life has been one big kiddie horse ride.
I was pretty happy living in Altamonte Springs. It’s kind of the middle of nowhere granted, but it is centrally located to Orlando, Daytona and points beyond. I really liked places like Mount Dora and Sanford too, which were a quick car ride away.
I had never considered living in Melbournville. It’s where my ex-whatever was from. But the ex-whatever had an ace up her sleeve. Her parents owned property and they offered her the old horse pasture that sat kitty-corner to their homestead. There, we could build a home. As you’ll see in a later RobZerrvation, I have a way of being in love with the idea of something. In this case, I was in love with the idea of having land.
So, we had a glorified trailer (re: manufactured home) installed on the property because everyone else wanted to build the same sized house for $400,000. On the appointed day, the house arrived in three pieces and they got to work bolting it together on the foundation. The city, of course, wanted to add their own last minute touches, requiring a garage, a paved driveway to a dirt road, and finally, a grassy front lawn.
Before I new it, it was time to move to Melbournville. I was ambivalent, to say the least. It was just a little too rural for me. Not that I’m exactly in an urban environment now, but at least as a renter I can easily change the scenery. As a homeowner, I would be facing a life sentence in Melbournville. It was not something I was exactly looking forward to.
It’s not the town’s fault, by any stretch. It is a very nice community with lots of things going for it (though I’m not sure what they are). It’s just not the town I would have picked to live in. If given a choice. I would have much preferred Cocoa, frankly.
It didn’t help that I was now living right next door to my in-laws. The ex-whatever’s father seemed to have never gotten the memo that this was now our property and would regularly come and chop down all the elephant ears and shrubbery that gave the backyard this wonderful Garden of Eden meets Land of the Lost look to it. I would regularly find him in the yard hacking away with his ever present machete. I never understood this, but since I wasn’t on the deed for the property and was barely on the mortgage, I didn’t really complain too loudly.
That’s in large part because I don’t like yard work. I think it’s because I was the youngest of the four boys and mowing the lawn always fell to me. We lived on an acre, half of it thankfully wooded. But the rest had to be mowed with a second hand lawn mower with a blade about as sharp as a butter knife. I could have made better progress chewing on the grass instead.
This loathing of yard work carried on into my adulthood. When I was looking for a house in Port Orchard, I purposely steered us away from the houses with the large yards. The house we finally settled into had a very small front yard and the backyard was all pea gravel. Couldn’t get much better than that.
But now I had a lightly wooded acre to contend with. If it had been in the cooler Northwest, I think I could have learned to enjoy putzing around in the backyard. But here it’s bloody hot almost year round, at least for a guy who had just moved from soggy Seattle.
Worse, the yard backed a greenbelt (swamp) that had mosquitoes as big as hummingbirds. Not just a few; thousands. Every time it rained you would take your life into your own hands if you went out in the yard. It was so bad that the ex-whatever had to spray some kind of toxic chemical around the borders of our yard just so our friends wouldn’t get West Nile. It was horrible.
And then there were the squirrels. I liked the bird feeders we had in the backyard. During the two years there I saw more species of birds than I ever had seen in my life. In Seattle, the birds are mostly brown. Here there brilliant colors. I saw my first cardinal, scrub jays and my first and only painted bunting. Unfortunately, the squirrels would steal all the seed. I wanted to shoot them, but the ex-whatever was a squirrel lover so I acquiesced. Looking back I should have plugged the little rodents. Never liked squirrels.
Thankfully, I’m longer on Green Acres. I don’t have to put up with the nosy neighbors the Ziffels, Eb or Hank Kimball and his endless diatribes about our flora and fauna. I can just live at the beach, living the life that Jimmy Buffett wrote about. And when I want to go on a vacation, I can just close the door, knowing that the grass won’t continue to grow in my absence and the neighbors won’t be whacking down the Elephant Ears.
Out on the Treasure Coast, sawing logs but only in my sleep,
– Robb