Gator Country

A Trip to Vero Beach

We get up early for breakfast, then get ready for the drive to Vero. Joshua is complaining; he doesn’t want to go. Rick says he’ll stay home with Josh. This seems like a good solution; Rick’s not that interested in going, and Josh would be bored sitting in the car for the 2 hrs it takes to get there. We decide to take Carol’s van. People drive pretty fast on that stretch of two-lane blacktop, and accidents are not unheard of. (God forbid, we’d have better odds of surviving a head-on in the Astro than the little red Escort.)

On the road, Carol jokes that Rick is getting Polkanized. He’s turning into a redneck, doesn’t want to leave Polk county, even for a day at the beach. I tell her that the place she’s living doesn’t seem that bad to me; give me a month here and I’d fit right in. I’d probably be able to find a cheap old shack to live in, fill the yard up with old cars, boats, and motorcycle parts, and get a mongrel dog to guard the homestead for me.

We stop for gas at Yeehaw Junction. (Yep, it’s a real place. Look on a Florida road map: It’s a little over halfway between Winter Haven and Vero Beach.) I fill up the Astro, then go in to pay. I see they have boiled cajun peanuts for sale, so I ask for them at the register. (I love hot spicy things!) The cashier tells me I have to buy them from the counter in the diner.

I walk in, and the locals look at me like I’m a damn fool tourist, which I imagine is what I look like anyway. (We’re still miles from the ocean, but I’m dressed in a bathing suit, and a souvenir T-shirt I picked up in Utah last summer.) I ask for a medium-sized order, and the cook scoops the peanuts into a styro cup. The counter lady puts the cup in a small plastic bag and hands them to me. “You can put the shells in the plastic bag as you’re eatin’ ‘em.” She says, as if explaining to a child what to do with the shells. (Actually, she’s right, I probably wouldn’t have figured that out, being an ignorant city boy.)

I thank the woman, and we hit the road. Getting closer to Vero, the air is noticeably cooler. Carol says “I wouldn’t mind living in Florida if we could live closer to the coast. Anywhere but Polk County!"

We park in a lot near the beach, and carry our stuff onto the sand. This stretch of beach isn’t too crowded, a nice place to relax. It is hot though, much warmer than the beach in Southern California. And the water is 90 degrees, like bath water compared to the water in Hermosa.

I manage to catch a few waves, but they are breaking close to shore. I get thrown into the sandy bottom a few times. There is also a pretty strong rip current, it’s hard to stand in one place. We end up walking up the beach a ways, then drifting down with the tide, it’s easier that way. Later on we stop in a local restaurant; I grab a burger and a beer. I’m starting to itch, I can tell I got too much sun today.

We stop in town at an art and antique shop; Carol has been here before. They have an amazing assortment of stuff. From trash to treasures, as they say, items selling from $5 to $1500. Carol asks about some drawings from a famous artist that were on display the last time she was in. The owner says they were sold, I think he said for $2000. Then she looks at a painting that is being sold for $600, asks questions about the artist. She ends up buying a two-dollar book that’s on sale at the register. The owner smiles, I can tell he’s probably dealt with artists before.

On the ride back we stop at the bar in Yeehaw Junction. The place is over a hundred years old; it’s actually listed in the “National Register of Historic Places”. It looks like a typical old biker bar to me, similar to the dives I hung out in back in Connecticut years ago. We order a couple cans of Bud and listen to the C&W on the jukebox for a while, then we hit the road.

I take the wheel for the second half of the drive. There isn’t much traffic; we make good time getting back. This is a big difference from where I live. You will definitely hit traffic coming back from anywhere into the LA metro area on a Sunday evening.

Back at the house, Shasta is doing poorly, she doesn’t want to eat or drink. She just lies on the floor, looking sad. I know that humans are supposedly the only creatures with enough intelligence to be aware of their own mortality, but to me Shasta looks like she knows that her time on earth is coming to a close. Rick puts an old jacket down on the floor for her to make her comfortable. Carol says she’ll call the vet in the morning.