Marvin strained and struggled against his collar, eager to make the acquaintance of this plated oddity. The armadillo kept ambling along. He had the air of a carefree whistler, a creature on a safe, familiar path. He snuffled right up to our toes.
As he sniffed our toes, he drew back with the slightest of double takes. “Hmm,” he seemed to comment to himself, “I do believe that’s an unusual smell.” Slowly, slowly, he turned his pointed face upward. At last he made eye contact, and for a split second, man, woman, dog, and armadillo communed. Then a look of consummate terror exploded over his face. He turned, nearly rolled over in his fright, and fled.
We continued our walk and soon arrived at the edge of the lake. The surface was gray and opaque in the gathering dusk, rippling around the air boats and dinghies tied to the dock. We walked the length of the wooden structure and stood at the end. The air was still and humid.
“But the water keeps moving,” said Mark. “I thought it was a breeze at first, but there isn’t the slightest breath of one.”
The water boiled and rippled with a life of its own, a secret submarine ecogalaxy that broke the surface every minute or two with the flick of a tail or the flash of a fin. Once, with sinister silence, the two saurian eyes of an alligator rose in front of us and just as quietly slipped back under the oily surface.
Near the bait shop was a pay phone lit by a single bulb. The light had attracted a fuzzy cloud of gnats so large and dense it rendered the telephone all but useless. “Unless you want a mouthful of insects every time you say something,” I commented as we walked past.
And then I noticed the other tiny pilgrim at the telephone Mecca. It was a small frog, dazzling in its green iridescence, it was sitting on top of the telephone, and sure enough, every time it flicked out its tongue, it reeled it back in studded with a satisfying load of gnats.
“He doesn’t even have to aim,” I said. “He doesn’t even have to try.”
“He’s got real estate with the three most important qualities, all right,” said Mark. “Location, location, and gnats.”
“I’m very grateful I don’t have to use that telephone with my computer,” I’d said. “I’d be debugging it for the rest of my life.”
In the morning, the frog was gone, and a pile of dead gnats lay in a soft drift under the telephone. That night, the frog was back, amid an even bigger cloud of gnats. I like to think that shiny frog is still there every evening, huge now, a giant jewel of a toad, bloated on a lifetime of easy feasting.
We’d just come from Disney World, where gnats are anathema, and the alligators are made of plaster and fiberglass. When Walt and his cronies came to Florida to carve out a fairy land in the jungle, their goal was to beat back the fauna as thoroughly as an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.
We spent a whole day in Epcot Center, and never once did I see so much as a fly. In the evening, back at a campground just outside the Disney ring of fire, we were blanketed with mosquitoes, and a pygmy rattlesnake struck at Mark and Marvin when they went for a walk off the pavement.
The plants are different inside the enchanted zone, too. In real Florida, there are strangler figs and tropical vines and grasses that cut through skin. In the Disney universe, everything is Cotswold borders and marigolds, velvet lawns and pink carnations. The imports love the sun, and all their enemies are kept at bay by battalions of uniformed gardeners and sophisticated insecticide delivery systems.
Disney keeps expanding the borders of its better-than-real-life enclave. We went back in 1997, and a town called Celebration had just opened. It’s a manufactured city built on land reclaimed from swamp and marsh, just like the rest of the Disney empire. Its perfectly proportioned streets were lined with American dreams, storybook houses where Beaver and Donna Reed might spend happy days with a father who knows best. It had a darling main street, too, and a post office right out of Mayberry.
And no bugs. Not a one. No creepy vines, no snakes, and every hint that alligators once ruled had been erased and replaced with apple pie atmosphere imported from Kansas. I can’t say it wasn’t lovely. The houses and shops were so Johnny-comes-marching-home perfect I wanted to come back for Christmas and the Fourth of July. Celebration is a Norman Rockwell painting in three dimensions, and if you never stepped outside its boundaries, you could easily forget that it was built in a swamp.
And the swamp hasn’t been beaten. It lurks around the edges of the Disney realm like an ever-wakeful Argus, waiting for its chance to send in a snake or dispatch an alligator. Celebration, like all the other Disney colonies in Orlando, is an alien fortress built on hostile ground. My eyes took pleasure in the happy verandas and jolly lawns, but they also saw the tropical wilderness lurking at the perimeter. Appearances to the contrary, the swamp things have made only a superficial retreat.
It was that tropical wilderness I found fascinating, not its momentary conquerors. The Disney dynasty is a temporary artifice, and it’s not difficult to imagine the day when its ersatz mountains and plastic pirates will lie ruined in the swamps and marshes from which they rose, a fascinating conundrum for the archaeologists of the future.
Mai Tais with the Snowbirds
A day at Epcot Center and two nights at a campground ruled by a monolithic statue of Yogi Bear were enough to sate my appetite for cartoon-inspired environments. I was ready for a taste of what lay beyond the plaster and pavement. I was ready for alligators and anhingas and mangroves and manatees, for all the denizens of that intermediate zone that isn’t really land and isn’t really sea. We headed for the Everglades, even though it was the time of year when most people head north.
We skirted Lake Okeechobee, a giant circular depression with a perimeter defined by an endless border of trailers and motorhomes. There were gaps now and then created by the summer exodus, but a thick phalanx of breadbox dwellings remained, their wheels having long since rolled to a permanent halt. It was hot and quiet and moist, and we stopped overnight at the edge of Loxahatchee National Wildlife Reserve.
Actually, we stayed at Lion Country Safari, because theme parks have well-appointed campgrounds, and after a steamy day, I was ready for the cool, mosquito-free cocoon that 30-amp power could provide. Resort campgrounds usually offer cable television hookups, too, and industrial strength ice machines. Some have whirlpools and billiard tables in air-conditioned clubhouses.
It’s not surprising. They’re built for retirees and vacationers, people who’ve earned the right to loll and bask and listen to Neil Diamond tapes in Polynesian bars. What right had I to take advantage of such amenities? At best I was a working stiff, and to many eyes, I looked like an undeserving dropout who hadn’t bought enough nylons to merit a place in the sun.
But you know what? As much as I enjoyed my air conditioning that night, as much I liked lapsing into television-induced catatonia with an icy drink at my elbow, it wasn’t enough. It was refreshing after a steamy day on the edge of the Everglades, but it was no rainbow’s end. It held no motivational power over me. It didn’t make me want to go to New York and get a fifty-year job with retirement benefits. My life just wasn’t for sale on the usual terms any more. The big payoffs, house, car and golf course retirement now seemed less appealing than purse and panty hose.
Which isn’t to say I didn’t want to work. I just didn’t seem to have the heart to labor for lucre and luxuries alone. I couldn’t seem to get out of neutral for anything less than the real thing, work that made my heart sing. If I’d been a donkey, my master would have scratched his head. “That carrot on a string trick always worked with her,” he’d say, “but it just doesn’t get her going any more. Don’t know what’s come over her.”
The next morning, we rolled on down Interstate 95, which follows the coast through places with names made famous by the movies: Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale. We sailed right by Miami and on down to Homestead, the last big town before land gives way to ‘glade.
&nbs
p; We had entered the zone where time isn’t measured in years and decades, but rather in intervals between havoc-wreaking winds. Hurricane Andrew had ripped through Homestead in 1992, and residents had erected signs to mark spots where he displayed unusually vehement shows of force. If they aren’t there today, it’s because another child of Aeolus has blown them away and created new landmarks.
Trailer resorts abounded, and we parked in a spot recently vacated by a northbound snowbird. The park catered to tanned retirees wearing Hawaiian print shirts and rubber flip-flops. We looked pasty in comparison, and the Phoenix stood out like a crown roast at a vegetarian buffet.
It didn’t stop us from joining the throng at the establishment’s bar that night. Its Polynesian decor set a high standard. The roof was thatched with palm fans and inside the walls were festooned with weathered nets, cork floats, plastic leis and desiccated marine life. Carved coconuts and rustic totems filled every available surface, and the drinks all came with little paper parasols, even the beers.
The bartender was a friendly blonde woman who rang a ship’s bell every time someone gave her a tip. The bronzed sixty-ish couple next to us were wearing Hawaiian shirts and rubber flip-flops. Their smiles revealed that they were friendly, too.
“Where y’all from?” the man asked, a question I can’t answer smoothly to this day. It’s easiest to say, “Los Angeles,” and let the conversation progress to drive-by shootings, smog, and O.J. Simpson. It’s simplest, but it makes me feel like a liar. I’m not from L.A. any more than I’m from Illinois, where my mother happened to be when I was born.
Mark filled the vacuum left by my pause. “We’re always on the road,” he said.
“Oh, full-timers,” said the man, happy to find a pigeonhole that fit. “We are, too. We spend the winter down here, and then we pull our trailer up to Maine for the summer. We have a spot in a park near Freeport.”
So Mark’s answer is no better than mine, and maybe it’s worse. Nothing is quite so irritating to him as to be labeled a “full-timer.”
“I hate the term,” he says. “If you live in a house, you’re a person, but if you live in a motorhome, you’re a ‘full-timer.’ I can’t stand being defined by my domicile.”
But the conversation in the tiki bar had already wended its way down a familiar path, and the tanned couple was eager to chat. They loved August in Acadia, and Christmas among the palm trees.
“I pinch myself sometimes,” said the woman. “I love my life so much I get to thinking I must be dreaming.”
“I like Florida better than Maine,” said the man. “For me, this is heaven, including this bar. And the music hasn’t even started yet.”
Here I was thinking that paper parasols and freeze-dried fish were treat enough, and there was more. I hardly had time to wonder whether we were in for a Don Ho look-alike or a Blue Hawaii Elvis when a short, fat man in black shorts and red suspenders appeared at the end of the bar.
“That’s Ronnie,” said our neighbor. “He’s fantastic.”
Ronnie was wearing a set of headphones with an attachment that positioned both a microphone and a harmonica in front of his mouth. A keyboard stuck out at a right angle from his waist, attached to his shoulders with a sturdy nylon harness. He was perspiring heavily, and his mass of black hair clung to his flushed forehead in damp tendrils.
Ronnie spoke, and no one within a forty-foot radius could do anything but shut up and listen. He was — how do the sound guys put it? — amped to the max.
“HELLO,” he bellowed. “AND HOW ARE WE ALL TONIGHT?”
He repeated his question until we all shouted “FINE” loud enough to suit him. Ronnie was slowly making his way down the bar, and I knew where he was headed. He was obviously an audience participation kind of entertainer, and we were the new kids on the block.
“WHERE Y’ALL FROM?” he blasted when he slowed to a halt in front of us. This time I didn’t pause. Bar singers with headphones don’t want Zen answers. They want place names, pure and simple.
“California,” I said. “Los Angeles.”
I’d answered well, and Ronnie beamed. He released a salvo of coast-versus-coast jokes and then launched into a lounge lizard arrangement of “I Love L.A.”
“Isn’t he great?” asked our tan neighbor when he was done. And he was great, a truly wondrous marriage of talent and technology. He could even be a deejay without standing in a booth. Just by pushing buttons on a little box attached to his keyboard, he could cue up CDs and insert sound effects. Ronnie gave utterly new meaning to the concept of ‘one-man band.’
We stayed for hours in the tiki bar, chatting with our neighbors and listening to Ronnie’s endless repertoire. Ray and Pat, our tan neighbors in the flip-flops, were full of hurricane tales and alligator yarns, and Ray was dead right. Ronnie was fantastic.
All of which goes to show. Retirement resorts and tiki bars and mechanized musicians may not be my carrot or my cup of tea, but what does it matter whose favorite treat they are, whose beverage of choice? There’s an ancient rule that’s been known to travelers since Odysseus plied the waves. If a new dish is put in front of you, taste it. You don’t have to get the recipe, and you aren’t even required to clean your plate. Just open your trap a little, let somebody else’s ambrosia slip by your epiglottis. Sure there’s a risk. You might choke, puke, go into anaphylactic shock. Chances are, though, you won’t. Chances are you’ll end up pinching yourself. You won’t be able to believe it’s really a wide-awake you enjoying another Mai Tai at a tiki bar with Ronnie on the virtual ukelele.
Chapter 14
Run for the Roses
The Belly Button of Uncle Sam
The half-submerged tip of Florida exceeded our expectations with regard to flora and fauna, and Key West was hypnotic in its balmy gardens, azure waters, and Mañanaland culture. Mark twisted his knee just after we arrived, and we both got drunk to kill the pain. After we reeled back to the Phoenix from the waterfront bar that had seduced us with “Triples for the Price of Singles!!” I decided to use the Iguana at a pay phone to file a story and collect e-mail. I staggered over to the booth trailing cables and cords, only to find that someone had relieved the thing of its receiver, leaving only naked wires. Our cellular telephone didn’t work in the Conch Republic, either, which meant we were even more disconnected than we’d been in Big Bend, Texas.
“Tomorrow will be soon enough,” I said to Mark when I’d made it back to the Phoenix with my assorted hardware. “I have another day before I have to admit defeat and use a fax machine.”
Under the pall of hangovers, we headed back up Highway 1 the next day and cut across the mainland to Naples on a road that hugs the Tamiami Canal. Somewhere along the way, we noticed we were back under the cellular umbrella that ends shy of uncivilized border zones. There on an earthen berm overlooking the canal, I filed my story under the gaze of two unblinking alligators.
We left Florida through her panhandle, and our wheels kept turning across the continent. Pages flew off the calendar as quickly as the miles disappeared behind the Phoenix. Life in motion was at last routine. At last we had the new life the wildfire had offered by taking all our worldly goods. Bidding farewell to physical encumbrances had been the easy part. The real test had lain in tearing down the mental constructs that had attracted our physical reality in the first place. Building new lives in our minds and furnishing our souls afresh had been a far greater challenge than the surface showed. Like a still pond in the Everglades, much to be reckoned with had lurked beneath the surface.
We slid along in our newly familiar groove, spending a summer in America’s big warm paunch, the Midwest. We watched fireworks on the Fourth of July through St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, a grand spectacle launched from barges in the Mississippi. As I sat there on the damp grass, looking out over the mighty continent-bisecting river, I felt as though I was sitting in the epicenter of America, the point from wh
ich all gringo ripples emanated, the belly button of Uncle Sam.
And that arch. In my California smugness, I had always thought it must be a silly thing, a sorry man-made attempt to compete with Yosemite, a manufactured tourist attraction built to break the monotonous flatness of a riparian plain.
But photographs and key chain replicas are masters of deception. I was utterly unprepared for the simple, breath-taking elegance of this monumental masterpiece. It stood gleaming in the sunset, its polished surface now white, now purple, now orange. Its very presence seemed to defy rationality. What creative spirit had first envisioned that huge parabola, and how had that dream ignited others until it took shape in three-dimensional stainless steel, meeting so impossibly at its 630-foot apex? A dream like that is the human equivalent of a huge glacier, slowing carving its way through granite until Yosemite Valley appears.
It was like our new life, which suddenly, after months of freeform anarchy, had gelled into something with an identifiable presence, a routine, a philosophy, a norm. Gradually the chaos that we sometimes mistake for freedom had organized itself into a lifestyle. Ironically, we felt freer now that a semblance of order had given structure to our journey.
Extreme Pageantry
At the end of 1995, we returned to Pasadena, not because it was our home, but because it was the home of that New Year’s staple, the Rose Parade. Mark had joined the force of white suited volunteers that mobilizes the parade nearly ten years before, and after a year’s leave of absence, he wanted to take on a committee assignment again.
There’s an old joke that goes like this: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. Well, the Rose Parade is an event designed by 33 committees, and for decades, they’ve been pulling it off with a remarkable lack of spitting and kicking. It’s no mean feat to ensure that sixty floats, each as long as 75 feet, as tall as 60, and weighing as much as 40 tons navigate a five-and-a-half mile route without stalling, crashing into the crowd, or bumping into low bridges. And the floats are only half the story. Twenty-two bands from around the world join the throng, along with 300 horses and riders, and the whole extravaganza is followed by one of the most famous football games in the world. It’s easy to be impressed that an event with such a prodigious profile is run by volunteers, and that, in addition to paying for all the costs it incurs, it generates $100 million in business in the Pasadena area every year, and gives $1 million to the city itself.
Roads From the Ashes Page 17