By Don
So why did we move to Florida? Well, A...our granddaughters were there, B...We wanted to watch them grow up in a timely fashion (or as I once told people who asked, “Before they threw us over for a rock star.”), and C...that window was now open and we were not sure when it might close.
We made two visits to the Barbers, now living in Cape Coral, Florida. Not the least of which was for the arrival of Laurie on May 24, 1996. With two granddaughters, it now seemed appropriate for us to move to Florida for the fun of watching them grow up. See, I could nuance it but in the first paragraph I bored right in with the truth. By the time we arrived in Southwest Florida, otherwise known as the land of humidity and hanging chads, the Barbers were now living in Orangetree, in Collier County. We were in a condo in Spring Run, part of the Brooks, where in order to play AM golf, unlike Arizona, one needed rubber boots due to the dew and swampy wet grass, but we were still only 35 minutes away from the girls.
Spring Run was indeed a golfing community with fees, only two tennis courts, a clubhouse, a pool, and a restaurant that needed more customers to survive. Management told us that we were allocated a certain amount to spend, or we would be considered deficient. I wanted to bring homeless people to lunch to achieve the required amount but cooler heads prevailed.
Meanwhile, we felt different about golf due to missing our old golfing friends at Saddlebrooke, and the mysterious lack of dry air like at Breckenridge. As a result, I found myself playing tennis all alone, sometimes against a backboard, trying to rekindle old tennis skills. After all, I was the flight student champion of South Whiting Field in 1956. No need to mention that the last two tournament games were won by forfeit when the other student pilots had flights and could not play. For that I got an 8” high plastic trophy. Remember, I was much younger back then. What to do? Put an ad in the paper? Meanwhile the paper person stopped delivering our paper at our door because one early and dark morning, a gator was in the way and it wasn't a young Tim Tebow.
Early on at Spring Run, I was at a fishing meeting when a secretary came into the room and plugged in a television. We then watched live and open mouthed as the 9-11 terrorist planes hit the World Trade Center. Life would never be the same but we did not know it.
I rode my bike a half mile east to another tract called Lighthouse Bay which had no golf course, six tennis hydro courts, a paid tennis pro, a tennis shack, lighted courts and actual players looking for a game. I rode home and told Doris that I liked Lighthouse Bay. She agreed that we were paying for our golf course but not using it on the same level as at Saddlebrooke. Besides, the golf pro was a putz. So after two years at Spring Run, we sold that condo and bought one at Lighthouse Bay. Yes it was another move but at Lighthouse Bay there was a better fitness center, more year round people and it was a mile further from any storm surge.
I found tennis friends and my tennis skills were adequate but nothing to brag about. I enjoyed being on a team and going to nearby places to play in tournaments. Then I had a bit of bad luck as I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, had six weeks of getting nuked and a bit later, had my L-4 and L-5 Vertebrae fused to get rid of chronic back pain. Gee, when we got to Florida and the new MD asked me what meds I was taking, I said none at all. So then the pills started, and kept coming. If TSA ever looked in my bag, they would think I was a pharmaceutical rep. But I did rehab and after a while, it was back to tennis.
In the process of learning Southwest Florida, we also found Bill and Marie Demmer in a lovely three story house on Barefoot Beach. I had walked Marie down the aisle many years earlier and Bill was the best man at our wedding. I have known Bill for 80 years, having first met in kindergarten. Bill had a big boat and took Doris and I from Marco Island to Sarasota on neat boat trips. Bill then had a quintuple bypass and he went into rehab. Months later he became my Sunday singles tennis partner while I played doubles at Lighthouse Bay. I found that playing with people with two artificial knees, double foot surgeries, a bad shoulder and a quintuple bypass did make me look somewhat better. Besides, after tennis, Bill and I went to Taco Bell for a Chalupa. Culvers had yet to be discovered. I played more tennis, slowly devolving downhill towards geriatric incompetence, but at four days a week.
Later, on a trip to Club Med with Jennifer and Keith and two chicks that kept in local touch with something called iPhones, Kent who was visiting from California where he bought a house, quietly told us he was in a relationship and Kimberly entered our lives.
Feeling odd that the Navy had strangely forgotten us and since we had not moved in quite a while, with wanderlust in our blood we undertook to be proactive, and again packed ourselves and the Cuckoo clock and moved to a retirement place that had independent living, assisted living and memory care. The cuckoo took the move well but we were aching for days. Now if Jennifer and Kent would ask us, when are you moving into an old folks home, we could say A...we are already there. And B...people there have walker races and eat mounds of broccoli. Besides, this time we are now two miles closer to the storm surge.
One odd thing about living at the home that I never even thought about was this...There are so many single old ladies and the male-female ratio is 4 to 1. Only then did I realize that the men all die young. They drop like flies until in assisted living they say the ratio explodes to 7 to 1. Hmm...Hello, Dr. Kevorkian...
For life at a typical old folks home and a video... Please Google “Assisted Living, The Musical.”