chuckography

A brief FLORIDA trip...

 I lived in Tallahassee for 10 years and often thought about re-visiting.

I left there in 1993 to come home to Charleston after my last divorce.

23 years have passed without a Florida return trip.

Heather, my younger daughter, called and asked if I wanted to come for a visit.

The time frame would be during the week between holidays so I started thinking about Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Christmas/New Year air travel.

She laughed and said she was much closer - house sitting for a friend who was taking her family for a vacation to Italy and Paris.

Duh, yes, the house is in Tallahassee so I stopped checking airfares to Tulsa and contacted Thrifty about renting a car for December 26 - 29.

I had moved to Tallahassee in the 80s when I had been offered a position with the Florida Division of Tourism.

It was a move to the Majors Leagues after having been Director of Tourism for the state of Missouri for four years.

It meant working WITH Disney instead of competing against that major magic tourism mecca.

And the state tourism budget was $50 million. Yikes!!

Driving down there also would give me time spent with my youngest grandson - Aiden - who I had not seen since I was in Tulsa and he was two.

Now he is 5-years old. What a difference!

Well-spoken, smart as heck (home schooled) and quite a dynamic youngster.

He was shy at first - beards do that - but quickly was hugging his Pop-Pop.

It also had been three years since I had seen my daughter.

She was still recovering from the sudden death of her mother in the home she, her husband, and the boy had shared in Sand Springs, an affluent suburb of Tulsa.

We toured Florida State University, where her mom Sandy had worked for 10 years before retiring.

As we drove around the campus, I wanted to see the FSU Bobby Bowden field at Doak Campbell Stadium.

I had been down on the field, taking photos of a football game there many, many years ago but the stadium did not look familiar at all.

"They tore that one down, Dad, and built this new one," Heather explained, as we got out to take pictures of several statues and monuments on the campus.

Did I mention the energy 5-year olds have? Whenever it was safe, he was told to run as fast as he could and burn 
off some of that pent-up need to run. 

The area around the stadium afforded ample opportunities
to turn him loose to run, his hair flying and his grin wide.

He would run fast and turn around and race back to us.

He was in his element, speeding in the walking areas, safely away from cars in the parking lots and roads.

They obviously had developed a routine.

At the statues and monuments, he was encouraged to run circles around them as I tried to capture his movement moments.

Eventually, he would "wind down" and snuggle hug his mom as he caught his breath.

Did I mention he was her "teacher's Pet?"

The familiar statue of a Seminole Warrior hefting his spear was impressive.

The plaque said the "no particular person was named, to represent the unconquerable spirit," but I recalled the name of the horse was Renegade."

THAT I happened to remember as I watched Bobby Bowden's teams over the years after my divorce.

The stadium looked brand new to me, with more bricks second only to the Great Wall of China.

Heather pointed out the area where her mom had worked for 10 years.

A very nice set of figures in football gear represented the spirit of "Sportsmanship."

A fallen player, still clutching the football but minus his helmet, is offered a hand up by the FSU tackler who also had picked up the opponent's helmet.

I had lived in the Capital during some of the best years under coach Bobby Bowden and was surprised his statue did not have "Saint" added to the marker.

The drive down from Charleston was about 6.5 hours and I was entertained by several audio books I had picked up at the library.

The librarian had reminded me to not leave them behind in Florida and to make sure no disk was left in the car.

That's a funny remark because the first two full-size cars I checked had had low mileage, Bluetooth technology, and satellite radio ....but no CD player slot.

Finally, they found me a Jeep Patriot that could play the disks and I headed down US 17 south to connect near Yemassee with I-95.

I had made several trips recently to Savannah so knew that leg of the journey quite well.

Had not ventured on to Jacksonville for years but GPS on my phone smoothly guided me around JAX and then  I-10 moved me across the panhandle to TLH.

One night we went to Osaka, a nice Japanese Hibachi restaurant and enjoyed the antics of our chef who flipped knives around as he prepared the food.

He "lit up the place" at the start of the meal to ohs and ahs.

I had calculated the timing by watching other tables and grills so I was able to catch the brief flash of flames.

Later, as the meal progressed and noodles were added to the plates. I observed Aiden demonstrating the "proper way to slurp them."

Looking around the table, I saw he was the only "expert" showing off his skills.

As usual with such meals, we packed up enough for another serving the next day.

Quite a change from my usual leftover breakfast treat of cold pepperoni pizza slices.

Even on his encore, the noodles were properly dangled and slurped between Aiden's lips.

The host house was equipped with a newer version of the Keurig coffee maker and a small array of real and decaf coffees.

Our morning routine was very familiar and comfortable.

I'll close now and return later with pictures of some of our adventures as I spent quality time with my daughter and her adorable son.

(Click on the photos and links for more details).

Labels: 'Noles, capital city of Florida, GPS for CHS to SAV to JAX to TLH, I-95 to I-10, missing CD slot, Renegade, slurping noodles, Tallahassee, Thrifty Rent-a-car

posted by chuckography @ 3:33 PM 1 Comments

It's All In The Timing...

Somebody told me my tomatoes will all ripen at the same time.

Huh? Can this be true?

There's about 15-20 little green ones hanging there right now.

I buy two tomatoes at the store and hope to use the second one before it gets all squishy.

What do you do with a dozen at once?

This may be a set back to my status as a veteran farmer.

I adopted that title after earning my Green Thumb by planting a small patch of wheat when I lived in Kansas.

It was just outside of Kansas City, Missouri.

You could gather my whole Winter Wheat crop with your two arms forming a circle.

My then-wife suggested I pull it up from her garden and throw it away. "You can't eat wheat," she said.

I'll always remember that line!


Years later, I planted a crop of peanuts when I lived in Tallahassee, Florida.

It WAS fairly close to Plains, Georgia.

And, I HAD met President Carter.

Not too unusual to think about peanuts.

But I must have done something wrong.

They didn't come up "boiled."

(Click on the photos for more details.)


When it snowed, I called the Kansas Wheat Commission and asked what I should do about the snow?

They seemed confused when I asked if I should brush it off or ignore it.

I left the little plot alone and it was just fine.

This alone should have earned me the title Farmer of the Year.

Labels: boiled peanuts, green tomatoes, outstanding in my field, President Jimmy Carter, Tallahassee

posted by chuckography @ 8:55 PM 2 Comments

007 Goldfinger's Poison Gas ....

We call it "The Dying Film."

My son was 8 years old and we had just seen James Bond, 007, in Goldfinger.

Chris suggested we do a short film using a poison gas like they did in the movie.

Sounded OK to me. WD-40 makes a nice visible "lethal" spray for the camera.

We ended up with about 5 minutes of film as Burbank neighbors fell on lawns and driveways, writhing in agony. They loved it.

The funny thing is we would ask other people for the next several years to "die for the camera" and edited it into the original film.


Over the years we moved to Florida and a neighbor in Tallahassee fell off his roof (a stuffed dummy) and others rolled into ditches clutching their throats. An entire beach party of 20 people dropped to the sand when I said 3-2-1.


The best addition was when I attended a wedding in Oklahoma and convinced the bride and groom to go back into the church and react to a blast of poison gas.
They "died" as a nice looking couple.

I just played the expanded film recently and I see it now runs about 20 minutes.

Labels: 007, dummy, dying film, Goldfinger, James Bond, newlyweds, Oklahoma, poison spray, Tallahassee, WD-40, wedding couple

posted by chucker @ 11:03 PM 2 Comments

It was ALMOST invisible ...

See, I was living in Tallahassee, Florida and it was a nice looking house, except when you saw the big, black trash can sitting in the bushes by the gate. All week long it just sat there until garbage pickup day when you rolled it down to the curb.

All the neighbors had these large black trash cans too of course. Nice subdivision with probably 6 different patterns of houses and all the little changes here and there to make it appear more varied than they were. Different materials, some stucco, some brick, some wood.

Big UGLY trash can though. Caught your eye as you walked by. It really bothered me.

So one day while I was in my garage/workshop (the cars were always parked in the driveway) I was moving around my collection of $1 cans of spray paint that I had collected over the years and, in one hand I was holding green, the other was brown and I had an inspiration.

My then-wife thought it was dumb. Our 15-year old daughter didn't share her thoughts with her parents anymore. The City of Tallahassee had an immediate reaction.

That evening when I came home, there was a new big black trash can sitting at the curb. There was no charge for the new one.

Labels: camo, Florida, spray paint, Tallahassee, trash can

posted by chucker @ 8:16 PM 0 Comments