Just south of Sarasota, while on the bike path through Oscar Sherer Park, we met a determined detective looking for clues in the Walker homicide. Six days before Christmas in 1959, a killer wiped out a local family of four, staining their living room floor with blood. It is still an open case! We kept a watchful eye, but found a peaceful trail lined by Payote, the native coffee plant, which when brewed and swallowed, causes hallucinations, and Beauty Berry, whose glossy purple fruits repel mosquitoes. We saw wide swaths of flat ground, where early settlers built structures, raised meager cash crops on roughly 150 acres, or lay out in the sun eating shellfish. If you survived for 5 yrs the land was yours. Not many people were interested in Sarasota county in 1850, the population was just 15. Late in the day, it was a lonely quiet path, the sandy ground peppered with the half moon holes of the gopher tortoises, a few leggy sandhill cranes digging in the short grass with stubby beaks, and we passed under the watchful gaze of a pair of spectacular bald eagles.
Back at Tally wood, Pete dug a grave under the pine for an old black cat!
Squeaky hangs around our condo, his former home, and relies on food from our kindly neighbor. His alternative is Sarasota’s unbelievable Cat Depot, with air conditioning, open visiting hours, and tastefully decorated pods. He would live his last days with cat friends, plentiful food, delightful feline art, daytime animal movies, illustrated story times, and a doorway to the great outdoors. Kitty bliss!
Since we installed new wide gutters, the thunder clouds have evaporated. When not playing pickleball, or exploring new trails, Pete spends time in his closet, a dark room, for music, wifi and Skype conversations with long distance friends. A brighter than average friend in Oz pointed out that Sarasota’s grim history includes the on-air suicide of Christine Chubbuck, a depressed tv anchor woman who reached beneath her desk and put a gun to her head!
Towards the end of October, we had a day in Fort Myers with Biddy, then Carol and Jack, then took the long road North toward home. In Cold Blood was on the audio, but we a warm welcome and brilliant fall colors at the Franklin home on Black Mountain. We are in the heart of the Smokies, where the last skirmish of the Civil War was fought. From their high deck, we fired a golf ball cannon with Bill Forstchen, joined his well armed students (knife and handguns !) on a rail history hike, and agreed that all we needed was a faraday screen. Earl and Linda’s concrete house is a bunker, with stores of food and crates of currency (liquor) in the event of an EMP. Earl has a sturdy Korbuta which carried us easily up and down the fierce dirt tracks.
When we arrived home, despite witches spells and incantations, and many prayers, there was no win for the Indians playing the Cubs in the World Series.
Where the Art is... 