The Continuing Soap Opera

We're back in our slot at Terra Ceia RV Resort in Palmetto, Florida. Hello, Boyce, the dim-witted neighbor who worked hard last winter at two jobs - being a janitor at a local school and doing all kinds of things at the nearby Walmart - is gone. Gone. Gone as in his lot is empty and he has moved away.

It only takes a couple of minutes with the neighbors to find out that Boyce was thrown out because he failed to pay his lot rent. He also made a habit of borrowing money from his neighbors and then failing to pay back his debt. When they came to haul away his mobile home, the wheels apparently fell off and this caused a bit of a stir.

He had taken up with a woman in the resort who lived in another home. She, we are told, is a lesbian who is pregnant and large with the child by her black drug dealer. She and Boyce seemed to have a thing when we were here earlier in the year. So who knew. The woman still lives here. But the fact that she is messing about with a black man has incensed some of our more redneck residents.

Jo was bombarded with the word "nigger" by one of our neighbors within the first 10 minutes of our being in our slot. Apparently there is some fear that our black brothers are trying to move into the neighborhood. What they don't seem to realize is when we lived in St. Petersburg back in the 1970s - it is the city immediately to our north, across Tampa Bay - Palmetto then was known as a poor black enclave. Then the whites discovered the real estate values were much lower across the bay and residential developments sprouted like mushrooms.

Soothing waters

These two turtles take in the warm sun on a sunken log in Little Manatee Rivers Park.

Our laminated wooden paddles dip, dip, dip into the tea-colored waters of the Little Manatee River. It is so quiet that the dripping drops of water when we lift the paddles from the river make the only sound.
We slide along under the Spanish moss that hangs from the oak trees on the river bank. Not a sound. There are three turtles sitting on a half-submerged log. They watch our arrival, craning their necks to keep us in view since we represent the greatest threat to them in this peaceful wilderness.
Snook, 18 inches to two feet long, make their way upriver. They seem to move with purpose but nothing is chasing them. Perhaps they are chasing smaller fish. A pileated woodpecker flap, flap, flaps overhead. He/she lands on a dead palm tree and we hear him drumming his beak into the wood.
There is almost a guilty pleasure as we pass slowly and peacefully along this waterway in our canoe.
Earlier in the day, I had connected to the Internet and read that one of my favorite reporters from 30 years ago, Lisa Schnellinger, had just flown into Erbil, Iraq to train two groups of Iraqi journalism trainers on voter-oriented election coverage. Arghhhh! Why am I enjoying myself on the Little Manatee while she is putting her life on the line? See; there's that old Calvinist thing that creates guilt in those who are not struggling!
Well, I'll be thinking about this courageous young woman who's trying to make the world a slightly better place.