Manaloosa Memories

I hope you enjoy your stay. Manaloosa is the source of a variety of amazing and amusing stories like those you'll read here. In fact, the entire Sunshine State is home to countless natural and manmade wonders. We have a host of sinkholes, retirement communities and lots of sand and water. Yes, manatees and dolphins abound. But it's the humans that remain wild and unprotected. Florida dangles enticingly from the east coast of the United States, exposed to water on three sides and suspiciously close to the Bermuda Triangle. The income gap between inland residents and shore-dwelling "Snowbirds" no doubt contributes to some interesting behavior. So grab your sunscreen, a comfy lounge chair and a cool drink. It gets hot down here.

The  Manaloosa Shade  hangs on by the barest of threads thanks to a subscriber base in which a spring chicken is a reader under the age of eighty-two. The old timers hang onto their traditions. Newspapers, landlines and boxy old cathode ray televisions provide a connection to the familiar past that a wireless or streaming device cannot. They love the thwock of a paper publication, twice wrapped in plastic, skidding across the driveway in the dark of morning. Its magical delivery at some unknown time before sunup is somehow satisfying. It means that some hard working youngster is kickstarting the day with a dose of good old-fashioned work ethic.  Out to retrieve the paper in slippers and a housecoat goes Mrs. Parker, shuffling down toward the street in the humid Manaloosa air, gun in hand in case of panthers, alligators or bears. None of these creatures has ever been seen in her neighborhood, but she knows better than to let down her guard. And Democrats might be lurking i...

Officer Ferrell parked his car at the far end of the looping driveway where school buses arrive for end of day pickup. A half dozen of the yellow transports sat waiting with engines running as the final bell rang. A few minutes earlier and Tom would have been spared the indignity of passing students as he made his way to Dean Reynolds office, the northern most in the front hallway of the school. Ferrell hung back to allow the rush of students to exit the building. Several of the inmates, as Tom called them, circled his squad car hooting and whistling, casting taunting looks his way, running their hands over its gleaming surface. Tom leaned his head toward his shoulder mic for effect, mouthing a few unspoken words to a nonexistent recipient. He glared at the teens threateningly as if calling for backup. The stunt worked. They laughed and spat on the sidewalk as they sauntered away. Pete Reynolds had been reduced to human residue over the twelve years he had been Dean of Students at Mana...

Tom Ferrell sat in the comfort of his air-conditioned cruiser monitoring traffic at the unregulated corner of Gulf Coast Vista and Palm Harbor Drive. His thoughts wandered from the parade of elderly drivers passing cautiously out of the school zone to dreams of his own retirement and hopes that he would eventually get there. His reputation for requesting backup since the latest Maynard incident was not a source of pride, but it seemed that stories of officers being ambushed just short of their farewell party were speaking to him from the evening news with greater frequency. Back in Illinois during September he would have spent Saturday afternoons on the couch with a light comforter lovingly placed over his legs. His dog nestled in the folds at his feet would listen with one eye open to the sounds of Dorothy cooking in the kitchen. Up north it would be a time for chili simmering on the stove, a gas stove, not one of these infernal electric fire hazards. Hopes and dreams. Shorter days an...

The dreams come more frequently now. Distorted images, intensely familiar but haunting, that shake me from my sleep, gasping for air and heart pounding. It’s such a relief, waking to first light, the sound of distant, exuberant mockingbirds and the smell of coffee brewing. I calm myself with several deep breaths and a few simple stretches before setting my bare feet on the cool tile. I search for my glasses on the nightstand and head into the kitchen.  I blow away a swirl of pungent steam and sip. “Hot coffee for a cold day,” I laugh. It is summer in Florida. The temperature will reach into the mid nineties by late morning. The beverage is a comfort, a ritual between us. Shared time before we set about our separate tasks.             “Was there a barn?” I ask my mother, now in her fifties. Her memory is my window to a past I can no longer access. The accident left me only fragmentary glimpses of my forgotten life, s...

Melanie Allen examines a wound in the center of her son Chuck’s forehead that is healing nicely. The hole where a small caliber bullet entered three weeks ago is now an angry pink mark, somewhat indented but no longer scabbed over. She gently raps her knuckles on Chuck’s skull as if expecting a rattle or clanging metal echo.             “I told you not to hang out with that kid,” she says, setting a plate of toaster waffles on the kitchen table in front of her distracted teen. He swipes and scrolls over the cracked display on his phone.             “What? Oh, yeah. He’s my friend Mom. It was an accident,” he says, though he knows it wasn’t. The truth would just make things worse.             “You could’ve been killed,” she says, “Accidentally.”          ...

The Harbor Vista Waterway stretched ahead like an undulating brown snake, stinking slightly of rotting vegetation, exposed along the seawalls due to low tide.                        “Can’t we go a little faster?” Jill pleaded. “The breeze would help.”             “No wake, honey, just a little longer,” Fred replied, just loud enough to be heard above the sound of a droning outboard.  Access to the Gulf of Mexico sounded like a dream come true, a life of leisure on the water. The reality was quite different, at least in summer. The Sunshine State drove eighty percent of coastal residents northward to second homes from May through October. For those left behind, it was a pleasant period of reduced traffic both on and off the water. But it also accompanied a blistering, incendiary attack from above. Flaming, relentless and intense, the s...

Manaloosa was all abuzz over my reporting that Johnny Maynard shot Chuck Allen in the head with a 22 on Wednesday. My interview with Melanie Allen, Chuck's mother, yielded only basic information. It was clear that she didn't want her son talking to me, and I respected that, but she told me off the record that she's as terrified of the Maynards as most people in town. The shooting affirmed her worst fears It sounds like Chuck will be fine so long as the bullet doesn’t move from the sinus cavity where it lodged, doing no damage to his brain and very little to his looks. He just may have to explain it to doctors and airport security personnel later in life. The incident barely made the Manaloosa   Shade . The police blotter noted the specifics of the 911 call and I kept the article short and sweet.  A small town reporter can quickly lose the protection of press credentials when the subject of an article feels singled out.    It’s generally been talked about at the din...

We Manaloosians have been a bit anxious this week, watching and preparing for our imminent doom as it inches closer in the Atlantic. I suppose I'm not helping, reporting on the storm daily in the Manaloosa Shade . The feeling is akin to that experienced by a banana about to be dropped into a blender as part of a protein shake. Poor banana. In this metaphor a Hurricane is the approaching blender, and we are both protein and banana. At least that's the story I'm going with. And if the buildup to a monster storm isn’t nerve wracking enough, this one has slowed, moving toward the coast at just one mile per hour. This means that evacuees can easily run away from the approaching danger. In fact, they can just turn and walk. No need to wait in long gas lines. Just bring an extra pair of sneakers. This is not meant to diminish the real horror being wrought on Puerto Rico again for at least the last full day. Those poor souls have a devil parked on top of their little archipe...

A general shortage of news has left me reporting on the start of school here in Manaloosa. I have to go to Walmart to be sure. Back to school sales and Halloween decorations are reminders  in every store nationwide.  Residents are hunkered down in the August equivalent of January up north. The weather is so at odds with the pursuit of human happiness it becomes by default a good time to organize photographs or take up genealogy. A very thin and sweaty UPS driver just walked quickly to the Maynard's front door. The pavement threatens to melt the soles of his shoes, so his bosses really love his speed at this time of year. He nervously scans a package and runs back to the truck. The Maynard's dogs have been loosed on him several times. Other drivers have refused this route and filed complaints.  This is the time of year we stop gloating about how great our weather is compared with the homeland back in Illinois. They have about six good days left of summer. Sunset is p...

Chuck Allen lived with his parents on the canal side of Harbor Vista Terrace in a bright orange stucco house.   Out back a twenty-two foot Sea Ray hovered above the murky brown waterway on a covered boat-lift that kept it mostly out of the weather. The salt air and pernicious humidity of southern Florida sought out corrodible boat parts the way water seeks its level, which is to say, the boat was rusting away from neglect. The lift stood on four round wooden pilings, eaten at the water line by wood-boring insects that mimicked the damage caused by beavers. Eventually the pilings would fail, but not for a few more years. Manaloosa’s tranquility was in more imminent danger of collapse. John Maynard sat on the edge of a weathered dock next to the lift in Chuck’s back yard. He held a bolt-action 22 caliber Remington rifle the boys found in the back of the shed where Mr. Allen kept his lawn mower.   Chuck was gathering oranges from a nearby tree. “Toss one in the water...