Paradise Lost and Two Hurricanes, Two Weeks Apart

We flew to Sarasota a week after hurricane Helene flooded Siesta Key to check on our family’s vacation home. We landed on a sunny day and, as we exited the airport, as always, the stifling humidity hit us like a tropical jungle. The beauty around us was undisturbed and we were hoping against all odds that our home somehow survived the 3-4 feet of water that flooded from the nearby canal. 

The windows were thrown open by friends and neighbors but the smell and the mold growing on the walls to the flood line caused our hearts to sink. Everything was soaked and damaged except things set high above that had not molded yet, including the TV sets. The electrical wiring was shot. We were told that it would cost upwards of $100,000 to rebuild this very modest beach house to its original state. There was no flood insurance; it is expensive in Florida and most people cannot afford it. They took their chances as this part of the island has not flooded in 80 years.

Patriot Pier in Siesta Key one week after Hurricane Helene

The island’s streets were lined on both sides by mountains of debris, furniture, mattresses, lamps, refrigerators, washers, dryers, splintered wood, doors, lamps, anything a person had in their household that was not completely waterlogged and smelly.

Stores in the village were boarded up and empty, others, built much higher, had survived and re-opened, waiting for the tourists that were not coming. We were just two of the few who dared to fly here.

The beach was flat as a pancake, as far as the eye could see and quite smelly from the sewer that rose up and mixed in with the ocean water. The lifeguard towers were placed back in their original locations, standing guard, lonely and shuttered.

We managed to get two hours of beach time with some of the workers taking a reprieve from the unpleasant task of ripping apart someone’s flooded home. The ocean water was a sickly greenish yellow, no doubt not fit to swim. Few dared to enter it.

We drove to St. Armand Key - the devastation there was just as bad. The Circle that used to house fashionable businesses and restaurants looked like a war zone. Longboat Key was flooded as well.

The Marina in Sarasota was flooded, and debris was piled high. Very few of the piles of debris had been removed anywhere – the county, the city government, and the local help were organized but overwhelmed by the massive amount, tons and tons of discarded stuff that had to be hauled away.

We spent three nights in a hotel at the foot of one of the bridges entering Siesta Key. By Monday morning, the order came to evacuate the area, so we decided to drive to Miami as advised by the hotel clerk.

When hurricane Milton finally made landfall, it was in the exact area where our Spark hotel was. Siesta Key was again flooded. The mountains of debris on each street were disturbed and items destroyed by hurricane Helene floated away; new ripped roofs, shanties, and other dangerous materials were added to the already gutted flotsam and jetsam suffocating streets and canals. If the first hurricane did not do a good enough job to destroy, Milton made sure that few things remained untouched. The beach was again washed flat and clean but infused with the perfume of overflowing sewers.

Elderly people who had saved their entire lives to retire in a modest old dwelling were suddenly homeless, having to fend for themselves, sometimes without families. Some had to make heartbreaking decisions to sell the property because they could not afford to rebuild with the new codes of safety. Real estate brokers from Miami were suddenly hit with a bonanza of new and cheap properties on the market which they had salivated for years to acquire.

We took the scenic tour to Miami, through modest neighborhoods and small towns, not the interstate where we knew, we would be overwhelmed by traffic of other absconders from the incoming hurricane Milton which promised to be, according to the media, a category 5 unlike any other hurricane.

We stopped on U.S. Hwy. 27 in Palmdale, Florida at Gatorama, which was closed for a few days. They had been in business since 1957. As we started to leave, a truck pulled up with a jovial driver named Allen. He turned out to be the owner and we had a fun and interesting thirty-minute conversation with him.

Allen closed the attraction for a few days because Hurricane Helene flooded everything and the resident crocs in the creek had escaped, and he was trying to wrangle them safely back in and secure his gators’ enclosures before he could reopen.

I watched his right hand as he was gesturing and noticed his missing middle finger and deep scars on the remaining ones. I asked him if a croc took his finger off and he answered yes. As he was spending time in the hospital healing from surgery, his son produced the motto of the attraction, “Fast hands, or no hands.” My favorite motto would have been, "too slow, lose a toe." Gators and crocodiles are fast runners for their shape and size and can easily outrun a human. They can also jump up seven feet out of the water. Scary scenarios! Thanks to prior hurricanes that released crocodiles and pythons from a zoo into the wild, we now have a sizable population of crocs and pythons in the Everglades.

We made it to Miami and took refuge in a hotel in Miami Beach filled with other people like us and the lucky ones who were going on cruises. By Tuesday, all the cruise ships docked in the Miami harbor disappeared at sea, away from the oncoming hurricane.

The Atlantic Ocean was serene and placid, the color of emerald green, a balmy temperature perfect for swimming and bathing. By Tuesday, the ocean became furious with large waves. But we managed to get two days of beach time before we left.

We did enter the water which dropped precipitously with every other step, two to three feet at a time while our legs were sinking to our ankles in the shifting sand. Within a few mere feet from the edge of the water, we were in 10 feet of water, unable to touch the bottom. To say that I was uneasy about it, it is an understatement – the water was opaque, and I could not see my fingers below three inches from the water’s surface. My mind was conjuring up sharks, jelly fish, and sting rays circling to bite. Fighting to stay afloat, swim, or tread water, the current was trying to pull us out to sea. I was glad that the lifeguard was watching us intently. The waves were more suited for surfing than ocean frolicking.

We enjoyed the Cuban cuisine, and, thanks to our friend Craig, we took an airboat ride on the Everglades, watched gators in their habitat, and even saw the captain of the boat feed one large gator who kept following the boat. A thirty-minute show of gators raised in the park completed our tour. They did not seem to mind their captivity as they were well fed and slept peacefully.

We were going to visit next the Big Cypress National Reserve which was established in 1974 to protect the fresh water’s natural flow from the Big Cypress Swamp into the Everglades and Ten Thousand Islands, but access was flooded by the two back-to-back hurricanes and the accompanying huge rainfall.

Next, we decided to visit Coral Castle, an unusual oolite limestone park located between Homestead and Leisure City, Florida. It was built by a Latvian American, Edward Leedskalnin (1887-1951). He had moved to America from Latvia at the age of 26 after having been rejected by his sixteen-year-old fiancé, Agnes Skuvst, one day before their wedding. The “castle” is built from large stones in difference shapes, each weighing several tons, stones with a specific significance to Ed - slab walls, tables, chairs, a crescent moon, a water fountain, a grill, and a sundial.

The claim is that the structures were built over 28 years by Ed alone, using reverse magnetism and move and carve the stones; another theory was that he used hydrogen balloons and Ed’s advanced tool called a ‘perpetual motion holder.’

It is alleged that Ed had tuberculosis when he arrived in the U.S. but was healed by magnets. How he passed the Ellis Island quarantine with active tuberculosis, is a mystery to me.

The Coral Castle remained in Florida City until 1936, but Ed decided to move it to 28655 South Dixie Highway, an unincorporated area of Miami-Dade County, where he would have more privacy on South Dixie Highway. He left when “discussion about developing land in the original area of the castle started.” It took him three years to move everything 10 miles north of Florida City to its current location outside Homestead, Florida.

The next drive was on the Star Island where a few rich Cuban Americans lived in their gated mansions, away from the masses. A guard house protected the entrance into the Star Island but allowed drivers to make the circle if they did not stop.

Photo by Craig Brand on a sunnier day

Ft. Lauderdale Beach and A1A Highway

Craig B. drove us another day to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida and to Ft. Lauderdale to admire the famous spring break beach which was now deserted. The blue beach chairs were stacked along the narrow strip. I wondered how much room there is during spring break when all the chairs and towels are deployed on the narrow sand patch between the ocean and the A1A highway. A few die-hard beach goers were fleeing from the imminent rain blowing from the ocean.

We took refuge from the rain at the infamous Elbow Room bar where we were entertained with live music to the delight of the sing-along regulars who were drinking margaritas and beer.

We dined with Craig and Alba on Cuban food at Havana 1957 on Lincoln Road and the next day at Versailles in Little Havana and drove through the neighborhood of old homes, all windows covered in metal bars, allegedly to protect the windows from hurricane projectiles, a cheaper alternative than boarding the windows each time, I was told.

The day before our flight back home, we were crossing the pedestrian crosswalk, we had the right of way, and an SUV turned and clipped my husband’s left side, arm, and leg. Luckily, it did not run over his foot but it caused a lot of bruising and pain. The car sped away, and although there were many witnesses, none of them stayed until the police came, they all disappeared.

I asked one of the two police officers to look at CCTV footage to identify the vehicle and he said, since there were not two cars involved with a crash, and my husband was not dead, there was nothing they could do. In addition to taking them half hour to get there, I was appalled at how little they cared about my husband’s injuries.

We will never return to Miami or Miami Beach that’s for sure. One of my irritating take-aways, and there were many, was that few locals spoke English, why would they, they do not need to because they have little meaningful or no contact with English-speaking Americans. “No English” were the two words I heard many times when we visited places. Ethnicity, diverse culture, good Cuban food and sandwiches set aside, it made us feel like we were in a foreign country.

 

Ray's Road Trip in 1942 America

The roads were “grand” for Ray’s traveling trailer. Driving on January 19, 1942 through Ohio, he was fascinated by the abundance of farms and rolling hills, red painted barns, individual hog pens, and husked corn left on the ground uncovered, easy pickings for any critters or humans passing by. His love of animals was only equaled by his love of nature – his oil landscapes were legendary in the family.

When Ray left the Ohio state line, Kentucky revealed numerous drying tobacco barns and tobacco stalks, and large numbers of stock farms with miles and miles of stone fences. Farther into the state, homes were run down and unpainted. He encountered saw mills from where cut timber was shipped on carts pulled by mules. Ever curious, Ray came upon a large stock sale and stopped to check it out.

The soil was red clay interspersed with pine trees. He noticed that filling stations were very far apart. Homes were poorly constructed and never painted. He was shocked to see toilets separate for “colored people.” Going through Look Out Mountain and Rock City, he drove 7 miles to the top on a slow and gradual incline. The shifting foundation had split the large rocks and fashioned rock crevasses 100 ft. or more deep. Large herds of cattle and hogs were wandering all over the highways, no fences anywhere in sight. Large pine forests flanked the highways.

Crossing into Georgia, he noticed that the soil was hued red, blue, and yellow. Miles and miles of peach trees filled the landscape. The southern Georgia countryside was packed for miles and miles with pecan trees. Mules seemed to be the beast of burden just like in Tennessee and Kentucky.

Georgia homes were built on rock piles or posts with no basements. For the “poorer class,” houses had no windows, only “wooden door flaps.” One dead cow had been hit by a car and the carcass was still in the road.

Stopping in the Okefenokee Swamp, Ray walked out into the swamp for about a mile through the quiet and wild surroundings; the silence was only broken by the occasional hammering of a wood pecker and other bird calls. Moss covered trees abundantly and water lilies bloomed gracefully from the swamp; a large percentage of the tall pines were dead, jutting out of the murky black water.

At the Florida line, the landscape changed to acres and acres of slash pines on both sides of the road. Pines were slashed to gather resin from which turpentine was made. The slashes were made by removing the bark on an area of 12 by 36 inches through which a metal rod was driven at a 45 degree angle ending into a funnel shaped catch for the resin draining from the tree.

Arriving in Jacksonville, Ray remarked that the population was mostly “colored people.” The back of the trailer where they parked for the night was a veritable jungle of palm trees and thick pines covered with Spanish moss. Further down the road he encountered palms, citrus trees, flowers, and a Chinese garden with waterfalls and bridges. On both sides of the highway there were cacti growing everywhere.

In St. Augustine, Ray and his family had a drink from the famous well attended by a man dressed in Spanish clothes. “The grave yard of a vanished race of Indians had uncovered graves, showing the skeletons as these burials were made on top of the ground. At one spot, by looking toward the ocean, I could see through a row of palm trees a distance of 3 miles to the open sea; this is believed to be the spot at which Juan Ponce de Leon had landed in 1513 as it was the spot he first sighted upon sailing into the harbor.” A stone monument in his honor is erected to commemorate the location.

Ray and his wife took a sight-seeing tour through St. Augustine on a horse drawn “surrey” at a charge of $1.50 per hour. The drivers were “colored men wearing a long tail coat and a large plug hat.”

The next stop was a fascinating fort with its heavy ramparts. Ft. Marion, the Guardian of the Spanish City of St. Augustine, was built from “coquina, shells taken from the beach on Anastasia Island and mixed with lime,” cementing walls ten to twelve ft. thick. Ft. Marion was surrounded by a moat of water 40 ft. wide.

The interior court, which crammed 2,500 people inside during a 27-day siege, had a dungeon for prisoners, a Catholic church, and a powder magazine. It was so damp that the powder magazine had a hard time keeping its powder dry. The town was burned to the ground several times by the Spanish, the English, and the French, but the fort never fell. The old wall that surrounded the city is still partially standing. The oldest school and oldest house were also located here. The oldest house had been owned and occupied at one time by Napoleon’s nephew. The beautiful Spanish garden in the back had a wishing well.

The old school house boasted eight “pupils” and upstairs quarters for the teacher. A small dungeon served as punishment for students who did not behave properly. Tuition for this school was $12 per year.

After the alligator and ostrich farms, Ray visited Marineland, with its fish, coral, other marine fauna and porpoises, and the portholes through which the movie industry had shot most of their underwater films of that time.

Across from Marineland was a burial mound for various Indian tribes from counties across Florida. Buried in layers, the bottom uncovered were remains of the “Timucua Indians, the forerunners by a good many years of the Seminole. The skeletons were found in shell mounds, mainly oysters. Vines had grown through all openings of the skulls. The people were buried in a hunched or huddled position.”

Ray passed by the famous speedway in Daytona Beach, on his way to comb the fine white sandy beaches for shells. Parking the trailer in Port Orange for a week, three miles south of Daytona Beach on the Halifax River, Ray, his wife, and three-year old blue-eyed Joan enjoyed the Florida sun and the quartz-white beach.

 

The Paul’s River Land Trailer camp allowed them to park 150 ft. away from the crystal clear waters. The trailer park was enjoyable and only cost $3 per week. Pelicans, white herons, seagulls, and ducks landed in the area quite often. A few boys fishing by speared a small sting ray, about a foot long. The drinking water was none too pleasant, it was full of Sulphur and smelled like rotten eggs. “We had to let water set out overnight in order to get the smell and awful taste out of it.”

Driving through West Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, on to Miami, Ray stopped in Jupiter at Shuey’s Trailer Camp for 75 cents per night, parking about 100 ft. from the government lighthouse. They bought milk for 27 cents with a 5 cent deposit for the glass bottle.

“On the drive to Miami, we went along the ocean and saw the fishing fleets out with their motors, sailing in circles; the waves were so high that in between the crest of the waves, the large fishing boats would be out of sight.”

Ray and his family spent three weeks in the Tall Pines Trailer Camp. Three miles south of Miami was the Rare Bird Farm with coral flamingos and other unusual birds. Of the 350 species, five species of blue, green, and white peacocks were fascinating. Twenty-two miles south of Miami was the Monkey Jungle, where “humans were caged in chicken wire walkways and the monkeys ran wild into the tangle of jungle-like trees.” For 35 cents admission price, they saw up close and personal chimpanzees, black spider monkeys, marmosets, mangabeys, capuchin monkeys, and other primates.

Live sand dollars

Photo: Ileana Johnson

 

In South Miami, after visiting the Floridian Coconut Factory, Ray and his family went swimming twice at Matheson Hammock, a beach protected from sharks but not from the man-of-war - “a large jelly-like transparent globe of a wonderful bright shade of blue.”

Next was window shopping in beautiful Coral Gables where jewelry stores sold their wares for upwards of $3,800, a rich sum for those times. Coral Gables was confusing to Ray as the streets were all names and no numbers, especially when the names were all in Spanish.

For $25 a day and fishing gear provided, Ray broke down and rented a boat to go deep sea fishing and caught his very first sail fish which his wife cooked for supper.

Passing by a Seminole village, Ray marveled at the colored patched clothes. An Indian dressed in full Chieftain’s regalia, posed for pictures with visitors for 15 cents each. Parking in the trailer camps in the area was more expensive, $3.25 per week.

Ray crossed the Everglades, driving on Tamiami Trail, the southernmost 275 miles of U.S. Hwy. 41. The Everglades, thousands of square miles, was a vast tract-less wilderness which could only be negotiated by waterways and the Seminoles were the only persons who could do that at the time. The vast tangle of saw grass was sometimes ten ft. high. One could drive for miles through the big cypress swampland.

“Occasionally through the Everglades, there are small villages of Seminoles. They hunt, fish, and only kill what they need for clothes and food. The main Seminole reservation was deep in the Everglades and could only be reached by their waterway canals. Using large and small boats hewn out of large trees, Seminoles numbered 3,000 at one time, dwindled to 200 and are now increased to about 650. They are the only Indians that are still supposed to be at war with the United States.”

 

 

During the rainy season, even the dry spots become swamp land. Of the 16 species of palms in Florida, 13 are found in the Everglades. Forests of bay, live oaks, papayas, and rubber trees grow wild.  In between there are large ferns, gorgeous wild flowers, orchids, air plants, and mosses.

Large burnt out areas could be seen from the road and, as far as the eyes could see there was nothing but swamp and forest, no sign of human life. Houses were miles and miles apart but close to the road. The abundant wild life could be seen from the road – turtles on rocks and logs sunning themselves, turkey vultures, American eagles, wood ibis, blue herons, white herons, egrets, almost extinct sandhill cranes, cougars, alligators, native bears, deer, flamingoes, everglades kite, cape sable, manatees, alligators, snakes, and sea side sparrows. Over 50,000 bird species inhabited the area.

Morning feed

Photo: Ileana Johnson

 

Next stop was beautiful Sanibel Island with its famous sea shell beach. It did not have any camp to park a trailer so Ray drove into Ft. Meyers Beach and stayed there for two days at Don Carlos Trailer and Cottage Court for 75 cents, 300 ft. from the Caloosahatchee River. The wind was blowing fiercely all night, rocking the trailer quite dangerously for comfort.

Next morning they drove across the bridge to the Estero Island where the shells were plentiful on the beach – conchs, whelks (a sea snail), sand dollars (a sea urchin), starfishes (marine invertebrates), sea urchins, and scallops. They had to boil the shells as many were still inhabited by marine mollusks. I cannot imagine anyone today on a road trip disturbing nature in this way. But even collecting an empty shell of a dead marine creature is removing an opportunity for another sea invertebrate to find a home inside.

Last stop of Ray’s road trip was Sarasota with the largest trailer city in the country. The parking fee was $2.25 per week and the camp had everything to keep one occupied and entertained – free movies, dances with attendance of upwards of 300 people, a five-piece orchestra, first aid room, men’s card room, ladies’ card room, its own newspaper, post office, community hall, grocery store, six horse shoe courts, swings, slides, 14 shuffle boards, bingo, a sand box for kids, and a different program every day. The trailer park had 600 trailers laid out in streets, with beautiful landscaped areas. The only charge levied was a government amusement tax of 5 cents.

Sarasota of today, with its Siesta Key, has been voted several times the most beautiful beach in the country. Currently suffering from the worst case of Red Tide in its history, the beach has been less than inviting to tourists for the last three months. Dead fish, brown waters, brown sand, and respiratory distress have dominated reality daily. Mother Nature will take its course and will eventually return the sugar white sands and crystal clear waters to Siesta Key.