THEY’RRRRRRE BACK

January 8, 2012  Dateline Ft Myers, FL USA

They arrived back in FT. Myers on Wednesday night, Jan 4, 2012.  I was getting ready to get going and they told me they had a car, so they will be traveling and I will continue to sit.  I will turn the site over to Rich until I start traveling again, then I will make him give it back to me.  So here is Rich.

Rich here.  On Thursday, Carol and I drove to Captiva Island.  We took a shot and looked up an old business partner of mine when I was with D. George Harris & Associates.  I knocked and he showed up at the door.   The conversation was great as a long time has passed since we last saw each other.  We agreed to meet the next night at a restaurant on Sanibel Island called “Sweet Melissa’s Café”.  The food was incredible; the presentation was beautiful, even the dishes were unique.  Oh, did I mention that the executive chef, Melissa, is the daughter of my friends.  She has been written up in several local magazines as her restaurant is extremely popular.

Did you ever wonder what ladies who have pig tails do when they ride a motorcycle.  This lady figured out a way to solve the problem by drilling holes in the helmet.

Carol and I went to Tarpon Springs to purchase another sponge and some air plants.  We had a really pretty one that we purchased a year ago, but left it in a motel room last summer when we went by car to visit the Thousand Islands.  A new sponge, similar to the lost one, was acquired as well as some really nice air plants. 

Tarpon Springs is a community on the west coast of Florida which was populated by Greeks.  The town was built around the sponge business and the Greeks came to be hard hat divers who gather the sponges.  The males in the family dove for sponges, while the females would operate the shops that sell them.  At the center of the water front is this statute dedicated to those men  who lost their lives diving. The waterfront area is still Greek and to this day locals still speak Greek, and the restaurants serve Greek meals.

On Sunday, we went north to Inverness to visit Helen Hopler, an old neighbor from Denville, NJ. We went to a local restaurant for lunch and caught up on family events. It sure was nice to see her again.

Tomorrow, we’re going to Dunnellon to visit Carol’s Uncle Bill and Aunt Edythe then on to Ocala to visit Robert Scott, a descendant of the Scott family that I have been researching. After that it’s back to Fort Myers for a much needed rest.