THE SCENIC ROUTE

Our home is in a community designated as a bird sanctuary. We also have a beautiful golf course which had been private but is now open to the public. With large trees and slightly hilly roads, our area definitely does not look like a typical Florida community with palm trees. We are fortunate to have a large library and many churches. Shopping is available in any given direction. We can drive to our local beach in less than ten minutes

I will admit the beach is very small and mostly unsanitary, so I won’t recommend it for swimming although you usually see people in the water who don’t know any better. It has well maintained picnic areas and restaurants on the water and there is a nice ice cream store nearby. That’s what old Florida looked like many years ago.

Now for the downside, there are about four main roads leading into or out of our community. One such road feeds onto a major highway. As we leave one of our main entrances, there is a red light. On the right side is a Wal-Mart on the left a K-Mart, directly across the street are some small establishments. A strip club, a barbershop and a pawn shop. In front of the pawn shop are several enormous signs saying they have guns and ammo for sale. Right next to them is a dilapidated building filled with donated clothing and things which are free to the poor.

On the Wal-Mart side is an area where the homeless congregate, men and women usually holding signs asking for money as you wait for the light to change. As you turn south on the highway, there is a small mall which has some nice stores, but slowly businesses are leaving.

Driving further south you see many strip malls which are half empty, so it’s really surprising that in our large mall many new business have opened up and we have three or four new hotels, too. I don’t understand why we have so many hotels.

That’s the scenic route and it will probably look that way for the time being unless someone comes up with a big plan to change it.  After attending a meeting of our county commissioners, I don’t have much hope that a good plan is in the offing.