Bucko's World

Thursday 13th

Two of my greatest pleasures in life are listening to music and driving cars. Combine the two in any way and I'm generally a happy Hare.  The joy of getting my first car (a powder blue Mini Metro) was only increased when 99 quid was spent in Dixons on a 100 Watt Sharp Cassette Radio (with 5 band graphic equaliser no less) which me and a mate then spent a weekend wiring into the car.  The parcel shelf was expertly and accurately measured and drilled for the new Goodmans three way speakers, the old radio carefully removed in an electrically safe fashion, and all connections marked and coloured coded for easy installation of the new unit.  Speaker wires run safely under the carpet and installed with high quality connectors, before finally sliding the new head into place as shown in the installation instructions.  Piece of piss.  I'm surprised my suggestion that we go into business fitting stereos for other people fell on deaf ears.

So it's very gratifying to find that the two men most responsible for aiding and abetting these twin passions were great friends who lived in adjoining villas just up the road a tick in Ft Myers.....

Frommer's guide book is once again the traveller's friend as being stuck for something to do today, we find ourselves directed by the guide to the houses of Thomas Edison, inventor of recorded sound - his Mary Has A Little Lamb being the de facto original recording - and Henry Ford, bringer of motoring to the masses.  Their two houses have been brilliantly preserved for us all to see how the other half lived back then, and a museum has been set up across the road to showcase the best of their work.

And they say you learn something new everyday, but today for me it's two.  Firstly we learn from our lovely little tour guide - a qualified historian who neither looks old enough to have a boyfriend let alone be recommending wine bars she frequents with him in Naples for when we get there, nor to have obtained a history degree -  a choice piece of info about an early design of Edison gramophone.  As there were no amplifiers at the time, the music was sent directly into a big horn to boost it to listenable volume.  The only problem was that the volume was bloody loud!  The solution to the problem?  "Put a sock in it!"  

Later on, we're being escorted (pun intended) around the around the Ford exhibition by the lovely, and considerably older, Barbara.  This well turn out GILF is sporting diamonds the size of marrowfat peas in her earrings and proper spec Dolce & Gabbana sunnies, so it's unsurprising, when we offer her a tip at the end of the tour that she tells us "Others here would accept a tip, but not me."  She is showing us a rather lovely 1917 Ford Truck and explained that these were sold F.O.B., and you had to collect them from the dock yourself.  And they came pretty much as a kit car, with the wooden crate they came in having been carefully measured and constructed so when you opened it up, it became the floor of the vehicle, and sundry other wooden parts.  You sat there on the dock yourself, built your truck, and drove it away.  Hence the common parlance "Pick Up Truck."  This, I did not know.

We then drive into Ft Myers town itself for lunch.  There are apparently 62,500 people living in the town, but today it seems they're out.  We have a nice lunch at the Deli, but really, there's nothing to do here so we head off back to the hotel and a couple of Sams in the room.

Although our last trip to the restaurant area at the end of the beach had been less than successful, we decide to take a sunset stroll along the sand to the fishing pier and take a chance on somewhere to eat.  We stop for a couple of beers at The Beach Pierside Grill and Blowfish bar, and decide the menu looks so good we'll eat there.  The bacon wrapped shrimp we start with are amazing and the Flounder stuffed with crab and lobster is the best fish I've ever eaten.  It's all being washed down with far too many glasses of white but the sunset we're witnessing is amazing, so good it gets a round of applause from all assembled on the pier when it finally slips below the horizon.  Brilliantly, nobody goes home at this point, but stay to play on the beach, or grab a table in a bar, and sing along the the brilliant live music every bar has to offer.  It is fabulous.

Before we head back however, a huge commotion breaks out on the pier.  Being British we assume the usual, that it must be on fire, but only a couple of people are running from it, and then it's only to run to the water's edge.  "What's happening?" I ask.  "One of the fisherman has snagged a dolphin by mistake and it's beached itself down there"  FUCK!  I grab my camera and run to the seashore only to see the most peculiar looking dolphin I've ever seen.  In fact so peculiar it looks exactly like a 5ft long shark.  Fortunately, and before it can do any damage to itself - or anyone else for that matter -  the guys have unwound it from the fishing line and got it back on its way into the sea - where it proceeds to swim past a group of children paddling at the water's edge......

Rather laconically the girl sitting at the next table turns to us and says, once I've appraised all of the situation, "Shit, and I've been swimming in that sea just there all day."  Only in Florida....