[The date was 1991, thereabouts. – JDW]
Actual bumper sticker: Retirement is twice as much husband and half as much money.
Actual headline: ALLIGATOR TEARS OFF PART OF 80-YEAR-OLD’S ARM. The aged woman, with no running water in her rural home, was dipping a bucket in the Tamiami Canal when the seven-foot reptile attacked her.
Rural Florida is the kind of place where you have to hang your refrigerator in a tree to keep it away from animals.
Florida leads the nation in boating deaths. 103 people died here in marine accidents last year.
Since 1986, reckless motor boaters speeding around Tampa Bay have killed fifty-eight manatees. That’s about four percent of all the manatees left in existence. Environmentalists want a speed limit. Water skiers don’t.
Eighty percent of Tampa Bay’s once-extensive beds of sea grass have disappeared. There’s been a phenomenal decrease in fish caught. Besides pollution, motor boaters cause much of the damage. Environmentalists want to limit access to the fragile grass. Boaters don’t.
After all, how much harm can one eighty-horsepower outboard do?
I have actually lost count of the number of churches that have been burnt down recently. Somebody with a match in his hand has a very big chip on his shoulder. No religion seems safe here these days. Especially Freedom From.
The Tampa Tribune prints ethnic jokes. But it’s okay, because these jokes make fun of lawyers.
January’s unemployment in THE SUNSHINE STATE was 8.7 percent, the highest rate since May 1983. Up two and a half points since last year.
Running late, stuck in rush-hour traffic, dozens of cars line up as the drawbridge opens to let a single sailboat pass. The skipper, beer gut and gold necklace, waves jauntily.
A sixty-foot sinkhole in the town of Frostproof swallowed an entire house. Garage, too. Four hundred sinkholes are reported annually, some as wide as a football field and a hundred feet deep.
The greenhouse effect finally hit home. Global warming took on new meaning when I saw for myself the miles of dead Sabal Palms rimming the coast along Waccasassa Bay. Salt water from the rising Gulf of Mexico is poisoning The Sunshine State’s official tree.
A swimmer was almost swallowed by a nine-foot shark in Tampa Bay.
Did you know, since 1984, more than 200 children in the USA have drowned in five-gallon buckets. In the history of mankind, no one has died due to marijuana. My question is: Should we outlaw five-gallon buckets?
Drowning is the leading cause of accidental childhood death in Florida. More even than car accidents. Florida boasts the highest drowning rate in the country. More drownings every year.
Picked up a copy of FLORIDA SINGLES magazine. There’s a photo of an attractive blonde. What I’d call your Elly May Clampett-type. “Debbie Dehaven is a teacher with a unique idea. She teaches safe sex with walnuts. Each nut has a condom inside. She says, ‘Teaching safe sex is a hard nut to crack.'”
Gone fishing. “Wanted, a woman to cook, clean, fish, dig worms and make love…must have a good boat and trailer. Please send a photo of boat and trailer.” Just another lonely boy with a pole.
Tallahassee, I remember as being very rainy. Large green garbage trucks with great big iron bumpers. Driven by large black practical jokers.
“I can’t see, but he’s signaling me to back up.”
“Then, go ahead, Jack D.”
CRASH!!
“Honey, what happened?”
“He stopped signaling.”