COMMUNITY

Thirty years ago, in August 1991, I sat musing over a change of life, a change of life-style, with our move to Cedar Key.

 OLD DOGS, NEW TRICKS...THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME...

            It seems appropriate at this time each year to take stock of my mental status since it was on a clear hot steamy August day that the Roquemores moved to Cedar Key. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” was the common refrain. (And this was from the people in Cedar Key.) Most of the Orlando folks just shook their heads in tandem and sighed: “There they go again.”

            Maybe it was just that it was the only way to get the house cleaned out once and for all, and maybe it was because we sought new adventures without dodging terrorists in foreign airports, but Cedar Key sounded like the “99% Solution.”

            We really weren’t strangers to the island and contrary to popular opinion were not just “driving through” on our way to Mexico. Living in Cedar Key—full time—is trip enough for any lifetime.

            There are quite a few things to be learned from living in this town and most of these were by osmosis, not by being taught. One of the first things I learned is that every place is “long distance.” Southern Bell’s stock rose to bullish proportions as did the length and breadth of our phone bill. The “long distance” of the road was rather a treat than a treatment. I found that I could get to Gainesville in the time it took me to get to a shopping mall in Orlando and that the drive was decidedly more pleasant—if you stay out of the way of errant deer. Never before had I had a post office box. It was one of those few things that David and I argued about. To live without home delivery? That is downright UN-civilized!

            We learned about Cedar Key weather. Even the garden catalogs can’t decide whether we are north or south or central or gulf coastal or a combination of Northwest-Central-Coastal. No wonder. God can’t figure it out, either. Cedar Key enjoys a reputation for storms. It’s a humdinger of a reputation that pits flood insurance against wind-storm insurance against a very skinny purse. No such problem existed in honest to goodness Central Florida. Trees regularly fell over—once on my neighbor’s car which was parked in our communal drive. It was decided that it was our tree. No one knows for sure but the insurance companies vied for the privilege of soaking one of us. (This was in Orlando.)

            Cedar Key weather can be hot or cold but rarely at the same time. Never did I expect to be scraping snow off my decks only weeks after sustaining a sunburn. Shortly after moving here Dave announced: “There are no birds in Cedar Key!” (He doesn’t consider pelicans birds, but that is another story.) “David, darling, this is a BIRD SANCTUARY—they are all in the trees praying!” There are all kinds of birds in Cedar Key, but our problem was that we didn’t recognize half of them. The usual confluence of blue jays and mockingbirds hadn’t found us. Neither had the cardinals, the thrashers and the towhees. Instead there were weird little twitterers and giant ospreys, owls, eagles, anhingas, ibis soaring around. Never in my life had I seen so many robins as in that first garden. Bird sanctuary, indeed!

            Having raised three sons to manhood and paid my dues in quite a few schools, the Cedar Key school was a refreshing change. Unless you’ve attended a game at a large school you won’t understand the unabashed joy of being able to cheer for a name rather than a number. We tried to get the graduating class declared smallest in the U.S., but some private school someplace down south beat us for the honor. We had four graduating seniors. They had one.

 Some of the things I took for granted in a large town are impossible here. Just try to get a Mazda fixed. Don’t expect to buy stamps after noon on Thursdays. Only two people in the town smoke Virginia Slims 120 Menthols, so if the stores are out, they are OUT. (Maybe they are telling me to quit, anyway.)

            Cedar Key is a very small town with some big-city problems. I learned this in a hurry. Where I live, we don’t even have cable TV. Now, that is a major deficiency! The things we learned were worth doing without the Simpsons.

            Mullet eating is worthy of note. I’d grown up with grits for breakfast, but mullet? The fish? It wasn’t long before I realized that mullet makes a great breakfast and until you’ve eaten Cedar Key mullet you ain’t arrived. In a crust so light, with the fish so juicy and flaky that it melts on the fork, I scream that for the first 44 years of my life I didn’t meet a mullet on a plate before noon.

            There are probably some other things I learned along the byways of the last four years. One of these is, if you don’t tell, I won’t. There’s no place like home, and no home like Cedar Key.

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