Batten down the hatches! Put out the sandbags! Build a 12’ fence – no that never keeps anybody out. (I don’t know why they do not build a 13-foot fence. Many people are superstitious and the “13” might make them afraid to climb over). I am referring to the often dreaded flood of snowbirds that is about to descend on us. Now, I have some friends that are snowbirds and can hardly wait for them to come back.
However, they are only a few. It is all those other snowbirds. Now I know the merchants have big grins on their faces, and the restaurant owners are out buying more food, and contractors are lining up their people. Even the gasoline station owners are smiling heavily because they know that 441/27 will be one big traffic jam from Stonecrest on the North into Lady Lake – and that is not mentioning that it will take two or three lights to cross over 466 on Morse Avenue. Please note that it will not just be the snowbirds buying gas. It will be everyone in the Villages chugging gas as they wait in traffic.
Then, again I guess we should feel sorry for the poor snowbirds. They get it both ways. When they come down here, they hear about full time residents not being able to get on the golf courses and sit at their favorite restaurants. Did you realize that when they go north in the summer, they hear the same thing up there about all the sunbirds coming up from Florida just to escape a little heat and lousing up their golf courses and restaurants. They are one of the last groups that it is probably politically correct to complain about. Perhaps, we should have a benefit dinner for them. Mid-August would be a good time!
Speaking of being politically correct, it used to be that as you drove around you would see signs that said “men working”. You rarely see those anymore. What you do see are signs that say “workers ahead” or “maintenance next mile” so that you will slow down and not run over those who are serving the public. Personally, I think this is great. Now when you go down the highway and see two people working and four watching they can be either men or women or some combination of the two. Progress is wonderful!
I just realized that I may have already been too late when I spoke of the coming flood of snowbirds. As an example we try to make the monthly meetings of the Old-Time Radio Drama Club. They had been meeting at the Bacall Center, but the room was too small for the number of people who wanted to attend. Therefore last Thursday they moved to the Seabreeze Regional Center and met in a much larger room. Naturally, the room was still full. It must be the snowbirds/sunbirds. I should have known as it took me two lights that day to cross 466 on Morse.
The radio Club did a live presentation of an old radio program involving Dick Piston Hotel Detective. That series was one of which I had never heard. (How about that sentence, I avoided putting the preposition at the end). The program was pretty funny and since it is seventy or more years old there was not one concern about snowbirds. Old Dick Piston was not the usual detective either – he could not work past midnight as his boss would fire anybody who asked for overtime. Come to think about it the first victim was on his honeymoon so he could have been a snowbird – or even a sunbird. The dialogue did not go into that aspect, but it could have been the start of the unfounded complaints about our friends the snowbirds.
As I have indicated some of my best friends are snowbirds so there is probably some good in all of them! Let’s give them three cheers! . . . ah, come on everybody!
Barry Evans writes about “Life in The Villages” for Villages-News.com
