Well, I have probably beat the heck out of my knee injury – which was caused by my tripping and falling on it. Just to finish it off a little bit, I am now walking sans walker or cane. It is still somewhat swollen and I do not move too fast. Nevertheless, the surgeon has looked at it and indicated that I did not need physical therapy. In fact, when I asked, he indicated that I could start driving. Unfortunately, that was overruled by higher authority. (Yep, The Blonde in the house). A compromise was reached in that I will begin driving when the stitches are removed – in a couple of days. In the meantime, I have driven the golf cart.
On another subject completely, one of my favorite authors is H. Terrell Griffin who writes Matt Royal Mysteries. The series takes place in Florida – mostly on Longboat Key. However, old Matt travels all over Florida. I had some correspondence with Mr. Griffin a little over a year ago, and he said that his next novel would involve The Villages. Sure enough, his latest book, Vindication takes place right in The Villages. The murdered lady is found in the early hours face down on the concrete dance floor of Paddock Square! The accused lives in The Village of Collier. You might want to look for it. Who knows, the real murderer might be someone you know!
The Villages is a great place to live. The only real problem I have is the effect of weather on those who live here. When we lived up north in Western Pennsylvania, most people had front porches. We would sit out there in good weather. The summers weren’t that hot, particularly in the evening, and the springs and falls were fairly long with nice weather. Since we along with others were in the front we could see our neighbors and folks walking up or down the street. That meant you could holler “Hi!”, and get in some good talking and find out what was what in the neighborhood. Sometimes, you liked what you heard and sometimes you may not have been all that pleased, but the opportunity was there.
Here we have lanais, which are in the back of the house. That means you don’t see what is going on in front. In fact, you do not see hardly anybody – unless your lanai looks into the lanai in the house behind you. You can then probably talk to those neighbors – unless they do not want to talk, of course. This is complicated by the fact that the summers are mostly too hot to sit on a front porch even if you have one. In any case the other folks are in the back of their house where it is cool. There are some days when the weather is just right – not too hot or cold, but everyone is used to being in the back and they rarely venture out front except to leave in their car.
There are solutions to this. In our neighborhood there are monthly “Flamingo Parties” also more simply known as Driveway Parties. One of our Village members permits the use of his driveway and garage for an hour session on a Friday evening. Neighbors come and have nice talks and you catch up on what has been happening to each other. Naturally, this does not occur in the summer as it is too blamed hot to talk in a driveway or even a garage. However, you do have about three fourths of the year when talk is good. It only means that at the first one in the fall you have four months to catch up so you have to talk faster. Perhaps someday The Villages will have an air conditioned/heated dome over the area and the driveway parties can go all year.
The lanais will still be in the back though!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com
