Act 1 : "She's a Crafty Bitch"
"O.k. let me get this straight.....you don't sell pitchers of beer anymore because it's illegal in the city of Atlanta?" "So you only sell bottles no draft anymore as well?" "O.k. let me get a Newcastle.....7 bucks?" At this point I'd had it. I mean come on man This was just another ploy by The City of Atlanta to gouge people. I had just paid ten dollars to park at this bar and then another five to the crackhead who said he would watch my car for me, which in reality was his nice way of saying "I won't break in it while you and your friends enjoy your expensive beers inside". I mean where was ATL's finest when you needed them? I can tell you where they were later that night, harassing me at the entrance to my sub-division. Checking people for insurance and registration. I thought a subdivision was private property? Did they work out a deal with the holier than thou "Homeowners Association"? Gimme a fuckin' break!!! Alright I'm losing focus here, oh yeah I'd had it. Not just with the parking, crackheads and police harassment. It was a build up of things.
You see my relationship with that town was like a love hate situation. As soon as I got to a point where I could love her the bitch would change on me. Soon after we would make up and I would dig deep and confess my love for her once more and once again that bitch would show me how much she hated my simple ass. It was just that. I figured it out during the drive home from the bar that night. I was just to simple for that city. Not simple in mind or thought process but simple in lifestyle and attitude. I just couldn't survive in a town that made it hard for easygoing people like myself to live. Don't get me wrong there are others like my self that do it, because they feel that they have no choice or they are somehow trapped by a traditional choice of lifestyle. You know the type, the guy with the pool and the viking BBQ grill and tiki torches. The yard that looks like an Hawaiian Luau in the middle of Midtown Atlanta or Marietta or Alpharetta or Buckhead or Stone Mountain. The yard where everybody gathers once or twice year because when you're caught up in the hustle and bustle you simply don't have time to enjoy your own fuckin' backyard.......or when you do get those vacation days that they make you feel shitty about taking, you have to go somewhere exotic to keep up with the Jones who are trying to keep up with the fuckin' DuPont family. Then you have the weekend warrior which is what I was when I lived there. Trying to cram everything into a 48 hour time period, real shitty because if your like me you want to enjoy your weekend and think about "Monday" morning.
So here I was at a point in my life where I had to make a decision. Do I do the so called "norm" in a town I've come to despise? You know mortgage, car payment, savings plan, time share and whatever else the "peach pie" has to offer, or do the so called "irrational" which is try to live somewhere I can actually enjoy. I chose the later.............
Act 2 : "Attack of the Mullets"
I should have known when the shuttle driver said "welcome to Fort Misery once you're here you're stuck here for life." This was after he discovered that I had accepted a job in the town and that I wasn't there on a fishing vacation. "You'll see bro' " was the next response after my puzzled look.
You see about a month prior was when I had planned my escape but not before convincing the wife that this was the thing to do. At that time she was in flow with the so called "norm" so convincing her to pack up and leave the things she loved (family, shopping malls, restaurants, hair salons and etc.) was a hard thing to do. I can remember plenty of shouting matches on the subject. But one day something in her as well gave her the feeling that she'd had enough. So she said "let's do it, take the job." referring to a job offer I was given by a small landscape/construction company in the town of Fort Misery.
Choosing the type of destination was obvious, somewhere tropical of course. Having spent the first 12 years of my life in Ohio. I was in no hurry to get back to the slush. I say slush because I love the snow but slush is that shit snow turns into when it's mixed with the pollution of city traffic and it's not pretty. Also I'm a sunshine person and choosing a place that has cold winters means shorter days and I don't like to get off of work and not have any sunshine left. So snow states were out of the question. Naturally we were stuck on Florida cuz' that's where we chose to spend some of our vacations during "off season". You can also see by choosing Florida I still somewhat in the "herd" mindset.
I decided to take the job in Fort Myers. At the time I had only been to two towns in Florida,Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale. My mindset was that all of Florida was the same. WRONG!!!!!! You see Florida is broken down into several different categories, you have the "Panhandle", "West Coast", "Southwest", "Eastcoast", "South Florida", "The Keys", "Orlando" and last but not least good ole' "Jacksonville" a place where the name reflects the attitude of the place. All these places are so close together but each one is a completely different fuckin' planet in itself. I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to choose "Southwest" Florida or So-Flo as some locals call it or maybe it chose me. I went there with wide eyed visions of beaches, palm trees, Spanish and Caribbean eateries and laid back locals with an Gloria Estefan soundtrack playing in the background. What I found was pick up trucks, rebel flags, mullet hair styles and one of the last cities in the country to get rid of segregation and believe me it showed. If your of color and what society calls "middle class" you're treated as novelty almost. Don't get me wrong I had some good times in Fort Myers there were beautiful tropical landscapes and some cool beach spots too. After a few tries I ended up working for a pretty cool company there and made some cool friends in the process, but as you know with the good comes the bad and when the bad comes in Florida it's a shit storm. Like the neighbor who hated us "niggers" cuz' we were the first black family to move to the racially segregated City of Fort Myers Beach. He never said this to us directly but he often express his views to the neighbors about how he didn't like living next to "niggers" and "Germans" plus I sort of figured it out when he would purposely let his wiener dog shit on my front lawn next to his cigarette butts. I mean after all he had worked all his life to retire and escape from the "niggers" in New Jersey so what gave me the right to ruin his piece of the pie? Oh I forgot, there was a interracial family who lived on the beach. The mother was white and the father was black, but he didn't speak to us. He gave me the feelin that he thought I was stealing his "token glory". Then you have the people who questioned you on how you could afford to live there, some of them just asked out right how much you make, drunk drivers galore, spring breakers who can't hold their liquor, little old ladies in abundance who drive big Buicks and Cadillacs but can't see over the steering wheel, no nightlife what so ever only "spring break" type bars and a country western bar that played hip hop in it's mix. Ultimately it would seem that Florida is one of those places where all the fuck-ups from other states (including myself) end up, so after a quick horrific stint on the Palm Coast (which is a story for another day) we decided that 4 years was enough it was time to bail.....again.
Act 3 : "A Hypocrite's Motivation"
My wife has always said that I'm a little bit too spontaneous for a family man. "You'll take chances and put everyone in this family at risk." she says. That can be good and bad. I'm sort of a hypocrite too, because I criticize people that do the same thing. Like those guys who jumped on the "house flipping" craze. I tend to criticize those guys often, but in reality I'm doing the same thing just in a different form. They're trying to flip real estate with hopes of financial stability and I had jumped from place to place and job to job with hopes of geographical and financial contentment. Either way it's a gamble. So with this third throw of the dice I decided to go big or as big as my chips would allow me to go. But this time the decision was totally mutual. I must say that my wife has good sense of timing for things. Let me say that a man who takes gambles with a woman with near perfect sense of timing at his side, can be the recipe for a great team.
"Let's just go now, why wait?" Is she serious? "That's the only place you'll ever be happy, we've known that since 2005 and besides we need to get as far away from this shit as we can." She was right though, ever since I'd worked in Hawaii for two months on a construction project in 2005 it was all I could think about. I would later find out that the soil of Hawaii flowed through my veins. So here we are in our nice, comfortable and supposedly "safe" middle class home on the Palm Coast of Florida at the end of an eight hour discussion where we had decided to leave it all behind. All of it.....everything. "You guys are too reactive" we were told by a so called friend, "That's nuts bra' I give it to you, you got some nuts." A Hawaiian associate of mine would say. I realize that to some people it sound exactly that, "nuts" but I thought if I made my decisions based on what other people thought was a traditional way of living the American life I would end up old and miserable like my neighbor in Fort Myers Beach.
At the end of out our discussion we had a plan and that plan was to leave all of our material belongings behind in the house we were renting from a guy who was a "flipper", get one last look at mainland North America as we knew it by driving across the country for two months, end up in California, leave our "Soccer Mom Machine" with my brother and his bride to be and hop on a plane to Hawaii.........for the most part it worked except the part where my brother gets the "Soccer Mom Machine" due to some miss-communication on my end. Sorry bro. But needless to after a two month cross country trip, a twelve hour plane ride with young children in tow, a two month stay in a Mormon hotel, several attempts at finding a place to rent for a large family and a couple short stints with local construction companies(all of these stories for another day) here we are and here I sit.......Somewhere 19.5 degrees (give or take a few degrees) north of the equator spewing what I think may be inspiration to a family or individual who may feel that it's time to bail and take that chance, opportunity or roll of the dice on life.................
