HOOKED ON FLORIDA!

I was on the fire department for about 4 years and I would spend most of my vacation time with my parents.  I had gotten hooked on Florida – it’s easy to do.  

  

When I would come down in the winter, my parents would tell me about a new restaurant that had just opened.  It was a steak house and a steak dinner only cost $5.00.  I was very suspicious of a $5.00 steak.  I should have remembered that suspicion a few years later.  I know this is off the topic, but worth mentioning.

One day a guy pulled up to our fire house and said that he was a truck driver and his truck broke down and it was full of frozen steaks.  He said they were thawing out and he would sell them real cheap.  Silly me - I bought 3 and brought them home.  I cooked one on the grill and you couldn’t cut it or chew it. My wife cooked one in a crock pot all day and you still couldn’t eat it.  The last one was cooked and given to the dog.  Even Willy quickly lost his appetite!  It was probably horsemeat (our firehouse was near a racetrack.  Our dinner probably lost too many races.)!  It only cost me about $7.50 but some guys spent about $150 on meat you couldn’t eat.  Very few would actually admit it, though!  A word to the wise – don’t buy steaks out of the back of a truck from a stranger! 

Back to the subject - My parents and I did go to the steakhouse and it was great.  The inside was all redone and beautiful.  I think the mob was involved because thousands of dollars were spent on rebuilding this restaurant.  The next year when I returned my parents would tell me the steakhouse had gone out of business.   Now there was something new.  Restaurants opened and closed like revolving doors.  

This time it was a dinner show.  We went one night and the place was packed.  The entertainer, a comedian and a mind reader, had a remarkable show.  He would walk around the room and ask questions of the diners – like their first name, where they were from, how long they had been in Florida, what they did for a living.  The show started about 9:00 PM when everyone was having coffee and after dinner drinks.  He would shine a spotlight on a table and remember everyone’s name, where they came from, and made jokes about their jobs and their lifestyles.  At the end of his show, he shined a spotlight on me and walked over to our table.  He asked me to stand up.  He then told everyone that he couldn’t make fun of me or my job because I was a firefighter and anyone who did this job deserved all the credit in the world.  He said it was his honor to introduce me to the audience.  I looked down at my parents and they were beaming.  When he left the table, I leaned forward and told them I really liked this job and I was going to make it my career.  That made them even happier.  Their son finally had a “career.”  

  

My Dad passed away in 1971.  He had been retired only 7 years.  My mom stayed in their house almost 7 years, then she sold the house and moved into a 1 bedroom condo.  It was on the first floor and looked like it belonged in a resort.  Just outside her screened porch was a swimming pool with a diving board, tables and umbrellas and a barbeque grill.  Just past the pool was a canal off the Intercoastal waterway with boat docks.  It was true Florida living – just beautiful!  I would stay with her when I was on vacation.  She owned the condo 3 years and then told me she had met a real nice man and they wanted to get married.  She said she had put the condo up for sale 6 months earlier but no one was interested. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t asked me about it. 

My wife and I both loved Florida.  When I met my future wife, I asked her if she liked Florida – that was a prerequisite for dating!  Fortunately for me she did - so we bought the condo and all the furniture, too.  Occasionally we rented it to some firefighters but mostly we used it for our vacations.  We would spend 6 weeks in the winter and 6 weeks in the summer.  We kept the condo for 5 years and then sold it, doubling our investment. 

We knew we wanted to move to Florida when I retired – which was fast approaching.  The kids loved Florida, too – actually, they loved anywhere that had pools everywhere plus Disney World and Shamu.  We began looking around the state for our dream location.  My aunt and uncle told us about a small fishing village on the East Coast called Sebastian.  After a lot of driving and looking, we settled on a piece of property just off Sebastian River with a deeded 1.5 acre community area with a dock. We looked at model homes and picked one out that we liked.  We saw this model in February, and when we came back in July, the price had gone up $4,000.  If we waited another 5 years until I retired, the cost would be way up.  We contracted for the house to be built that summer.  Before construction began, we took our vacation in a 3 room, really old, cottage not too far from the property.  We would do fun things with the kids during the day, but after dinner we all sat around the large kitchen table and picked out carpets, paint colors, fixtures, lights – all for the new house.  The builder let us take the samples back to the cottage to make our choices. 

The house was finished in February.  We flew down and went through the house – it was perfect - except the building inspector hadn’t issued a CO as yet.  Without the CO, we couldn’t stay in the house.  We had even brought sleeping bags with us – we were so anxious to stay in our new house.  This was actually the first really new house either of us had ever had. 

 

Now we had to find a room for the night.  This was the busy winter season and we drove south, all the way to Vero Beach – no vacancies.  We then drove north to Melbourne, no luck.  We were told the only place that might have room was the Grant Motel which was known for renting by the hour.  They had a room for us – for the whole night!  There was an older couple running the motel and they were great to us.  We told them about our new home and that we couldn’t move in until the next day.  The old woman brought us hot tea and cookies that night.  The next day we had our CO and could stay in our house.  We went out and bought a bedroom set, bar stools so we could eat at the kitchen counter, some pots and silverware.  

We had to make a decision about renting the house.  I wouldn’t be retiring for a few years and we hated to see it sit empty.  After hearing story after story of rental nightmares, we decided to keep it for ourselves and just have friends check on it.  We used it every chance we could get to Florida and slowly began to make it our home.  In 1983, we sold our NY home and moved to Sunny Florida.  The life I had been planning for 20 years had finally begun – and continues through today!

Unexpected Side Effects of New Equipment

Somewhere around 1979, the department bought a telescoping elevated platform truck.  It was a huge truck that the firefighters called a cherry-picker.  The platform was equipped with large caliber turret nozzles.  Three men would ride in the platform and direct large volumes of water into high risk apartment fires.  The platform also had a railing all around the platform and a gate.  A firefighter could open the gate to make rescuing people easier.  I had to learn to operate this rig.  After I became proficient, the cherry-picker and I were sent to the busy side of the city where it was to be used on tenement fires.  I had the job of teaching firefighters how to drive and operate this truck. 

One night shift, a 3-alarm fire was reported.  I responded driving this truck.  I started to set up the rig but something wasn’t right.  It had a tormentor on each side,  back by the rear wheels.  The tormentors were hydraulic jacks that extended out beyond the truck and each had a large 2 foot by 2 foot steel plate on it.  When the arms were extended and the plates depressed onto the road, they lifted the rear of the truck off its tires.  This stabilized the rig so firefighters could extend the platform to the fire.  The controls to operate these stabilizers were on the driver’s side of the rig.  This piece of equipment was wider than a standard fire truck and it had an opening so that the operator could look through to see if the clearance was okay on the other side of the rig.

 I looked through the opening, didn’t see anything in the way, and started putting the

Notice Tormentors

tormentors down.  When I put the tormentors down on the opposite side of the rig, that side of the truck started to lift off the ground.  I retracted the arm and tried again.  The right side of the truck lifted up again.  I looked through the window and still saw nothing in the way.  I tried again - same result.  I finally got out of the truck and walked around – I immediately found the cause.  It was a VW beetle, completely compressed into a block about a foot high.  The equipment definitely had a “blind” spot.   We had 2 of these rigs for a few years.  They were so heavy that they couldn’t cross over some of the bridges in the city – so the city sold them.  

I remember going to see the movie Backdraft.  It was the most authentic picture of the life of a firefighter.  In one scene, there was a car parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant.  The firemen smashed the driver’s and passenger’s windows out and ran the hose through the car and over to the hydrant.  That happened many times during my 20 years on the job.  But we added a slight twist to this problem.  After the fire was out and we were loading the hose back onto the rig, we turned the water on and filled the car up.  The Police also gave the driver a ticket for parking illegally. Talk about having a bad day. 

Another time, I was driving an aerial ladder, it was snowing, and the temperature dropped 

 way down below zero.  A five-story apartment building was completely involved in fire.  I had to go down a steep hill and make a right turn to get to the building.  As I made the

turn, the back end of the rig slid into a car that was parked too close to the corner.  The whole side of the car was smashed in.  Police gave the driver a ticket for destroying city property – our fender was bent – and one for parking too close to the corner.  My roommate Bob and I worked all night on this fire.  It was so cold they told us we couldn’t turn off the water or shut off the water to the nozzles or the water would freeze solid in the fire hose.  At one point, I came down the 100 foot aerial ladder to get a cup of coffee.  Even though I had gloves on, I couldn’t open my fingers to hold the coffee, they were so cold. 

24 hours later, Bob and I and eight cops landed in Mexico for a 2-week vacation.  It was 94 degrees in the airport and we thought we were going to melt.  We soon thawed out and adjusted – but it was quite a shock to the system. 

10 YEARS LATER AT THE HAMPTONS

We rented a house in the Hamptons for 10 years and with almost the same group of guys.  Only 2 guys got married during the 10 year period and they were replaced by 2 others who wanted in on the fun.    

Every year the rent was going up so we needed to make some money to offset our expenses.  I made a deal with a beer distributor near the Firehouse where I worked.  We would buy 10 cases of beer every Friday night all summer if he would give us a discount.  When we got to the beach, we would put 3 cases in each of 3 garbage cans along with some ice.  We would spend most of Saturday on the beach telling girls that we were having a party with a band and beer -- $3 to get in, $2 for the band and $1 for the beer.  We would start the night with one full garbage can of cold beer in the kitchen.  When the beer got low, we collected another dollar for more beer.  In came the second can full of ice and beer.  And so it went.  

We started to have cookouts on Sundays.  In those days, there were lots of farms out on

Long Island.  They’re now mostly vineyards and wineries.   We would buy 200 lbs. of potatoes, 2-3 bushels of corn, and a front quarter of beef.  We told everyone it was a YAK roast.  We would dig a large hole on the beach above the high water mark so it was on our property.  We would line the hole with bricks or cement blocks and add 8 bags of charcoal.  We drove 2 pipes through the beef to form an X.  Four guys would  pick up the beef and place it on the fire.  A front quarter of beef has lots of fat on it so, when we placed it over the fire, flames shot up about 10 feet.  Everyone on the beach would come over to see what we were doing.  We’d invite everyone to the cookout at 5PM.  We would soak the corn and potatoes in salt water for a few hours, then wrap them in aluminum foil and toss them into the coals.  The Irish used to call the potatoes done this way “Mickeys”.   Some people liked their “Mickeys” and corn really charred so they would leave them on the fire until the foil was black.  We charged $5 a head for food and all the beer you wanted.  This helped out a lot with the rent. 

As a firefighter, I was often off during the week so I would go fishing.  If I caught a lot of fish, I would clean and filet them and they would be on that weekend’s menu.  Wrapped in foil with butter, onions, lemon slices, salt and pepper and cooked over the charcoal – they were great.  Plus we used much less charcoal on the fish. 

There were lots of new guys renting on the beach so we organized a softball league.  One house would play against another house on Saturday mornings with a barrel of beer on third base.  Losers paid for the beer.  It was a good deal if you had a good team – if not...

We knew there was a noise ordinance in the village of Hampton Bays and that the local police would show up about 1 AM to close our party down.  We would make another beer collection just after midnight and when the party was over we had lots of beer and money left over for Sunday’s cookout.   

Most people started back to NYC about 9 PM on Sunday night.  They would hit bumper to bumper traffic on the Long Island Expressway and it would take them 3 -4 hours to get home.  Us “old timers” would go to bed at 9 PM, set the alarm for 2 AM (so we’d get 5 hours of sleep).  A Shower and a shave and we’d start back around 3AM.  In the 60’s the Long Island Expressway was only finished to Riverhead, Long Island.  From there we took Rte. 27, a 2 lane road across Long Island to the ocean and north to the Hamptons.  At 3 AM no one was out on Rte. 27 so we made great time.  The Expressway still had lots of traffic at 3AM but at least it was usually still moving so we would make it home under 2 hours.  We’d get another 2 hours of sleep and then go to work.  We couldn’t wait to do it all over again the next weekend. 

MY FIRST BOAT

 

One day while out on building inspection, I noticed an old boat in the back yard of a house.  An old high school friend of mine used to live there.  I knocked on the door and asked if he still did.  His mother answered the door and told me that he was still there, but he was at work.  He would be back after 6PM.  I came back that evening and it was great to see him and catch up on the last 6 years.  I asked about the old boat and said I was looking to buy one.  Turns out that someone at the marina where his dad kept his boat wanted to get rid of it and gave it to him.  His dad parked in the back yard – 2 years ago.  It was an 18’ plywood cabin cruiser with a 40HP Mercury engine on a trailer.  He said I could have it for $50.

First I had to see if my sister would let me work on it in her back yard.  She was in the middle of a divorce and her husband was removing his things from the garage.  She said I could put it in there.  Bob and I towed the boat into her driveway, but it was too tall (on the trailer) to fit into the garage.  So I built a cradle with wheels on it and put the boat onto the cradle – this way I could wheel it out onto the driveway to work on it and push it back into the garage at night.  I worked on that boat all winter.  I sanded the whole hull down to bare plywood, layered it with fiberglass resin and cloth, more resin, two coats of paint – it looked brand new!  Then I started on the inside cabin.  My sister remade the seats and sewed curtains for the windows.  

The outboard motor hadn’t been run in over 2 years, so I replaced all the parts that I could.  Even then it was a bear to start – 20-30 pulls before it started.  Once it started, it ran great but I tried really hard not to stall it.  I didn’t want to go through that process again. 

Memorial Day was a 3-day weekend and the beginning of summer out at the Hamptons.  Bob and I towed the boat out to a boat yard where we could launch it and drive it to the dock at our rented summer house. We used the boat all summer but it was very slow.  The 40HP outboard had to work really hard to move the boat now that it had the added weight of all that new fiberglass.  When the summer was over, we put the boat in storage at a marina.  I told the owner I wanted to sell the outboard and buy a larger one.  I found an 85HP Johnson motor with only 25 hours on it.  The owner had lost his job, sold his boat, and made me a good deal on the motor.  Bob and another friend, Frank, helped me load the motor into my car.  We took it to the firehouse to store it over the winter.  

The motor came with everything, even a gas tank.  I took all the parts out to the Hamptons and I would work on the boat whenever the weather was nice.  When it was done, Bob and Frank and I put the motor in my car, took it to a marina with a work slip and a wench.  We put the boat into the water and floated it over to the dock.  Frank wasn’t very mechanically inclined, so we sent him for lunch supplies and beer.  It took Bob and I about 2 hours to hook everything up.  Now all it took was one turn of the key and the engine started.  Thank God!  When Frank got back, we took the boat out into Peconic Bay for a cruise!  

We started out slowly, getting the feel of the new motor – then we went faster, faster until we were flying across the bay.  The wind picked up and seas became choppy.  We were bouncing and pounding on the waves so we backed down on the throttle.  Frank had gone down into the cabin to make sandwiches.  He started yelling that something was wrong – water was pouring into the cabin! He was in water up to his ankles.  I looked at the port side of the boat and the fiberglass was coming off.  We stopped the boat and watched the remaining fiberglass peel off that side and sink to the bottom of the bay.  We figured that one of the waves must have slammed the hull so badly that it split the keel wide open, the plywood underneath was delaminating, and the water got in between the plywood and fiberglass and peeled it right off the boat.  This $50 boat was a headache from day one and I knew I wasn’t putting any more time or effort into it! 

We decided to try to get the boat back to the marina and get the new engine off.  At least I could save something.  We crept back to the dock and unhooked all the wiring and controls.  By the time I was down to the last few connections, I was actually working with my hands underwater.  The dock master wanted that boat out of the slip before it sank there.  So did I!  We decided to paddle it out into the bay and let it sink.  I made sure to take the ID numbers off the one side of the boat that was still there.  I didn’t want anyone tracing this new “reef” back to me.  Frank wanted no part of this plan, so he took the motor and all the parts in my car back to the house.  

Bob and I paddled the boat out into the bay, drinking the beer as we went.  Well, the boat wasn’t sinking as fast as we would have liked.  The tide was going out and we hoped it would carry the boat to the inlet and out to sea.  But we were quickly losing the tide.  I went down into the cabin, the water was now up to my chest and it was cold!  I opened the forward cabin windows, the water started coming over the bow and into the cabin.  Bob and I moved up onto the cabin roof and we were leaning against the windshield – drinking beer and laughing at this strange “cruise” we were on.  Every now and then, we would hear air bubbles coming from the cabin and the boat would go down another 2 or 3 inches.  We finally made it to the end of the inlet.  There were 3 large boat slips with lots of docks out there and they were full of people – watching us and the sinking boat.  They decided to “help us out” and they called the Coast Guard. 

Now, we were trying to get out into the inlet to sink this thing.  We wanted it in deep water so it wouldn’t interfere with navigation channels.  We didn’t want the Coast Guard involved in this project.  Well, they showed up – told us to board their boat and they would tow us to the Coast Guard Station – NOT where we wanted to be.  During the towing process, the boat was taking on so much water and became so heavy, the engines on the Coast Guard’s boat began to overheat.  They told us to get back on my boat and they would send a tow boat out to get us.  Sure!  Now we were way too close to shore where a sunken boat was sure to cause problems.  We waited until they were out of sight and decided to swim to shore.  We had one six pack of beer left and we pushed it along as we swam to shore.  That’s when I learned that canned beer floats in salt water!  People were cheering when we got to shore.  We all watched as my boat sank – about 4 feet from the end of the dock.  Not exactly what we had planned.

The man who owned these docks also sold bait and tackle and lobsters in his store on Dune Road.  We didn’t want him to know who the boat belonged to, so we avoided as many people as we could and walked down Dune Road to hitchhike back to the beach.  I called my insurance company and they paid me $400 for my poor boat.  I figured I had made out pretty good.  

During that winter, Bob and I drove out to the inlet and bought some lobsters from that store on Dune Road.  We told the owner we had seen a boat sink last summer and wondered what happened to it.  He wasn’t a happy man.  Apparently when the large lobster boats returned from sea, they couldn’t pull into the slips because of my boat, so they used grappling hooks and tossed the boat to shallow water at the end of the docks. The owner told us that they had had some bad storms and high tides so now the boat was high and dry on an empty lot.  Bob and I walked to the lot.  There was the boat.  Some kids had stripped it of anything valuable – which wasn’t much.  We went back the following summer and all that was left was the bottom of the boat and some ribs.  My next boat was definitely going to be a row boat!