Tuesday, October 11th, 2022
My Dear America:
It has been difficult to watch CNN and MSNBC recently and see the Nightmare Devastation that has taken place in what has normally been one of America's most beautiful states, The Magnificent State of Florida. Like many Americans I have had times in my life that I dreamed of visiting Florida and at times even Living in Florida.
My first recognition of where Florida was and what Florida was happened a very long time ago when I was in Grade School and my Teacher, who was acquainted with a Teacher in Fort Myers Florida, helped to set up a situation whereby students in my Elementary School in Scranton, Pennsylvania became Pen Pals with students in a Fort Myers, Florida Grade school.
I did send a couple of rather bland letters to a girl in Fort Myers and got a couple of bland letters back from my young lady Pen Pal. I remember thinking when I got a picture of the young lady enclosed in one of her letters that she (Unfortunately I don't remember her name) was pretty and I had visions of one day traveling to Florida to meet her. Sadly, that never happened and although we wrote to each other for awhile, at some point the letters stopped and we lost contact.
I remember back when I was about 10 or 11 actually traveling to Miami, Florida with my family. We drove all the way from Pennsylvania to Florida and back again in a car that was not very reliable and gave my Dad problems a couple of times on the way to the Sunshine state and on the road back home. On those occasions that our car broke down my mother was quick to roll up the car windows even though it was hot as hell in the summertime in those southern states because she didn't want my sister and I to be exposed to the Extremely Salty Language that my Dad always used on those occasions when dealing with our car breaking down. Normally my dad almost never cursed in front of his kids but on the road to and from Florida when the car stopped the old man became like Lenny Bruce, except not funny like Lenny Bruce, just pissed off.
Despite our car problems we did finally make it to Miami and someone was passing out flyers on the street to passing cars advertising some unbelievably low discount rates for rooms at the Fontainebleau Hotel. When we finally arrived at the Hotel, I couldn't believe my eyes, The place was fabulous. It was located right on the beach and it had a pool, as well. We moved in and heard my Dad say over and over during the time we were there:
"Man, This is Livin. This is really Livin."
He was right too. It really was Living it up in this incredibly beautiful hotel.
There were two things that stick out in my mind about the Fontainebleau Hotel.
After we had moved into our room I had walked down the hall to get some ice when I heard a familiar tune. When we traveled to Miami it was in the early fifties and I had spent a good deal of time in my life listening to the radio. We didn't have a television and almost no one that we knew had one. My favorite radio program was "The Lone Ranger". While I was on my mission to get ice I heard the theme song (The William Tell overture) from the Lone Ranger coming out of a room with an open door. I found myself walking over to the door and looking into the room. There was no one in the room but I could see something incredible. On what I would come to find out was a Television Screen I could see for the first time My Favorite Hero, "The Lone Ranger" on a White Horse riding across the screen. I couldn't believe it. It was too much. I walked into the room and proceeded to watch "The Lone Ranger" on Television for the First Time and The Best Time in my life. Just around the end of the program I heard one of my parents calling out for me in the hall and I raced out to find both of my parents looking for me and obviously freaked out that I never made it back to the room with the ice. They forgave me pretty quickly though when they found out what had happened and later on we watched some television together as a family in this room where the TV was available to hotel guests.
The other thing I remember about the Fontainebleau was when we all came down to the pool and went swimming. My sister, who was about five or six at the time could swim a little but was not yet the great swimmer that she would become in the future. She had a little plastic tube that looked like a fish that she enjoyed swimming with. There was an opening in the back of the little tube which made it easy for her to wrap around her. She and I were in the water swimming around when she slipped out of the tube and began to sink. I saw what happened and grabbed her quickly and after that incident I kept a close eye on her.
Later in their life my parents became Florida Snowbirds. After visiting in Florida with a family that they had met on a trip to Ireland they bought a trailer near Fort Pierce and traveled to Florida every Winter leaving PA in October or November and returning in the Spring for several years. I remember one year when my father was so sick that we were afraid he was going to die and worried that he wouldn't survive the trip to Florida that year. He wanted to travel to Florida, though even though he looked awful when he left for the Sunshine state. When he left I was afraid that this might be the last time I saw him. My Dad, who was in his eighties at the time of this trip came back from Florida the next Spring looking and feeling like a million bucks. It was obviously one more Florida Miracle.
I visited Disney World on Two occasions. Once with my two older children and once with my two youngest. We all had good times at Disney World. It is probably impossible to have a bad time at Disney world. When I took my two oldest kids to Disney World we also visited Daytona Beach and ended up in the water with a shark just weeks after having seen "Jaws." The three of us were way out in the water when I looked back towards shore and realized that no one else was in the water except us. A Lifeguard was jumping up and down on his lifeguard stand pointing in the direction of the shark. I grabbed my kids and we got the hell out of the water very quickly.
When I was at Disney World with my younger kids one of my daughters had been invited to dance with her dance class at one of the Disney Stages. At one point I got separated from my wife and kids but we got together later. When we were scheduled to leave Disney World the bus pulled out without us and luckily we found a kindhearted young lady who worked at Disney World who got us to the airport in time because Dance Teacher "Miss Sharon" could have cared less that we might have been stranded in Disney World. Suffice it to say that there were no more dance classes with "Miss Sharon"
My wife and I before we had our kids visited Florida one year when my wife's parents and my parents were living in different areas of Florida at the same time. We flew into Fort Lauderdale and visited with my In Laws in a Condo by the Beach. We also drove up to Fort Pierce where my Parents were staying. We had a great time with our parents and since it was January we flew out of PA in an ice storm and although we had perfect weather every day we were in Florida we returned from Florida to find a snow storm in PA. It made us very appreciative of having a weeks worth of beautiful weather interrupting our terrible Pennsylvania weather.
Several years ago my wife and I found out about "The Villages" in Florida and thought seriously about moving there. There were several reasons that we didn't move to the villages but when I ended up seeing an alligator running across a golf course at the Villages on You Tube that was the end of that dream for me.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Florida and I treasure my memories and dreams of Florida but after watching what has happened during Hurricane Season nearly every year I have come to terms with the fact that while Pennsylvania may have its problems it is, overall, a beautiful state with many wonderful people and in the end I am happy to be here and look forward to many more years of happiness in my home state.
I live in hope that my fellow Pennsylvanians will reject The Nazi and the Carpetbagger who are running for Governor and Senator in November of 2022. I really don't want to live in a state in which our Governor is more extreme than Florida Governor DeSantis. I also don't want to live in a state where an Ex President who wants to be a future dictator lives.
At this terrible time in Florida I wish the residents well. You are, for the most part, wonderful people who deserve better than what you got from Hurricane Ian. You also deserve better than Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.
God bless us all.
Sincerely Yours
Jerry Gallagher
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