1972 – FIRST TIME With Nana, Aunt Iz and my brother. Packed in the Dart, which broke down in Virginia. Transmission. My grandmother and Isabel arguing loudly about whether to head back or move on, to Florida. To Disney World. My brother and I squirmed for an hour. Isabel prevailed. She was determined to see Ocala: her hometown, where she ran moonshine during Prohibition, straight into Georgia. A fresh-faced teenage girl out for a drive, .22 automatic in her purse. I’d never seen Isabel smile like that. Like I’d never seen her in a dress. She wore creased slacks and men’s shirts, breast pocket bulging with a pack of Pall Malls. Her beer was Ballantine’s, from Newark, New Jersey. Purity. Body. Flavor. Ballantine’s. Isabel had come north in ’44, worked at Grumman alongside my grandmother, Rosies riveting. Her fiance – a flyer – was shot down over Europe so she rented a room from my grandparents. My grandfather died seven years later and Isabel never left. Could it be? Could this story be right? Or did I make it up myself? Piece it together from things heard over the years? We all thought she was Scottish, Cooksey being her last name. Turns out she was adopted. No one knows who her birth mother was. Isabel, left on a doorstep at the orphanage. We made it to Florida With one day for Disney World. One day to see it all: Pirates of the Caribbean The Haunted Mansion Captain Nemo. And, most important to me The Indy Car race. Which was closed Due to rain. Rain?! This piss-ant shit? This isn’t rain. It’s an annoyance! Would real Indy divers quit In this goddamned drizzle? Two thousand miles And I don’t get to race?! 1979 – SECOND TIME Visiting Glenn Katz. My junior High School year. We were best friends since thirteen. Things collapsed at his house. His father, the lawyer – embezzler, philanderer – suffered a heart-attack but did not die. His mother tried to overdose in the bathroom. A year later she’s divorced and they’re in Plantation. Plantation?! Who names a town Plantation? I went anyway, eager to see my best friend. My first flight anywhere. On Delta, when they smoked on board. Glenn: My God! He had transformed. Lean, muscular – a football player. This kid who loved Monty Python and Cat Stevens now hung out with guys nicknamed “Mongo”. Big, stupid rednecks who wanted nothing more than to snap your bones. I watched them fight more than once not knowing what to do. Jump in or stay neutral? I was Switzerland Drinking Busch from cans. My first real exposure to beer and with those hot dogs from dinner It’s no wonder they came up the way they did, right there by the pool. 1999 – THIRD TIME Dad left Massachusetts. Gave up the Antique Store on the main drag. Memories. He couldn’t come up with anything better than Memories? He packed it in for Jupiter with Sharon (wife number three). Jupiter, Florida: birthplace of Burt Reynolds. Home to the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater. Not anymore. Dad got Sharon a ’47 Studebaker. Red convertible. They drove it around on Sundays, Took it to shows, Won ribbons. She sat beside him, hangdog look on her face. He puffed his pipe, smoothed his mustache. They lived in a gated community. Big, beautiful house stuffed with antiques. All that money he never spent on his family. We went to a flea market where I bought a legal switchblades. One night, up late, he told me again how he didn’t think he was my father but he loved me anyway. 2011 – FOURTH TIME My brother Mario died same age I am now. He was trying to kick all the opioids. I watched him once cut open a pain patch and eat the goop with a spoon. He broke his back on a riding mower when it tipped over on him. Went doctor shopping in Floriduh. When he died alone in his double-wide, my nephew and I went down there. We wanted to get his stuff before his “friends” descended. That house was like something out of Silence Of The Lambs. Everything coated in nicotine. Our eyes stung so bad we found a Lowe’s and bought goggles and masks. Hours spent searching through the dimness, sound of a braying mule and gunfire off in the distance. I found a bullet hole in the bathroom and closet full of painkillers. It’s a vision I can’t shake and one more reason to stay out of Floriduh. When I retire and want out of the weather it’s Southern California or bust. Yes, it’s expensive, there’s the drought, fires, mudslides, earthquakes. Still, it’s not Floriduh.