On New Year’s Eve in Manhattan, a gigantic bejeweled Waterford Crystal ball weighing over 12,000 pounds is dropped from the tower of the old New York Times building at One Times Square to celebrate the arrival of the new year. In Atlanta, a giant peach descends 138 feet to its eventual resting place in Underground Atlanta. In New Orleans, a large fleur-de-lis falls from the ethers into Jackson Square. And in Key West, the drag queen Sushi is lowered in a huge facsimile of a woman’s high heel shoe at a bar on Duval Street. It’s Florida, what did you expect? In the Sunshine State, we do things that are not popular in other places. Call it the Florida Tao.
Years ago, author Carl Hiaasen began writing comic novels satirizing the bizarre behavior of Florida residents. No matter how hard he tried, though, Carl couldn’t couldn’t conjure up anything crazier than what was happening in real life on the peninsula. Where else is someone arrested for the crime of “eating pasta belligerently,” as 32-year-old Ben Padgett was back in April in drowsy Naples? Where else does a man successfully steal a jeep as Ronnie Dillon Willis did in May in Winter Haven, but then return to the scene of the crime to search for his lost phone? Where else does a nincompoop like 35-year-old Barry Hastings Jr. pose as a police officer and pull over an actual off-duty Tampa cop?
Two weeks ago in Orlando, fun-loving mom Jennifer Yeager, 49, tied a kiddie pool full of water to the top of her Audi Q5 and went for a drive. Odd, but probably not illegal unless your children are inside the pool. Jennifer wants you to know she had a good reason, though. She’d just driven to a friend’s house to have the thing inflated and she didn’t want the pool blowing off the roof on the way home. Sounds perfectly logical to us, but the cops call it endangering the health of a child. It’s always something with those guys.
When Alligators Attack
It wouldn’t be a column about Florida hijinks if those wild and crazy alligators were not involved. Just down the street in Gainesville, Taylor and Trevor Walters were picnicking at Lake Alice on the UF campus when a large gator came stomping up, chased them off their blanket and began getting into the guacamole. The gator consumed an entire block of cheese, some salami, half a watermelon, a pound of grapes and the guac before Trevor got it in his head to spread his arms and start making a lot of noise. The reptile, quite sated, wiped his chin, burped and meandered back into the water, leaving the picnic in a shambles. “You wouldn’t believe how fast that gator swallowed the whole dinner,” exclaimed Walters. “The poor salami didn’t stand a chance.”
In Punta Gorda, Michael Clemons, 22, and Ariel Machan-Le Quire, 25, were stopped at 3:15 a.m. one morning in May for blowing through a stop sign. The two related that they had been collecting snakes and frogs under an overpass, but neglected to mention another 41 small turtles police later turned up. When asked if they had any other surprises, Ariel promptly whipped a one-foot alligator out of her yoga pants, startling her questioners. The offenders were cited for the appropriate violations and the critters were released back into the wild. The cops claimed no further searches of Le-Quire’s clothing were necessary.
Sticking with reptiles for a bit, Thomas Lane, 61, was jailed in April in Brevard County for disturbing the peace, for want of a better crime. Seems Lane, who regards himself as some sort of uncanonized saint, kept marching into local restaurants threatening to destroy everyone with his “army of turtles,” a fearsome thought, indeed. The Indialantic Police Department took issue with this sort of carrying-on and slapped Thomas in jail. The reptile army was never found but the cops later discovered a strange turtle-signal beacon on top of Lane’s roof.
It Takes A Licking And Keeps On Ticking
While we in Florida prefer to be trend-setters rather than mere imitators, we tend to know a good fad when we see one. Just a few weeks after a gentleman in California was arrested for licking a doorbell for three hours, a man in Lake Worth approached the front door of a home, holding a stack of printed fliers. The unidentified man, who was known to the homeowners, then alternated between pointing out various features of the fliers and leaning in to lick the video doorbell, though he lacked the three-hour stamina of his West Coast predecessor. The Village of Palm Springs Police Department is having difficulty categorizing this individual’s exact crime and so far no charges have been filed. “We’re watching him,” the cops assure us, “in case he takes it any further.” We hate to think what that might mean.
Meanwhile, who would have thought killing someone with kindness was a crime? The Santa Rosa County Sheriff”s Office did when Brian Duane Stewart wrote the word “kindness” on his machete and took after a neighbor, waving his weapon and threatening to kill him. The victim was unharmed except for a small cut on his hand while Stewart was booked into the Santa Rosa County Jail on January 19th. The machete was rehabilitated, renamed Chopin, put on probation and sold to a Mexican landscaping outfit at the annual Sheriff’s yard sale. It promises to “live for Jesus” from hereon out.
On a less pleasant front, a strip search of prisoner-to-be Wesley Scott at the Pinellas County Jail on January 4 turned up three syringes cleverly hidden in his (ahem) rectum. Scott, who had been arrested on an outstanding warrant, insisted they were not his and he had no idea where they had come from. “Things can happen when you take a lot of drugs,” he pointed out, and certainly nobody will argue with that. Nonetheless, an additional charge of introducing contraband was added. The syringes were sold to a Mexican landscaping outfit at the annual Sheriff’s yard sale.
Over the course of the year, Collier County deputies seized 332 different marijuana-related items sold in wrapping that resembles popular candy such as Sour Patch Kids. The overall value was reported at $33,600. Although medical marijuana is legal in Florida, there are laws which prohibit the stuff from being packaged in such a way as to potentially attract children. According to Fox News, any THC-infused food must be “sealed in plain, opaque wrapping and marked with a universal marijuana symbol.” The pot products were later sold to a Polish landscaping outfit at the annual Sheriff’s yard sale.
The Further Adventures Of Florida Man
How do you get in trouble just looking at the moon? In Florida, anything is possible. An unidentified couple, both 24-years-old, decided they’d get a better look at January’s Super Blood Wolf Moon from the darkness of the Apoxee Wilderness Trail, which was closed at the time. Cameras in hand, they climbed over a locked gate and sat in the road waiting for the perfect shot. Meanwhile, an unsuspecting police officer blithely patrolling the area in his Ford Explorer was congratulating himself on his unusually quiet night. Oopsie. Before you could say Bad Moon Rising, the police vehicle ran over the stargazers, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries. “We missed the moon shot,” complained one of the perps. “but I think I got a good one of the undercarriage.”
Like many Florida males, Juan Arreguin, 41, enjoyed target shooting in his back yard, even though it was in the middle of a populous neighborhood. In January, Arreguin was blasting away with his Ruger S&W handgun at a bottle set up against some packed down mulch when a shot went astray. It landed on a 21-year-old next door neighbor sitting at her dinner table, injuring her arm and side. “I’ve only been living here a short time,” said the shocked victim. “This almost never happens in Cleveland.”
Melvin Stubbs, 37, a resident of Homestead was very unhappy when police stopped him in January for driving with very dark, illegal window tinting. See, Melvin already had a warrant out for his arrest for violating probation stemming from cocaine sales. Stubbs tried to run, but you know how that goes. Police quickly tasered him and then found four baggies of coke inside his jacket pocket and charged him with cocaine trafficking and resisting arrest. Sometimes, a man just can’t take it any more and resorts to uncivilized behavior. Melvin, locked in the caged rear of the car, began chewing on the seat and did quite a bit of damage before he was discovered. He was charged with property damage: eating a seat, and taken to the pokey with a bizarre smile on his face. “It wasn’t Chateaubriand,” he said, “but it wasn’t bad.”
Jessie Webb, 29, was sure that people were eating his brains out so naturally he had to do something about it. Wouldn’t you? Anyway, Jessie commandeered a Community Watch vehicle from a neighborhood supervisor and went lurching through the hinterlands of Lady Lake’s Orange Blossom Hills Golf and Country Club. Two police cruisers dutifully gave chase as Webb weaved in and out of golf cart paths and around perplexed duffers. Jessie eventually smacked his stolen SUV into the side of a nursing home (remember, it’s Florida) and then attempted to escape on foot without running into any of those brain-eating zombies. Charges were delayed as psychiatrists and fans of the walking dead sought more information.
The Naked And The Dead
People like to get naked in Florida. Which would be fine if they kept it to the friendly confines of their own homes and nudist retreats and didn’t insist on inflicting their nakedness on the rest of us. But it’s Florida, right? Ain’t happenin’.
Anyone who reads the letters-to-the-editor section of the Gainesville Sun realizes that the city is an island of sanity in a sea of crackpots. Nearby High Springs has its share. Thus, it wasn’t a big surprise to local police when residents of Southeast Brawley Terrace began calling in with reports that a nude man covered in mud was acting erratically in the neighborhood. When the cops arrived, they found Donald Watts, 38, nude, high on methamphetamine, turning his flashlight on and off while pacing back and forth in a ditch “making unusual sounds with his mouth.” Did you ever stop to think what fun it might be to be a rural cop?
Naturally, Watts attempted to escape, hiding under the porch of a mobile home, then punching one of the deputies several times. Two deputies used stun guns on the naked man to no effect. They were soon joined by six more cops and Casper, the K-9 cruncher. It was a tough night for Casper. Watts grabbed his head, bit his ear and wrestled him to the ground. Very peeved, Casper promptly bit him in the head and Donald finally gave up. The animal officer was given a course of antibiotics to stave off any infection which might be lingering in the perp’s saliva, then took three days off to go to the beach.
Meanwhile, another naked Florida man got the attention of Cape Coral police when they arrived at a home on Northeast Pine Island Lane to find John Hennessey, 27, chanting and dancing around a fire. Not too bad but Hennessey was also holding a very large knife and talking gibberish. The cherry on the cake came when he threw a rock through the window of a nearby home. When police arrived, the naked man picked up a large wooden stick and began swinging it at officers, who “electronically subdued him,” to put it nicely. When he finally calmed down, Hennessey admitted to taking some psychedelic mushrooms given to him by a friend. “I never tried anything like that before,” he admitted. “They were bitchin’!”
Like Moths To The Flame….
Ratso Rizzo knew he was dying but he felt like everything would be alright if he could just get to Florida. Retirees in the frozen recesses of Bangor dream of moving to the place. Little girls everywhere want to see the mermaids at Weeki-Wachee, small boys in the north wait avidly for Spring Training, adolescents in Iowa think South Beach is the second coming of Sodom and Gomorrah, grannies flock to the pick-up bars in The Villages. It’s The Florida Mystique and it draws people of every persuasion, paupers and billionaires, socialists and neocons, churchgoers and the worst of sinners, nudists and tightasses and practitioners of every sexual inclination. Key West, without a doubt, is the Provincetown of the south. Or perhaps Provincetown is the Key West of the north. 300,000 new residents are moving to Florida every year, the equivalent of adding a new Orlando every 365 days. So what are odds all of them will be sane?
The old motto of the Gainesville Sun was “We Like It Here,” and we do. We like the sun and the sand, the flamingos and the alligators, the funkiness of St. Augustine and the foolishness of Miami Beach. We like to watch the sun rise in Ponte Vedra and set in Cedar Key, both on the same day, if possible (and it certainly is). Where else can you watch a rocket blast off for outer space, drive over a seven-mile bridge and still be back in time for Bingo?
And we especially prize our crazies, our unconventional citizens who march to the beat of a different drum. People like the restaurant owner in Stuart who initiated “Monkey Mondays” so diners would feel free to bring their prehensile pets. People like the Port Orange funeral home magnates who gave away a free cremation at their grand reopening. People like the two mayors of Port Richey who were arrested within 20 days of one another, one for obstruction of justice, the other for practicing medicine without a license. People like the near-naked guy wearing hot pink socks, sneakers, very skimpy underwear and a pink headband, bicycling backwards down 1-95. People like Patrick Eldridge of Jacksonville who parked his tiny Smart Car in his kitchen so it wouldn’t blow away during Hurricane Dorian. Floridians all, contributors to our story, toters of the tangerine banner you’ll see at most of our gateway welcome stations:
“Toto, you’re not in Kansas any more!”
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
