A quick note:
Instead of posting "No one gets murdered in coach class" I decided to do a podcast in honor of Father's Day, which which was this past Sundy.
Another quick note:
It's been brough to my attention that I got Frank's name wrong in Episode 2. The artist's name was Frank W. Parks, not Frank Price. Apologies AND thanks to Jeff Creath for the correction.
And now... The Big Pink Hotel
It's true that most of the traveling I've done in my life has been on the ground. It's not that I have anything against flying. I like flying just fine. But ground travel has always been ... more convienent. I've been all over the country on bus and train; but I've also driven a good deal too, and rode across a chunk of it in a car. As a matter of fact, my taste for travel was probably fostered early, in the vacations my family took to visit relatives in Saint Petersburg Florida every few years. And although my dad worked around airplanes, we didn't fly. We drove.
Our trips south to the sunshine from our home outside Bethel, Ohio usually occured in July ... the off seaon. We always left early in the morning, when it was still dark. Dad was an early riser by habit thanks to 20 plus years in the military and when he was ready to go, we launched out into the darkness to start our 14 hour trip to the white sands and jade waters.
The last time we went to Florida as a family, Dad had just bought a new truck... a blue Chevy S-10 with an extended cab and with a matching cap. Since the extended cab wasn't big enough for us to ride comfortably , Dad decided my older brother and I could stretch out in the truck bed. We could take chair pillows and blankets, our walkmen and headphones, and whatever else we wanted (within reason) to keep ourselves entertained.
It was a grand adventure, watching the interstate fall behind us through the rattling back window hatch of the cap. My brother and I started out trying to make a game out of it all, but in the end, we left one another to our own devices.
Late in the afternoon on the second day, we would roll across the Sunshine Skyway. I always knew we were close when I saw the big pink hotel on the horizion, standing up and out amongst the faded brown and sky blue stucco.
The Don CeSar then, as now, was a swanky and expensive resort and was well out of my parents' price range. we stayed at a small motel down the beach from it though.
I didn't know it then, but I was, even then, brushing up against literary history. The hotel, built in 1928, had once been patronzized by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I remember finding out that when Iived in New Orleans that F. Scott lived on Palmyra in Mid-City... not two blocks from the (barely) rennovated crack house turned rooming I lived in on North Jefferson Davis. There was a ring and a resonance to it. When I think about the big pink hotel, on that stretch of white beach along the Gulf of Mexico I think about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wonder if he felt about the gulf and St. Petersburg like my dad did. Dad loved it down there. If he had lived long enough to retire, he and my mom were going to move down there. That was always the plan. Dad was happy, but his eye was always on the horizion. Always on the white beach, that jade water, with that epic pink hotel working as a beacon from a thousand miles away.
I got that from him, I think. That eye on the horizion. I'm pretty sure I my love for seeing new things, people watching, and my itchy foot from him, too. I like to think that I serve them and his memory well with every mile I travel. Because where I am is just fine. But Out There is bound to be pretty interesting, too.
Thanks for listening to Episode 3 of A Record of Well Worn Travel Boots. Be sure to find me and subscribe on Podbean, Google Play, or Spotify. Also be sure to check out the Spotify playlist, which are songs that I listened out on my most recent trip out to Los Angeles. More on that in upcoming episodes.
Look me up on Twitter and Instagram, @dirtysacred. You can find me on Facebook as well.
Thanks again for listening. May the road forever rise to meet your feet.
Instead of posting "No one gets murdered in coach class" I decided to do a podcast in honor of Father's Day, which which was this past Sundy.
Another quick note:
It's been brough to my attention that I got Frank's name wrong in Episode 2. The artist's name was Frank W. Parks, not Frank Price. Apologies AND thanks to Jeff Creath for the correction.
And now... The Big Pink Hotel
It's true that most of the traveling I've done in my life has been on the ground. It's not that I have anything against flying. I like flying just fine. But ground travel has always been ... more convienent. I've been all over the country on bus and train; but I've also driven a good deal too, and rode across a chunk of it in a car. As a matter of fact, my taste for travel was probably fostered early, in the vacations my family took to visit relatives in Saint Petersburg Florida every few years. And although my dad worked around airplanes, we didn't fly. We drove.
Our trips south to the sunshine from our home outside Bethel, Ohio usually occured in July ... the off seaon. We always left early in the morning, when it was still dark. Dad was an early riser by habit thanks to 20 plus years in the military and when he was ready to go, we launched out into the darkness to start our 14 hour trip to the white sands and jade waters.
The last time we went to Florida as a family, Dad had just bought a new truck... a blue Chevy S-10 with an extended cab and with a matching cap. Since the extended cab wasn't big enough for us to ride comfortably , Dad decided my older brother and I could stretch out in the truck bed. We could take chair pillows and blankets, our walkmen and headphones, and whatever else we wanted (within reason) to keep ourselves entertained.
It was a grand adventure, watching the interstate fall behind us through the rattling back window hatch of the cap. My brother and I started out trying to make a game out of it all, but in the end, we left one another to our own devices.
Late in the afternoon on the second day, we would roll across the Sunshine Skyway. I always knew we were close when I saw the big pink hotel on the horizion, standing up and out amongst the faded brown and sky blue stucco.
The Don CeSar then, as now, was a swanky and expensive resort and was well out of my parents' price range. we stayed at a small motel down the beach from it though.
I didn't know it then, but I was, even then, brushing up against literary history. The hotel, built in 1928, had once been patronzized by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I remember finding out that when Iived in New Orleans that F. Scott lived on Palmyra in Mid-City... not two blocks from the (barely) rennovated crack house turned rooming I lived in on North Jefferson Davis. There was a ring and a resonance to it. When I think about the big pink hotel, on that stretch of white beach along the Gulf of Mexico I think about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wonder if he felt about the gulf and St. Petersburg like my dad did. Dad loved it down there. If he had lived long enough to retire, he and my mom were going to move down there. That was always the plan. Dad was happy, but his eye was always on the horizion. Always on the white beach, that jade water, with that epic pink hotel working as a beacon from a thousand miles away.
I got that from him, I think. That eye on the horizion. I'm pretty sure I my love for seeing new things, people watching, and my itchy foot from him, too. I like to think that I serve them and his memory well with every mile I travel. Because where I am is just fine. But Out There is bound to be pretty interesting, too.
Thanks for listening to Episode 3 of A Record of Well Worn Travel Boots. Be sure to find me and subscribe on Podbean, Google Play, or Spotify. Also be sure to check out the Spotify playlist, which are songs that I listened out on my most recent trip out to Los Angeles. More on that in upcoming episodes.
Look me up on Twitter and Instagram, @dirtysacred. You can find me on Facebook as well.
Thanks again for listening. May the road forever rise to meet your feet.
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