I’ll ask my brother about his address in Goldenrod, maybe you’ll know it. I’ll get back to you on that.

Where in Goldenrod? It’s unincorportated (they tried in the 50s and were voted down). First it was an Orlando rural route, then we got a post office in the late 50s, but it stayed R.R. 6, Orlando, then it became Winter Park street addresses even though we are 3 miles from Winter Park and still an unincorporated community, although we are disappearing like a puddle in the path of a tsunami.

Green Acres, my abode south of Clermont, is on the edge of the Green Swamp, 50 miles west of Goldenrod. The family homestead is still there, still unbulldozed, and still the family homestead, although the house across the street, which belonged to my uncle when I was a child, and was a neat Spanish mission style house, just got leveled and hauled away in construction dumpsters. I wasn’t there while the carnage was occurring, thank lobster. It still makes me sick to look across the street. I guess the day will come when our cracker house, like the woods, the groves, and the wetlands, is just unremembered history.

The swamp between Goldenrod and Winter Park is now two large subdivisions. The peat fires would burn underground for weeks when they were raping the refuge of wildcats, panthers, alligators, frogs, great blue herons, myriad swamp plants, rattlesnakes, water mocassins, and every other subtropical creature and plant to fill a child’s days (and his imagination at night).

Muddafukkas.

In the small world department, my brother, who now lives in the next county and whose home I just returned from eating Christmas Eve dinner and doing gift exchange for the kids, used to live in Goldenrod, though he had a Winter Park address. I asked him about it and he confirmed it tonight. So as it turns out, I have been to Goldenrod, there on the edge of the Green Swamp. Wouldn’t it be great if your Jeep dug up HIS front yard during that one final fishing trip? Talk about a small world! Life is strange and full of interesting surprises, isn’t it?

Best to you and your family.

Your pal, cooper.

It’s in Hendersonville. This is the first year in several that I’ve missed the glorious spring and so not-Florida summer that blesses the folk in WNC. I do plan to be up there when the mountain laurel do their thing this year. By the way, do you listen to one of the two best radio stations in the southeastern United States, WNCW? Tampa boasts the other one, WMNF, which I pick up by virtue of an antenna w/signal booster on a tall pole, marooned as I am at the moment here on the edge of the Green Swamp.

Merry Christmas to all, or Seasons Greetings to any who might take offense to that greeting.

My dad is from Philadelphia, and I lived in New Jersey (Trenton) for a year. Your Christmas card is wonderful. Made me really nostalgic for the snow and the feel of regular folk PA/NJ.

There are two of the cows at the corner of a pasture outside Hendersonville, NC. My sweetie was driving along that particular country road when she rounded a curve and was confronted by them (they are the same size as y’all’s Big Cow). I immediately got a phone call from her: “We have cows!”

Shameless site promotion: I made up a Christmas Card that touches upon this ridiculous debate. Stop on by and have a peek!

http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005-from-an other.html

If anybody wants a hard copy, or would like the hi-res image file (or other angles of the same image) to make their own version, just let me know!