Thursday, March 13
On Thursday, in the warmth of mid-morning we trekked our way
westbound with Avis and Jim Brown on route 60 to eventually find ourselves in
Seffner, just outside of Tampa at Lazydays RV. On the way we found ourselves at
the ear-popping elevation of 112 feet above sea level in the town of Mulberry,
where in the 1840s the longleaf yellow pine was logged and Badcock furniture
store’s base was founded. If you are not from the south, Badcock’s is a
dealer-owned furniture store now operating in eight southern states. Also in
this area of Polk County is the world’s most productive phosphate rock
mining.
We find ourselves in Plant City at
the quaint Whistlestop Restaurant, where malted milkshakes are still made by
hand using the old-fashioned stainless steel mixer with scoops of ice cream,
chocolate syrups, topped with fresh whipped cream, stemmed maraschino cherries and
reminding us of long-ago soda fountains. We made sure that we did not refer to
our server as “a soda jerk”. Which reminds me, do you know where the term came
from? The kids, typically guys, who manned the soda fountain, made ice cream
sodas that had flavored sodas added. The soda was added by jerking the soda
water spigot. Ergo, soda jerk. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program. All
menu items at Whistlestop are homemade, including the breads and soups. While
enjoying lunch we tried to count the railcars passing by on the tracks just
outside the restaurant. The train was long, there was no caboose, and we lost
count.
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We tackled the interstate to arrive at Lazydays, an RV dealer with an
enormous inventory of new and pre-owned luxury motor homes to travel trailers.
The vast sales team of Lazydays should be wearing roller skates for the ground
they need to cover. If we have time we will probably return; but not carrying
our checkbook. After drooling over motor
homes we went to Parkesdale Farm to salivate over their strawberry shortcakes.
Parkesdale, near Plant City, is the largest family-operated strawberry grower
in Florida. On average they harvest nearly 3 million pounds of berries per
season. Also at the stand are fresh fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, we
noticed quite a number of fruits that had been imported from Honduras. It is
assumed they get their fruits and veggies from the farmers market that we just
visited. Interestingly, there was a type of onion-strawberry onion- that had a
nice, pleasant bouquet. A sign indicated the onions are grown at the end of the
strawberry rows because of the amount of fertilizer and water needed to produce
this small, sweet onion.
Sunday, March 16
We had a pleasant two-hour drive to Cocoa Beach, to meet
with Don and Sherry Payment. Don replaced Dave in the fire department at
Carrier when Dave was promoted to the safety division there, many moons ago. Don and Sherry are newbies to the camping world,
having jumped in with the purchase of a 35 foot motor home recently. Don and
Dave spent a few hours reminiscing about the faces and changes of Carrier,
while Sherry and I traded war-stories of rv travel. We will meet up with the
Payments again during our annual trek to Syracuse in the spring.
Being traditionally Irish the Costello’s displayed the wearing
of the green and enjoying corned beef and cabbage with other fine Irishmen (and
not so Irishmen) at the park. Dave’s Costello family (Gaelic pronunciation is Mac
Oisdealbh ) hails back to the MacCostello land that was known as the Barony of
Costello until the end of the 16th century in what is now part of Mayo. In
1565, their seat of power was near Ballaghaderreen, which is now part of County
Roscommon. The Costello name is quite common in the area both County Galway and
County Mayo. As well, there is a village in western Galway named Costelloe.
Tuesday is a planned R&R day. It is alot to keep up with retirement!
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