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Flamingo Tour
Postcard 1: Griswalds Hit The Road
My heart sank as we pulled into the empty parking lot. There
was absolutely no sign of life. The web site had been down for
weeks, and my attempts to phone the roadside attraction were
to no avail--the phone rang into an eternal abyss. Could it be
possible, this post-war roadside attraction, having just celebrated
their 50th anniversary in 1997, had succumbed to the mighty power
of the Mouse, only an hour away in Orlando? At that moment, I
was a living Clark Griswald, making an attempt at having a nice
vacation.
The first leg of our Flamingo Tour, a 1,400-mile loop through
Florida, and already we're not meeting much success. We had been
traveling south down U.S. Highway 19 (which passes within 100
feet of Barnes Place) for the last nine hours. Our plan is to
stop and do everything we would not be allowed to do if others
were in tow--alligator wrestling, swamp buggy tours, lunch with
an astronaut at Cape Canaveral, and the kick-off crown jewel--the
underwater mermaid show at Weeki Wachee Springs.
And now, after 12 years of longing to see the Mermaids do
life-like things under water, 378 miles from home, I stand at
the gate, fingers clutched to the chain-link, shaking my head.
Just like the Tupperware Museum of Food Storage Containers in
Kissimmee--gone, and forever forgotten. An icon from bygone days
living only in the minds of a few random women housed in nursing
homes, proudly proclaiming to their bingo partners, "I was
a Weeki Wachee Mermaid."
"I didn,t even have a chance to use my 2-for-1 coupon,"
I said to Tony.
"Tim, they close at four o'clock. It's six o'clock,"
said Tony. "And they open at 10 tomorrow. We can go tomorrow
morning, first thing, before heading on to Naples."
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