The Man Who Painted His Toyota Red

Indiatlantic, Florida -

We slept with the sliding glass door open so we could hear the surf roar in the night.

I love sleazy, tacky Florida beach motel rooms. This one is over the top with plastic palms festooned with colored lights. I had two margaritas and a sushi eel roll for dinner last night.

I get up at 5 AM and go into the bathroom to read so I won’t disturb Mrs. Phred. In the harsh florescent light I see that there are apparent bloodstains on the bathroom mirror frame and similar smears on the door jam...too much for a laid-back housekeeper to deal with.


The beach is white sand extending north to space shuttle at Cape Canaveral and south to Sebastian Inlet where they found Spanish gold bars on the reef. The sun comes up on the horizon in the morning on this side of Florida...We could go back to the other side and watch it set tonight...

My cousin and her two of her grandchildren drop by for a picnic. The day is perfect, about 72 F and breezy. My niece tells me that she is ten. I ask her when and she tells me next September. We spend about three hours getting knocked down by the waves. She shrieks with delight after each wave sends her tumbling in the surf...She feels something touch her foot and I tell her it’s probably a banana fish…


I give her my camera and she takes some good pictures. She catches a water-skier being pulled along by his own personal kite thing, a surf fisherman and several Hibiscus flowers. My nephew brings a SF book. We talk authors for awhile and trade books.

Strangely, my cousin and I both made the decision to join the Air Force in August, 1963. She was a WAF. I looked her up at basic training in Texas and we went to the movies together at the base theatre. We try to remember the name of the movie but nothing comes.


I spoke to the motel manager about the apparent blood stains on the door jam of the bathroom. He told me about the man who painted his Toyota red. He was the motel maintenance man. His name was Oliver. He had an old 1985 Toyota which he liked to paint red. The unusual thing was that he used a paintbrush and a bucket of red paint and did it about once a week.

The Toyota must have weighed an extra 1,000 pounds or so at the end of the first year from the inch thick layers of peeling red enamel.

They always asked him why he liked to paint his Toyota red, but he would only giggle and never gave an answer. He painted the tires, hubcaps, bumpers and everything red. Once he went too far and painted red over the headlights and the police stopped him when he drove to the 7-11 for a six-pack at night and gave him a warning not to paint over the headlights again.


Then he really went too far and painted red over the windows and got involved in an accident out on A1A. They arrested him and the judge gave him a stern warning not to paint his headlights, windows or rearview mirrors red any more.

One evening he was painting the Toyota red and a young college student named Leo who was on Spring Break from New York City came close to ask him why he was painting his Toyota red. She was wearing a bikini on her way to the beach.

He whispered something inaudible and she came closer to hear the reason. He began to paint her, holding her arm tightly as she screamed and dipping the brush in the bucket rapidly.

Leo ran into room 15 and called the Indiatlantic police and then locked herself in the bathroom. The other students that Leo was with told the police that Oliver had gone back into his darkened living quarters with the red paint. The police entered with flashlights and found him in the bathroom painted with red enamel from head to toe. He would have painted his teeth, but he forgot. He tried to paint his eyeballs, but it hurt too much.

They sent him too the state mental hospital in Chatahootchee for observation for six months. When he got out, he got a job distributing pamphlets for a Koreshan minister. Koresheans believe that we live inside a hollow sphere. They conduct frequent experiments to prove that the horizon slopes upwards.

Oliver did well on that job for about a month, but then he painted the minister and several of his parishioners red. Then he drove the Toyota to Webb City, Missouri and now lives near the public library, where he is considered fairly normal and is a good customer for the nearby Glidden Paint store.

Anyway, that’s how the red stains got on the door jam and mirror in room 15.

The Conch Republic

 Grassy Key, Florida 

The Conch Republic celebrates Independence Day every April 23 as part of a week-long festival of activities involving numerous businesses in Key West. The organization — a "Sovereign State of Mind", seeks only to bring more "Humor, Warmth and Respect" to a world in sore need of all three.

You can usually find conch in grassy sea beds in warm tropical waters. A Cayman Islander taught me to cook them chemically by soaking them overnight in lemon juice. Conch fritters and conch chowder are widely available in Key West as is Key lime pie. In case you wondered "what's a conch fritter?" please see my blog.

In 1982, the US Border Patrol set up a checkpoint at the choke point on the north end of the Keys and began to randomly search motorists’ cars for drugs and illegal aliens. This is not an unusual tactic for the border patrol. If you drive in Texas, New Mexico or Arizona today you will be stopped and interrogated somewhere on a road north of the Mexican border and subjected to similar scrutiny.

Once, coming out of Laredo, Texas at night, I was directed off the interstate and stopped in front of a blinding searchlight. The uniformed officers questioned me about smuggling parrots and waved me on. As I pulled past the searchlight, I saw several officers with assault rifles pointed at me and I was very glad that for once I had no parrots.

When the Border Patrol tried the same tactic in the Keys in 1982, the citizens resented both the inconvenience to themselves and the impact on tourism. After their protests went unheeded, the mayor of Key West decided that if Key West was to be treated as a foreign country, then it might as well be one.

The city announced its independence from the United States of America on April 23, 1982 and declared itself to be the Conch Republic. The Mayor visited the Admiral in charge of the Key West Naval Air Station and broke a loaf of stale Cuban bread over his head. After that, Key West immediately ceased hostilities and applied for a billion dollars in foreign aid from its giant neighbor to the north.

The Conch Republic still sells passports to tourists. The 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, bought a set of these online in early 2001, demonstrating both an abysmal lack of understanding of the American culture and a missing sense of humor.

 The Republic later annexed the old abandoned “seven-mile bridge” after a boatload of Cubans landed on it a few years later. The Coast Guard sent them back to Cuba after stating that since the bridge was severed on both ends, the refugees had to be returned under the "wet feet/dry feet" policy. Under that policy, refugees who make it to dry land can stay. Those intercepted at sea are returned to their country of origin. The courts overturned that theory but the Cubans were already back in Cuba.

In a place where invasive species like iguanas abound, the most common of all, the chicken, draws a lot of ire. They crow at all hours of the day and night and they strut the streets like they own it. While they don’t get any special protections in the Keys, residents cannot shoot them, and cruelty laws are enforced. In case anyone is wondering—these are wild, feral chickens and don’t make a good dinner. The chickens don’t have many natural predators..they do eat anything you drop on the restaurant floor.

Shake Down

Sebastian Inlet State Park

 The battery on the toad died twice as we towed it 115 miles east across the peninsula. You have to leave the key turned to "accessory" to keep the steering wheel from locking up. Also the "Brake Buddy" is a compressor that runs off the cigarette lighter and assists in braking  Theoretically you stop about 250 feet sooner at 60MPH with the assist. I'm sure it helped me keep from totalling out a bull moose and the RV one time.

 Anyway, the toad battery is 4 years old so we bought a new one this morning and also bought a device that will let me run the Brake Buddy from a second battery.

 The other problem is that the bolt on the big "slide- out" broke once again with the slide halfway out. We hit home depot and bought 5 more replacement bolts and then transferred as much luggage weight as possible out of that slide "basement" into a basement area not on a "slide-out."

Our travails pale in comparison to those of the Spanish expedition of 1715 which ran into a hurricane here while hauling gold and silver back to Spain in an armada of 12 ships. 1500 survivors set up camp here and sent to Saint Augustine and Havana for help.

Many of the ship wrecked Spaniards died here as they looked for salvage for 4 years until, at last, the whole thing was forgotten. 

The treasure was rediscovered and they began recovering it in the 20th Century using modern salvage techniques. The park has a museum full of pottery, jewelry, weapons, gold, silver, ship bells, cannon, anchors and crucifixes.Admission is only $2.

 One more night here after today and then we move south, toward the Keys, and spend the next three nights in the Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

Punta Gorda

We decide to spend the weekend in the Wyvern Hotel in downtown Punta Gorda. The town has the highest proportion of over 65 people in Florida (44%).

Next door to the hotel is the "South of the Border". They have great rock that lasts until 11PM. The old folks come to dance and eat. At 11 the bands change to heavy metal and the old folks leave and youngsters show up.

 The view from the top of the hotel.

 They have a band on the roof...it keeps us awake until midnight....we don't care... we came to listen and dance...

 Sunset in Florida...

 The bikers have the typical silver ponytails and tattoos...they clear out at 11 when the heavy metal shows up...

In the morning we explore Punta Gorda...everyone lives on a canal and has a boat...

 Next time we'll go the Fisherman's Village on Saturday night and listen to that band..

Key West

Key West again. The weekend before my eyelid surgery seemed like a good time to get away and take the new Honda on a shakedown cruise. We get about 38 MPG although the sticker says 31 Highway.

We get a mixture of good and very bad food although it's uniformly overpriced.

We stay at the Grand Guesthouse, which is a nice little B&B on Grinnell near the Beach and near the back end of Duval Street. It gets very good reviews and is  relatively reasonable in a quiet neighborhood.

We awake berore dawn to find a young lady sprawled in a lawn chair clutching a bottle of Gordon's gin. 

This looked a lot better than it tasted.

Sunset.

The trees here can be full of flowers.

I went swimming on Higg's beach. The water was just right.

Chicken on the beach. Key West is known for feral chickens.

Mrs. Phred on the Higgs beach in Key West

Another Key West trip in 2003....

Happy Campers

Sarasota, Florida

The weather here is lovely...high in the mid 80s and low humidity...It's still very quiet since most of the community doesn't arrive before November...We're playing "social" tennis in the morning and after the sun goes down.

I fixed a bunch of the RV problems yesterday. The rear video camera was manufactured in China. We took it out and hooked it up to a working video jack and verified that it was burned out. We blasted out the crud on the hot water heater, both air conditioners and the refrigerator and replaced the broken hose on the drivers side windshield washer. The turn signal problem turned out to be a simple fuse...

Today I saw one of my dentists and got another root canal...He gave me a Vicodan prescription so I'm flying high on pain killers and Sauvignon Blanc.

It could be that the frequent fuse blowing on the tow lights is caused by the way I've wired the tow jacks. The I have the male side of the jacks "hot" at 12 volts DC and exposed, so that if I happen to touch them to an exposed surface they would blow a fuse inside the RV. A simple preventative measure would be to reverse the jacks on the Toyota and RV so that the hot side would be the female plug, difficult to short to ground. Meanwhile, I did rewire the Toyota completely so it and the tow circuitry no longer share any wires or bulbs...I installed separate bulbs on the Toyota for the tow circuitry and quit using diodes to separate the two....

We hit Sam's Club to stock up on wine and the library for books. The pool is mostly empty this time of year. I went in during a heavy thunderstorm and had it all to myself.

Sweet Memory

There's a killer on the road

His brain is squirmin' like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet memory will die

At age 66 I seem to live more and more within a memory palace and think about the past.


My first memory is of a snake sticking its head out of a hole in the front yard of my grandmother's house in New York. It was probably the Spring of 1945. I also remember attacking my father with a toy hoe after he came back from Germany in early 1946 and tried to assert his authority. I was astounded with the ease with which he disarmed me. I have lots of other childhood memories. I hope they don't just slip away.

Mom's memory is gone at age 86. She knows who I am so far, but that may not last long.

I remember the Junior High School hazing that we had to endure. They painted us with lipstick on our way to class in the seventh grade. Then there was the bully Billy Mitchell. He had been held back so many times that he towered over everyone else. Also there was Provo, a very muscular bully who was later fried in the electric chair for murder. I had to fight them both, knowing I was doomed to lose...but A man has to do what a man has to do.


It was double session Junior High school for me so I was left alone in the morning. My brother and sister were in regular sessions in grade school and both Mom and Pop were working. Sometimes I made donuts with a can of Crisco. I remember doing push ups to try to develop my strength and playing 45 RPM records very loud like Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire".

The girl next door was really hot and she often sat with me in a tree and tried to make me interested in her, while not really being interested in me. I often wonder what she looks like now at age 66. At 13 she was special. There's a certain memorable fire in being 13 and getting your first fondling and French kiss from a pretty girl. Maybe I won't forget.


Anyway, most of my friends are dead already. Some at 19, some at 21, some in airplane crashes, some at 35 and others at 53. I sometimes think that my life is somehow charmed and I'm immune from death from lung cancer or other causes. If I died somehow, the universe would immediately cease to exist.

Last summer I took Mrs. Phred to Jurarez, sister city of El Paso. There are 3,000 murders a year there related to drugs and we are the only Americans crossing the border that day. We bought some wallets and had lunch. Last night Mrs. Phred saw a TV program about the out of control Juarez murders and chastised me for taking her there. I explain that by standing tall with a steely-eyed glint it protects her from cowardly miscreants

We lived on a Tampa street where the city kept dumping oyster shells to keep the street passable. The Mosquito control people kept coming by with the Fog trucks and we all ran behind them breathing in the poison. At least we didn't get Yellow Fever or Malaria.