Category Archives: The Villages

Home: The Clean-up

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Relationships, The Villages, Travel

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Going away involves getting the dirty clothes from the trip washed when one returns home. I am doing that now.

I talked with #1 son last night. He wants to do more stuff with me. No problem there. He is far more emotional than I am and gives me feedback like it’s OK to cry. He told me he has a greater sense of my stepmother in his his life than my mother. Mother died in 1995, when he was 19. Dorothy, my stepmother, has been in the family since 1998, or twenty-one years. so he is right. My perspective is much broader, naturally. His concern around her current illness is quite painful for him. She is the last of the grandparents and step-grandparents in his life. Her passing will represent the final act of the Greatest Generation.

I have a post planned around the billboards I saw on the trip from The Villages through to our first stop in Macon, GA. In short, it seemed the ads for porn shops, liquor, erectile dysfunction treatments, hormone replacement therapy, HIV testing, and pro-life concerns outnumbered the usual exhortations to accept Jesus, once the billboard mainstay of the Bible Belt. Sexual liberation, it seems, is not without complications or limitations.

So I am tired. And hungry. I will have dinner with J when she gets off work at 2:30. I am incredibly glad to be home. I feel like I have been away from everyone here, my cyber-family.

Funeral At The Villages

06 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by in The Villages, Vietnam

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I wore a suit for most of the day. I hadn’t done that in years. To tell the truth, I liked the experience. I wore a tropical wool tan suit, with a black patterned tie,white dress shirt, cordovan shoes. I looked good. I thought I would be inappropriately dressed, not wearing a dark suit. No worries. There were three of us in jackets & ties. This is a Florida retirement community. I could have worn my white sneakers and not been out of place.

The funeral was low key. The reception after was well-attended by Dan’s gardening colleagues. The Villages community has very nice residents, thoughtful and caring. The golf, golf carts, and pickleball (whatever that is) fade into the background.

Tonight we went out to dinner. The local Corvette Club had its members’ cars on display at Lake Sumter Landing. So we got to see these geriatric teenagers show off their rides.

The Villages has a reputation for sexual promiscuity, The Birth Control Culture grew up and old, but is still looking for cock or a piece of tail. That didn’t show up in my take on The Villages. Just kind of a place where old men try to pick up where they left off, before they shipped out to ‘Nam. I can’t much blame them. Our niece, aged 42, and daughter of the deceased, has a similar take on The Villages as I do: Disneyland Without The Rides.

My verdict in The Villages, It’s OK, I suppose.

Home Again.

13 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in Florida, The Villages

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It has been a period of sorting out my thoughts and feelings around Florida and The Villages. The Villages, like much of Florida is an Old Geezer Monoculture. When Mrs CorC? and I shared a chicken nuggets meal at the local Chick-Fil-A tonight, we noticed more small children there than we did in the entire past week in The Villages. That I don’t like. The Villages is like living on a movie studio back lot. They built 3 little “village squares” with three different themes, The West, a sea port, and a “Spanish” town square. They are very nice, but very fake. The senior citizens pride themselves on being active adults. The concept is that active seniors live longer with a better quality of life. I can’t argue with that premise.

The Villages are neat, clean, and well-maintained. The grass is mowed. There is no trash. I immediately noticed the roadside litter as we drove home from the airport in Richmond. When I consider that my brother-in-law and his wife moved from the traffic-swollen DC suburbs of Northern Virginia, I can’t blame them at all. There is no debate on the question.

It doesn’t appear to be an outrageously expensive community. That is a plus.

Riding from The Villages to the Orlando airport on the shuttle bus, we saw billboard after billboard from a plaintiff’s attorney proclaiming “Dan Got Us $600,000!”(or more). Kinda creepy.

My favorite billboard promoted a tourist destination called

Machine Gun America

Fun For The Whole Family

Fire Real Machine Guns!

I can imagine the family firing their rental Tommy Guns

“Junior, help Granny with her Uzi!”

“Watch that barrel climb, Sis!”

Just how badly do I want to live there?