Hear this right…. Here!
EXIT 14b-a; I-95s to: I-78 to Staten Island, Jersey City & Bayonne, New Jersey

Onramp to I-278s; New Jersey, Goethals across I-95 to Elizabeth, NJ & Staten Island NY


Ok Road Team, look out on this vista of swamp and marsh.  No place  like this to offer you and your family inexpensive yet comprehensive Life Insurance from Triple A.  Yes you heard that right.  AAA does not just offer travel services. If you tap the Deal Radar Logo on the phone ,  you will help protect your Loved Ones with affordable Term Life Insurance. Request a quote any time in the next 2 weeks and get term life insurance for your family for as low as 65 cents a day for a $100,000 policy.  

Speaking of family, you are surrounded by miles of salt marsh which were once considered useless except as a dump yard for New York City’s garbage.  Now we know New Jersey’s salt marshes --especially here in the town of Fresh Kills New Jersey -- are in fact an essential nursery for many families of commercial fish like striped bass and flounder as well as hundreds of species of wading birds like egrets and herons. ​

Continuing on the family theme, Tony Soprano knows something about Fresh Kills.   Tony Soprano is in the waste removal business. A lot of his garbage ended up in these wetlands. “The Sopranos” television show made much use of the wetlands in and around Staten Island and  North Jersey.  Utilizing the gritty beauty and the sad industrial patches of these wetlands, scenes were shot showing recyclables being dumped,  hijacked trucks getting offloaded, and bodies being disappeared. ​

In 2013, the Writers Guild of America named The Sopranos the best-written TV series of all time while TV Guide ranked it the best television series of all time.


Chase had been fascinated by the mafia from an early age, witnessing such people growing up. The series is partly inspired by the Boiardo family and the DeCavalcante family.  Both were prominent New Jersey organized crime families when Chase was growing up near here in Clifton and North Caldwell. ​

I-95 Exit 380 in FL To: US 17, to Yulee, Florida and  Kingsland, Georgia


The Florida town of Yulee is named for the first Jewish member of the United States Senate who was also considered the father of Florida Railroads.  However, the first railroads in Florida transported more logs and less people than would be thought!  The first railroads were used for logging operations -- but I digress. 

David Levy Yulee was born David Levy in 1810 in Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. His father Moses Levy was a Moroccan Sephardic Jew who made a fortune in lumber.  At the time, the Virgin Islands were owned by Denmark and a sizable Jewish population lived there.  One of the oldest synagogues in the western hemisphere still exists today in the capital of Downtown Charlotte Amalie.

After the family immigrated to the United States, Moses Levy bought 50,000 acres of land near present-day Jacksonville in Florida Territory. Moses wanted to establish a "New Jerusalem" for Jewish settlers.
​
His son, David Levy, dutifully served in the territorial militia, including the Second Seminole War, and in 1834 was present at a conference with Seminole chiefs, including the famous Seminole War Chief, Osceola.

-Thereafter, the handsome young David married well.  Soon after his 1846 marriage to the daughter of ex-Governor Charles Wickliffe of Kentucky, David Levy added Yulee to his name, the name of one of his Moroccan ancestors. Though Yulee became Christian and raised his children as Christians, he was subject to anti-semitism throughout his career.

​In 1845, after Florida was admitted as a state, the legislature elected him as a Democrat to the United States Senate, the first Jew to win a seat in the Senate, and he served until 1851. In 1855 he was again elected to the Senate, and he served until withdrawing in 1861 in order to support the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War.

David Yulee is considered the father of Railroads in Florida where he built the first cross peninsula line from Fernandina Beach near Jacksonville at the Florida-Georgia line to Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast.
​
In the 1850’s, cedar lumbering was big business since light weight cedar was used to produce Faber Pencils.

​Incidentally,  Faber Pencils are still in use today.  Using his influence in Congress to procure Federal Funds, Yulee engaged slave labor to lay the tracks across Florida and access the dense cedar wilderness along the Gulf of Mexico.

Today, at the Fernandina Beach Train Depot, a statue of Yulee sits “waiting for his train.”  No doubt, this statue has invited some controversy.

​Yulee's inflammatory pro-slavery rhetoric in the Senate earned him the nickname "Florida Fire Eater”. David Yulee supported slavery and secession.

After the war, Yulee was imprisoned in Fort Pulaski for nine months because of his support for the Confederacy. He then returned to railroad building.

Selling the Florida Railroad, Yulee retired with his wife to Washington, D.C. in 1880, where she had family. He died six years later while visiting in New York. Yulee was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
​
Both the town of Yulee, Florida and Levy County, Florida are named for him. In 2000, the Florida Department of State designated him as a Great Floridian.

Exit 75 I-95n in NC To: Jonesboro Rd, near @Dunn,North Carolina


Ok Road Trippers time for a Road Test. So put on your thinking caps.  The winner of this gets something valuable at any Love's Convenience Stops along the highway in the next 7 days. More on that in 10 seconds. Now pay attention and keep your eyes on the highway. 

Quick, take a gander at the shoulder on the right. See the big hole in the ground and the sign about "Another Love’s Travel Store Coming Soon"?   Seeing that love is coming soon gets me all wistful and teary eyed. Why, you may ask?


Well, seeing another convenience store rising from the red American dirt gets me very patriotic. ​

America is still the land of the free and the home of the brave. It is also a place where with grit, luck, and smarts, anyone’s dreams can still come true. The convenience store chain, Love’s is still a family business.  The c-store chain is owned by Tom and Judy Love. ​

So now, dear Road-Trippers, Tom and Judy Love would like to make you an offer you cannot refuse.  They would like to offer you the chance to get $5 of free Pepsi, Dorito, Lays and Gatorade products with any fill-up of over $20 in fuel at ANY Love's Convenience Store along all Interstate 95.  That is right! Tom and Judy want you filling up -- and stocking up -- only at Love's all along the interstate.  You might as well call it the "Lover's Lane". No?  Ok...ok... maybe I am getting a little crazy here.

To get this deal, remember to just tap the huge Deal Radar logo on your smart device and say out loud, "RoadSpoke, get me that Deal."  This deal will be good for up to 7 days from when you start it, so keep on truckin' Road Crew. 

Likely you have passed thousands of Love's and other such fuel and food convenience stores in your life.  Convenience store sales in general are huge. According to GasBuddy, as recently as 2017, Convenience Store sales were 60% bigger than all online sales. And that includes sales by Amazon! Wow, right? Well you could call Love’s the grand-daddy of the c-store industry.


In 1964, Tom and Judy Love spent $5,000 to lease an abandoned gas station in booming Watonga, Oklahoma. Watonga is an hour northwest of Oklahoma City. They named their company Musket Corporation. Over the next 8 years, Musket opened 40 additional gas stations.  But then came the Arab Oil Embargo…


When the fuel crunch of the early 1970s began, gasoline was in short supply. ​

​Tom and Judy Love diversified for the sake of survival. They launched a new concept: the "Mini Stop Country Store." By adding groceries to their self-service fuel sales, Musket became one of the nation's first to offer one-stop shopping for road trippers. The so-called convenience store was successful and the company quickly opened more stores in western Oklahoma.


In 1972, Musket set out to convert all of its locations from gas stations to convenience stores. By 1973, the company began using the family name instead of Musket. Love's Country Stores was the new name.

​By 1981, Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores celebrated its 100th store in small communities throughout Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. That same year, the company began offering the Fresh Daily Deli, sandwiches made fresh daily on-location. Food service became the company's third profit center along with self-serve gasoline and convenience store items.

Despite the founders becoming some of the wealthiest people in America, with a net worth of around 7 Billion Dollars, Loves transformed its country theme but not its folksy service. Despite the mansions and flying around in private jets and yachting about in a 7 million dollar mega yacht, the Loves joint ventured with such regular folk eateries like Wendy’s, Dunkin’ and Taco Bell. ​

​The founders are still homey folk: the Loves expanded service to professional truckers with showers, overnight parking for big-rigs, and even barber shops.

The EXIT of the DAY is a Bridge
Hear this... right HERE!

Ok. So now for some humor — some Construction Worker Humor.  But first the Fast Facts: you are now crossing the George Washington Bridge high above the Hudson River. ​​

Likely you are in traffic.  The bridge carries over 106 million vehicles per year - about 300,000 vehicles per day. This makes The George Washington Bridge the most heavily travelled bridge in the entire world. ​

Because of the huge traffic, in 1961, construction workers then hung an underneath level. ​ 

Ever thoughtful, the construction workers nicknamed the underneath level “The Martha Washington Bridge”  for George’s wife Martha.


George, of course, is on top.


#GeorgeWashington #GeorgeWashingtonBridge #GWB #MarthaWashington #HudsonRiver #ConstructionWorkerHumor #NewYork #NewJersey #ConstructionWorkers
​

Hear this here:


I-95 in North Carolina.


“Ok,  Roadtrippers, I know someone in the car has their driver's license but still, now it is time for a Road Test.  The winner of this gets $4 dollars of Pepsi Or Dorito Products  with your next fill-up of over $20 in fuel at any WaWa Convenience along I-95.   So  pay attention! Here now are the Fast Facts.

​

"Etymology" is  defined as “the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history”.  Most interesting it tells us a lot about how we once lived and how these phrases began.     


Where did the term "piss poor" come from?   A lot of our popular phrases derived from middle ages England.


Back in the day, they used urine to tan animal skins. So to earn extra income poor families used to all pee in a pot or barrel.  Once it was full it was taken and sold to the tannery.

If you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor”.  Fast Fact: babies were often left not in cribs but in tubs or pots so that when they went number one the family could add that urine to the tannery savings bank.  But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot…  They "didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the poorest of the poor.


Here are some facts about the 1500’s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May so they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.  Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

​Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water. Then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children.
Last of all the babies.  By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.
Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

​Many English Houses had thatched roofs which consisted of thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. That’s because in England they had cut down most forests many centuries ago.  Plus most property with wilderness were owned by nobility and the poor could not use its resources.


A thatched roof was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals including mice and bugs lived in the roof.  When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.
Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling from the thatch  into the house.  This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection.  That's how canopy beds came into existence.

​The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor.”  The wealthy had stone floors that would get slippery In the winter when wet, so they spread thresh or straw on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, It would all start slipping outside.


A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way.  Hence: a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day.  Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while.
Hence the rhyme:


“Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."


Sometimes the poor folk could obtain pork — the cheapest meat available — which made them feel quite special.  When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off.

​It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon.”  They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.  And talk so that is where  the phrase for “chewing the fat” came from.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and honored guests got the top, or the “upper crust”.

​Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days.  Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.


Hence the custom, “holding a wake."

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people.  So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.


When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.  In fact patents were filed for coffins with bells attached.

Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, “saved by the bell" or was "considered a dead ringer."


And that's the truth.  So , who said etymology was boring?  

Now for the Road Test.  When was this roadspoke submitted?  You have three seconds. Three… and two… and one.

If you said during the second wave of the pandemic, you would be correct!   So get right to EXIT. Claim the $4 in Pepsi Products.... A WaWa is straight up ahead!"

Back in the last years of World War Two, a couple of guys went to Pensacola hoping to be fighter pilots in that war. But they were late so by the time they graduated, the Big Show was over. One was an upwardly mobile middle class Irish guy from near Boston. ​

His parents wanted the best for him, so they had sent him to Phillips Academy Andover, an elite Prep School that had graduated the likes of both President Bushes, and many titans of industry and politics.
​
The other was the first African American graduate of Navy Flight training school. His parents were penniless Mississippi sharecroppers. They too wanted the best for their brilliant son. ​

So what does Tommy do? He radios for helicopter help and then crash-lands his own plane. ​

​Lieutenant Tom Hudner got out that day and Jesse became the first Naval Officer to die in the Korean War.
​
As for Tommy Hudner, he won the Medal Of Honor for his bravery and received it in a ceremony attended by Jessie’s wife, Daisy Nix.

Hear this HERE... along I-95
​
EXIT 56 southbound; I-95 South, Waterbury Connecticut. Mile 57. 

"OK Road Crew, now it is time for a Road Test.  The Road Test is brought to you by Walmart which yu can see just off the next exit, Exit 56.   If you stop into Walmart any time in the next 30 days we will give you  a free coffee at the instore Dunkin Donuts. ​

"Ok. Time for the Road Test.  So here now are the Fast Facts.


Back in 1945, a former J. C. Penney employee opened his first store in north west Arkansas.  Sam Walton’s focus was to sell products at lower prices to get high volume sales, portraying it as a crusade for the consumer. He was able to find lower-cost suppliers than other stores. Sales increased 45 percent in his first year of ownership to $105,000. The lease then expired so Sam opened up a new store on North Main Street in Bentonville, naming it "Walton's Five and Dime”. ​

​By offering always low prices, always, within its first five years, the company expanded to 24 stores in Arkansas. Sam did not expand outside of Arkansas till 1968 -- some 23 years later.  Bad Business? Well consider this...

Today, Walmart is the world’s Largest Retailer with 11,000 stores in 27 countries and Growing!  It is also the largest employer in the world with over 2 million employees and growing. Each week, over 275 million customers shop at Walmart or its other outlets like Sam’s Clubs. ​

​Other superlatives include many environmental initiatives like using wind turbines, biofuel boilers, and solar panels.  In fact, it is the biggest commercial producer of solar power in the United States.

So what happened to that first Walton Five and Dime in Bentonville? Well, That store is now the Walmart Museum.


Now for the Road Test:  where did Sam Walton work before he started his own company? You have 3 seconds. Three… and two… and one. If you said JC Penney, you would be correct.


#Walmart #SamWalton #Walmart Trucks #Bentonville #JCPenney #LargestRetailer #LargestEmployer #BetterTogether #Alwayslowpricesalways ​

MILESTONE:
Today, we just crossed 246,000 page views for our SINGLE post about Jimi Hendrix and  Woodstock.


Will RoadSpoke pass a quarter million Views? Stay Tuned!


Question: What does Mark Zuckerberg and Latino hip hop group "Cypress Hill" have in common?


You choose:


Answer #1:  Both came from Scarsdale, New York and were the children of dentists?
Answer #2: Both headlined at Woodstock 94 — the 25th Anniversary of Woodstock?
Answer #3: Both are advocates of the legalization of weed?
Answer #4: Both joined over space and time to reach nearly a quarter million viewers on RoadSpoke’ Facebook Page?


If you selected Answer 4, you would be correct. Mark Zuckerberg and Cypress Hill both provided generous service for RoadSpoke to reach so many thousands of people without RoadSpoke paying a nickel!  

While Zuckerberg provided the platform, Cypress Hill no doubt shared the RoadSpoke’s Post and as of today we have …
…reached 246,260 people!

WOW!

Thank you CYPRESS HILL!  Thanks Marky Mark!​

Hear this…> Here!


On Ramp to EXIT 18-8 I-95s: Road 13, To: Switzerland  Beaufort, Hilton Head Island, Hardeeville, South Carolina


“Believe it or not, America’s first Trade War with China happened almost 400 years ago.  It was headquartered in a little obscure river settlement of Purrysburg, South Carolina as well as in world famous Jamestown, Virginia.


In the early 1600's, Jamestown the first settlement in Virginia, was originally financed by London investors to start a silk farm. Here too in southern South Carolina, silk worms were the original reason for starting early settlements. Unlike in Jamestown, the experiment nearby worked — albeit briefly. ​

Once landed near the upcoming Savannah River, Swiss Immigrants  were tasked with meticulously planting and tending to the mulberry bushes that their British overlords imported with them.  Mulberry leaves are the sole form of sustenance for silkworms. The silkworms -- which are larva to adult silk moths -- spin fuzzy white cocoons which when painstakingly unravelled, become silk. ​

​The investors felt that South Carolina would be the proper climate for cultivating mulberry bushes.  But what they did not anticipate here were the snake infested swamps and malaria mosquitos.


While this experiment -- as opposed to Jamestown -- did manage to export about a 150 pounds of silk in 1772, the indentured Swiss laborers died by the score.


After many stressful seasons, the Swiss abandoned the river farms near Purrysburg and created their new village on high dry ground. A bastion of health and clean living high now on a hill, obviously, it would come to be called Switzerland!  Upcoming is the Exit.

Meanwhile, Purrysburg too survives... hard along the swamp of the fast approaching Savannah River. But at least today the residents enjoy air-conditioning not to mention mosquito spray… lots and lots of Mosquito spray.”


#Jamestown #SwitzerlandSouthCarolina #Silk #Silkroad #ChinaTradeWar

EXIT of the DAY. Hear this… Here!

I-95 Northbound. Exit 2,  Arch Street, Greenwich CT

Like you today, recently we took a little drive.  We drove an hour up I-95 from Greenwich, Connecticut, to Westerly, Rhode Island.  As RoadSpoke's slogan says: “There’s million stories behind every milepost.”


Man, ain’t that the truth!

In addition to about 12 opportunities to get discounts on everything from Fast Food to Ferrari's we even offered the opportunity to buy Mel Gibson's Greenwich mansion which is asking $17 million... but we mostly explored a lot of fascinating science, history, and fast facts -- all in bite size Bytes.

Between stamford and the Rhode Island border, right where it happened, we explored Taylor Swift’s summer home, hedge funds, frisbees, Nathan Hale at Yale College, super diva Diana Ross, American Impressionist Childe Hassam, Long Tooth the mastodon, blue fish, blue sharks...

...Black Panthers, The Knights of Columbus, AmeriCares, Save the Children, The Coast Guard Academy,  Sybil Ludington and her horse Star, author and slave Venture Smith, Yale University, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Hilary Clinton, Bill Clinton, both George Bush’s, Boy Scouts... 

Pez Candies, Subway Sandwiches, The Connecticut River, Connecticut College, Benedict Arnold, Mark Twain, U.Conn’s Lady Huskies, PT Barnum, Tom Thumb, World Wrestling, whaling, sealing, biking, harbor seals, aquaculture, culturing marijuana, growing tobacco, McDonald’s…

… Jewish War Veterans, Catholic Charities, Puritan Bigots, Mohegans, coywolves, submarines, Eugene O'Neill,  Pilgrims, Pequots,  Puerto Ricans...

and the biggest Movie Star Katharine Hepburn who lived in the littlest town, Fenwick, Connecticut.

Harry  worked across the Delaware River as the chief gardener at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. It was there that they commercialized the canned tomato. It is probably no coincidence that Campbell's Soup started not far away and that tomato soup was one of their first products. ​

The history of canning food is not corny.  Legend has it, around 1800, Napoleon sought an invention to feed his fast moving troops. This led to sealed  jars. ​

But I digress. We are speaking about no small tomatoes here.


Fast Fact, the Jamesburg native James Woodhull Crosby was not only famous as the first to can Tomatoes, but he is also famous for coining the term, "Hey! How 'bout them tomatoes?"  I kid you not.


Something that does not commercialize well by being canned is a bobcat. More and more people are seeing bobcats. Many of the sightings are from passengers in cars in wooded areas like right here. ​

The bobcat is about two feet tall —larger than a house-cat  but much smaller than a mountain lion. Adult females in New Jersey generally weigh between 18 and 25 pounds while adult males can weigh as much as 35 pounds.  While they typically hunt rodents, rabbits and birds, they are strong enough to take down a deer. Or unfortunately, Fido or Puss. So bring your pets inside before dusk and only let them out long after dawn.


That’s because most hunting takes place at dawn and dusk. They are extremely shy animals that are seldom seen by humans. With suburbs spreading out, hunting has diminished, and numbers have increased.  But it was not a natural population boom. The New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife conducted a restoration project where 24 bobcats captured in Maine were released in northern New Jersey from 1978-1982. By the 1990’s reports of bobcat sightings began to increase. ​

There are some ridiculous laws on the books in the state of Florida. We did some research and found some of the silliest. Many of these laws are only in effect in certain cities. So for example, selling fruit in one city is all right but you could spend hard time if you cross the county line.  Up in Destin, Florida please don't set off any torpedoes. It's illegal there.  Not sure about the rest of the state, but they have a problem with torpedoes in Destin. Must be a lot of large alligators or something. ​

Also Good to know: in all of Florida, men are not allowed in public wearing a strapless dress. As long as you've got straps of some sort, you're cool.  ​

Also, in Destin, it is illegal for an ice-cream man to sell ice cream in a cemetery.  But what’s really weird, in Hialeah, strolling or ambling is a misdemeanor.


Still all that’s nothing compared to selling certain fruits in Miami.  In Miami, you could face up to 30 days in jail for selling oranges on the sidewalk.  And don't even think about showering naked!  It's an actionable offense. ​

Maybe the cops perp walk you with your handcuffs in front.... Raincoats must be popular round here.  And as if people do not have enough outdoor activities to entertain them, in Daytona Beach, you're banned from molesting trash cans.  In Key West, don't molest the chickens. They're a protected species. But they need to hear that in Key West… ​

​Finally, here is one that does make sense.    In the state of Florida, it's illegal to have physical relations with a porcupine. Ouch!  But maybe you can have relations with a chicken outside of Key West. The State Law is not clear on that issue

And finally, in case you are riding down the interstate on Jumbo, know this: When you tie it to a parking meter, your elephant gets charged just the same as your car would. ​

Now for the Road Test. How many days do you get in jail for selling Grapefruits in Miami? You have three seconds. 3…2…and 1. The answer is no time. You get no time in jail. That’s because it is only illegal to sell Oranges. Now go park your elephant and feed the meter. And when you visit upcoming Deltona, no romancing porcupines.  Pervert!


Oh and go get your Buy 1 Get 1 Free Deal of Pepsi or Doritos at Joe’s. Just tell em RoadSpoke’s Silly Laws sent you!”


#sillyFloridalaws #Roadtrippers #FastFacts #Jumbo #ParkingElephants #Florida #Snowbirds ​

In Dillon you will find Pedro, the mustachioed, 97-foot-tall “Patron Saint of Travelers In Need of a Pit Stop”.  No Baloney. That’s what Pedro is the patron saint for.  Visitors can drive through his legs and find a parking place. Then it’s time to stretch, hit the bathroom, grab a hot dog (or a banana), see some gators and buy a few fireworks to detonate later on the beach. ​

South of the Border is a roadside mash-up of tacky souvenir shops and wacky attractions. For over forty years, these billboards have delighted children and quite honestly,  annoyed parents.  After years of disapproval by the forces of political correctness, Pedro will no longer be able to entice with his corny epithets and awful broken English puns. ​

Not surprisingly, Locals refer to the site as SOB.  Speaking of SOBs, what you have not seen as you approach the border between two Carolinas is the Carolina Pararkeet. ​ SOB's are responsible for that loss no doubt.

2018 marked the sad centennial for the extinction of the only Parrot in The United States. The last known  bird died at the Cincinnati Zoo on February 21, 1918.  This was the male specimen, called "Incas", who died within a year of his mate, "Lady Jane". Coincidentally, Incas died in the same  cage in which the last Passenger Pigeon, "Martha", had died nearly 4 years earlier.

The Carolina Parakeet is believed to have died out because of a number of different threats.  Large areas of forest were cut down, reducing its habitat. The bird's colorful feathers (a green body, yellow head, and red around the bill) were in demand as decorations in ladies' hats.  It has also been hypothesized that the introduced honeybee helped contribute to its extinction by occupying the bird's hollow tree nesting sites. Finally, they were killed in large numbers because farmers considered them a pest. ​

Sadly, the most egregious factor that contributed to their extinction may have been loyalty or compassion. Family members would return immediately to a location where flock members had been shot. This led to even more being shot by hunters as the parrots gathered about the wounded and dead members of their flock.

From Pedro to compassionate parrots, South Carolina itself is a proud mashup of conflicting and complementing inspirations marked by beauty, soulful loss, and great commercial promise. ​

Welcome once again to the Palmetto State.


#PalmettoState #SouthCarolina #NorthCarolina #DillonSouthCarolina #CarolinaParakeet #SouthoftheBorder #Pedro #Patronsaintoftravelerswhoneedapitstop #Billboards

​Like in many resort towns around Florida, while many are year round residents, most are in fact winter snowbirds. If you cruise down Wilton Drive, the so-called main drag, you will see these residents frequenting its many restaurants, bars and other gay-owned businesses.  The scene is very colorful and frankly inclusive. Between cruising, drag and birds, my commentary is rife with bad puns. But do not hold it against Wilton Manors; this winter nest is a hot-bed of creativity and culture.

Interestingly, like the majority of snow birds elsewhere in Florida, most of the LGBT community here live in family households. The 2010 U.S. Census reported that Wilton Manors is second only to Provincetown, Massachusetts in the proportion of couples  relative to the total population. 


The city is very progressive and boasts a lot of well, pride. The art scene spills out onto streets that are well manicured and spotlessly clean. ​

It should be no surprise of course that this brazenly flamboyant community contains a large Pride Center, the World AIDS Museum and Educational Center, and a branch of the Stonewall National Museum & Archives.  The Stonewall Museum commemorates a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village which was the birthplace of the Gay Pride movement. ​

"Ok Road Crew, now we play a game called "Name that recording artist."  The winner gets to claim a free month of Pandora app. ​

...having summers off,  beginning in 1953, the family spent summers on Martha's Vineyard. Regardless of his privileged upbringing, our hero suffered from depression so much so that between his prep school and college year, he committed himself to a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts.  Between the meds and the organized schedule he started to achieve structure which he credits for saving his life and influencing his music.  Still he lived chaotically and despite getting signed by the Beatles Apple Records he wound up becoming addicted to heroin.  However he continued to be productive. He wrote songs, including "Carolina on My Mind”. Paul McCartney and an uncredited George Harrison guest sang on "Carolina on My Mind", whose lyric "holy host of others standing around me" referred to the anonymous Beatle pals.

​Once he recovered, our hero moved to California, and there he produced his second album. Titled "Sweet Baby James", and featuring the participation of Carole King, the album was a  triumph.  Memorably, it included the single "Fire and Rain," a song about experiences in rehab and the suicide of his friend, Suzanne Schnerr.  In 1970, the album and the single reached #3 on the Billboard charts, with Sweet Baby James selling more than 3 million in the United States alone.

​The entire album was received as a folk-rock masterpiece, marking a direction he would take in following years. In following years there were many more triumphs than personal slips including a ten year marriage to singer Carly Simon.  Quick aside: Carly Simon likely appreciated her husband's literary chops because her dad was the founder of Book Publisher "Simon & Schuster."

So now can you name that artist?  You have 3 seconds to guess. Three, two... and one.