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My brother and I were born in Boston of Southern parentage.  My Mom was from Georgia and my Dad was from Bradenton. They married in the Depression and there was little work to be found in Florida at the time, so they migrated to a foreign culture where work was available. It was quite a shock especially for my Mom who grew up on a farm in Georgia.  She was raised on Southern fried chicken, collards, black eye peas, biscuits and corn bread; none of which was available in Yankee Land.

For years my brother and I felt we were under-privileged because, while our friends were dining on brown bread, Boston baked beans and hot dogs, we were having Southern fare. I might add that the chicken was fabulous and her biscuits were so light that you had to slather them with butter to hold them down on the plate. Some time later we found out that Mom had to go to S.S. Pierce in Boston to find these Southern delicacies, and she paid a premium price for them.

Ah, the ignorance of youth.   Life was/is good.

The other day someone asked me about a former entertainment venue that is now only a source of memories. Driven out of town by the "NIMBYs", now one must drive ten miles east to bombard your ear drums with VAROOM, VAROOMS.

Back around 1953, a place called Sara-Mana Speed Bowl was available to satisfy anyone's appetite for noisy, dusty, loud screeching tires and crashing sheet metal. I think it was an eighth-mile oval with asphalt pavement where hard-working local hot rod jockeys could spend a Saturday evening bashing and banging what they spent all week rebuilding.

Seems to me they ran ten heats of ten laps with 12 racers each and a twenty-five lap feature.

The track was located near 63rd Avenue and 14th St. W.  Kind of across from Bayshore Gardens area. While not an official minor league to NASCAR at least one name, prominent in NASCAR, traces back to Sara-Mana Speed Bowl; Emil Reutimann, from Zephyrhills, raced number double zero there and today his grandson, David, has that on his Sprint Cup car. Ironically, Emil was killed in a highway collision a few years ago.

Back in 1939 there was a small grass strip airport on the other side of 14th St.W. The Mystery Ship Airport was used for Jalopy races. Later it was a golf driving range. They also used the City Island air strip when available.

A popular Jalopy racer was Sherman Studer (see photo) who operated Studer's Small Engine Clinic in Sarasota for many years. His little known notoriety saved the U.S. Air Force millions of dollars and who knows how many pilots. When the North American P-51 fighters were assigned to the Sarasota Army Air Base in 1944, they began to experience in-flight fires. When one pilot refused to bail out and he returned to the base, on fire, Studer, on North American's payroll, discovered a faulty solder connection on a fuel pump booster. Inspection of the other P-51s showed a pattern which enabled a saboteur in the factory to be captured. Studer's mechanical acumen was also evidenced when you saw him running errands in his 1959 (?) Cadillac pick-up truck; home-made of course.  They were each one-of-a-kind.

Life was/is good.

Does that sound like a line from a song?  You must be one of The Fantastics. Here's a few things to spark your ROM; do your children know how to hand crank an automobile? Do you remember the smell while running a mimeograph copier? Anyone here still us a Dictaphone?

Speaking of automobiles-does yours have bumpers? When I was a kid my Mother would do her grocery shopping, then go to the New West Florida Ice Co. ice house and drive home with a 20 pound block sitting on the front bumper supports.

Another use for the front bumper was to hang a leather water bag on so you'd have cool drinking water on long trips!

Wing windows needed to bring in fresh cool (?) air; did you ever drive with your doors slightly open to suck out the mosquitoes?

"Saucered and blowed"?  I haven't heard that for many years. Mother made percolated coffee in the mornings that was so hot that Daddy would pour some into the saucer, blow on it and sip it from the saucer. All this while reading the morning Tampa Tribune, and never spilled a drop.

Personally, I don't remember using a telephone with no dial. Every call was through a switchboard operator. I do remember we were on a four-party line. Not much privacy then. Life was/is good.

I recently realized that life is fast and getting faster all the time and I don't think it's just a result of my status, age-wise.

Back twenty or more years ago, about 4:00 p.m. every business day we could hear the helicopter approaching the local area banks to pluck bags off the roof poles, with long hooks. The bags were filled with the day's transactions of checks to be taken to a central processing location to be debited to your account. That would give you a little "float time". No More!!!

Several years ago I bought something at Wal-Mart and paid for it by check. The cashier scanned my check and handed it back to me. I asked her if she didn't need to keep the check. She told me that she scanned the check and it's already been taken out of our account. Yikes!!!

Probably 10 years ago I received our monthly statement from our business gas credit card account showing that our previous month balance had not been credited. When I called the company in California I was told they'd never received our check. Pete hears my conversation and speculated that our check might be laying on an airport runway in Kenner, Louisiana. The day after I had mailed the payment, a plane had crashed there.  Fortunately, they didn't charge us any late fee. All that is now eliminated with online bill- paying which can be both a blessing and a curse, but it sure is convenient. Also, as soon as you charge something on a credit card it instantly appears on your account with the speed of lightning (or computers).

We've recently been told that deposit slips will be a thing of the past.

The coming generations will look upon us as "living in the dark ags". Like I said: Life is Fast, but Life is Good.

Back in 1965 Diane and I took a vacation trip to Mexico. Of course, we made Mexico City our main stop, with side trips to Taxco, Cuernavaca and Acapulco.

When we ventured out into the hinterland I enjoyed trying to impress the locals with my Puerto Rico Spanish. While out on a volcano-hunting trip our tour guide-driven car radiator overheated which required a stop and wait on the outskirts of Puebla.

Having about an hour or so to wait, we hit the side walk. While browsing through a small open-front general merchandise store, Diane asked me to ask the clerk if they had any tissues.

I wracked my brain and all I could think of was paper handkerchief. So I asked the young clerk, "Tiene usted un paquete de pannelas de papel?"  (Do you have any paper handkerchiefs?)  She repeated my words as though she was trying to decipher my query, then repeated it again to her nearby co-worker who was equally puzzled. Finally the co-worker exclaimed, "KLEENEX?"    La vida es Buena.