It took almost a YEAR to drive to Key West!

Wow.. did you miss me? So yeah. The title is misleading. I didn't take a year to drive to Key West... It's been almost a year since the last time I wrote something here. My bad. Where were we....? Oh yes. Moving to Key West, Florida. 

This was a road trip of no events other than we discovered that, at the time (1967-68) stopping for Mexican food in Virginia was NOT a good idea. They apparently had no idea what Mexican food was supposed to taste like. I'm sure they''re better now. I mean they have to have learned something in the last 45 years, right?

When we got to Key West, we stayed iat some sort of rooming house until we found a place to rent. It was near the water and, honestly, there is very little I remember about the place other than that was where I discovered Playboy magazines. A huge pile of them. In a storage shed. I don't remember the naked women, I remember the cartoons. That grandma with the boobies down to her knees and… Little Oral Annie. I'm not going to pretend that I understood anything that was going on in those comics, I just knew they were comics and I was bored. I'm gonna say that I knew enough that I was very careful to put them all back in the same order that I found them in.

We moved into our rental house and I started school at Poinsettia Elementary. I don't remember this house that well. I remember getting in trouble for not coming straight home from school one day. I imagine that if someone had *told* me that a hurricane was on it's way that I might not have taken my time. It might also have helped if someone explained exactly what a hurricane was… I mean... I was familiar with Connecticut weather and they had no hurricanes. I got in trouble for goofing off that day.

Eventually we got into housing out on Sigsbee Island. 1135B Gilmore Dr. The girl that lived next door was Beth Kocher and she had a dog named Snoopy. She had an older mentally disabled sister named Laurie and a brother who apparently made no impression on me since I can't remember his name. (edit: His name was Terry and I'm remembering this TEN years after original post! Go me!!)  The ocean was across the street. Across. The. Street.

I think of Key West as the beginning of the tomboy years for me. Once we moved into that house on Sigsbee Island, I spent ALL my time on a dock fishing, in the water netting things, exploring the area and playing games in the street after dark. So starts the Key West chapters of this bloggie thing.