The Beginning (3 page)

When we crossed the Georgia/Florida border and I saw that sign that said “Welcome to Florida” for the first time I cried. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of belonging.

When we pulled in to the official welcome center my mouth dropped open. There were palm trees, lots of palm trees. In the field over to the left there were these big grey birds walking around. I mean they had tall legs and were probably taller than my five foot six. Ok, maybe not, but they sure looked that way to me. At the table out front of the visitor’s center people were handing oranges to everyone.

Frankie shut off the truck and turned toward me. “Mom, what’s wrong? Are you ok? Did you change your mind; do you want to go back?”

“No, honey, I don’t. I just got this overwhelming feeling that this was where I belonged. That something wonderful was going to happen to me here. I mean, look at this place.”

“Yeah, it’s cool. Wait a minute. You mean nothing wonderful happened to you in Pennsylvania?”

“Of course it did. I met and married your father, I had you, and I had your sister. All wonderful things. But this is different somehow. I can’t explain it. I’m overwhelmed.”

I also felt free for the first time in my life. But I didn’t want to tell him that. He’d probably take it the wrong way.

“Do you want to go inside, or do you need a few minutes?” he said.

“Son, I have to pee like a race horse. I want to go inside.”

As soon as I emptied my bladder of the several cups of coffee I’d had this morning, I went to look for Frankie. He was holding something in his hand. “Here, I got you a gift from the vending machine,” he said.

I took it and looked at it. “Toll booth pass. What’s that?”

“It’s for the toll roads. You open an account on line and add money to it. Then you put the little sticker on your windshield, on the inside, and no more going through the tool booths.”

“Oh, cool,” I said. It really was cool. And it was sweet of him to get it for me.  I put it in the pocket of my jean shorts.

“Mom, why don’t you carry a purse?”

“I didn’t think it was a good idea on the road.”

“No, I mean why don’t you ever carry a purse? You never really did?”

I just laughed. “Frankly I don’t understand what other women put in them. I just don’t need to carry that much stuff. Besides, they’re a pain. I’m always leaving it somewhere when I do carry one.”

Frankie laughed this time. “You never were like the other mothers.”

“Yeah, I was younger and cooler. A heavy metal princess. Let’s look through the brochures.”

There were aisles of brochures. There must have been hundreds of them. In fact, they even had bags there to hold all of your brochures for you. It looked as if there was more to do in the state of Florida than someone could possibly do in their entire life time. I loved this.

Frankie took the left side and I took the right side. When I finished filling my bag, I went to find him. I saw him in one of the aisles crouched down by the bottom row. I went over to where he was.

“Can you believe all the things there are to do in Florida?” I asked him.

He didn’t respond, he was staring at a pamphlet in his hand.

“Frankie, are you there?”

“What? Oh, sorry, Mom. Hey do you remember anything on our itinerary called Adventure Planet?”

I though back through all the discussions he and I had and the papers we had looked at.

“No, I don’t think the name is familiar. Why, what is it?” I asked.

“According to this brochure, it’s a theme park. But it’s not in Orlando, its further north. It looks kind of interesting,” he said.

“It could be our very first theme park experience together. Where is it?”

“Looks like it’s about an hour or two south of here. We could get a hotel, stay the night, and then check it out in the morning.”

“Ok. Where did you find the pamphlet? I don’t see it in this aisle?”

“Actually, it’s funny you ask, when I bent down to look at the brochures on the bottom row I saw this one sticking out from under the dividing wall. There don’t seem to be any more anywhere, though.”

“Maybe Adventure Planet’s not open anymore.”

He looked up at me, “Well, there’s one way to find out. Let’s go check at the desk, they’ll know,” he said.

The lady at the desk looked confused when we showed her the brochure. “I’ve never heard of the place,” she said. “Excuse me one moment; I’ll see if I can find out anything about it.” First she showed the brochure to a man behind the desk. He’d never heard of it. She then went to her computer to look it up.

“Well,” she said finally, “it still exists. Adventure Planet is open seven days a week from nine to six. And admission is only…I’m sorry this must be an error. It says here that admission is only thirty dollars per adult and twenty dollars per child. That sounds way too low so I am going to guess that they haven’t updated their website in years.”

Frankie and I looked at each other. We were both considering what to do. I spoke up first. “I still want to check it out. It could be interesting.”

“You got it, Mom.” He looked at the lady and said, “Can you, please book hotel rooms for my mother and I for tonight somewhere near Adventure Planet?”

“Sure, let me just pull up that information,” the lady said smiling at Frankie.

I let Frankie and the lady behind the counter work it out while I got a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice from a spot further on down the counter. Wow, that juice was so much better than the stuff I’m used to. I got a glass for Frankie and brought it to him when I saw that he was done.

“Thanks,” he said taking a sip. “That’s good. Ok, she couldn’t find a hotel any closer than twenty miles, and neither could I.”

“So, maybe there are no luxury hotels out there.”

“Mom, we looked at the cheap hotels and they were the twenty miles. The nearest luxury hotel, as you put it, is fifty miles away. In fact the hotels out there are independently owned. No chains.” He said this like it was a bad thing. Well, maybe it was, he knew more about hotels than I did.

“So, maybe it isn’t open anymore,” I said. “I mean, if you owned a theme park wouldn’t you want hotels nearby?”

“I would. Do you want to skip it? Maybe it’s a bad idea.”

I stopped for a moment to think. We were already planning on spending at least one day at each of the theme parks in Orlando. I mean, at least four at Disney, two at Universal, two at SeaWorld, one at Discovery Cove, and at least one at each water park. And the more Frankie and I went to tourist attractions, the longer I put off getting in to my new apartment and getting a job. My life was on hold until we were done playing tourist.

Did we really need to spend, or maybe waste, a day visiting this Adventure Planet? We didn’t even know if it still existed. Did we really want to spend a day on a wild goose chase? No, I thought, let’s continue on. It’s time to get on with the reason I came to Florida in the first place.

I may have thought no, but when I opened my mouth all that came out was, “Yes, what the hell. Maybe something good will come out of it.”

Frankie looked at me and exhaled as if he had been holding his breath waiting for my answer.  “I’m glad you said that.”

I looked at him in surprise. “You are? Because that’s not the decision I had come to in my head. I’m not even sure why I said that. Why are you glad?”

“Mom, you know me, I am not a big believer in fate. Hell, I tell people where to invest their money. If I even mentioned the word fate or feeling, I’d get laughed right out of business and into the poor house. But I can’t help it. Something is telling me we need to go. I mean, what are the odds that I would have found that brochure?”

Frankie’s hunches had made a lot of money for Frank and I over the years. I trusted in him when he felt this way.

“Point taken, I trust your instincts, but I want to eat dinner and then sit in my hotel room and think. I’m not sure I like this following my intuition thing. I haven’t done it for a long time. Let’s both mull it over and come to a decision in the morning,” I said.

We got one more glass of orange juice and visited the bathrooms and vending machines one more time before we left. When we got in the truck Frankie placed the Adventure Planet Brochure on the seat between us. We drove on in silence. We didn’t even play music. We just, thought.

When we arrived at the hotel, I was a little in shock. It was not that far off of I75, but it was not a great hotel compared to the ones we’d been staying in. The rooms were much smaller and the building smelled old. However, it was clean and the lady behind the desk was very friendly. In fact, she was so friendly I wondered how many guests she’d had recently. There were only a few cars in the lot, so I knew her rooms weren’t exactly filled.

The area surrounding it the hotel looked as if you’d be ok driving to your destination and then driving back when you are done, but it did not look safe for walking anywhere. Everything seemed old and run down. Luckily for us there was a buffet restaurant in the same parking lot. 

We ate our dinner there and did not talk. I’m not sure if Frankie was thinking or daydreaming, but I was listening to the conversations of the few people who were around us. I heard some happy conversations, but mostly I heard people wondering what was going to happen to their city. The staff was talking about getting their hours cut and what that would mean to their families.

One poor man mentioned that this was his second job and if they close Adventure Planet like the rumor says, he had no idea how he was going to feed his family. I looked at his name tag, it read “Jerome”. He had a face I liked, it was want you could call an honest face. He was a tall, well built and dark skinned African-American man. I was going to look for him tomorrow and give him a big tip. I couldn’t tip him tonight, because he was not our server. Besides, our server was well taken care of by Frankie. He always tipped according to service and the girl serving us was very attentive. I almost wondered if she found Frankie attractive.

Back at the hotel I was in my room trying to read a Dorothy Gilman novel when Frankie practically burst in carrying his laptop. Why did I give him a key?

“Holy crap, Frankie, you scared me!” I yelled at him, my heart pounding.

“I’m sorry, Mom, but I had some things I wanted to tell you. I’ve been looking up information on this area, and I wanted to share it with you.”

“Ok, I’ll put Mrs. Pollifax down for now.” I set my book on the night stand and gave my son my full attention. “Ok, what did you learn?”

He sat at the edge of my bed. “First, we are in Early County. It was named after Jubal Early, a rather reckless civil war general. Adventure Planet is in a city called Neuspech. The town was named after the family who opened, and still own Adventure Planet. Apparently when it opened, Adventure Planet did quite well. I found a lot of older articles about them. Then, a year or so ago something happened and the bottom dropped out. By the way the word neuspech is a Czech word and translates to failure.”

“Interesting,” was all I could say.

Well, it was interesting. First, the county was named after a reckless general. Next the city was named after a family whose last name meant failure.

“The park is currently owned by Adolf Neuspech,” Frankie continued.

“Oh my god, that’s even worse. Why would you give our son that name?”

“He’s named after his grandfather, the man who opened the park in the first place. In all of his photos they guy looks scared to death. I mean even when he’s smiling.”

“Let me see.”

Frankie handed me his laptop and I looked at the photos. In almost every picture he looked almost as if he were going to cry or wanted to run away. In most of the pictures he was with this bleached blonde, large busted woman who towered over him. Possibly because she wore six inch heels and he was always sort of hunched over.

“Poor guy,” I said. “Who’s the blonde?”

“That’s his wife, Barbara. According to the social column she left him about a year ago…which is not too long after the park started falling apart. I mean, according to the articles I’ve read.”

“Yeah, marriage starts to fall apart, life starts to fall apart. I could see it.”

“So, Mom do you still want to go tomorrow? We don’t have to. It could be a big disappointment.”

“Could be but, I want to go. I promised myself I’d give Jerome a big tip.”

“Who?”

“Guy from the restaurant who was saying he works at Adventure Planet.”

Frankie smiled at me. “Ok. We’ll go and we’ll give Jerome a big tip.”

“He was also saying he was afraid it was going to close.”

“The restaurant?”

“No, Honey, Adventure Planet.”

“Oh, wow. Good thing we’re going before it does.”

“If it closes how will the people here make a living? I mean he said he was working two jobs and still struggling.”

“Something else will come along.”

“Like what, Frankie? Another big box store? A mall?”

“I don’t know, Mom. Why are you getting so worked up about this?”