TwoGether

Friday 1/13/12.          Last night on the 11 o’clock news the weather girl was warning about the cold weather coming today.  The temps will only reach a high of 69°!  It was a bit cool this morning… a bone chilling 56°.  This morning I got the new inverter installed but we’re still waiting for the relay.  Since it’s such a beautiful day we decided to visit Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. 

Thomas Edison had his winter home here in Ft. Myers.  After becoming an encouragement to Henry Ford and inviting him to stay in the guest house, Ford bought the neighboring property.  Both houses now belong to the city and are setup as a museum. 

Edison also had a laboratory here where he would work as many as 20 hours per day.  He was very interested in plants which could produce rubber and ones that the fibers, after being turned into carbon, would work as the filaments in light bulbs.  One species of bamboo actually lasted 1300 hours. This was the reason for the botanical gardens. 

Most of the furnishings in the Edison home are original since the home was sold to the city by his widow Mina, in 1947 for $1.00.  They have tried to restore the Ford home by duplicating the furnishings.  The Ford home had several owners before becoming the property of the city.

The Ford House

Later in the day we headed toward Ft. Myers Beach.  I found Century 21, the mobile home park that Dad and I did much of the concrete and masonry work in back in the 1960s.

The next stop was Hickory Bar-B-Que.  At one time there were only two restaurants in Lee County that served real pit bar-b-que.  One was Old Hickory the other was Little Pigs.  Bill Davis owned Hickory and I owned Little Pigs.  We were friendly competitors.  Bill and his wife would visit ours, and my family would visit theirs.  I was telling our waitress about times gone by when she said “Would you like to meet Bill, the original owner?  He’s right here.”  I turned and shook his hand and he remembered Little Pigs telling the waitress exactly where it was located.  We enjoyed a delicious rib platter with fresh made hush-puppies.

Now on to Ft. Myers Beach.  I remember when the bridge to the beach was a manually operated swing bridge.  Two big strapping men would put handles into the mechanism and walk a turn style to open and close the bridge.  Later there was an electric motor used to open it … unless it broke.  Then it was back to manual labor. We were told that the old bridge became so rickety that the school bus would stop short of the bridge and let the children out.  The kids would walk across the bridge and get into another bus to get to their destination. Today there is a high-rise concrete bridge in its place.  The miles of pristine beach have been lined with every conceivable condo, motel or tourist trap.  It has become the typical tourist center.  And that’s okay.  People need to have a place to R & R in today’s hectic world.

We continued south to Bonita Spring then took US41 back to Ft. Myers.  What we remembered as the two lane “Tamiami Trail” is now six lanes with dedicated left and right turn lanes.  The roadway is a wide as a runway on an international airport.

We arrived back at the boat just before dark and enjoyed the serenity of being gently rocked in our slip.