TwoGether

Sunday 1/29/12        Linda wanted to take a walk in the downtown area and see the different shops.  She said " Let’s explore a different street every day".   So today we went back to First Street.  The building that used to be McCrorys 5&10 is now divided into numerous enterprises from a small variety/convenience store, bistros and a nail salon.

Even when I was a youngster downtown was divided with arcades.  The Arcade Theater was a closed walkway but most of them were open air with common areas in the center.  The Post Office Arcade was home to the Snack House, a regular stop in my teens, and now is the entrance to the largest hotel downtown with a Japanese restaurant in the arcade. 

While looking around the hotel lobby we met Kathy. She is a Ft. Myers native born the year my family first moved here. She was a delight to talk to. It was like talking to someone we have known for years.  I was telling her about the Little Pigs Bar-B-Que restaurant I had on Cleveland Avenue in the late 1960s and she remembered it. Her family owned the largest dry cleaner and laundry service in the county. I remember taking our family dry cleaning there. As I recollect we used them for our uniforms for the restaurant. She remembers when Ft. Myers still had that small town atmosphere and everybody in town knew who you were. That atsmopshere still comes through when you are downtown.  I enjoyed how she helped take us a little farther down memory lane. We were invited to go to the roof top observation area and see the town from above. 

On the way back to the boat Linda commented how beautiful the downtown restoration is and how to us years ago, it was just downtown.  It would be great to see some of the towns around our home to take on such an initiative.  But then, this is a tourist town and it is geared to them. (Uh…That’s us!)