The Fountain of Eternal Life
We are now on the flight from Atlanta to Orlando. We had a “normal” layover in Atlanta and our flight there was not really late in arriving, but we landed at the E concourse and were taking off from the T concourse. While that’s not quite as bad as the letters make it sound, its still pretty bad. We had to take the train from E to D to C to B to A and then to T, but even at T it was a bit of a poke to gate T6 and we arrived while they were loading the second of the three economy sections onto the plane. So, it wasn’t a close call by any standard, but it wasn’t a calm stroll either. We held our water until we were on the plane and took no bathroom stops just in case. But we made it and now we have a 62 minute flight to sunny Orlando and that town that Walt Disney made famous in the mid-1970’s. I have a friend Josh who grew up in Orlando and he used to say that what that experience taught him was that you always wanted to grow up in a growth-oriented community because there was always opportunity and jobs and new people moving to town and lots to do. I’m guessing that worked for Josh, but wouldn’t work for everyone. That gene must run in his family because another part of his family had moved to Las Vegas in the 1950’s and they certainly rode that wave to wealth and power in the town that never sleeps.
I’ve been to Orlando enough times over the years, for the theme parks with the kids and to conventions which I either attended or at which I spoke. I specifically remember taking Thomas there for a five-day hoopla to Universal Studios and the like. He loved it. I also remember giving a speech there to McDonalds franchisees about a product we created in the early 80’s to help them protect themselves against interest rate risk in there franchise borrowings. That was a trip watching Ma and Pa Kettle try to understand the subtleties of derivatives even though we dumbed the product down enough to be digestible. I would characterize their reaction as not wanting anything to do with anything that sounded too good to be true. I did get a laugh or two out of the crowd nonetheless, which was always a prime objective of mine. And I think the last time I was in Orlando was when I was building the New York Wheel. I was told I HAD to go to the attractions convention, so I went. What I saw was a bunch of people dedicated to jiggling and jostling people for their collective pleasure with rides and attractions. I met the guy who was considered the dancing fountain king of the attractions world. When he bragged that he had done ALL the big fountain displays I said, “so you did the Bellagio fountains in Vegas?” His answer was a quiet no as he turned to talk to someone else. That and a misguided visit to Epcot for New Years Eve one year when we were visiting Fernandina Beach sums up my experience with Orlando.
This time we will be staying at the Disney Coronado Springs Resort, which is funny since the Hotel Del Coronado is in San Diego and we tend to avoid it like the plague due to the tourists. When I went online to see where the hotel was in relation to the airport and the theme parks, I was thoroughly confused. I guess I hadn’t realized just how much land Disney must have bought around Orlando when they planned out this mega resort fifty years ago. We are staying at what is probably one of the closest Disney Hotels to the Magic Kingdom, but we are even closer to Disney Hollywood Studios (obviously a counterpunch to Universal Studios) and Epcot Center, that not-so-small-small world that makes it possible for Americans to visit the world without leaving the good old U.S. of A. And yet, it took me forever once I had pinpointed the hotel on Apple Maps to figure out where the freaking theme parks were. Why? Because there are huge swaths of swampland surrounding all of these places, presumably no different geologically than where they have already built, but just left to simmer for future expansion WAY beyond what exists there now or could reasonably be handled by the massive infrastructure they have already put in place to handle the millions and millions of annual tourists. Amazing stuff.
Once I figured out where everything was, I began to imagine how many alligators and copperhead snakes there were in those swamps (my brother-in-law from Southern Georgia would probably insist that I call those swamps marshes, since it sounds more civilized and less dangerous). The next thought is how it must have been for the Spanish Conquistadores that first traipsed around that God-forsaken swampy peninsula back those 600 years ago. I used to wonder why the early explorers like Columbus spent most of their time bouncing around the Caribbean Islands when the mainland was so close. I assumed it was just the first land they saw and they were too weary to carry on. Now that I’ve been to many of the Islands and to Florida, I have a feeling it was far more tactical than that. It is little wonder that Miami and the East Coast of Florida was a backwater that only got inhabited well after the Bahamas (like in the early 20th Century). Without air conditioning or island breezes, it must have been a God-awful place to live. You can see my disdain for the tropics come through…and the tropics I lived in in Costa Rica was far less swampy than central Florida.
Do you remember the old adage that if you believe such-and-such I have some nice swampland in New Jersey you might be interested in. Well imagine the early 1970’s landowners around Orlando when the presumably Uber-stealthy Disney agents came to town and bid up the local swamps. They must have toasted one another for days as they laughed about unloading the otherwise worthless property to these rubes from California. Last laughs are always the best, but you have to be a real long-term thinker to get out ahead of something like Disneyworld. I’m not so sure its as easy to plan that long term now with the pace of technological change and the nature of things like the pandemic throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of the attractions industry. I sense that the uncertainty of gathering large groups of humans in a single space or even in an urban setting for that matter, may get thrown into question as we inch forward into the next phase of life in these United States.
But one demographic shift seems to be relentless…at least for now. Old people like warmer weather and like to congregate somewhere where they can be near their friends for Ma Jong or Gin Rummy and they can easily play cart-golf and now pickle ball to their hearts content. That still sounds more like Florida than anywhere else, the land of the Early Bird Two-fer Specials. Of course there are lots of options. You can go mainstream near Palm Beach (especially if you hanker for invitations to Mar-a-Lago). You can go Latin down near and in Miami (with both a goodly Jewish and Gay quotient in Miami Beach). You can go Midwest and New England on the West Coast. Or you can be a non-conformist and go up near Daytona and St. Augustine. But whatever you do, unless you are looking for the Southern Redneck experience, probably best not to go to the Panhandle.
Florida is lots of things to lots of people but maybe Ponce De Leon had it right when he figured it was the site of the Fountain of Youth. Of course that’s ridiculous, but modern medical science has certainly at least taken us to the Fountain of Near-Eternal Life by prolonging our existence until every last penny of our savings have been depleted.