Villages
Coconut Boulevard, Palm Tree Drive, Willow’s Creek…were whimsical names of the individual villages in the enormous golfing complex, all built around the central golf course.
A most wonderful concept! It didn’t exactly replace the ancient village green, but given most English people could no longer afford a house overlooking a village green, this was an excellent idea and gave so many homes wonderful views.
The internal road was wide with undulating, smooth, rippling bends, edged with external green grasses that never died, alongside footpaths for the odd jogger.
These paths were never cluttered with pedestrians and never grew weeds or had litter. They were serene, empty, calm, and decorative. Why couldn’t the whole world be like this?
Between the gym and the jogging, people burnt off enough spare and unwanted calories to feed a small African country.
Squirrels darted and ran for no good reason as there were no predators here they were in no danger. Had they not been in the overall master plan they would have all been exterminated immediately, but they could stay if they didn’t bury nuts on the golf course.
I lost my way as each perfect boulevard ran into the next and all the palm trees swayed in the same direction.
Clusters of houses in individually architecturally- designed villages branched off to the left or right in intervals of about half a mile.
Whispering Brook, Green Reeds, Barbados Sun, or Vintage Court all had a different price bracket, size of house, style, and location to the clubhouse. The names themselves made no sense at first, but when they came to represent a cluster of $2-3 million golf-view Spanish-style villas, it was surprising how quickly a name could become significant.
All the villages basically competed with each other with different grand entrances, gold lettering, fountains, marble entrances, and Italian-style ponds, but the price of the houses inside was set.
Majestic palm trees, arrays of endless flowers, lakes that never dried up, and tall grasses were only disturbed by the occasional visiting egret.
Underground pipes apparently connected the lakes, but I never saw a huge dinosaur of a gator basking motionless on a golf course as golf carts whisked around. I wondered how the club would have dealt with that.
Every day that passed, this place became more real.
We were here and you could touch, feel, and smell the nature around you, but it was the outer world on television and people in far off places, bombing, starving, fighting, and burning that become the more unreal.
Florida and our life behind the wall which was actually beginning to keep us in…voluntarily, of course for now.
* * *
Back in the supermarket, Frank Sinatra and I waltzed between the pregnant chocolate muffins, trotted passed the sea green pickles, and swayed in front of exotic fruits and on towards the checkout girl, carrying, as usual, very little to eat.
They always avoided looking at my face, and only ever said “have a nice day,” which they could very well have not meant, but I didn’t care.
I was in heaven, happy to be alive; the world had no starvation as we lived in abundance and this was becoming my reality.
All human misery was a thing of the past. Man could organize himself if he had the will, money, the right architects, and people with straight white teeth could organize it all.
The vast selection of fabulous food only confirmed the system in the USA had worked, as there was plenty for everyone, enough to give away, and plenty spare.
It was like living on a film set for a propaganda film and no one ever said, “cut.”
Waxed apples, flaunting their pale-green skins like thick Rolls Royce paint, lay next to bunches of radishes flushed with embarrassed. I ignored the perky carrots - all the same color and length – the wispy bundles of dill, soft and feathery-like seaweed and the light, springy parsley waiting for fish.
The stock was never depleted or disheveled, and the odd tub of blueberries or a banana would drop into my basket.
We never cooked in the kitchen and I fantasied about making dishes that I had no idea on how to really make.
These were ingredients that longed for an experienced cook, and I wanted to be that person, but Tim wanted dinner out every night, and I was terrified of ruining his meal.
I could have jumped into the salad leaves and played boule with the letterbox-red tomatoes, but instead I bought a cauliflower with a creamy-white bumpy pure face and took it home with me and put it in the fridge.
Alone, on a shelf, it beamed back at me for about five weeks before decay spoilt its lovely face, and that’s when I realized foods here were irradiated, and they did not know what the long-term effects were.
This was a bizarre, unnatural type of longevity, and I was sad when it died.
All the fizzy drinks in lime green plastic bottles, too big for a normal human to lift, stood next to packets of chips and tacos as large as pillows for homeless people, except there were no homeless people around here.
Buying cleaning products demanded some serious study, as each bottle was completely confident of its own success, and I wanted them all to help me.
I never did get to try out their promises, as Tim arranged a nice Spanish lady to come in to clean, what was already still clean, and who spoke no English but enjoyed the messages on the bottles.
This was life in the USA, my friend.