A Wisconsin Yankee in Walt Disney's Court

One question loomed large over the heads of every child of the ’60s: Dick York or Dick Sergeant?
Found going through the detritus of my parent’s lives after my father passed a couple weeks back. On my sixth birthday– I don’t remember ever looking like that, or having such a toothy grin. My mom had saved not only all these old photos, of course, but old birthday cards and papers from grade school. I had no idea. Sadly, most of it just had to be thrown out; I can’t archive this stuff forever, and it’ll be hard enough for someone to catalog the old pictures for posterity. I’ll have more on this whole depressing issue if I keep blogging…

We’re finally moving from the luxury apartments from hell, near Orlando proper, to a house a little farther out in Apopka. The only interesting thing of note I’ve seen in Apopka so far is this vintage shopping center sign on the outskirts. This was once the center of town but is now home to a bargain grocery, bargain auto parts store, and lame thrift store. I think the rest of the run-down neighborhood around it was bulldozed for the new surrounding highways.
I’ve mentioned Florida’s ubiquitous tiny lizards that are even more abundant out in the boonies, but we also have strange white frogs that climb the walls and think nothing of peeing on you from 20 feet up as they dive to the concrete if you disturb them. Plus, joy of joys, we found a shed snake skin in the front yard already.
Better yet, according to the Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology, 2 three-foot monkeys were spotted here in 2000, and monkeys have been captured in the state park across from our subdivision. But the best part is that Apopka and the Wekiwa Springs State Park have had numerous Skunk Ape sightings over the past 50 years– the wackiest and the only detailed one I can find is here. I can look forward to spending my evenings in a swamp with a camcorder waiting for Bigfoot– how awesome is that.
I spent a couple of late nights painting junior’s room with her favorite animals, manatees.

Every morning, when I ask what she dreamed about, she says “Manatees!” It’s probably not true, but she thinks it is, and I guess we’ve assured that they’ll haunt her dreams until long after the next repaint.

She didn’t really like that the “mommy” manatee is kind of mean looking, but it matched the model I had and the eye came out too nice to retouch. She likes the (more) cartoony baby manatee, of course.
I’m not even sure why or where her obsession started, just that it wasn’t long after moving down here. She’s seen them in captivity a few times, but not in the wild. And she only has one or two manatee toys. Her bigger obsession is probably puppies, actually, but big grey blobs are easier to paint, and if you see any flaws on it you can just say “That’s where a boat propeller hit the poor bastard; they’re endangered, you know.”

Some day I’m going to fulfill my intention of driving around and taking pictures of old or interesting signs in the Orlando area and posting them to the blog, but for now I have this video and some links about the Rotoshere, the king of the neon age mechanical signs.
Also known as Sputniks, over 200 were produced but only a handful survive. A product of the 1960s, they adorned car dealerships, liquor stores, bowling alleys, malls, hotels, and more. With more or less a car’s differential driving neon tubes in alternate directions, it’s no wonder they didn’t last very long, but how great would it be to still have things like this spinning all over town? If there was one near me, I’d probably be compelled to go park under it every night and fall asleep.
Beyond the wonder of the Rotosphere is the fact that people have compiled so much information and video on such things. Thank the magic of the internet that such esoteric subjects can reach their limited audience, in a way that couldn’t happen through books or magazines or libraries. There’s a pretty sweet Flicker pool of Rotospheres and related signs, and this page has, unbelievably, a checklist of every known example and it’s current condition. Amazing. Plus, there’s enough further footage on YouTube to make a grown man weep.

I had to meet a connecting flight in Atlanta to get to the National Scrabble Championship– surprisingly there aren’t a lot of direct flights to Dayton, Ohio. When a guy sat down next to me to wait for the plane while furiously studying a hand-written notebook of 7-letter words, it wasn’t hard to figure out where he was heading. After an introduction and some small talk we looked around and saw plenty of others with word lists or electronic dictionaries all around us– I guess nobody else had much of a reason to go to Dayton.
The city is kind of run-down with nothing much going on downtown and empty buildings everywhere. But it’s still fairly busy, and they’re putting in an effort with new streets and a trolley system going in, a riverfront park that seemed nice (at night, anyway) and a hipster uptown area with restaurants and small shops. The old buildings, classy and kitschy both, give the place an old-fashioned feel that many cities of that size have lost. I wanted to spend some time taking pictures of them , but didn’t have a chance. You’ll have to take my word that the Price department store building, apparently still open for business, is a rust-stained thing of beauty, enough to make the nostalgia hound inside me weep.
I arrived with a suitcase full of my Tilecan bags and Tilecouch racks, the Tilecans mostly only finished the night before (and given a minor design change that solved a production problem). One set of racks came out of the mold as I left for the airport, around the clock production running all week to get out as many as I could. I actually had to sit in the hotel room and trim thread and rubber off the respective items. Remind me not to pack a surgical scalpel next time, or maybe to pack some Band-Aids.
I was given a table during the tournament to sell my goods, before, between, and after games. I’d had a surprising response to my initial post and about half my stock was pre-orders, and it kept me busy tracking everyone down and selling the rest. I went home with only one rack (brown isn’t as popular as I’d hoped) and not even a Tilecan for myself. I did work a deal for a board with Sam of SamTimer fame and a deal for a clock with Gene of Adjucator 3000 fame. And all the other dealers were nice as well, including Mary of tilebag fame who took me out with her clubmates once or twice. All these people have last names that even Scrabble players can’t remember right, coincidentally.
I can blame the distraction of preparing my products and selling them for my mediocre performance play-wise, I suppose, but it’s still frustrating. I had a lot of games with luck going my way, some I had no chance in, but a few losses, in any one of which had I done the smart thing or reacted better it would have put me in the top 10 and I’d have been satisfied. I didn’t challenge a few stupid words, or didn’t yell “hold” quickly enough, or tried a phony word myself when I didn’t need to. In one I opened up the board to avoid a stalemate that might’ve come down to who had the least points on their rack, and of course lost. I think it’s a good sign that the far majority of my losses were to players that finished below me, and I had pretty close losses with the top 2 players (and only lost to the winner of my division because of an unlikely Q being the last letter in the bag). I still can’t deal with supposedly weaker players that clog up the board.
I met up with my buddy from the airport in round 17, and had one of my best games of the week, making the comments and the photo page. Games like that, down to the wire and wide open, are by far the most fun. Another highlight was hearing the story from someone at lunch about learning the word SEAWANT the day before and playing it that day… and I played it the next day myself, as did another player who was there. I’m sure I’ve seen it before but wouldn’t have remembered it or seen it on my rack if it hadn’t come up. A neat coincidence. Sadly, nothing much else too impressive came up, looking over my score sheets. Not a single play over 90 points. Ugh.
My other excitement of the week came when someone had a seizure and had to be hauled away. I heard about it a little later and asked an official who it was, and he told me it was my elderly roommate Stu Goldman! He’d just been given a plaque for playing over 5,000 tournament games, and I feared he’d given up the ghost. A little fact checking showed it to be someone else, though, who recovered and came back to play later that day. He and the guy who was mugged one night are doing fine, or as well as can be expected, I guess.
My products were a success and I made a lot of new connections and friends so overall the trip was worthwhile. It felt good to see people using my bags and racks. Maybe I deserved to lose ratings points (I haven’t had the gumption to check how many) because of my weak word knowledge. Oh well. One of these days I’ll get it right.
One note to Dayton businesses– maybe you could be a little more prepared (I’m talking to you, Subway-with-2-guys-working-the-lunch-hour) or step things up a little. I was a little pissed that the smelly hotel that should be grateful for being filled up maybe the only time all year gave a woman a pissy “The shuttle to the airport is a privilege, not a right” speech on check-out day. You couldn’t run them twice an hour? Or have someone drive the manager’s SUV? You have to talk to someone like that after 5 nights as a paying guest? Jerks.

Thanks to our old pal Jimmy for pointing out a Canned Tamales group on MyFace or somesuch social website, but I’m not joining up with any of those anytime soon. I even avoid Facebook Scrabble. I’ve been sticking with the Hormel tamales, but I saw a bag of frozen corn-husk jobbers at the Costco that I may try someday.
On a similar note, back when I lived in the land of plenty, I still supported ChiliCheese.org, even though we were blessed with the fabulous Chili Cheese Burrito from Taco Bell. Now, of course, they’re nowhere to be found around Orlando. Arguably one of the most interesting items they sell, the chili sauce doesn’t seem to combine in any other products the way their 7 other main staples combine to form 140 different taco-like foodstuffs.
I don’t miss them like I do, say, White Castle (We have Krystal’s here, which have a similar “slyder” and may actually be affiliated with WC, but it doesn’t feel the same) but it seems an injustice when you can get it in one area and not another. And it’s not like I go there much, but when I do it’s be nice to get one, now that I think about it.
With the lonely, sad death of the disenfrachised Taco Bell Chihuahua looming over them, TB could use a better PR gimmick than adding bacon to everything for a couple of months. Bring the Chili Cheese Burrito to a national audience, and while you’re at it why not bring back the mysterious “Mexi-Fries” that had an even smaller regional distribution? How could Mexi-Fries have possibly been a failure? C’mon, TB, you’ve stagnated since the days of promising a free taco to all comers if a satellite crashes into a target in the middle of the ocean. Now that was genius.