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MIKE,
A 38-YEAR-OLD SECURITY GUARD at the Ramada Inn
in Ocala, Fla., is no ordinary rent-a-cop.
And the Ocala
Ramada is no ordinary motel. From the highway, motorists can't
help but notice the 120-foot New York Yankees insignia rising
high off the marquee. The motel, like four others in Ocala,
is owned by Yankees majority partner George Steinbrenner III.
In addition to
his duties of policing the premises in his white Chevy S-10
pickup truck with SECURITY stamped on the door, Mike tends
a tangerine patch behind the motel. The grove's sole meaning
in life is to bear fruit for The Boss when he's in town.
"Do I know
George?" Mike retorted disdainfully through boneless
gums. "Oh, yeah. Me and George go way back. Every
time he's down here I have to look after him. He's a asshole.
But he give me this hat."
Mike was wearing
the same $6.99 mesh-backed Yankees cap that motel guests receive
on their pillows instead of a chocolate.
Jeremy Gilbert,
23, of Fort Myers, Fla., my partner in crime in the northward
leg of the road trip, felt a kinship with Mike immediately.
Jer managed to extract the following facts: Mike earns more
money securing the Ramada than the Wells Fargo guys —
"And they have to carry a gun.," Mike had announced
in suddenly insecure upspeak. And he once owned a highly
successful business processing stuff that slowly suffocates
and strangles trees: Spanish moss.
We learned, as
you may be hearing for the first time now: Henry Ford stuffed
seats in his first Model Ts with Spanish moss, and herbalists
use it as tea to relieve rheumatism, abscesses and birth pains.
And that's not all. Ocalans are liable to stuff their microwave
ovens with Spanish moss to "cure" it when they wish
to use it for handicrafts, indoor mulch or to pack fragile
items. Others boil and then dry the moss to treat it.
A warning, though:
"It is always a good idea to inspect the moss for larger
creatures (like frogs, lizards and all visible spiders and
insects) before taking any Spanish moss home."
Spanish moss even
serves to fill potholes and to dam up puddles in driveways
to private residences.
Now this seems
like more than just a cottage industry — one that might
enrich its leading maven — but Mike claimed that for
years he was the world's top processor of this endlessly useful
bounty of nature, and never reaped the cash to which he seemed
entitled.
His dreams dashed,
Mike says that soon he plans to move north, back to Maine,
where he came from, to take care of his ailing in-laws. And
when he gets to New England, he'll pitch his Yankees cap forever
in favor of one from New York's arch-rival, the Red Sox. It
will be a small satisfaction in what seems to have been an
otherwise disappointing life.
See below
to learn who would break into a filthy frat house
at 4 a.m., and what they might find. >>
ON THE ROOF
of the University of Florida's Theta Chi house at 4 a.m.,
it all seemed like a harmless enough idea. Jeremy's brother,
who still vaguely associated himself with the fraternity,
had told us if we wanted a place to stay, all we had to do
was break in. Nobody would mind.
Nobody, that is,
who had completely disregarded normal, non-biohazardous living
standards. And though I would later sleep in the boot of my
car, I can safely say I am not among that number. By the time
I had pushed Jeremy through a broken windowframe and he had
hoisted me up behind him, we were in the midst of a Superfund
site.
Jeremy stopped
short at the end of the hallway, shocked at the filth. "Mac,"
he said. "Prepare yourself. These are conditions not
fit for the urban poor."
There was garbage
heaped everywhere. These wretched quarters seemed absent of
sewer-dwelling rodents, because even for them it was too foul.
None of the toilets flushed and the sinks were filled with
trash. The smell of the bathroom was so bad that it was hard
to walk past the open window while on the outdoor balcony
without pitching off the roof.
We found the most
acceptable room to sleep in — no Hilton, but apparently
without macro parasites. The room was divided into halves
— top and bottom. Mattresses were placed on the floor
in a virtual cave about four feet high. On top of that were
futons which also had about four feet of head room. One of
the guys (a weightlifter) had a blender in which he "cooked"
all his meals, Jeremy's brother later reported.
After putting
practice at the UF golf course and $6 haircut appointments
on the strip, we enjoyed a brunch of burritos and hot sauce
at Tijuana Flats, a local favorite. Trying to prove my manhood
to nobody in particular, I selected hot sauce No. 15, "Ass
in the Tub." That name would be confirmed later that
night in Marietta, Ga.
Inside the Tijuana
Flats john, Jer and I separately observed a strange amalgam
of graffiti. One epithet above the urinal read: "This
fills Al Queda (sic) water tanks — contribute at will."
Nearby there was a Star of David. Another comment, not clearly
directed toward anyone, said: "DICKHOLE." Another
choice remark was "Your Mamma's (with arrow that read
"no apostrophe dumbass") got a peg leg with a kickstand."
Jeremy and I evacuated
the establishment soon thereafter, got a quick nine in at
Ironwood (know locally as Ironweed) Golf Club, and set out
for Atlanta, Birmingham and points north.
See below
to learn what BBQ burgoo, eyeliner and puppy chow
have in common. >>
OWENSBORO,
Ky. is home to the second-most successful basketball program
in college history. Kentucky Wesleyan College has won eight
NCAA championships, more than any other school except for
UCLA. So we wanted to watch the Panthers play in front of
a sellout crowd of 5,000 at the Owensboro SportsCenter.
Instead of basketball,
though, the best part of our visit to Owensboro was a behind-the-scenes
visit to the "world-famous" barbecue mecca, the
Moonlite. (Aside: What barbecue joint have you seen that doesn't
to be world-famous?)
Besides the barbecued
meat, the specials at Moonlite are the coleslaw and the burgoo,
a meat chowder that used to include squirrel meat"until
the damn USDA got involved," the owner told us. Naturally,
this fact piqued our curiosity. After lunch, Jer and I would
find ourselves hair-netted in the kitchen, stirring a 100-gallon
vat of the stew with a wooden oar.
Now, really all
we intended when we asked the third-generation owner Pat Bosley
if we could peek into the kitchen was to see if he'd actually
let us back there. After all, we'd just eaten barbecued mutton,
so how much more distasteful could it get? Well...
An hour and fifteen
minutes later, we had toured the packing plant, the distribution
plant, the warehouse, the cannery, the kitchen, the furnace
and the "recycling area." That's where the excreted
grease from the 40 x 20 x 20-foot oven emerged.
"I betcha
wanna know where that stuff goes when we're done with it,"
Bosley drawled in a half-Southern, half-Western accent. As
to his question, well, since we had just eaten, we actually
didn't wanna know where the grease ended its lonely,
scalded life.
"I used to
just toss it," he said of the oil filling 50-gallon drums.
(Footnote: Wherever those barrels lay, we now have Superfund
site No. 2) "But now I sell it for two bucks a barrel.
Some guy hauls it outta here. He uses it to make cosmetics
and dog food."
Now, Pat holds
an anthropology degree from Western Kentucky and a masters
in industrial psychology from Colorado, but I doubt he had
any idea how close I was to barfing in his rack of ribs. As
if it weren't bad enough to have eaten lunch there having
a vague idea of what we were putting inside ourselves... but
we left town with a story, and that's what really matters.
Click here to
learn when it's okay to get
flipped the bird. >>
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