A Kansas Rogue in Florida

Here are a few observations on life in the tropics. This is my sixth year since leaving Kansas. I’ve developed some opinions on Florida that readers may find thought-provoking:

• Floridians are not on permanent vacation (at least most of us). We also have to work and pay for things, like mortgages.

• Snowbirds, or winter visitors, we consider a necessary evil. We would just as soon they either move to Florida permanently or stay away. They clog our highways, hospitals, and establishments. Then they leave at the first sign of a hurricane. Yes, snow birds are fair weather friends.

• What Florida needs most are Midwestern families moving down here.

• Florida schools almost rate dead last in national statistics. When families from Mississippi and Louisiana refuse to move to Florida due to the poor schools, things are really bad.

• Florida tornadoes will sometimes blow over trash cans.

• How is it that former New Jersey and New York residents of Florida can so successfully retain their accents? Forty years later, they still talk as if they just flew down from Newark.

• If you are waiting for a rain day in Florida to do some house cleaning, you will be waiting a long time.

• Disney World and Universal are not the real Florida.

• Like Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster, my sons have not seen snow either.

• Florida is composed of at least two climates. The panhandle is nothing like central and southern Florida.

• Trailer parks should be banned ten miles in from the coastline. Hurricanes are much too powerful for trailer park living. Likewise, trailer parks should be banned in the entire state of Kansas. Anyone remember the Andover tornado?

• Tampa is not the lightning capital of the United States. I remember far greater electrical storms when I lived in Atchison and Topeka.

MORE observations from the Kansas rogue are on the way......