A special friend of my family, Bill Smith, passed away this summer. He followed his wife, Betsy, by approximately a year. The Smiths were my mom's next door neighbors in Mariemont, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cincinnati. When my mother's parents passed, Betsy and Bill Smith became an extension of her family, and mine, when my parents married. Events like Thanksgiving meals and Christmas day visits to the Smiths became tradition for me as a child, and I think back to those days with longing and wishes to duplicate the feelings derived from the experiences.
In the late 1960's or perhaps the early 70's, Bill and Betsy Smith bought a duplex on a Florida island called Anna Maria. South of Tampa and just north of Sarasota, it sits in the Gulf of Mexico, making itself available with just two bridges from the mainland. In October of 1976, I made my first voyage to Florida with my parents and sister, my Grandma Dorothy, and my Uncle David and Aunt Barbara. Of course, it was to Anna Maria Island. My family stayed in the left, and larger side of the duplex. My relatives stayed on the right. Driving from the Tampa Airport to the island, I can visualize tall palms against the late afternoon sun through the rear window of the rental car, and understand now the beginning of a love affair with this state blooming in a young mind and heart.
I remember driving there with my family in our Jeep Wagoneer, and listening to Elvis all the way home as he had just left our world. For most of the 80's, Anna Maria was the spring break destination for myself, my sister, and my mom, who would sell Tampax stock to pay for our airfare. I brought my close buddy, Rick, there for two consecutive years in high school. In college, I brought Laura there for the first time. Betsy and Bill actually encouraged us to marry some day. We did. We have traveled there with Emma and Harrison, my parents, and my sister's family. The last time we went, we took our good friends, who claimed that part of Florida was unlike any other they had seen. To this day, my son, Harrison, occasionally mentions that we "really need to get back to Anna Maria." I don't disagree.
The following is an ode to the island. A love song. I believe I wrote it on the back of a couple of postcards during a trip in 2000 or 2001. Nothing has changed.
Anna Maria
Your
latitude is such that the rays
of the sun
shine radiantly,
bathing your
lush foliage and
sand white
shorelines in a swath
of
ultraviolet persuasion.
It’s a
Technicolor oasis that at once
bedazzles
and terrifies the eyes
with its
clarity of shape and form.
In the
confines of your tiny perimeter,
blooms of deep,
luscious pinks and whites
comparable
only to a Yankee snow thrust
out and sway
decadently if a breeze
from the
Gulf saunters through,
but mostly
hang in an Island stillness,
from the
defensive arms of plants
whose
magical gift is to exist in
more hues of
green than is logical
to man’s
eyes.
Move outward
in any direction to the
blankets of
crushed rock and shell,
pulverized
to a fine, finger caressing smoothness,
the Island’s
pride, its trip to the bank.
And no one’s
surprised, what with its
suggestive
contrast to the Gulf of Mexico,
a
glowing turquoise giving way to deeper
tints of
blue, home to scads of fish,
roaming
dolphins, occasional sharks,
and the
vulnerable manatee.
Two age worn
piers, reaching out
into the water, run parallel as they
connect land
and sea,
drawing us
out farther, yet never
too far from
this haven, this Island.
Softened by the heavy, salted air that accompanies life on an island, Kipper quickly took to his new environment. Walking among the fallen needles of the pines that populate the island, he found plenty to sniff on his leashed walks. As a matter of fact, he greatly enjoyed his mid-evening walks along the ponds of the fairway behind the villa, which, in all honesty, were actually thinly veiled gator searches. One evening, we came upon a goodly sized fellow patiently and silently waiting, presumably, for an ill-timed passing of a creature that would satisfy his hunger until the next morning’s breakfast. If Kipper had in any way sensed the alligator at water’s edge, I’m confident he would have barked and postured (at a safe distance, of course) with the bravery of other notable South Carolinian dogs such as The Great Dog Chippy*, until the shrill and piercing barks sent the large reptile back into the peaceful, murky, and soundproof waters of the briny pond. If Kipper was ever ambushed by such an alligator, I’m quite certain he’d make an adequate meal, if not something of a delicacy, being Yankee blood and all. 
