FLORIDA SUCKS!!!

PLASTICVILLE-USA

FLORIDA SUCKS!!!!

Three years ago this past week..on our 10^th wedding anniversary to be exact..we succumbed to the pressure of my wife’s parents and bought a house in the Plasticville bubble. While her parents were overjoyed, we came here kicking and screaming and the feeling hasn’t changed.

Over the time we have lived here, I have had the chance to meet and talk to a number of true native “locals” and found them to be VERY nice people. They love Florida and interestingly they all seem to share the mammoth dislike..as we do..of the northern invaders. Local Floridians love their state and they don’t mind the extreme weather and other interesting attributes of their state. Much the same as native Alaskans who delight in their state and the extreme weather found in that state. Native Floridians and Alaskans also share a certain distrust..and in many cases outright dislike of non-natives who have come to their state for various reasons.

Nowhere in Florida are the divisions more clearly marked than here in the Plasticville bubble. It seems that the vast majority of northern types who have settled in Adult Disneyland feasted on a meal of asshole pills before arriving. Villagers arrive as pompous, nasty, self-important people who look down on the locals and expect them to “know their place” in the food chain. I have yet to see any real examples of the northern invaders being anything other than shallow, obnoxious and self-serving.

Unlike most of the invaders we didn’t come here because we wanted to. We’re here because my wife’s parents felt that they would live a more fulfilling life if their nurse-daughter was living nearby. It’s helped them. It hasn’t done much for us.

When we came here we left behind ALL of our personal and business friends, our children, our grandchildren, brothers and sisters and a life we found to be quite satisfying. We traded that to live in a hot, steamy jungle-like area filled with rich spoiled brats. Its not been fun.

So for our 13^th anniversary we boarded a Delta flight from Mouse City to head back to our home area near Binghamton, NY. Binghamton and the nearby towns are a shadow of once they what were, but they are still “home”..and home is a wonderful place to go.

Just west of Binghamton is the small town of Endicott, NY. Endicott was the home of the Bundy Time Recording Company. Bundy Time Recording just happens to be the original name of a little company called…IBM! Yes..little Endicott, NY was the birthplace of one of the world’s largest and best known tech companies and for decades it employed tens of thousands of people in jobs ranging from elite research and development programs to factory assembly work, each and every one of these jobs meant top industry pay and benefits for whatever line of work you found at IBM. Just down the road from Endicott in even smaller Owego, NY was the IBM Federal Systems Division..the operation who built the vast majority of computer units used for the NASA space programs and US Military missile defense operations.

In fact when the famous words..”Houston..we have a problem” were uttered, a lot of lights snapped on in little Owego as IBM engineers were called awake to help figure out the problems at hand on Apollo-13.

But in the late 1990’s IBM made a fateful decision to pull out of its long time ancestral home leaving over 20,000 people out of work. Eventually the Owego plant was sold to Lockheed Martin and today, the formerly 6,000 people who worked for IBM-Owego found jobs with new owner Lockheed. Not a bad feat since little Owego’s population essentially numbers the same amount of people employed at the new Lockheed operation.

Needless to say with the 5,000 pound gorilla of IBM out of the local scene, the general area had fallen on tough times. In one (partially) lucky event, a great deal of the people who worked for IBM-Endicott and IBM-Owego were long-vested with the company and were of retirement or near retirement age, and would receive a good defined-benefit pension from the area’s former powerhouse employer.

Today those big tech jobs are gone, and the largest employer outside of Lockheed is the government. Binghamton plays host to one of the best rated universities in the NY SUNY system, and it has become a large employer. Others work for the school districts and other governmental and quasi-governmental agencies. While that helps, that also means that the local economy is driven by tax dollars, which has made property taxes a real problem back at home.

But home is home and we were happy to be there.

One of the great myths retired people will tell you is how much cheaper life is down in Florida. For the most part it is indeed a myth. The myth ONLY becomes a reality IF you are…

A) Retired with a GOOD defined-benefit pension.

B) Your home and cars are paid for.

C) You have a reasonably healthy savings account.

Otherwise the myth is an outright LIE. Housing is for the most part cheaper, and property taxes are lower. Gas is a bit cheaper depending on where you are from. There is no Florida state income tax, or municipal income tax. However..here’s the difference. IF you are still working and you come to Florida no matter what you do for a living up north you can expect to make fully 35-50% L-E-S-S money for whatever job you do down here. The wages are just plain TERRIBLE. Now, if for example you have a job with IBM or BP or GM and they transfer you to Florida, you are going to continue to get whatever their standard pay grade is for your position. BUT…if you happen to be a teacher, cop, truck driver, nurse, clerk, cook, server or whatnot and you are working for a Florida-based employer you are going to be SHOCKED at just how much less your career is going to pay you in the Sunshine State.

While you will pay some more taxes up north, that does NOT make up for a 50% wage cut! Add to that the fact that food, electricity, water, clothing, medicines and many other basic needs are just as expensive, or even MORE so in Florida than they are up north, it is not the paradise the folks will lead you to believe. In fact when we first came here our insurance agent remarked that no matter what job you do, you will be paid the most poorly of your life if you are doing it in Florida!

The day we arrived in Binghamton at the airport it was a beautiful sunny fall day with a temperature of 55. A full 45 degrees lower than when we had left the steamy jungle confines of Florida. It was FALL! A REAL FALL! With the trees turning bright colors and nice crisp air had replaced that hot stagnant steam that we have been used to since April rolled around down in Adult Disneyland. It was LOVELY!

Another thing that I had forgotten about was “cold” water. When you’re in Florida you can NEVER get “cold” water out of the cold water tap. The best you can do is a sort of tepid “not hot” water out of the tap. Up north when you turn on the old water tap you get real, honest COLD water! How refreshing! One learns to appreciate the little things.

Immediately I was hit by the lower cost of things. On our way down from the airport to the hotel we stopped at a Mickey’s for a couple of cups of Coke. Now just across from our development in Florida is a McDonalds. 2 large Cokes go for $4.14 cents. Here in Binghamton even including New York’s higher sales tax those 2 same Cokes went for $3.87!

We continued to experience those price differences all during our time back at home. Again, those lower prices are offset by higher property taxes but then when you factor in making 40% less at your job in Florida those taxes are more than cancelled out by your higher wages.

Now certainly if you live in a place like New York City, all those things are different, you’re living in one of the most expensive places on the planet to live. But if you are living in MOST places in what is called “upstate” NY, the prices are far lower, and your wages are higher than they are in Florida.

The thing that I think I miss most about living in Plasticville are the seasons. No matter how you try to spin it Florida has at most 2 seasons. What we might consider “late spring” up north and the full-out “August Dog Days”. Late spring arrives depending on all sorts of things anytime between late October and December and stays until mid-March. During that time the temperatures can fluctuate anywhere from the upper-60’s to 100 although the median is about 75. The week before our first Christmas here it is was 85. And for those from the north, Christmas when it’s 85 outside is a VERY hard thing to wrap your head around!

By mid-March the temperatures and humidity start edging up and come April there is no longer any pretense of “spring” We are in full-bore summer with temps running anywhere from 90-100+ each and every day and jungle-style humidity to go with it.

There is no fall, there certainly is no winter and there is no early spring. It’s just blisteringly hot and slightly less hot. If you’re at all human your A/C unit turns 10 months out of 12 on a daily basis, and you will run it 12 months out of the year no matter what. There hasn’t been a single month where the A/C was off for a full week, much less a full month.

On that end there’s no trade-off with the north. Up north you pour heating oil thru the furnace at varying amounts for 9 months and then turn off the furnace and switch to the A/C unit. You don’t win on any level at either place in that area.

But I have missed the beauty of the north..the trees turning in the fall and their beautiful colors..and yes..I DO miss the winter. I’m not as arctic as I used to be and 6 feet of snow on the ground and zero degrees isn’t as exciting to me as it used to be, but I’d trade it any day for the hot, nasty weather here in The Bubble.

I also don’t have to share the ground with thousands of the GEICO gecko’s cousins, nor with poisonous snakes, nasty biting bugs and every unkind creature that God has placed on this earth.

And the most important thing about being at home..there’s not one single member of TV Borg Collective running around. What a delight!!

To the natives of Florida..I salute you. You were born here and you’ve made this your home. You never asked for the hordes of nasty Villagers to come and invade your land, and I’m sorry with you about that. You love Florida..Corporal Klinger loved Toledo..and I love the Southern Tier of New York! I wish we could ALL be in the place we love, and if I’ve got to be here..I promise to NEVER treat you the way a Villager would treat you!

Peace.