MAXIMUM SILLINESS

PLASTICVILLE-USA

MAXIMUM SILLINESS…

Back in the early 1990’s there was a radio station in Toronto, Canada which had the call letters CHOG. They billed themselves as AM 640-The Hog. They played what is often referred to as “Head Banger” music. I used to call it chainsaw music because it always sounded to me like somebody had just hooked up a Sears chainsaw to an amplifier and cranked it. There were billboards all over Toronto advertising the radio station.

The billboard was quite simple. It had a picture of what was easily the largest hog I had ever seen staring out of the billboard into the approaching traffic. I’m pretty sure this porker could have won every blue ribbon there was to be had at the Iowa and Nebraska state fairs. He was a champ indeed. Under the pig were two words. MAXIMUM GRUNT. And under that was the station’s slug line AM 640-The Hog.

I thought of that billboard one day on the week prior to Easter as I was sitting in one of the ubiquitous traffic jams that occur in TV during the much maligned “Snowbird Season”. I was thinking that instead of MAXIMUM GRUNT..there ought to be one that just simply said “MAXIMUM SILLINESS”.

Depending on whom you talk to and what yardstick you use, “Snowbird Season” starts anywhere from October to January. In truth what really happens in October is that the “Sunbirds” return. The Sunbirds, in the ridiculous caste system of TV are those people who live in TV most of the year but escape the brutal summer heat during the months of May thru September. These folks tend to have summer places on lakes or rivers up north, and some of the ones with the thicker bank accounts actually have places directly on some Florida beach. They flee the nasty summer heat and come back into the fall.

As I have mentioned before there is a serious caste system here in America’s most screwy hometown. On top of it all are the “Frogs”. People who gladly claim that title because they are here in TV until they croak! Then come the Sunbirds. They are treated with almost as much respect as the Frogs. But then comes the dividing line. It is as stark a line as that infamous curtain in an airliner dividing First Class and Coach. Beyond that dividing line are the Snowbirds who are treated like garbage, and beyond them are the lowest of the low..

the Snowbird RENTERS! The Snowbird renters on TV caste system are just lower than whale shit.

Virtually everything that goes wrong during Snowbird season gets blamed on the Snowbird property owners and the Snowbird renters. They are the unclean/untouchable class of TV.

The odd thing is that almost all of the Snowbirds are full-out property owners. They only come to Florida and TV for 3-5 months out of the year, but they pay full-time property taxes and full-time amenity fees. To keep all the financial balls in the air TV needs these people badly. But they are treated like scum.

True Snowbird season begins in earnest right after Christmas. Many of the Snowbirders stay in their family towns until after Thanksgiving and Christmas and then descend on TV. Come the beginning of February, everybody who’s coming is here and indeed everything in TV is now cranked up to MAXIMUM SILLINESS. The grocery stores are jammed. At night the town squares are packed and there are often fist fights over available chairs! The various and sundry clubs and activities are standing room only. The restaurants? Virtually NONE of these people cook! They invade the restaurants like ants invading a picnic. If you are a local, you are better off to just stay home and eat out after the population thins out. Now to be fair, the vast majority of Villagers don’t cook. They eat out. And if your idea of lunch is between 1130am & 1pm and your idea of dinnertime is falls somewhere between 4pm & 7pm plan on waiting in line. A LONG line.

All of this is maddening enough if you are somebody who isn’t retired and you need to go about your life, but what really makes things unbearable during this time is the traffic. Villagers are well known for running all over the place in their golf carts, and golf carts and REAL traffic don’t mix well. Especially when you are dealing with Villagers who are piloting their golf carts dead drunk at 1pm in the afternoon. Drinking is an Olympic sport in TV and the regulars start tuning up for the day either on the golf course or as the local watering holes open up at 11am.

Now add in all the extra vehicular traffic that comes with the season, and again, if they are Villagers there is a better than 50-50 chance that if the Sheriff stopped them and asked them to “blow up the little balloon”..they’d ring the bell good and hard and be given a chauffeured ride to the county hoosegow’s drunk tank. Driving in and around TV on any given day requires attention and skill and even more when the whole place is cranked up to MAXIMUM SILLINESS.

The other problem is that the area roads such as US-441 and US-301 were designed back when TV was little more than Spanish Springs and its’ surrounding homes. In fact US-301 was a main southern route back before the Interstate system was even an idea on a drawing board. They were never designed to handle the glut of traffic that TV generates during non-Snowbird time, much less when the full compliment of people have arrived. So traffic jams and the bumper-cruncher accidents that go with them can often bring US-441 to a dead halt on a regular basis. There are times if you are looking at 441 from a parking lot it looks much more like the west side of the Baltimore Beltway at 5pm on a weekday, than a secondary US highway. It is a mess.

Maximum Silliness tends to last roughly until Easter. Usually the first people to leave are the Canadians, who have a limited time to be out of their country without putting their national healthcare coverage in jeopardy. Also for the Canadians, depending on how long they stay, and given that they own property in the United States, they can encounter difficulties the US-IRS if they tarry a bit too long here in God’s Little Waiting Room. The rest of the Snowbirds tend to leave shortly after Easter. Often family members come to visit grandpa & grandma or auntie & uncle in TV on their Easter school breaks. This influx really swells the population for a couple of weeks just prior and just following Easter depending on what state you live in and when their Easter school break falls.

By the time May rolls around the Snowbirds have all essentially packed up and headed back to wherever they plant their flag the rest of the year. Such as many who have little summer cottages open them up on Memorial Day weekend and close up on Labor Day weekend. By May things start getting back to “normal”…or whatever passes for normal in this cloud koo-koo land of crazy self absorbed retirees.

But one thing has changed over the last few years…When we first moved into “the bubble” it was very plain when Snowbird season came to an end. There was no question as to when that was. But now, as TV continues to expand and more of the new people choose to be at least Sunbirds if not outright Frogs straight from the get-go, the amount of people who leave seem to be less and less..or maybe they are leaving, but so many more have come in to stay permanently that MAXIMUM SILLINESS may soon become a year round situation.

Oh Dear!!!!!