THE HISTORIC SIDE…

PLASTICVILLE-USA

THE HISTORIC SIDE…

Greek philosopher Plato is credited for uttering the old saying “necessity is the mother of invention”. Plato’s words have often come true, and when you get right down to it, it is this phrase that explains the beginning of TV.

Back in the day old Harold Schwartz was making a living selling chunks of real estate by mail. While it was perfectly legal, and there’s no indication that Harold was doing anything “dodgy” as they would say in England, but lots of others were and the Feds decided to step in one day and save the terminally stupid from those unscrupulous sellers who were promising cut-rate prices on ocean front property in Nebraska.

When this happened it left Harold with lots of acres in Florida and no easy way to sell them. Necessity became the mother of invention and Harold created what was then known as “Orange Blossom Gardens” the very first of what was to become TV.

History indicates that Harold had no intention of creating the massive Borg Collective that today is known as the world’s largest retirement community. All he was going to do was build a nice, neat trailer park where elderly retirees from places like Cheyboygan, McCook and Eveleth could escape the cold winters and play a few holes of golf while living a modest lifestyle on their pensions and social security. They got a nice retirement home and Harold got rid of his land and fattened his bank account.

Over time the development grew and when Harold’s anal retentive son Gary arrived on the scene the place began to grow exponentially. Today TV is a massive creation housing some of the most obnoxious, spoiled and self-centered people on the planet and has grown as far away from the original Orange Blossom Gardens as the earth is to Pluto.

When Orange Blossom Gardens was created there was no ponderous list of what you cannot do with YOUR own property. Nobody to tell you that you couldn’t have a lawn ornament or 2 or 10. Nobody to tell you what kind of grass you had to plant, nobody to tell you what color your house HAD to be. It was just a nice, pleasant trailer park for retirees.

Today to live in TV means that you must surrender your “self” at the door and be ready to march in lock-step with your neighbors (or else!) in America’s Friendliest Hometown. You must surrender yourself to the Borg Collective because..resistance is futile. Now for the most part the people who willingly come to TV had surrendered long ago. They are people who value sameness and personal shallowness over everything else. They have truly found their Mecca.

What is interesting about all this is that when Harold came up with the idea of Orange Blossom Gardens the current incarnation of TV was not at all on his mind. Orange Blossom Gardens was for PEOPLE..not Stepford robots. To that end, the original few “villages” are free from all the onerous rules and regulations that make the rest of TV so utterly boring to normal people. It is the ONLY place in TV where free expression is allowed and it is the ONLY place in TV where depending on your situation you do not pay ANY amenity fees!

When TV jumped to the west side of US-441 and the new Borg Collective was under construction Harold Schwartz did something unprecedented. He kept his word to the people who purchased homes from him! He had promised them free golf for life. He also provided a swimming pool or two that came with the purchase of your home. No bonds, no monthly amenity fees, no hidden costs.

When the bonds and amenity fees were put into practice, the original people who bought into the original villages were grandfathered in and to this day pay none of the above. This freedom from fees also applies if the property is transferred to the ORIGINAL owner’s offspring! It was a pretty good deal. Also in the deal was the exemption from all of the Stepford-style “rules to live by” that come with all the rest of the properties in TV. Because of this, those who live in TV but NOT in the original villages refer to them as “The Ghetto”. Now if you happen to be talking to a sales weasel from Properties Of The Villages they will ALWAYS refer to the homes in the original villages as “The Historic Section”.

A little while ago on a pleasant Sunday afternoon my bride and I decided to take out her Mustang, put down the top and enjoy a nice slow, quiet ride thru “The Historic Section” of TV. It turned out to be a very interesting drive.

Originally, all the housing in “THS” were so-called “manufactured” homes. Trailers. At the beginning they were single wide units, later came the double-wides and finally actual “modular” homes that came in on trucks in sections that were assembled on the building site. Since that time a few people have replaced their trailers with standard Villages Villa and Ranch model homes on these sites.

Probably the first thing you notice is that the home lots in THS are NOT the tiny postage-stamp lots that are the norm on the west side of 441. These are decent sized lots with nice lawns. You also immediately notice that people are FREE to decorate their home lots with various ornaments and nice plants and the colors vary. It is the exact opposite of the vanilla, homogenized, BORING layouts of the new sections. As you go by these homes you are left with the idea that REAL people live here. The residents of THS are a far, far cry from their fake, plastic cousins over across the highway.

As you continue your drive around THS you occasionally come across something that sticks out like a sore thumb..new houses that look like the standard-issue Villager homes from the “new” side. You are not mistaken. They are. As time has passed some of the old, very original single-wide trailers have worn out and have needed to be replaced. Over the past couple of years the Morse Machine has stepped in and bought up a number of these lots. After purchasing the lots from the original owners or adult children of the original owners, the Morse Machine tears down the old trailer and slab and replaces it with a new current Villages model home and then sells the home to new owners.

This does two things. It takes a dilapidated home out of the picture which is indeed good for the area, but it also puts in a property where there is now a bond that can be collected and amenity fees can be charged. So the Morse Machine is hardly doing this out of a sense of civic pride, but it is a move to put those homes “back on the books” so to speak.

The new homes stick out like a whore at a nun convention. While the developers have attempted to make them fit in, they don’t and while they look better than a decaying trailer they don’t look like they belong there. If anything the developers should have replaced the old trailers with brand new modular homes. They would have fit the scene better than the newly-built house. But time marches on.

When you get right down to it, THS is the only place in all of Morse-Land that has any heart and originality and has any sort of feel that REAL people actually reside in TV. It is a great breath of fresh air after taking in all of the fake plasticity that you will find in TV on the west side of US-441.

Having grown up in New York State there was a forever divide between what is called “Upstate” NY and “Downstate” which includes New York City, its northern suburbs and Long Island. Over the years there have been many calls for the state to divide because the two areas are so utterly different from each other. It is the same in TV between THS and shall we call it..the “new” side. Better yet..how about we call it “The Real People” side and “The Snotty Rich Kids” side. Yeah. That’s better. Long live “The Ghetto”!!