THOSE @#$% KIDS!!!

PLASTICVILLE-USA

THOSE @#$% KIDS!!!

If you are a resident of TV you pay what it called a monthly amenity fee. This amount which varies from $0 to $150 a month goes to pay for the private perks that you find in TV such as swimming pools, non-Country Club golf courses, ball fields, parks, tennis courts and the like. In return for your fee you are promised exclusivity of use of these amenities. Those who are not Villages residents, or guests of residents are not allowed to use these various facilities. Fair enough.

You might notice that I said the fee goes from ZERO dollars to 150. Yes, there are a few who pay nothing. Those are the folks who bought into old Harold Schwartz’s original project which is now..depending on who you are..either referred to as the “Historic section” or the “Ghetto”. If you are a sales rep from Villages Properties then it is the “Historic Section”. If you’re one of the snoots on the opposite side of US-441 then it is most definitely the “Ghetto”. In Harold’s original plan the price you paid included everything that came with the place, swimming, golf and what have you. When the big expansion kicked into gear Harry & Gary knew they would have to charge amenity fees to make everything work out right, but Harold was good to his word and those original Historic side buyers were granted FREE use of everything. For some reason that is a HUGE burr under the saddle of those who came afterward. At this point there are very, very few original buyers still left, and most of them are now too old to be making much use of any of these amenities. But for those on the southern side of 441 it just makes them boil.

One of the great myths of TV..which the Morse organization has gone to great lengths to dissuade residents of is that EVERYTHING in TV belongs ONLY to Villagers and is of course paid for in full by their amenity fees.

In a sense TV is two separate entities..the private sector and the public sector. Obviously the private sector includes the homes and the standard amenities that we mentioned above. The public sector includes all of the local businesses, the town squares, the hospital, the doctors offices, the roadways, the restaurants, the radio station, the newspaper..all the sorts of things you would find open to the public in any town or city.

But no matter how much the Morse organization and the minority of sensible sane people who inhabit TV say so, the vast majority of Villagers are absolutely damn certain that EVERYTHING IN TV BELONGS TO THEM AND THEM ALONE!!

One of the places where this myth gets an industrial strength workout is down at the town squares. Villagers are often mad as hell that “those people” are using “OUR” squares.

The biggest gripes come from the people at the south end who make use of the Brownwood town square. To be perfectly proper..the name of the town square is the “Paddock Square”. Each of the town squares has its own special name, but nobody really uses those names. Almost everybody just calls them by their location..Spanish Springs, Lake Sumter and Brownwood.

Brownwood has become a sort of Town vs. Gown war zone. Brownwood is very close to the town of Wildwood. There’s not much in Wildwood..which in days gone by was a farm town where the ranchers came to go to the store, buy feed and grain or a new tractor. Today Wildwood is a bit on the shabby side, with a big dead plaza in the main section of town and a lot of empty store fronts like so many other small towns across the USA.

Now Brownwood happens to have a multi-screen movie theatre, some restaurants and of course the FREE music on the square every single night of the week. Because of this Brownwood has become somewhat of a teen hangout. This just absolutely boils the Villagers geesters!

Funny thing is, the Sumter County Sheriff’s department happens to have a satellite office in Brownwood and every single night there are 2 or 3 deputies keeping watch over the festivities. There’s no trouble going on there.

In fact many is the night that my bride and I drive her car over there, and uncork the top and sit in the car and listen to the music and watch the drunken Villagers make asses of themselves. Funny thing is..we have NEVER seen the young people act up. In fact the young people behave very well and the Villagers could stand to learn a lesson or two from them. Yet the Villagers resent the presence of these young people the same way most people resent finding a snake in their living room.

Multiple threads on Bitch Of The Villages decries the presence of these “bad kids”. Bottom line is that some of these kids are…GASP….black!!  In the whitest town on the planet a couple of black teenagers going to a movie and eating an ice cream cone at Scooples equals an outbreak of crime and juvenile delinquency on an epic level. And of course even worse a couple of black teenage boys have been seen talking to..GASP..a couple of WHITE teenage girls! Oh the tragedy of it all!! You would think this was Mississippi in the 1950’s.

One of the places where I agree with Andrew Blechman and his book “Leisureville” is his curiosity of why so many older people want to get away from younger people. I was lucky enough to grow up within miles of both sets of my grandparents. All of them were deeply involved in the lives of my sister and I. I am now the keeper of the diaries of my dad’s mother, and there isn’t a page that goes by where there’s not some mention of my sister or I or both of us. They would have been very disappointed to not be around us. Yet Villagers make a profession of hiding away from adult children and their grandchildren.

This attitude perplexed Blechman and I understand his confusion. When pressed Villagers will often give the mantra…”Well now it’s OUR time”. OK..Fair enough..but why do you want to hide from your families? It seems very out of sorts.

But then again, when my grandfathers retired from their jobs and my grandmothers were free from raising their children, they didn’t have any interest in drinking themselves into a daily stupor or seeing how many different sex partners they could notch on their bed posts. They didn’t have anything to hide. And of course kids have a very good knack for finding out things that have been carefully hidden.

I was once told that if you couldn’t do anything else you could always serve as a bad example. No wonder Villagers don’t want any kids around!