Mystery Monkeys and Unstable Discs: A Snowbird's Sketches of the Sunshine State

By Dave Easby

As the Spring Training home of the Toronto Blue Jays, Dunedin, Florida serves as the seasonal residence for many Canadians. So when Anne and Dave Easby decided to sell their condo in Mexico and escape the Canadian winter in Dunedin instead, they figured it would feel just like home. Minus, of course, the boots and mitts. But they soon encountered many things unique to this part of the world – from BOGO sales to raffles for a free colonoscopy to snow machines on Main Street. This collection of funny, and sometimes moving, short stories and essays looks at the ‘Sunshine State’ through the lens of a Canadian snowbird. With a few stories from the rest of the Sun Belt thrown in for good measure.

It’s so easy to relate to the insights and reactions of a fellow traveler such as Dave Easby. His anecdotal style of telling a story brings you in—you get it, you feel it. This collection is a companion for all like souls— a pleasure and fun.
Tom Russo— author/artist

Life as a Canadian in Florida has never been described with greater insight and wit. Dave Easby is a true heir to humourist Stephen Leacock."
Brandon Jones – snowbird/author/magazine publisher

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Easby
• Release date: Sep 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370169108

Dave Easby

'They Tore Down the Russell Hotel - A Story of Change in Small Town Mexico' and 'Mystery Monkeys and Unstable Discs - A Snowbird's Guide to the Sunshine State' are the first two books written by Dave Easby. They chronicle the exploits of he and his wife as snowbirds first in n the small town of La Peñita de Jaltemba, Mexico and, later, in Dunedin, Florida.. Dave still spends his summers in Ontario, Canada but now winters in Dunedin, Florida with his wife Anne and his Mexican rescue dog Amarillo. He retired in 2005 after a thirty-year career with the Canadian and New Brunswick Governments. Since much of that time was spent working on speeches and briefing notes for Ministers and other Senior Officials, he decided to try writing non-fiction for a change in his retirement years.

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Mystery Monkeys and Unstable Discs

A Snowbird’s Sketches of the Sunshine State

by

Dave Easby

Copyright © 2016 Dave Easby

All rights reserved.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

CONTENTS

Thanks

Introduction – I Guess That’s It

The Sunshine State

1. Just Mint to Be

2. Recalculating

3. The Power ProLine Snow 500

4. Without U

5. Rice-A-Roni – the San Francisco Treat

6. If You Don’t Like the Weather …

7. The Mystery Monkey of Tampa – Details at 11:00

8. Yes – We Have No Bananas

9. We Could Get Sued

10. Tinfoil Hats and Impure Thoughts

11. Canadian Politics for Dummies

12. A Banana for Your Monkey

13. The Free Cruise

14. An Uzi for Grandma

15. Twinkies, Doobies and Unstable Discs

16. Mrs. Champlin’s Dream

17. Where Does It Hurt

18. Anchors A Weigh

19. How Much Is That Doggie in the Driveway

20. The D-O-C is On Her Way

21. The Right to Keep and Bear Pastry

22. Tiny Pillows

23. A Coupon for Your Thoughts

24. Dear Diane

Some Other States of Mine

25. Wilbur and Antoine

26. Crayfish, Milk and the Peabody Ducks

27. Kennels of the Rich and Famous

The Final Word

About the Author

Thanks

I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of people who helped in making this book become a reality. The members of the Dunedin Writers Group offered both encouragement and positive criticism that helped, in the end, make this a better product. In particular, I would like to thank Tom Russo and Brandon Jones for their help with my cover design. I certainly appreciate the keen eye of Shirley Smirle, who reviewed the manuscript for me. The folks at CreateSpace were great to work with. My wife Anne served as both my co-pilot and soul mate in these adventures and also provided honest and sometimes humbling feedback.

The stories in this book are largely true and, where I have taken some literary license, it is likely in the places where you would least suspect it. Truth is, in fact, stranger than fiction. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. And, sometimes, the not so innocent.

Introduction: I Guess That’s It

"I guess that’s it." This would be the last time we would be making the drive from Mexico to our home in Canada. We had spent seven winters in La Peñita de Jaltemba – one of the three towns that make up the wonderful community of Jaltemba Bay. An hour north of Puerto Vallarta, it was once a small fishing and farming town, but now lies at the heart of Riviera Nayarit - a tourist destination the Mexican Government was keen to promote. But we had sold our Mexican condo and decided to spend our winters in Florida instead.

I guess that’s it, my wife Anne said as she handed me the beautiful, hand painted ceramic sun we had picked up at some up-scale tourist shop in Puerto Vallarta several years before. As I searched for an empty spot in the back of our Ford Escape, it struck me that it was somewhat fitting that this was the last of it, mirroring as it did the many fond memories we shared of our time in Mexico

The vehicle was crammed full of keepsakes and clothes and all sorts of other odds and ends for the trip home. Amarillo was snuggled up in his dog bed looking up nervously. He was hoping that the wall of luggage would not coming crashing down on him at the first of the many ‘topes’ (that’s speed bump or speed hump for Nord Americanos) that we were destined to encounter.

Mexico too dangerous for you? was pretty much the universal reaction we got from folks in Canada when we told them of our plans. It was a belief that was only reinforced when we told them the story of a phone call we had received a couple of summers back from one of our Mexican neighbours.

You missed all the excitement, the call began. And then Helen proceeded to tell us the latest chapter in the story of Laura and Kenny and the Zeta Cartel.

Kenny was from somewhere in Ontario but had lived in Mexico for many years; I was the only gringo in town for the longest time, he used to brag. Laura was his Mexican wife. They were our landlords for our first two years - and still lived in an apartment in our building. It turns out that there was a reason Kenny had moved south of the border. When he disappeared for a while, rumour had it that Kenny’s quick summer trip home had turned into a two-year stint as a guest of the Ohio Department of Corrections. The details were sketchy but terms like ‘outstanding warrant’ and ‘passenger list’ and ‘Homeland Security Act’ were liberally thrown out as the story made its way around town.

It was shortly thereafter that Laura grew lonely and took in some fellow named Jorge as a roommate. While he was introduced as her nephew, this was a source of confusion to the many folks who thought the two had met at the tennis courts and had an unusually close relationship for aunt and nephew. It was shortly after Jorge moved in that Laura began to tour around the dusty streets of La Peñita in a brand new Mercedes with Culiacan license plates. While Culiacan may one day be better known as the boyhood home of Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Roberto Osuna, its current claim to fame is as the place where the notorious drug lord ‘El Chapo’ was captured after escaping from prison through a tunnel only slightly shorter than the Toronto subway system. We actually stopped in Culiacan on the bus once, and a friendly fellow passenger told us it was probably safer to risk a bladder infection than to exit the vehicle to use the facilities.

And while all of this backstory was well known to us, it was the events of a hot July evening that represented the new ‘excitement’ on our street. Apparently three Zetas had shown up in the middle of the night in search of Laura and her ‘nephew’. They had shot up the Mercedes – the one with the Culiacan plates – and a truck and any other vehicles that happened to have been on the street. And they had broken into three different units trying to figure out how to get up to Laura’s penthouse apartment. She had only managed to escape by jumping onto the building next door – apparently breaking both legs in the process – before calling in the Marines to get out safely. She had not been seen since.

But it was not, in fact, this story that had convinced us to change in our winter plans, although it certainly prompted grimaces from our Canadian friends whose views of Mexico were shaped only by the stories that they had seen on Fox News or the CBC or read about in tabloids. But it elicited only shrugs from those whose impressions of the country were shaped by their own experiences. We even shared the story over margaritas with the couple who were buying our condo – honest disclosure and all that – but they remained determined to own their own little piece of paradise.

The time that we had spent in Mexico had taught us that, yes, there was always the risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But then that could happen doing post-Christmas shopping in Toronto or watching a Batman movie in Colorado.

No, the die was cast one day several years earlier – when Delta Airlines lost our dog Amarillo on the flight from Mexico to Toronto. We drove to Mexico three times after that, but the fifty hours on the road was just too much to handle in the end. Besides, who doesn’t like a new adventure.

"I guess that’s it." I thought as we pulled away from the curb. The end of my second career as a writer. La Peñita had provided me with lots of ammunition for my first book – They Tore Down the Russell Hotel: six-foot-high bags of Cheezies; a water truck perched on tree stumps in the middle of the street after the wheels fell off; two dogs playing a game of diaper tag on the beach. There were so many things that were new and different and fun to write about.

But Florida would just be Ontario with better weather. And a later Thanksgiving, because, as my American friends like to tell me, we have less to be thankful for. For Americans speak the same language as we Canadians – by and large. We listen to the same music and watch the same movies and TV shows. We even watch them on the same channels - since three-quarters of Canadians live within 160 kilometers of the border, which is 100 miles in American. Mind you, we still don’t get to see the US commercials, since they often dub in Canadian ones. So we aren’t privy to the fact that the acne cream our teens are using can cause heart palpitations and thoughts of suicide and half a dozen other side effects that the announcer rhymes off like an auctioneer on steroids. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to get us riled up; perhaps ignorance is bliss.

So just what kind of things could I write about if I wanted to put a book of short stories together about a Canadian snowbird’s adventures in Canada South. Oh well, at least we would still get to escape winter.

"I guess that’s it." I thought. But boy was I wrong.

1 Just Mint to Be

The look started out as one of disappointment but then a smile spread across his face.

Mexicanos? he asked, more statement than question, as he stared at the handful of mints that Anne had just passed him through the car window.

Nuevo Laredo sits just a few yards across the Rio Grande from its sister city of Laredo, Texas. It rarely makes it onto the top ten list of must see places in Mexico. Instead, it often finds itself on the list of places to ‘get the hell out of as quickly as possible.’ It’s dark and run-down and sinister characters lurk on every street corner – eying cars bearing foreign plates with suspicion.

This was the third, and last, time we would be driving home through this grimy border town. Our condo in Mexico had been sold and from now on, we would be spending our winters in Dunedin, Florida.

And it was also the third time we had gotten lost. When we typed ‘Nuevo Laredo’ into Samantha, our faithful GPS, her answer was not Keep left onto Highway 85D nor even the familiar refrain of Recalculating but Why?

When you drive a car that is registered in Canada or the US into Mexico you need to purchase special insurance, since your normal insurers wash their hands of you the second you cross the Juarez Lincoln Bridge. You also need to get a Temporary Vehicle Importation Permit.

We had a good excuse for missing the permit office the first time. Our traveling companions had convinced us to get an early start – in the dark. Only when we backtracked to the office later that morning did it become evident that the city looked very different – and significantly less appealing – after sunrise.

Obtaining the ‘Permit’ represents bureaucracy at its finest. It is designed to prevent people from illegally bringing American vehicles into Mexico and leaving them there – although I am not quite sure why anyone would want to do that since vehicles are generally cheaper to buy in Mexico than they are in the States. You are required to leave a substantial deposit on your credit card – a deposit that is refunded when you leave the country.

Only one person is allowed at the kiosk per vehicle and, since the car was registered in Anne’s name, she had to struggle along answering their questions in her limited Spanish while I stood the requisite fifty feet away shouting out translations where necessary. The permit is large enough to cover half the windshield of a smart car and, while you are allowed to put it on your car yourself, removing it when you return home is strictly ‘prohibido’. We had all heard the story that went around town about the poor unfortunate who was involved in a major accident over the winter. He had to bring in the hunk of windshield that still had the permit attached to it before he could get his money back – although no-one was quite sure how they knew it was from his car and not from some abandoned vehicle that he had found in a junkyard.

I can’t recall what my excuse was the second time we failed to find the permit office on our first try. But I am positive that it was a good one.

This third time, I was blaming on the Zeta Cartel. I had read the headline on the CBC news site the day before we had left our Mexican condo for the long drive back to Canada: Six Headless Bodies Hung from a Pedestrian Overpass in Nuevo Laredo. Ever the creative, the Zetas had apparently left the heads in a cooler at police headquarters. It was a pedestrian overpass that I recognized from the grisly photo as one that we would pass directly under on our route to the main bridge to Texas. I had figured that Anne had enough to worry about, so I made the decision to keep this tidbit of information to myself – at least until we hit Kentucky – just in case the Federales hadn’t had time to clean up the mess or the Zetas had found some replacements.

I found a shorter route to the permit place, I said, directing Anne down a side road that, according to the local tourist map that I had scooped up on the way down, would take us there without having to observe any of the Zeta handiwork.

The map, I soon discovered, was not actually to scale and included only those streets that tourists might consider using – omitting those that no-one in their right mind would venture onto. Like the ones we were driving on now. Although I am sure it