Veterans' Clinic, Northeast Cape Coral

Pretty fancy for a mere clinic.

The city obviously hopes that ancillary businesses will  be attracted to the vicinity of the clinic. So does North Fort Myers. The clinic is located on the border of the two communities. I hope they’re both right and don’t get into a meaningless competitive posture with one another. There’s no need for it. The  clinic is located in a wooded area, there are no blighted neighborhoods around it, and presents an opportunity for planned development  that would benefit both.

All of it bodes well for employment opportunities; direct and indirect.   If you’ve had medical experience (especially in the military), I think there might be an opening or two. Personally, I’d like some Mom and Pop diners to spring up: I’d at least check them out and guess so would others…. What else?  Maybe  a third class mail drop. I don’t know…. I’m sure you’ll think of something.

There are no roads in Don Pedro State Park. This pretty effectively separates the three parts, almost as well as if there were passes in between.

There are no bridges to the island. The only access is by boat. Helicopter, maybe. There is a water taxi that leaves from the Leverock Resort in Placida which makes the ten or fifteen minute run to the Rum Bay Resort on Palm Island about every half hour starting at noon. Costs $5 per person round trip. It might not operate after dark, so be sure to ask about the return if you go.

North tip of Palm Island

Off on the horizon is the Stump Pass Sate Park on the southernmost tip of Manasota Key. The park is a good place to look for fossil sharks’ teeth. There are some on Palm Island, too, but not as many. The Palm Island beach is about 350 yards from the Rum Bay resort.

Palm Island beach at low tide

As you can see, not many people at all. We ran into more people in the restaurant than we saw on the beach in three hours.

Royal terns in flight...keep your hat on....

Royal terns on Palm Island

Told you so…. Maybe you should visit our real estate section as well as checking out the real estate updates among our blogs. Also, take a look at Come to Cape Coral.com when you get a chance. They do a good job covering the Cape in some detail.

Manatees are a kind of totem around here. They’re completely harmless, have no natural enemies to speak of, and everyone likes them.  Everyone I know, anyway. Matter of fact if you ever run across anybody who doesn’t like manatees, you might want to steer clear of him as it is likely there is something really, really wrong there. Like wearing black socks with sandals. Maybe worse.

Nevertheless, manatees are ugly. No excuses, flat-out ugly. Like an 800 pound blob of snot . With flippers. You will almost never see them because they stay submerged most of the time with only their nostrils above the surface. It’s just as well. That way you can, only after some difficulty, fantasize them into mermaids as the sailors of old are said to have done. Long voyages at sea will do that to you. You, however, don’t have that excuse because manatees live in the coastal rivers and estuaries, rarely going out to sea. So, if you see a mermaid in a manatee, you have a problem. Unless of course you’re a sailor. Otherwise, check your meds, your diet, but get over it. They’re UGLY.

About ten years ago we were staying on the beach when  a pod of manatees swam by going into Estero Bay through Big Carlos Pass. I think there were six of them, behaving in what seemed to me to be an erratic fashion. They were crowding up against the beach as though they were grounding themselves on purpose. Each time one would try for deeper water, the others forced it back toward the beach. So I called the State Fish and Wildlife office to report a problem. It made their day. Evidently, this is manatee mating behavior: several males will try to corner a female in order to mate with her. Even knowing this, I can’t say that I am surprised at her apparent reluctance to copulate with a large blob of snot, let alone several of them. As to the males… well, it doesn’t speak well of their aesthetic sense. No wonder they’re a threatened species.

• The Federal Fish and Wildlife agency was upset with the local governments a while back because of the number of manatees killed by boats. There is (and was) a law that restricts boats to idle speed in waters frequented by manatees but enforcement was lax according to the Feds. Power boats are the main problem here because they can run over a manatee resting at the surface, gouge them with the prop, and never see them until it’s too late. Several hundred a year were being killed in south Florida. Part of their response was to punish Cape Coral by restricting dock construction. Now manatees live in brackish estuaries with direct access to the Gulf. Two thirds of Cape Coral canals are fresh water, separated from the salt water system by weirs. Manatees can’t get to them.  Most of the deaths were on the Caloosahatchie and involved boats from outside the area. None of this mattered. Logic and practical remedies went out the window and all docks were affected. The ban has been lifted for several years as manatee deaths from boats have declined. It’s a good example, though, of Federal over reach and stupidity.

In areas that have salt water canals down here manatees are likely to be present. Interestingly, they drink fresh water even though they live in salt water. It seems to me they must remember the location of the numerous fresh water springs as they travel. In turn, this suggests a fairly high level of intelligence certainly not apparent in either their slow, deliberate movements or their general appearance. Thus, if you dribble a hose into your canal to attract them, they’ll remember that, too. Not a good idea because they might be counting on it when the hose isn’t running. They won’t understand it. Springs don’t go “off.” So don’t do it.

If you want to get a good look at manatees, try Manatee Park in the winter. They congregate there because the park is located on the outflow from a power plant which keeps the water in the 80s (F). Manatees can’t digest their vegetable matter diet if the water gets a lot colder. They’ll die in water colder than 6o(F) degrees.

Manatee with calf

Here the manatees look like a large sausage after one end was mashed flat by something very large. It’s a slight improvement in image. Barely.

• After that, if you think summer is no big deal, then you’ll love the other times. When I was a kid, living in Memphis, Tennessee, we all thought Florida summers were great. You would, too, if you lived where the nighttime temperatures were in the 90s with humidity to match and no air conditioning. Down here there’s almost always a breeze and the night temperatures are usually 25 degrees or so off the daytime highs.

If past experience is any indication, rentals will go up from here. “Experience….” you say? I know, I know. But let me give you a little history from Cape Coral and the beaches, two spots with which I have some first hand experience. Although this last real estate bubble-and-bust was a once in a lifetime event (or at least I hope it was), there have been smaller scale market perturbations:

• Back in the 1970s when gas prices spiked, beach rentals went down as the number of vacationers declined. It happened again after Hurricane Charley damaged a number of beach rentals and again following the oil spill.  Generally, gas and airline prices will operate to determine the number of tourists. In addition, in a “normal” year, beach rentals are highly seasonal, the least expensive period coinciding with the hurricane season (June 1 through November 30). This is in spite of the fact that except for Charley (2004) and Wilma (Naples in 2005), there hasn’t been a major storm down here since 1960.

• Cape Coral, which had its beginnings in the late 1950s, gradually built up through the 1960s and ’70s, with property values increasing at a fairly steady rate. Then, in the mid 1980s, the City was forced by EPA to install water and sewer lines throughout.  There was no good plan to finance this project.  Instead, the City billed each affected property owner for the cost as the sewer and water lines were extended ($12000 plus cost to hook up the house to the system). Many had bought lots in anticipation of retiring and building a home, others were simply speculating. Worse, some had pretty much sunk their life savings into the house and didn’t have the odd twelve thousand lying around. Disparate circumstances aside, nobody was keen to pay the City $12,000+. Property values dropped like a stone. Waterfront  lots on fresh water that the year before would have brought $10,000, were going for $6000, sometimes less.  Finally, by about 1998 or so, values had returned to the “pre water and sewer” level of the mid ’80s. Then the boom hit and for a brief period these same lots were sometimes going for well over $200,000. Now we are at the tail end of the inevitable bust that follows booms.  This current market is characterized by a significant vacancy rate which operates to keep prices and rents low. Curiously, lot prices have remained above their pre boom levels: even as they have not maintained their highest level, they’re not back to the 1998-2000 level unless there’s a financial problem.

It is unlikely, though by no means impossible, that this will continue much longer. If you think this area might be for you, as I suggested above, consider renting a place for a few weeks or months and see what you think. Maybe a condo on the beach for a while and then someplace away from the Gulf for a while. Most full time residents live away from the beaches because:

• it’s relatively cheaper;

• even a tropical storm can close beach access roads; and

• traffic can be difficult getting on and off even in good weather.

But the beaches are special places.  Not necessarily practical, but special nonetheless. I don’t see how you could lose by renting a while either there or inland.

I could be wrong about the market. I’m not wrong about you. Markets come and go in a cyclical fashion, but you and I age linearly. Each market cycle, if we’re lucky, can coincide with our plans. Look at it this way: you could have bought down here when the market was at its peak. Now it’s pretty much at the bottom. There is only one way to take advantage of a trend…. run alongside, catch the ring and see what happens. But don’t sell– or buy– the store based on a dream. You can “test drive” first.

We’re headed into hurricane season, lots of rain, high humidity…. On the other hand, from May until then, the poincianas and jacarandas will bloom. In June, the rains will start and knock the blooms down. You’ve got a small window if that’s important to you. Most snow birds miss it for want of flexible plans. I’d wait, were I they; maybe have the grandchildren come down here for a couple of weeks. But that’s what makes the world go ’round. None of us is the same.

Eventually, after fits and starts Up North, in 1894 Teed was moved to establish a commune in what is now south Lee County, the Koreshan Unity.

Cyrus Teed's house (interior stabilized and partially restored)

The religion, Koreshanity, believed in a hollow earth, with the sun and moon being reflections off rotating disks at the center of the sphere, while we live on the inside surface with our heads toward the center. Outside the spherical shell, which is a hundred miles thick, is void. All this came to Teed as a young man when an electricity experiment rendered him unconscious and God spoke to him.

The Unity also believed that man is immortal, presumably at least in part through reincarnation in which they also believed, and that avoidance of sexual contact advanced the goal of immortality.

When they weren’t working dawn to dusk to support the commune, much of the rest of their time was spent convincing themselves and others of the verity of these claims. They were resigned to being rebuffed but kept coming back, secure in their own version of the Truth. It must have been a lot like global warming discussions or other religious debates (on whichever side of them you find yourself) such that converts are rarely produced.

The Unity supported itself through farming and ranching. It was never a profit making enterprise in the sense that anyone got rich off it.  It was a life of hard work. Members came and went. The lack of sexual contact seriously limited the usual method of increase in central membership; having lots of children. So, the Unity passed into oblivion in 1961 when the last three or four members ceded the land to the State for a park, leaving the human genome mercifully undamaged by their contribution…. Well,while in the Unity, anyway.

It is said they were ahead of their time in many areas: women had a primary role in the Unity and were at least equal to the men when the rest of the country denied women the vote; they believed in and practiced communal living, long before there were Kibbutzim in Israel or Soviet farms, and they made it work (unlike the Soviets).

The daily activities of the Settlement were governed by the Planetary Chamber, composed of the seven Sisters of the Planetary Court. These women lived in a two story house, the Planetary Court, each with their own room.

Planetary Court, home to the Planetary Council (restored)

I think these achievements are a case of certain truths shining through even the murkiest  ideas and are indicative of what humans can do if they believe strongly enough. I think, though, if these ideas had depended solely on the Koreshans and had not been vindicated through other venues then they would have died an unnoticed death, perhaps to be independently discovered later. Their other beliefs were just too weird. To say they were ahead of their time is tendentious; they were never in anybody else’s reasonable notion of time and space.

Teed died in 1908, a result of the Unity attempting to enter local politics. That the local government in Fort Myers collected taxes from them was likely the principal driver. This led to Teed’s  central role in founding the town of Estero and running candidates in opposition to the Democrat controlling interests in Fort Myers. It was not always peaceful. In maybe the most important instance in the midst of what seems to have been a general brawl, Teed was severely beaten by Fort Myers Marshall Sanchez and never fully recovered.

He was interred on Fort Myers Beach where his followers kept an eye on things expecting his momentary return (after all, he had said he was immortal). In 1926  a massive hurricane hit the area and washed Teed out into the Gulf. This meant that even if he was immortal, he’d also have to walk on water if it were to count for anything. At that prospect, it all seems to have become too much and vigils dropped off sharply.

My wife says that I am uncharitable in my characterization. Maybe so. Looking back at the times in which all this transpired, I think it is an example of Victorian Utopianism, where the ideal often exceeded the reality, at least in implementation. Had the intentions been less than honorable, it’s doubtful the enterprise would have lasted ten years. There had to be something positive going on because it lasted almost seventy.

Estero River at Koreshan

The State park is located on the northwest corner of Corkscrew Road and US 41S (or South Tamiami Trail). It is a nice campground with picnic facilities on the Estero River which was once a through way for the Calusa before it was the water port for the Unity.  Still a good place for a peaceful canoe or kayak trip and a nice place to spend an afternoon or park the RV overnight.

To start the process, I went to zillow.com which gave me a value of $108,500 for the house I paid $145,000 for in 2001. The county’s assessment for tax purposes was $107,000. Zillow also had values ranging from $60,000 to $80,000 for off water houses on my street that had been foreclosed on and sold at auction. Zillow was quoting the auction price on these houses: I had already asked about that from other sources. I figured $108,000 would be about right for my house at auction but it was not the retail price.

The appraisal came back at $140,000 as the fair market value (FMV). This isn’t great, but it is consistent with the current price levels for houses around here. Prices have regressed to the 2000-2001 levels for houses in my zip code. Lots seem to have fared a little better, hanging in there at about 2003 levels. Factors lowering the price in my case are mainly that it was built in 1990 (getting up in age for a Florida house) and is on well and septic (Sewer and water will be extended to our part of northeast Cape Coral within the next few years, as soon as possible after the real estate market stabilizes). After I took a look at the appraiser’s comparable houses (there were about ten), I thought the $140k was pretty low as most of the comparable houses had sold for more than $200k and were in the same general area on well and septic. But they were mostly five to seven years younger. Anyway, the appraisal was well above what I needed to refinance – all I wanted to do was lower my monthly note without taking cash out.

The lesson here is that the zillow.com values are often wildly understated. You will most likely be paying the retail price which is unlikely to be as low. But here is a link to Zillow’s price trends for  Cape Coral, Naples, and Punta Gorda. Punta Gorda looks like it might drop a little more while the other two are hanging in there. The main factor in all these areas is the excessive inventory of unsold houses and a possible round of new foreclosures. Though it is unlikely the number of new foreclosures will be anything like what we’ve already seen, the uncertainty plus the existing inventory operates to depress prices. Good for buyers, not so good for sellers.

Love bugs do what they do without apparent thought. Sometimes so do we. We don’t like to see ourselves manifested in the guise of insects. Nor, I suspect, would the insects approve if given a vote.

We, being thoughtful about such things, have Congress… which, come to think of it, might explain the reluctance of insects to identify with us. The Democrats have controlled it for years with only brief interruptions and the national debt is almost beyond rational comprehension. The Republicans have lately garnered a measure of approval, but being accomplices leading to the current circumstance, they ought not to escape responsibility. Now that Republicans are apparently in ascendancy, I doubt they will be much different; and, because of it, not long in ascendancy. Each party blames the other for the shortcomings of policy. All the while the debt keeps growing and growing.

So, we have the novel situation in which no one is apparently responsible for our reprehensible finances. Frankly, all of us are. We put these people there. And, worse, keep them there, knowing what we know.

This, you might reasonably observe upon honest reflection, is certainly true. But what has it to do with love bugs? Allegory, that’s what. An alternate view of the legislative process.

Love bugs are insects that take their name from their mating habits. Around August and September the male love bug seeks out a receptive female. You may think of him as a Democrat.

The female, whom you might view as Republican, being essentially a passive soul, aimlessly flies about minding her own business until the male attaches the tip of his abdomen to hers. (You are entirely correct if you’ve been keeping up. They do indeed face opposite directions).

It is at this point things start to look like the legislative process. The two love bugs (now one) then fly around attached to one another, copulating, incapable of seeing with what they are copulating, just flying about copulating without any plan. Erratically flying around, that is, until they crash into your car where, if left alone, their juices will corrode your paint job. When things get going, their numbers can be so thick as to coat windshields and headlights beyond usability, forcing the prudent driver to pull off and clean up the mess….

“Cleaning up the mess” roughly equates to elections: some are eliminated but more of their kind take their place.

It is no accident that the love bug phenomena is particularly bad in northern Florida where the State Capitol, Tallahassee, is located. Neither can it be pure coincidence that the legislature convenes there. Washington D.C. is too cold for love bugs but you can bet there is another insect counterpart up there. Cockroaches, maybe. I can see the mess from here….

He went to bed a happy ten year old.

It started around dark. A low moaning, then louder, then softer, going around and around the base of the mound. Angrier and angrier the sound became, punctuated by shrill shouts. The bedroom, once a refuge, was now a prison away from which he dared not go. His bed was shaking, the room alternately cold and hot. All night it kept up, fading only with first light….

In the morning he asked his grandparents who slept on the first floor if they had heard anything in the night. No, they said. It had been very quiet.

He knew then what to do with those bones. Skipping breakfast, he reburied them right where he found them. He lived in the house for several more years and never again heard the sounds. And never told the story until much, much later.

His friend kept the bones he had found but didn’t say anything about strange noises or the like. Two years later his friend was dead. A victim, it was said, of a freak accident. He hanged himself.

The Calusa, so the story goes, moved to Cuba about 200 years ago. The Tribe was a shadow of the earlier imperial power that once was the Calusa; decimated by disease, pressured by the Creeks and Seminole from the north, unable to hold sway over their former vassal tribes. They just left. Most of them, anyway.

At the Nature Center on a moonlit night it’s easy to imagine a village with a hundred smudge fires going, the bark of a dog and the murmerings of a sleepy village. Still and quiet, silvery in the moonlight, you can almost smell the smoke. Time here is just another place, the past and present forever next to each other, neighbors across an invisible fence. The people can’t be that far away….

Maybe just over there a little way. There! By the mound. Waiting. Can’t you see?

Most people don’t realize that Southwest Florida was once about a wild a place as it gets. I don’t mean the animals, either, or at least not the four legged kind. It was every bit as wild and lawless as the American wild West of the Nineteenth Century and it stayed that way well into the Twentieth Century. Some of the residents were actually fugitives from the old west having worn thin a tenuous welcome out there.

You can call it “The Wild Wet.”  I don’t but you can.

All of what is now Collier County was once part of Lee County with Fort Myers serving as the County Seat until 1923. Everglades (now Everglades City) was the first County seat until Naples replaced it. I should note the “City” in the name reflects more hope than promise. “City” is not the first thing that comes to mind when you visit. More likely it’s, “was that it”? Chokoloskee is even less pretentious consisting mainly of the Smallwood store and several houses on a low mangrove ringed island which bears the name. The two are connected by a causeway: apart from hurricanes, the causeway was the most significant change vehicle for both. That and State Highway 29 which connects them to the rest of the known universe and spelled the end to a lively independent existence.

Aside from subsistence hunting, limited commercial fishing, and small farms the main activities before World War II were poaching and smuggling. Try not to be insufferably moralistic: that’s just where the money was. Not taxable, either; although the residents would have listened in wonder at the description of the income tax and, when told the system depended on voluntary compliance, would have been convinced it was all a bad joke and gone back to whatever they had been doing none the worse for having heard about it.

As recently as the 1980s somewhere close to half the male population of the two places was serving prison sentences related to drug (mostly marijuana) smuggling. Even now it is not considered polite to inquire closely into another’s business. Once upon a time it was downright unhealthy. But so was unconfirmed suspicion.

The following is summarized from True Tales of the Everglades by Stuart McIver:

• Ed Watson was rumored to have killed several men before he came to Chokoloskee around 1900 and a few more afterwards. He established a farm about 10 miles south of Chokoloskee where he raised papayas, beans and sugar cane, selling his produce in Ft. Myers and Key West. Before long, he apparently prospered as he built a house and dock when most of his neighbors were living in shacks. It didn’t take long for him to come under general suspicion, particularly when it was noted that his hired help had a way of disappearing around pay day.

• Things came to a head in 1910 when Watson was said to have killed Hannah Smith who, with several others, lived with Watson and his wife on the farm. He denied it, blaming the murder on a man named Cox who, Watson said, he had killed. A crowd gathered at the Smallwood store and proposed that Watson accompany them back to the site of the killing. When it was suggested that he go with them unarmed, Watson figured he’d likely not be coming back and leveled his shotgun at the crowd. It misfired. The entire crowd blazed away….

No one was ever brought to trial over the incident. Nor was it ever determined who had killed Hannah or even whether Cox was in fact dead. That would have meant too many questions.

Who killed Watson? Why, everybody did. But… keep it quiet.