Never Done... (Chapter Two)

St. Croix, in the US Virgin Islands... It was the summer of 1968 and I do remember celebrating my 13th birthday in the house my parents rented near Cane Bay... The memories are a little fuzzy, as I know we lived in two different houses there. One overlooked the bay (really just a very large cove) and on a clear day you could see St. Thomas, to the north, in the distance... The second and the one we were in on my 13th, sat atop a small hill overlooking an old sugar mill. The yard was fenced and doubled as a goat farm.

Dad found some free-lance work as an electrician (his two degrees were in mechanical and electrical engineering) as he was also a journeyman electrician it was a no-brainer fitting in. He also found the time between jobs to scour the lower islands for "THE" boat that would take us on his dream. Bill, my older brother, got to do most of the island hopping with Dad, but it didn't prevent the rest of us from having a blast. The time we were there was prior to the riots and uprisings of the 70's in St. Croix... Hitchhiking was commonplace, and we kids would thumb a ride into nearby Christiansted to roam around, not unlike the kids of the 90's hanging out at the mall...

We also explored the island with the family. I was so amazed that one end of the island was like a jungle from a Tarzan movie. You could, and we did, literally swing from vines while the canopy from the trees blocked all but only the finest rays of sunshine. The other end of the island, probably no more than 20 miles away (and no, I didn't do any fact checks so it may be more or less) was like the desert southwest of the US mainland. Sand, Cactus, and Iguanas... Lizards as big as I was at 13...

The search for the sailboat that would take us around the world seemed endless. Mom and Dad finally decided that they needed to re-coup some of the savings they had used in the search thus far... We left St. Croix and flew into South Florida in the fall of 1968...

Ahhh, The Sunway Motel and efficiencies in Ft. Lauderdale, near the border of Pompano Beach on US-1... Another adventure for us kids; it was a 40's style (Mom and Pop) kind of place. There was a drive-in movie theater next door, and during the day we would jump the fence and turn up the speakers on the posts closest to our 2 units so we could hear the movie that night, sitting on the little sun deck of the flat topped Motel... Life was grand!

The Sunway and the Drive-in are now a hospital complex, but I digress... Mom and Dad were looking to find a house they could "flip" to recover some of the funds spent in the Islands... And yes, while they didn't call it "flipping" in the late 60's (it was referred to as "speculation") the technique/practice existed... Next stop: 730 South Alhambra Circle, Coral Gables, FL...

Is anyone interested in this? It's ok if not... I am trying to keep my brain sharp by poking my memory of 40 year old events, and re-living them as I write!!!

Over and "Out" from a beautiful Easter Sunday, here in Portsmouth, VA

Update: April 6, 2010...  One of my brothers emailed me and corrected me, it was 1968, not 1969...  Thanks JRR...