Florida Education	Back to the Current Issue Back to Features
by Ross Boast

Crossing central Florida with a fifth-wheel is essentially boring. The landscape is flat, unrelieved by anything higher than sugar cane. When you look at the map and see this large body of water, Lake Okeechobee, you think it will be nice to see an open expanse of water. Don't get your hopes up. When you get there what you see is a long high mound, a levee, and you are well below the lake level, so no view. Part one of my education.

One of the few things wrong with a fifth-wheel trailer is that they tow so well you often don't know if there is anything out of kilter back there. So I had just crossed most of Florida and was coming to La Belle when a car pulls alongside me and motions that I had trouble in the rear. I pulled into a fast food restaurant parking lot and found that the damage was an almost completely shredded tire as well as a broken leaf in the spring. A quick look down the street and the fifth-wheel guardian angel produced a tire shop in the same block.

The tire shop honcho allowed as how they could put a new tire on and fix the spring and he would put one of his best men on it. That best man was Lloyd. Lloyd was a black man and he surely has to be high up on the list of happiest people on earth. He had a set of the biggest, whitest teeth most people ever see, and they were on display all the time. Lloyd liked to talk and laugh while he was working.

"British Columbia! Isn't that way up north? Must be cold up there. Freeze up all my vital parts. You come down here to get all your vital parts thawed out?"

We chitchatted a bit about what a neat rig a fifth-wheel was and how Lloyd would like to own one. Then he says "But that would take me away from my girls." I thought he was talking about his family.

Lloyd was making good progress on the repair so I went over to a Coke machine and plugged in an extortionate amount of money for a drink. Just then this very cute lady goes by on a bike and sings out in a coquettish voice "Hello, Lloydie". Lloyd surfaced and looked at the retreating figure.

"That's Martha. Martha's one of my girls."

"But Lloyd, you're too young to have a girl that age."

Lloyd says "She's not my daughter, she's one of my girls. I got Martha and Marcie. My wife thinks I finish work at five thirty, but we get off at four thirty, so I goes see Martha for an hour."

"This is a small town, Lloyd, don't a lot of people know about this?"

Lloyd gives me an extra 100 volts of smile and says "Well, I got that fixed up. Martha lives on Thalassa Street near here and Irvin got this monstrous big hi-fi in his car, so I get Irvin to drive slowly down Thalassa right after quitting time with it turned up real loud. Rattles all their windows. When they comes out to the front to see what's goin' on, I slip in the back at Martha's."

"That's pretty slick Lloyd, but you mentioned a Marcie. How do you deal with that?"

"After supper I tell the wife I'm going down to the pool hall to shoot a couple. But I go over to Irvin's. I keep one of these cans of white theatre makeup there, I slather this on my face and hands and go over to Marcie's. Go right in the front door. Marcie's been tellin' some of the folks I'm an al-beeano. They not sure what that is and I hear some of them say I'm a Mexican named Al." An extra laugh with this one.

"Lloyd, you must get a bit tired trying to keep your wife and two other ladies happy. That takes a lot of energy."

"I'll be right back. I got to get a new bolt for that shackle. This one's stripped."

When Lloyd comes back he says "You know I think you got the wrong idea about those ladies I been seein'. I'm, really helpin' them get ahead. Like with their education. Yes sir, I'm teachin' them readin' writhin'and sin-tax. Readin' writhin and sin-tax."

Lloyd gets bent right over with this one, slapping his thigh. When he recovers a bit he says "The jobs finished here. I got to go fill out my job sheet." And he walks off into the garage saying, "I got to get me some of that ol' readin', writhin' and sin-tax." I'm not just sure whether Lloyd was educating me to the way things are done down in the free and easy southland or if he was doing a bit of tourist leg pulling!