Ten Things I Learned While Kelly's Parents Pat & Russ Spent a Week Visiting Us
by Scott Hardie on July 4, 2008
• Florida reminds me of Dave Barry's quip that vacationing in Britain is great because you meet people from entirely different states. We stopped a woman to take our picture; she was visiting from New Jersey and her daughter beside her was from California. The only local we met warned us what bridge not to jump off for swimming because the water is shark-infested. Thank goodness we had her advice to stop us!
• Patrick's is still open. I had a lousy time there once, but otherwise it's been a favorite restaurant for years. Loving Sarasota restaurants means mourning many that go out of business, and I'd heard that Patrick's landlord sold the building to condominium high-rise developers. Apparently that never happened, as I learned while surfing the web for places to take Kelly's parents.
• Handicapped parking spaces are the only way to park. With their tag hanging from our rear-view mirror, we would drop the Lees off at their hotel, then go out on wild parking binges all over town, parking closer than we ever parked before. Then they left, and the withdrawal set in.
• The legendary Columbia Restaurant in Tampa lives up to its reputation, but it isn't sufficiently different from its Sarasota spinoff that I'll feel the need to drive all the way back. Russ liked the food so much he ate most of Pat & Kelly's plates too. We watched the flamenco dancers rehearse, their stomping threatening to outdo the thunderstorm that sent flashes of light darting through the skylight above our dining room.
• Get a distinctive luggage tag, especially if your suitcase is a black rectangular box like everyone else's on Earth. Russ doesn't care for them and didn't want strangers reading his home address, but we bought him one as a souvenir at a gift shop. Three days later on the return flight, their luggage was diverted to Baltimore. Who knows where it would be now without the tag.
• You don't have to go to a theme park to take silly family photos. Outside the Amish-themed Sugar & Spice restaurant, we posed as a farming family probably not all that different from Lee cousins (except for the Luddism and religiousness I guess).
• John Sayles makes great movies for film buffs, but not so much for ordinary folks just looking for a laugh at the end of a tiring day. I haven't seen Sunshine State in years and remember it being a witty comedy about Florida, so what better movie for their vacation? Yeah, right. It went down like a canteen full of sand in the desert. This was like that time we had to profusely apologize for dragging Jackie and her action-movie-loving boyfriend to Waking Life because we heard the animation was neat.
• Family Feud is a game show, not real life. Kelly and I broke up and reunited more than once over the years, putting our families in the difficult position of re-embracing someone who had broken their child's heart. But all of that seemed like ancient history when the four of us joined my mother and her boyfriend Andy for dinner. Kelly and I are the only ones who needed to grow up.
• It's not a visit to Florida if you don't go to the beach and go out on the water. Kelly and Russ got to walk along Lido Beach for two hours, turning into human lobsters, while I took Pat shopping. The four of us took a boat tour of Sarasota Bay, gawking at millionaire's houses on Bird Key and handling slimy sea urchins like schoolkids on a field trip. These experiences or ones like them should be standard in any Florida visit. (GooCon?)
• Don't even joke about not having had kids yet. They won't think it's funny. Not even a little bit.
Four Replies to Ten Things I Learned While Kelly's Parents Pat & Russ Spent a Week Visiting Us
Amy Austin | July 5, 2008
*Love* the Amish pics... that beard-scratching one just keeps on making me grin.
Having eaten a couple of times at the Columbia in St. Augustine many years ago (I loved it!), I had no idea it was a satellite location (1983)... and that Ybor City & Sarasota came first in 1905 and 1959! The website even proclaims it to be Sarasota's oldest restaurant... a testament to Scott's feelings on the fleeting nature of Sarasota's dining options, no doubt!
Sounds like a good visit -- glad a good time was had by all. ;-)
Jackie Mason | July 6, 2008
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Scott Hardie | July 6, 2008
Russ used to have a mustache and fuller hair. If you saw him in uniform, he tends to stand tall and carry himself differently that way.
I vaguely remember the crying teacher incident, but Kelly doesn't. We didn't see too many movies there (The Princess and the Warrior comes to mind) so it was probably Waking Life. Tough movie; apparently it reduces teachers to tears.
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