Old Friends & Great Memories…
Titusville has a lot memories for both Jan and I, together and separately.
Jan’s father retired from the Air Force here in 1966 and I met her here in July of ’67.
There was a amusement park here then called Florida Wonderland. It had a Western town, with stagecoach rides and gunfights, and a carnival area with a lot of rides. Across the street on the Indian River, was their Marineland ‘wannabe’ with 2 porpoises, 2 manatees, an elephant seal, a giant tortoise, and a 13 ft alligator.
Jan was working as a saloon girl in the Miss Kitty’s soft drink saloon. I was spending the summer bumming around Florida and was hired to give tours and shows for the customers, and also take care of all the animals at the Marineland area.
I would see Jan when I went across the street to get ice and supplies. And 42 years later we’re still together.
And now both Jan’s mother and father, brother, and still-born niece are buried here.
Plus a few years after Jan had moved here in 1966, Carol and Joe Burkott, friends of hers from high school in Massachusetts, moved down here too.
And this is who we’re getting together with for lunch today. We hadn’t seen them in years, but we had kept in touch with Christmas cards, etc.
We’re meeting at Whistle Junction, a buffet chain restaurant here in Titusville. We only have today to spend some time together because they’re leaving for Brownsville, TX tomorrow to visit one of their kids.
After biding goodbye to Carol and Joe, we spent some time driving over to Cocoa Beach and Merritt Island and looking around. Even though it was pouring down rain, we still had a good time.
About 6 pm we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant called La Bamba II. Pretty good food, lousy service.
And then back to our Beauty…
