Naples Then

Naples, Then

Gertrude Lawrence died the year my family moved to Naples, but the old-timers had their tales of her hanging out on the pier, fishing and smoking and telling salty stories. The town was an escape, then, a world away from the sophistication of Miami, across the Everglades. One might bump into Gertrude or Gary Cooper at the Swamp Buggy Lounge, rubbing elbows with the fishing guides and the old-money locals.

That world could not last. Can any? Development and golf courses and retirees made the town like any other in Florida. I could see it change around me, even if I was a kid, become a pretty Chamber of Commerce approved postcard. It doesn't matter; the pier blew down in Sixty and its replacement never looked quite right. Nothing looked quite right after that except the Gulf. That does not change.

I have sought another town like the one I remembered, tinged with false nostalgia, no doubt, but remembered none the less. Naples, then, can not be now. No one there worries about parking under a coconut tree anymore. They trim them all before the nuts fall and one can not go gathering them in the streets in the early morning.

Shake that coconut—can you hear the milk inside? If not, throw it aside and check another.

Stephen Brooke ©2016