Visiting The Past

Today's Washington Post has a nostalgic look at Florida's rapidly vanishing tourist traps. Those still struggling to survive in the face of the Disney Goliath are places many people remember from years ago: Cypress Gardens, Weeki Wachee, places with impressive water skiing stunts and "mermaids". The old, long gone, Florida, the remnants fading slowly into obscurity.

"Oh, my gosh, it's Frosty!" I exclaimed, sitting up front at the bird show at Jungle Gardens. "I know that bird. He was on 'Ed Sullivan.' "

True, the trainer said. Frosty, a Moluccan cockatoo, did perform on TV before the Beatles and is still riding a unicycle across a wire at the grand old age of 70-something.

A slim crowd — five blond Danish children, their parents and two senior couples — watched the show with us as Frosty and his macaw friends did stunts requiring the intelligence of a 3-year-old, which the birds have. Shows are held in a wooden pavilion with wooden benches, not in an air-conditioned amphitheater. Tropical birds sit on tree branches nearby, not in cages. Everyone could ask a question, have their picture snapped with a parrot perched on each arm and feed the flamingos (25 cents for a handful of pellets).

The entrance is a squat building with a Polynesian roofline. The gardens' former owners lived in what is now the snack bar and shell museum, and the koi pond, near the snack bar, served as the family swimming pool.

It's a trip down memory lane and a rather charming, if somewhat bittersweet look at the vanishing tourist traps of Florida. Worth the read.