Day: April 1, 2017

Posted in Blog Series

#SoCS – 04/01/27

Posted on by R.M. Carlson


An island in the sun. Where people are peaceful yet proactive. Where you can live a simpler life without any pretense. Maybe it has something to do with the Calusa Indians, a tribe long extinct, that were on this island long before anyone else. Their shell mounds are still here and are protected. Perhaps they left their magic here after they were wiped out by the French and Spanish.

People from all over the U.S. and all over the world live on this island in the sun. They come here to vacation and never leave. They leave and come back again and again. Perhaps, like me, they come here, catch the magic, and are determined to come back and live here. I’ve met many people who do exactly what I’ve done. Relocate here at least for part of the year.

People are different when they are on this island. The highest corporate executive becomes one of the crowd having a beer and a burger at Woody’s Bar and Grill in St. James City. He/she drops all the corporate pretense and becomes a person again. Politics does not galvanize us on the island. Indeed, that subject is not even thought of. People come here to escape such pressures and problems of the mainland. It’s like a spell has been cast upon us.

Back on the mainland, we think we require lots of “stuff” to live. Cars, homes, furniture, clothes. On the island, we live in the most modest small homes. Homes we would never live in if we were in our communities. No one cares about cars unless it is to pull a boat. Furniture? Ha! Clothes? Shorts, t-shirts, sandals. That’s all anyone wears on my island in the sun. No one judges.

You come across the most wonderful things on this island. Bob, the wood stork, who stalks us in my community, wanting food. The gopher tortoises who are mating at this time of year. There is now a Florida panther on the island. There are more endangered species than I can count. The little post office established in 1902. All the vegetable and fruit stands. I will write about all of this in my blog.

The most wonderful thing about my island in the sun is the feeling I get when I cross the bridge. Peace. A sense of wonder. A feeling much like we had as children. A desire to explore. Most days, I think I never want to cross the bridge to the mainland ever  again. I want my friends and family to visit. I want them to feel the magic.

Posted in Blog Series

Travel Florida: I Was Only Going to the Post Office

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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Copyright Rosemary Carlson 2017

And not the Post Office above! The Post Office you’re looking at in the picture is the original post office on Pine Island, built in 1902. I didn’t mean to visit it today, although I meant to visit it eventually. I just meant to go to the new Post Office, near St. James City on Pine Island, to mail something and pick up mail. I asked the postal service worker if the post office was open on Saturday. He said no and proudly explained to me that only one post office on the island is open on Saturday and that is the original Pine Island Post Office in Pineland, another community on the island. He instructed (instructed?) me to run on down to Pineland, another small Pine Island Community, and take a look since he knew I was new to the island. How could I refuse?

Off I went to Pineland, just about a ten mile drive. I turned off the main Pine Island road and found myself with palm tree farms on one side of the road and a mango plantation on the other side of the road, both crops grown on Pine Island and with stories of their own. After driving about three miles and fearing I was lost, I rounded a curve and literally had to screech to a halt. There, in front of me, practically in the middle of the road was the building you see above.

So I went inside. This little building could tell a lot of stories. It is only there because in the late 1800s there was a freeze that took out most of the orange groves in northern Florida. Many grove owners moved south and bought land to establish new groves. A grove owner, Minta Moore, came to Pine Island in 1902 when only about three dozen people lived here. That family bought acreage for orange groves and established the first Pine Island post office in a community they established and called Pineland. The original lockboxes are still in that little building and they are combination boxes.

The postal service worker is new. She, like me, came to Pine Island on vacation. She’s from Delaware. She loved it so much that she applied for a job at two of the Pine Island post offices. The little old post office at Pineland hired her. She was thrilled to move here. She, like me, has no family in the area. No friends in the area. Like me, she felt the magic of Pine Island. So do many people here.

We like to keep it a secret so I’m only telling you.