I’ve written several times now about some of our adventures —I should say MIS-adventures, with our golf cart, Lucy, when we lived in The Villages, Florida. Living in ‘Disneyworld for Grownups’, was one of the most exciting and fun experiences either of us had ever known.
I remember the first time my oldest daughter, Carrie, came to visit. I took her out for a tour in Lucy. We saw lots of tall brown marsh herons and white ibises close up, content in their surroundings, freely walking around, totally unafraid of humans.
We drove by ponds with posted signs, “Don’t feed the alligators” and even spotted a few sunning themselves on the grass at the edge of the pond.
“Mom, this town is amazing. It reminds me of how a movie set would be. The landscaping everywhere is stunning; flowers, palm trees, and huge ancient oaks with gypsy moss, parks with benches and walking paths through flower gardens …”
“Movie set? How so, hun?”
“I keep expecting to hear a director shout, ‘Action! (clack!). Cue the herons! Okay, now the alligator. Take #25, Action! (clack!)”
Interesting. I hadn’t thought of it like that before, but she was right. It was like a Disneyworld for Grownups movie set. Whenever any landscaping was disrupted by a tropical storm or the tail end of a hurricane, there were workmen out replacing it the very next day.
Robert and I loved our adventures with Lucy. She was ‘born’ in 2002, so she was getting pretty ‘long in the tooth’, as they say, but that was okay —we’re both getting up there in age, too.
She’s an electric model and quiet as the night. She would go thirty to forty miles, maybe even more, on a charge —but she wasn’t what the Creme de la Creme drove in The Villages. They mostly went with gas models, which are more expensive —-sort of like us driving a Chevy when they all drove BMW’s.
Funny thing is, gas models were much louder than electric models and we loved how quiet Lucy was. We could drive along and be within a foot or two of beautiful sand hill and marsh cranes. Gas models couldn’t do that —too noisy. Robert always brought his camera along for a quick photo shoot.
We enjoyed having real conversations and actually hearing each other talk. Who knows, maybe the gas model people didn’t want to talk to each other … hmmm?
With Lucy, we were at a much lower level than a car and almost a part of the scenery. We could smell the flowers, the grass being cut, backyard Bar-B-Ques and chlorine pools. Our silence didn’t frighten away the cranes, or other wildlife either.
We were always able to breeze right by any and all gas golf carts. We chalked it up to Lucy not wanting to be second best at anything and we were proud of her. When we’re out and about, we could almost feel her pull and tug at the reins, “Let me GO! I want to RUN!”
That brings me to what I’ll call our 4th MIS-adventure. This wasn’t Lucy’s fault. We had a lot of errands to do and we also wanted to go down to the Southernmost (at that time) town square which had just been finished, Brownwood Square.
Each of the squares is very different. Each square has a theme and the architecture, stores —-the whole flavor of each Square looks different.
Spanish Springs Town Square is very Spanish, complete with a “Fountain of Youth”. The buildings all have intricate ironwork balconies, terra cotta pottery roofs, etc.
Sumpter Landing Town Square on Sumpter Lake is elegantly New England coastal, complete with a lighthouse and boat tours.
Brownwood Town Square is definitely like the old wild west. At the main entrance to Brownwood, are life-size bronze statues of cattle, horses, even a cowboy.
We decided to head south to Brownwood first. When we got there, we always got an iced coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts first, then window shopped, strolling in and out of the beautiful boutiques and stores. Then we lunched in one of the many themed restaurants.
Midafternoon, we thought we’d better head back up north. We still had a lot of errands to do. We took one of the north-south routes and headed north to Walmart. Then from there, another five miles back to Spanish Springs to the bank before it closed. Last, to Publix to pick up a few groceries.
By the time we came out of Publix, it was dark. That was always fun, because we could put Lucy’s headlights on. We were just leaving the parking lot when Robert called my attention to our battery meter —it was in the red. We were almost out of ‘juice’ and we were still over two miles from home.
We took it slow and easy and about halfway home, since the arrow was resting on Empty in the red zone, we decided to turn off the headlights … we were traveling in the dark and hoping we wouldn’t see any other golf carts, because they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to see us.
Lucy shuddered and we held our breath. It was one of those ‘oh shit’ moments, but we kept moving forward …
We pulled into our garage on, I guess you’d call it ‘fumes’. At that point, Lucy was only moving a few inches at a time. She got us home by the skin of our teeth.
Recently, we found out something interesting about old Lucy. The last time we had her tuned up, the service tech was amazed. He said something like, “Ho-ly Shit! This baby’s got a high performance engine in her! Summabitch!”
Robert and I only looked at each other and smiled. We knew it had to be something like that. Maybe that’s how she got us home that night, who knows?
Atta girl, Lucy —you had heart!
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this post, please share it and consider a paid subscription to “CJ’s World” on Substack.
My daughter who was about ten at the time and I went out one night to purchase a few things from the local shop. We were in our trusty Reno Mégane of five years . After doing the shop we came back to the car all to find that the battery was flat, a little like Lucy's. We sat in the car wondering what to do, just then a drunk approached and started shouting abuse and banging on the windows, we were very scared .We locked the doors and I told my daughter if we focused hard on the battery we could put our energy in it. After fifteen minutes of hard focus the car started. The dunk ran down the road after us but we were free and homewood bound.