Same Time, Next Year

Author’s note: As I put the finishing touches on this post, hurricane Helene is bearing down on Port St. Joe, Apalachicola, St. George Island and parts east on the Gulf Coast of Florida. It’s due to make landfall today, September 26. Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for the surrounding areas.

In 2015 we started driving our RV to Florida. We scouted places in Apalachicola, Eastpoint, St. George Island, Mexico Beach and Port St. Joe. In 2018 we tried an RV park in Port St. Joe Florida, Presnell’s RV Resort. We liked it so much it became our permanent winter base of operations. When you officially become a “resident snowbird,” your relationships with the RV park and other campers change. You become a migrant citizen, and fellow snowbirds become neighborhood acquaintances. You recognize their campers and RVs when they arrive, check in on them to see how the year went and so forth. Occasionally something shifts and you actually become more than just seasonal neighbors; you become friends.

The area including Port St. Joe and Presnell’s RV park took a direct hit from Hurricane Michael in 2018. A house across the canal on a lot owned by the RV park was destroyed by the storm. We all took a bye on 2020 thanks to the pandemic, but returned in 2021. The lot remained vacant, but the debris had been cleared out. One morning I noticed a woman exercising her pup in the empty lot; I walked over with my dog (Gumbo) and they ran together while she and I talked. Renee told me that she brought her dog Breezy over every day to let her run. I let some of our neighbors know, and before long the vacant lot across the canal became an unofficial dog park. Over time, the group grew and by the end of our months there, a 4:00 PM “Doggie Happy Hour” became a regular event. Our dogs knew the schedule. They’d start pestering us at 3:30, and whine if we were tardy in bringing them over. The group expanded and contracted depending on travel schedules, but over the years a core group formed out of those of us who where there on the same schedule. We started hanging out for our own happy hour fun. When it was time to turn north, we compared schedules to make sure our stays would align. “See you same time, next year,” we said.

Every winter we celebrated Ben’s birthday. We mourned pets who passed and celebrated new puppies. Family members passed, grand children graduated from high school. The years went by, and then we wrecked our RV. I’ve written lots about the people who stepped up for us; we weren’t surprised when our RV friends did the same.

In one of those serendipitous moments, we learned that Florida friends Sonny and Linda live in Michigan about 10 miles from the crash site. When they heard what had happened, they came to help Ben and his friend Ron transfer our belongings from the wreck to a U-Haul.

For those of you who don’t RV, you must understand that these big coaches are capable of carrying a LOT of stuff. We’d lived in the coach for quite a few years, so we had all manner of household items as well as two 12-foot kayaks and a king size mattress. They stuffed anything and everything in the U-Haul. Sonny was especially useful. Without being asked, he salvaged all the add-on equipment we had installed–an in-house vacuum system, a power cable reel and all kinds of accessories. By doing that he saved us thousands of dollars. Ben observed that if Sonny ever decided to come out of retirement he could have a lucrative career running a chop shop.

After my discharge from the hospital we were reunited in Florida last March. We spent a couple weeks there, just in time to keep the tradition of celebrating Ben’s birthday. Before we left, we agreed that a year was too long to wait, so we planned a group RV trip in September.

We got together at an RV park in Wisconsin, and for two weeks we investigated Egg Harbor and the rest of the peninsula. In addition to the usual touristy stuff, we found a dog park and went there every morning at 11am to let our dogs run. Three days in they knew the schedule. We spent evenings around a roaring campfire, laughing and talking.

I’d always wanted to do something to thank Sonny and Linda for their help. We hadn’t known them for too long, but they swooped in and helped when we, and especially Ben, most needed it. We had to take some serious ribbing for the amount of stuff we had in the RV, but that’s how we all roll. I was at a loss for an idea. Then it came to me: I made them a plaque, which I presented to them at our first happy hour with a great flourish.

In the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard hands the Tin Man “a testimonial” in recognition of his kindness, and says this: “a heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others.”

Be grateful for all the big-hearted people out there, they are what makes the world tick. The only thing you can do to honor someone for a great kindness is to pass the grace you received on to others who need help. That being said, it never hurts to hand out a plaque from time to time.