Skeleton Dance, or Stories I Like, Yet Am Not Entirely Convinced They Are True, Part Five

Longtime readers of my foolishness might remember this story, I first published it back in the ancient days of Myspace, but I have recently unearthed new information which begged for an updated version. While plagiarizing yourself is looked down on by the elites, sometimes loose cannons like myself have no other choice in our relentless hunt for the truth.

Several Christmases ago I was at my parents’ house with my sister and then-wife. My dad made an offhand comment about a place called the Skeleton Hotel. Apparently construction started on a hotel back in the ‘20s during one of Florida’s periodic land booms. After the inevitable bust there was no money left to complete the hotel, so it sat unfinished for years, earning the nickname “The Skeleton Hotel.”

One of us commented that with a name like The Skeleton Hotel there should really be more skeletons or ghosts running around that story. 

“No, never saw any skeletons,” he said. “But I did find a mummified hand and a coffee can full of coins there once.”

Wait, what?

So my dad and some friends were playing at the old hotel and started digging under the front stairs. That’s when they unearthed the mummified hand and can full of coins. We asked him what the coins were like, were they regular U.S. money? Doubloons? Whatever money leprechauns hide? He wasn’t really sure, or couldn't remember, or tried to throw us off the trail. They took the hand and the coins to the police, then never heard anything else about them.

He did manage to save a photo of his find, however.

We were awestruck by this story. Not only did little kid dad find actual buried treasure, an obsession that took up like 40% of my brain when I was a kid, but he also unearthed a mummy hand, with all the weird, unholy powers that was sure to bring him.

My sister and I were doubly struck by the fact that he didn’t feel this story was interesting enough to drop on us until we were in our 30s.

I can understand that a bit now – had he told me that story when I was a kid, our yard would have looked like the surface of the moon after my frantic searches for treasure.

Couple weeks ago I mentioned this story to my mom. She said she didn’t remember anything about it. She also pointed out that my dad would regularly, let’s say exaggerate stories for comedic effect, and that my sister and I could be somewhat gullible about this. For example, he got pins in his shoulder when a car slipped a jack and fell on him right before I was born. When I asked  him about the scar he told me a kid at a campfire had thrown a flaming marshmallow at him, leaving a (rather large) permanent scar.

I don’t know if this was supposed to be a joke or a lie turned into a teaching moment, but it did the trick. While I’m a fan of both shenanigans and fires, ifI felt things were getting too rowdy around an open flame, I had a vision of my dad’s marshmallow scar. “This could get dangerous,” I’d think. “I better get out of here before people start flinging flaming marshmallows.”

So in the spirit of the investigative journalism that The Goo Goo Muck is renowned for, I decided to see how true the Skeleton Hotel story was. My mom didn't offer much hope, but she could just be part of the conspiracy. The first step was to see if the Skeleton Hotel even existed. Holy crap! While I was picturing a much more Addams Family skeleton, it looks like the Skeleton Hotel was a fairly well-known landmark in Lake Meade, and stayed up until the mid-'60s.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the mummy's hand howling for his can of coins.

You can't see the haunted front steps from here, but they were probably taken down by subsequent treasure hunters.

I have no idea who my dad's friends were as a kid, so there's no way to track them down without, actual, you know, effort. However, through a half-assed Google search I found a Fort Meade Historical Museum which mentions a 1957 bank robbery where two dudes used an airplane and kidnapped a policeman. Maybe the coins were hidden then? I'm not saying the sky robbers were cursed by the unearthly mummy hand, but I think that anyone with a scientific mind can infer that they 100 percent were.

Based on this evidence, I decree that not only was Polk County a pretty strange place in the old days, but I declare my dad's story to be True. I will be contacting the sheriff soon to claim the can of coins as my dad's rightful heir. They can keep the mummy hand. I've got a hard enough life trying to stay away from flaming marshmallows without getting mummy curses on me.

Aunt Mary's All Alone

My dad's funeral was on a Saturday. I left work early the previous Monday when I got the phone call and spent the rest of the week in a daze. I obviously knew he was gone, but it didn't seem altogether real, that someone I knew for my whole life (and had known me even longer) had just been sort of disappeared from the earth.

I spent a lot of time on the couch, sort of halfway paying attention to movies we had watched together, texting and talking to family and friends, and trying to wrap my head around his death.

Before my dad died, I had planned to drive down to Gainesville for a Radon reunion show that weekend. While by my estimations I have seen about 46,000 Radon "reunion" or "original lineup" or "final" shows, it's always a good time, and it brings all the oldsters out of the woodwork so we can drink and sing and act the fool away from our responsibilities and set the clock back about 20 years or so to recharge our worn out batteries.

While I obviously wasn't going to go to Gainesville Saturday night, I decided to spend Thursday night in Tampa, catch Radon in Ybor City, then drive down to Bradenton the following morning.

I was a bit conflicted about this plan. Should I really be having fun so close to my dad's death? Sure, I could tell myself that dad would want me to have a good time, but that seemed sort of hollow and somewhat disrespectful. In the end, I decided that it would be good to have a little fun to step into normal life for a little while and to steel myself against the funeral. Sure, that was a pretty cheap rationalization, but it was what I was going with.

I had a great afternoon; sure, sadness lurked around the corners, but I hung around band practice, drank some beers and talked with great friends that I haven't seen in a while, some of whom had gone through losing a parent and offered whatever advice or sympathy they could.

Remember that band in college, that one who might not be technically proficient, and maybe the drummer would slow down halfway through the set, or the guitars might be out of tune, or the singer might forget a verse, but it didn't matter, because after a few songs you and your friends transformed into a single organism, jumping and singing and making the wooden floor creak and bend under your weight while you could transcend, just for a second, the day-to-day cares and frustrations and become one, unified mass of humanity? Well, Gainesville was (and still is) lousy with those bands, and I was counting on Radon to bring that feeling back for a few minutes that night.

And they didn't disappoint. I knew the song that was going to kill me. "Grandma's Cootie," a song about an aunt left alone by the death of her husband who takes a ride on a roller coaster and sees the beach from the top of the coaster.



They played it about halfway through the set, right before "Stepmother Earth," a song that always made me think about the complicated relationship between fathers and sons, even though there's not really anything specific to that reading in the song.

Tears welled as I sang along with old friends and strangers, but they were different somehow. They were sadness mixed with that feeling of transcendence along with a bit of happiness. I could almost grasp a theory about loss and death and the power of friendship and love, but the music and gin and tonics clouded my thinking and it remains just out of reach.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Most people freeze their musical tastes in their 20s, and while I have continued seeking out different genres and styles since then (just ask anyone who has had to endure my "Summertime Reggae/Ska/Rocksteady/Dub" playlist at a cookout), the music and friends I made in my 20s have a special place in my heart. You can use that feeling to live in the past and moan about how things aren't as exciting now as they were back then, or you can take a bit of that feeling now and then to jump start your heart, to realize that you are part of something, that you have friends and family who love you, and that no matter how shitty life can be at times, you will endure and thrive.

I'm not saying that that night cured me, I continued (and continue) to have bad moments and bad days. But it did help, and if the suits at the American Psychiatric Association will ever recognize my groundbreaking research into punk rock music as grief therapy, I feel many more people will be helped.

Drivin' and Cryin'

I used to be someone. I had promise. I had a Porsche. No, seriously, I owned a Porsche for about a year. Actually, I guess technically my ex-wife did.

My dad had a hobby of buying old cars and restoring them. He'd be driving around and see a wreck with a for sale sign on it or start talking to a guy at a yard sale and end up buying a car and then spending months fixing it up. How he did this on a teacher's salary, I have no idea. All the way from a Model A to an MG like the one he used to have as a swinging single to a 1981 Porsche 924, he'd be obsessed for a while, then move on to another car.

About the time my ex-wife and I were first married, he had finished restoring the Porsche enough that he could drive it to work occasionally or drive it around the neighborhood now and then. We were down in Bradenton for something and he offered it to her as sort of an extra wedding present.

Well hell, who were we to turn down a free Porsche? I think we had just gotten rid of her car, a Geo that was on its last legs, or maybe we got rid of it after the Porsche offer. Who cares! We had one reliable car and a piece of German engineering, something that was befitting of our new life as one of Jacksonville's power couples. And it was a convertible, too!

I soon discovered there was a big difference between driving the car two or three miles every other day and depending on it to safely transport your wife to her job about a half hour away, especially in the days before cell phones. Well, at least before we had cell phones.

Here is a transcription from memory of about 87 calls I would get pretty frequently:

"Hey, I'm at Publix. The car just stopped. I can't get it started. I hate this car."

I can't even remember all the mechanical problems that car had. We were brand new in Jacksonville with no friends and had no idea which mechanic to trust. We called around but the only place that would take it was an import place, and because of the age of the car, they couldn't find parts half the time.

I did like the smell of the car's interior, though. It had the same smell those old VW convertibles used to give off - a mix of plastic that suggested the action figures I had as a kid, as well as a fresh bag of plastic fishing worms or brand new cassette tapes, mixed with just a hint of gasoline fumes.

Oh yeah, those gasoline fumes were probably bad.

That car was a major source of friction in the early days of our marriage. It didn't help my relationship with my parents, either. If I mentioned the problems we were having with it, I could feel my dad getting more and more upset. I mean, shit, he gave us a free car, you know? And his ungrateful son was complaining about it all the damn time.

I had (and still have) a tendency to grasp onto the smallest pebble of a problem and through a combination of worrying and anxiety, transform it into a house-sized boulder that crushes me down until I can't sleep or do anything but worry about the most ridiculous possible outcome. So when there's a real problem, say a car that we've dumped over $3000 into that we didn't really have, I've already planned my future in the poor people's nursing home, where I'm mistreated by hateful minimum-wage immigrants while my friends are enjoying their mansions and yachts, while they mention every once in a while between bites of caviar, "Hey, I wonder whatever happened to Scott? Eh. I'm sure he's alright. More champagne, Jeeves."

I don't remember when we finally decided to cut our losses. It might have been after we figured out how much we had spent on repairs. It might have been after we finally couldn't afford to fix it any more. I remember it sat in our apartment's driveway for a long time. I'd look down at it occasionally, sitting down there mocking me.

We finally ended up donating it to some charity, something I only though rich people did. Like I said, we ended up paying over 3 grand in repairs over the life of the car. Sure, it would have been smarter to take that money and use it as a down payment for another car, but it's not like we ever had all that money at one time.

We were a one-car family for a long time after that. That had its own set of problems and stresses, but at least I didn't think my wife was going to die every time she went to work, and even waiting for the bus for over an hour was much less stressful than waiting to hear from another mechanic as our checking account took another hit.

So if anyone ever offers you a free sports car, run far, far away.

Late Night Bonding

Nobody thought their parents understood them growing up. I was sure mine didn't. I'm still pretty sure of it. I often wonder what my parents thought of me, now that I'm probably the age they were when I was a teenager.

In return for free food and a place to stay (and a rather large assortment of Star Wars paraphernalia), I would act like doing yardwork was the equivalent of getting shipped to the Gulag, and the stuff I thought was cool (rock and roll, monsters, videogames, skateboarding, dirty movies on cable) must have seemed ridiculous at best, and at worst, a path to a life of laziness and loserdom.*

On my side, my parent's square habits like waking up early and doing yardwork and their extreme thriftiness was just as alien to me. I mean, who would want to do that crap when HBO is showing Emannuelle at 3:30 in the morning?

Naturally, I am now obsessed with yardwork, cheaper than Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve and generally wake up around 7 in the morning.

Things got better once I was in community college and still living at home. I was making close to straight As (with the exception of my math classes, which I had to retake like 30 times), had steady employment, and was generally fairly responsible.

I was on the newspaper staff, which was a pretty sweet gig. There were about 8 of us, and our advisor would stop in maybe three times a semester. We would hang out for hours in the newspaper office, eating food from the cafeteria, listening to the Pixies and Descendents, and bonding the way you do over old-school wax and X-Acto layout.

A friend on the staff had a crush on me which I was oblivious to, as I had the social skills of a circus bear and was fairly ugly, so the thought of someone of the opposite sex actually liking liking me after the end of my lengthy high school romance seemed about as likely as my flapping my arms and flying to the moon.

At one point, the two of us were driving around Siesta Key after blowing off our night biology class, something we did fairly often. We parked and walked on the beach in the dark. The water was glowing yellow-green with phosphorescence. Every crashed wave would leave a glowing, otherworldly hue. Naturally, we had to get out in there.

I can't remember what time of year it was, I just remember we were freezing, making out while hundreds of thousands of glowing algae turned the ocean around us into our personal light show.

Well, with nature turning on the romance like that, we had to go back to her house. After messing around for a while, I figured I needed to get home, as it was approaching 4 in the morning. I didn't actually have a curfew at the time, but this would probably be pushing it, and I still had a 20 minute drive home.

My clothes were wet, so I borrowed a pink sweatshirt with a beaver on it and wrapped up in a towel. I figured everyone would be long asleep at home, so who cared what I looked like?

I turn the key in the door and see my dad sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by a pile of bills, probably trying to figure out how he was going to manage to pay for all the food I was consuming.

"Where the hell have you been? Do you know what time it is?

"I ..."

Dad was taking in my getup. No shoes, feet and legs still glowing green from the ocean, and a yellow towel topped off with a pink beaver sweatshirt.

"Just...just go to bed," he said, laughing.

Strangely enough, "To Everything, Turn Turn" by the Byrds came on. My voice got whinier and I said, "And at that moment, I realized my dad and I weren't that different after all."


And that was the best episode of The Wonder Years ever.





* Guess I showed them, huh?

Take a Letter

My dad was awesome at writing complaint letters. If he felt a company or organization had slighted him, he’d get out the paper and pen and fire off a letter. I don’t know exactly what he said, but it must have been pretty persuasive since a few weeks after mailing out the letter he’d get a ton of free samples or a credit voucher delivered in the mail, along with profuse apologies.

Dad wasn’t stingy with praise either. He tried some sort of foot powder and liked it so much he wrote the company. When I came home from college there were crates of the stuff in the garage. I couldn’t visit without my parents trying to sneak bottles of the stuff into my car to take home with me. Now I could see if this was from a big company like Arm and Hammer or Gold Bond, who could afford to mail out a boxes of foot powder to keep a customer happy, but this was some sort of Mom and Pop foot powder outfit, so I’d constantly have people finding a bottle of the stuff holding up the couch or something and asking me what the hell Dr. Funkenmeir’s Olde Tyme Foot Powder and Poultice was, and why did I have a million little plastic bottles of it anyway.

But if he was good with a letter, Dad was a maestro over the phone or face to face. We’d be buying a car stereo or something and he’d say to the guy at Circuit City, “So how much is this really.”

I’d be all embarrassed, because I knew that you just didn’t do that sort of stuff, but sure enough, the guy would knock like 50 bucks off the price. The few times I tried that on my own, the salespeople just sort of looked at me and I felt so awkward and embarrassed that I’d write out a little extra on the check just to make up for my faux pas.

So one day my sister and dad are watching the local news. There’s some story about this Minute Maid fruit juice that was being recalled.

“You know, I’ve been feeling sort of sick all week. I’m pretty sure I had some of that juice.”

“Dad, you’ve never had that stuff in your life.”

”No. I ..I’m pretty sure I had some earlier this week and that’s why I don’t feel good.”

“Dad, that stuff is called like ‘Extreme Razzleberry Kicks.’ You’d never drink that.”

“No, I think I had some at work. I’m gonna have to write a letter.”

Whatever he wrote it worked again, because we had bottles of the stuff when I got home.