PART VII
Houseboat Diogenes, Hardy St. Pier
Fort Myers, Fla.
Mon., Feb. 15, 1926
My, but we were glad to get here Thursday night about 8 o’clock. The folks had been looking for us and had supper waiting.
The double-decker houseboat, painted yellow with white trim, is the most attractive abode imaginable. Purple bougainvillaea covers a trellis pagoda between the boat and dock and flower boxes edge the decks. A living room, kitchen and bath with all modern conveniences are on the lower deck, with two bedrooms above. Three folding double beds, one in each bedroom and one in the living room, built-in chests, desk and wardrobes are most compact. Mother Wilson has put colorful cretonne on the chairs and at the windows, and decorated with interesting sea things and dried grasses.
On the aft deck she feeds flocks of hungry wild ducks, a few coming to her hand when she calls. Most of them, though, are very shy and scatter at the least noise or unusual motion, so it had taken much patience and a long time to train even a few.
Out of the hundreds of varieties of palms in Fort Myers, the only ones I have yet learned are the Cabbage, Royal, Sago and Coconut, as well as the low-growing Palmetto, from the fibrous leaves of which brushes and whisk brooms are made. The Royal Poinciana tree, sometimes called Women’s Tongues, is shaped like an umbrella, with delicate, finely cut leaves, and at this season, pods, perhaps eighteen inches long, filled with beans that rattle in the wind, hang like earrings; Banana trees bear one handsome dark purple bloom on a long stem; water hyacinths crowd all the roadside ditches; the Flame Vine, with bright orange blossoms, climbs over every available post or tree; the Sleepy Hibiscus never fully opens its blossoms as the wide-awake varieties do; poinsettias grow ten to fifteen feet high, and although still in bloom, most of the leaves have fallen off.
Many challenging projects have been constructed lately in Florida; the concrete Gandy Bridge, six miles long crosses the bay from Tampa to St. Petersburg; lakes are made where there was dry land and dry land where there was water; a man named Davis has pumped sand from the sea bottom and made a large island near Tampa.
A plan is afoot to make a causeway and bridge on the unfinished Tamiami Trail, by filling in this part of the Caloosahatchee River, forcing Mother W., and the doctor to move the houseboat.
Stucco Spanish type dwellings are very popular here, some of which are built with imagination, but many of them are unpardonably ugly. Truly beautiful subdivisions do exist, however, like the ones outside of Jacksonville and Fort Myers; many others are poorly conceived and dismally located, the prices of all being sky high. The most depressing are the abandoned, half-finished developments, where people have lost their entire investments.
Both Ford and Edison have homes in Fort Myers that appear unpretentious, old-fashioned New England homes, but dense foliage makes them almost invisible from the road or water.
We are visiting with the folks, basking in the glorious sunshine, riding around the countryside, observing many interesting sights, and enjoying loafing after our strenuous trip down.