There's nothing good about Brevard's retirement qualities

 

 

Northbound traffic on Wickham Road was knotted up so tight you couldn't identify the situation until you got right up on top of it.

 

It was one of those big honkin' Lincoln Town Cars. Instead of drifting into the left turn lane designated for such purposes by a sign and painted arrows, the driver apparently had bolted left at the last impulsive instant -- from the far right lane.

 

Fortunately, the Lincoln had cleared the right lane, which allowed some traffic to wedge past. Unfortunately, I was in the left lane, which was hopelessly blocked by this functioning but indecisive behemoth.

 

Immobilized by fear and/or confusion, the driver had retracted into deep virtual headlessness, like a startled turtle spewing backward into its shell, but a pair of hands clearly was gripping the steering wheel. You could also make out wispy blue clouds of hair, which suggested a feminine gender. But not necessarily.

 

Giving serious thought to shearing off a tail-light for a paltry cathartic trophy while waiting in line to lurch past this flummoxed geriatric, I realized I'd stared down variations of this annoying imbroglio many times before. But the Town Car incident occurred within days of a depressing new report -- "Frommer's Retirement Places Rated" -- listing Brevard County as Florida's hot new venue to come and die.

 

Oh, Frommer's was absolutely right about all that personal safety, cost of living and ambience stuff. But pardon me if I save the spurting champagne and upside-down chandelier-monkey dancing for something really worth celebrating, like an undiscovered public-access footpath to the beaches you can't get to anymore.

 

Anybody who says the quality of life is going up around here just got off the bus from Sadr City.

 

Developers don't even bother to wait for permits to obliterate scrub jay habitats, lagoon dolphins are breaking out in lesions, the historic houses and landmarks that don't get razed for mind-numbing chain-store clones are relocated to more discreet locales. Nobody even blinks when the latest high rise emerges from the Indian River itself, like the resurrection of Atlantis.

 

But obviously, even the deteriorating remnants of what the Space Coast used to be are better than what the retirees are escaping.

 

So fasten your seatbelts and snap on your crash helmets, because here they come: snapping up retirement homes with cash from their pricey liquidated Rust Belt estates, driving local real estate prices through the roof to ensure that local salaries can't possibly keep up with ballooning mortgages, voting against paying the cost of their freight, settling in beachfront condos and expecting taxpayers to keep bailing them out with billions of dollars of sand after each hurricane season.

 

Not to mention clogging hospitals, and turning weeks-long waits for checkup appointments into month-long marathons. Not to mention creating local flu-vaccine shortages. Not to mention making left-hand turns from the right-hand lane.

 

This rant will no doubt come back to haunt -- if not downright humiliate -- me during some not-so-distant senior moment when I punch my car through the nightgown section of the Wal-Mart. But if Brevard insists on being Florida's No. 1 retirement draw, let's at least maintain a little elbow room on the road to the grave. In 2002, the last year comparable figures are available, 5,505 Space Coasters died, but 8,924 people were either born here or moved in.

 

How about a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing new Brevard arrivals never outnumber the deceased? Snowbirds and South Florida refugees will feel even more privileged to come here, and they'll pay even more.

 

Contact Cox at 242-3774 or bcox@flatoday.net.

 

 

http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/indexcox.htm

 

It's so true. This county used to be so beautiful. Now: so long natural beauties....hello Courtenay Springs Retirement Home, hello high-rise condos in Cocoa on the Indian River....so long cool sand dunes and beach spots....hello high-rise condos and hotels on the beach. So long Florida natural scrublands....hello 1/4 acre lots to build houses that all look the same.

Im with you all the way carter.

woot woot