First Time to Florida 1976
Growing up in a poor working class family never took a vacation or traveled to anywhere. So one Day my friend Ray (right) and his friend Bing (Center) were thinking about going to Florida I jumped at the opportunity being the farest I ever traveled from home was maybe hundred miles away for a camping trip I was ecstatic at the chance. So we went down to Florida in Bing's rustbucket Ford Comet with no credit cards and what megar cash we could scrape together. So here I am traveling with two black guys from the Bronx into the South back when racism was a lot worse in those days. So back in the those times you didn't have the proliferation of chain restaurants off highway exits like you do today so just went off an exit that was near a town and hoped you find a place to eat and ge gas. So as evening set we were in southern Virginia and we must have traveled about fifteen-twenty minutes or more down this dark road to this rinky dink town that had a diner. As we sat down it was diner filled mostly with older people and people were staring at us like out of a bad movie. The waitress was nice enough though and in the middle of our meal we heard one of these old rednecks mutter quietly "Filthy n*****rs!". We just finished out meals real quick and got out of there. No doubt in my mind this place had a whites only sign back in the day. We continued on and several hours later we stopped to eat in a big truck stop in Georgia where people were a lot friendlier and we had this waitress with a Dolly Parton hairdo and matching twin friends protruding from her low cut top and said, "Hi boys. Just ask I can get anything and I mean anything you want!" She took our order and a minute later some truck driver came in and they acted like they knew each other and the truck driver started squeezing her buttocks and they both disappeared and another waitress came out with our food saying our waitress had become inpisspossed. As we finished our meal our original waitress came out with hair all messed up with the truck driver and they were both sweated up and her original words of getting anything you want came back to us. After seeing some sights we then stopped at Bing's Aunt who live passed the state line in Florida and had a nice dinner and went down the coast visiting local beaches, went to Orlando to see Universal studios and Disney World, and spent some more time hanging at beaches not really having the money to party back then and then we ran out of spare cash we drove arriving back to New York City with a quarter tank of gas and not a penny in our pockets between all three of us. One cultural note about Florida back in those days was outside of that one of the most common local stores you saw that had signs that said Beer Guns a great combination where what could wrong of getting your new 44 magnum and a case of beer and everyone drove 20-30 MPH over the speed limit on the highways. But it was an interesting first real trip for me.
First Time to Florida 1976
Growing up in a poor working class family never took a vacation or traveled to anywhere. So one Day my friend Ray (right) and his friend Bing (Center) were thinking about going to Florida I jumped at the opportunity being the farest I ever traveled from home was maybe hundred miles away for a camping trip I was ecstatic at the chance. So we went down to Florida in Bing's rustbucket Ford Comet with no credit cards and what megar cash we could scrape together. So here I am traveling with two black guys from the Bronx into the South back when racism was a lot worse in those days. So back in the those times you didn't have the proliferation of chain restaurants off highway exits like you do today so just went off an exit that was near a town and hoped you find a place to eat and ge gas. So as evening set we were in southern Virginia and we must have traveled about fifteen-twenty minutes or more down this dark road to this rinky dink town that had a diner. As we sat down it was diner filled mostly with older people and people were staring at us like out of a bad movie. The waitress was nice enough though and in the middle of our meal we heard one of these old rednecks mutter quietly "Filthy n*****rs!". We just finished out meals real quick and got out of there. No doubt in my mind this place had a whites only sign back in the day. We continued on and several hours later we stopped to eat in a big truck stop in Georgia where people were a lot friendlier and we had this waitress with a Dolly Parton hairdo and matching twin friends protruding from her low cut top and said, "Hi boys. Just ask I can get anything and I mean anything you want!" She took our order and a minute later some truck driver came in and they acted like they knew each other and the truck driver started squeezing her buttocks and they both disappeared and another waitress came out with our food saying our waitress had become inpisspossed. As we finished our meal our original waitress came out with hair all messed up with the truck driver and they were both sweated up and her original words of getting anything you want came back to us. After seeing some sights we then stopped at Bing's Aunt who live passed the state line in Florida and had a nice dinner and went down the coast visiting local beaches, went to Orlando to see Universal studios and Disney World, and spent some more time hanging at beaches not really having the money to party back then and then we ran out of spare cash we drove arriving back to New York City with a quarter tank of gas and not a penny in our pockets between all three of us. One cultural note about Florida back in those days was outside of that one of the most common local stores you saw that had signs that said Beer Guns a great combination where what could wrong of getting your new 44 magnum and a case of beer and everyone drove 20-30 MPH over the speed limit on the highways. But it was an interesting first real trip for me.