Memories of Eldred’s by Tim Dixon: Part III
BY TIM DIXON
This is the third and final part of Tim Dixon’s memories of growing up on the Cape Haze Peninsula and, more specifically, at Eldred’s Marina. We thank him very much for allowing us to print his words.
In 1992 Charlotte County decided to put a public boat ramp on a strip of property they owned along the old railroad bed in Placida. It was an old rail siding that was abandoned when the rail line shut down, and the County had acquired ownership of the property after the train stopped running. The County had built the fishing pier on the old trestle, and this would provide parking for the pier as well as a boat ramp. The property was on the west side of what is now the walk path to the pier, and adjacent to the Mercury Marine test facility. Mercury got wind of it, and they didn’t want people launching boats and parking beside their operation, so they offered to trade the current site of the public ramp for the strip adjacent to their property. Why not just pass that headache to someone else? The County took them up on the proposal and built a boat ramp right beside Eldred’s Marina, then started giving away what the marina was charging for. Now the County was in direct competition with a local business, but they were providing the service for free. Private businesses can’t compete with that.
Of course they didn’t reduce the marina’s property tax after they took away their business income, and they didn’t compensate in any way for all the headaches they created. As soon as the County’s free parking lot filled up, the people would drive next door to the marina and park on marina property, and of course they never paid. Why should they? They didn’t launch their boat at the marina ramp. Now Eldred’s parking was filled up with freeloaders provided by Charlotte County, and the marina had to have someone on duty 24-7 just to try to stop people from taking parking spaces away from their paying customers. That would normally turn into a major hoorah, and many vehicles got towed away. Thanks again Charlotte County; chalk another one up for Big Government.
In 1996 our lives changed forever when, once again, the great enlightened masses stepped in and voted to relegate our culture to the pages of history. The way of life that we had inherited from our great-grandfathers was destroyed and piled upon the scrap heap of time, voted out of existence by ignorance and selfishness. When the net ban passed, our identity and purpose in life were gone, our hopes and dreams for our children and their future were abolished. Our way of life was discarded like so much rubbish, just another page in history that no one wanted to remember or acknowledge.
It wasn’t long before the fish house quarters, where hard-working fishermen lived and raised their families, where little boys grew up to be hard- working men, was demolished and hauled to the dump. Next the Fishery and all of the associated structures were happily demolished and hauled to the dump, and Placida has now been destroyed just as the Village of Gasparilla was in the middle 1940s. Now there is nothing left to remind them of our sordid past, nothing left to remind them of the way of life, the unique culture of our people and the lives they have destroyed, all for their selfish and greedy pleasure.
There is nothing left of Placida to save or salvage; the destruction is complete. Now they all want you to believe that they want to save the quaint little fishing village that they so gleefully demolished.
Now Mother is swiftly approaching 90 years of age, her husband is deceased, and she wishes to settle her affairs in a manner of her choosing. After more than 50 years of hard labor, sweat, toil and sacrifice, she has decided to put Eldred’s Marina up for sale in order to carry out those wishes. She is simply tired and worn out after 50 years of fighting, and she doesn’t want to leave her 10 children with yet another fight. Now, after everything in our lives has been destroyed, after our culture has been relegated to the memories of a dwindling few dinosaurs, after every surrounding property has been planned for development, the same people who robbed us are still not satisfied. They want more! Now they have focused their twisted minds on stripping our real estate of its development density in order to rob a 90-year-old widow of the very sweat of her brow. They will not rest until she has been stripped of the most basic of all human rights, the right to enjoy the fruits of her labor and sacrifice.
After more than 50 years of 15 – to – 18 – hour days, worked by three generations of one family, they want to deny her payment for services already rendered, for work already performed. They wish to rob her of her last dignity, being able to profit from her lifetime of hard labor. This is her IRA, her 401K, her life’s savings, and she simply wishes to cash it in and disburse it to her heirs in a manner of her choosing.
However, a small handful of people believe they have more rights and vested interest in the fruits of her labor than the people who actually performed the work! They have asked the Charlotte County Commission to remove development rights that have been with this property for years, to single her out from every other parcel of property in Charlotte County, to deprive her of equal treatment alongside every other property owner in Charlotte County, in order to accomplish their goal of total destruction. They don’t have the power, guts or authority to actually walk up and rob her, so they have petitioned the Charlotte County political and bureaucratic hierarchy to do it for them. They have asked the Charlotte County Commission to strip this 90-year-old widow’s property of the precious density units that give it the value that it has. That density cap was set for every property in Charlotte County years ago, including Eldred’s Marina.
After every surrounding property has been grandfathered under the rules that have been in existence for years, they are asking Commissioners to single out this widow, deny her of rights guaranteed by the 14th amendment, to steal the value from her property without compensating her for it, and to use the product of her labor to subsidize their lifestyle. It’s not that she won’t sell them her property. They just don’t think they should have to pay her price! If these people want her belongings so badly, they should man up and buy them! Step up and pay her price, don’t steal them through some cowardly political and bureaucratic rule change or amendment! We have never asked or received any special treatment or favors from government. Everything that we have accomplished happened by hard work and sacrifice, not government handouts. All we ever asked was to be left alone, but seemingly that is just a bridge too far.
It seems that for whatever reason, people and government can’t just leave us alone with our work. Why would anybody in their right mind want to start a business in this environment? Who would want to constantly fight 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, just to try to help a bunch of ungrateful people? Apparently it is true that tyranny never sleeps. It only took us 50 years to figure that out.
What kind of system of government robs widows to subsidize the lifestyle of someone who sits in their condo sipping champagne and eating caviar? Is this truly what has become of America, the “Great Land” of equal opportunity, the nation where you are rewarded for hard work and sacrifice? Has Charlotte County become the place where widows go to be robbed of their life savings by bureaucrats and government officials? Is this the way people are rewarded for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes over 50 or 60 years? Is this our reward for building your houses and condos, for hauling Florida Power and Light trucks across the bay to restore your electrical service after every storm? For carrying telephone repair and installation vehicles to the island so you had phone service? For holding our peace when you built your developments and condominiums?
I guess we are of no more use to them, so we should be destroyed and hauled to the scrap heap alongside everything else that was Placida! They honestly believe that we should just donate our grandfather’s dream to subsidize their lifestyle, and fade quietly and penniless into the horizon of history … just like the rest of Old Florida. I can honestly say that I no longer recognize the community or the America that I grew up in. It seems that America the beautiful, and the wonderful representative republic that our forefathers crafted, has devolved into the black hole that they feared more than anything else.
“To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, – the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, & the fruits acquired by it.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Three-part history of Eldred’s from Tim Dixon:
