Florida: Cocoa in the rain

Day 298
No Travel

As the weatherman predicted we woke to heavy rain and decided to lounge a chunk of the morning away lying in bed. Later, I read my novel and Clark worked on paperwork and making reservations for our next few stops until lunch. Afterwards we headed up to the marina office to sign up for another night's stay. While there a member of the office staff recommended we look at the DVDs available to borrow. We found a few to watch later in the day that we took with us.

We only had one item on today's "must see" list - a hardware store that we had heard was worth a visit. When we walked around yesterday, we saw the sign for the store, so we knew where to find it - a very short distance from the marina.

As soon as we walked in the front door Clark was mesmerized. Like "a kid in a candy store" he didn't know what to look at first. Physical customers appeared to be scarce; however. a  number of folks manned the counter. When we passed the only woman working there, I made a comment about Clark's level of happiness with what he had found. In response we were informed that the hardware store consisted of seven buildings - two with two floors. Oh my!

We both found the store interesting. Clark found tools he didn't know existed - that in and of itself is amazing. I found bits of history hidden among the items for sale. The store was established in 1885, so it has a lot of history.

A very dusty hat signed by Harry S. Truman in 1951
just sitting on the shelf with the items for sale

An old Texaco Pump
Advertising the Hardware Store
(The red box next to it is an old Coca-Cola box
like a modern-day vending machine.)

As we wandered the aisles Clark found a variety of items that caught his interest. At one point, he came and found me a couple of aisles away to tell me he had found something to buy that he could use right away on the boat. He found the materials and tool necessary to repair the screen door on the boat. Only one problem, we didn't know how much screen we needed or what size spline to buy to go with it.

We wandered around other buildings but nothing else grabbed Clark as the screen had. The store closes at 5:00 but the staff at the marina said the hardware staff start hiding behind the counter by 4:30, so we decided we should go back to the boat to get the information we needed to purchase our new screen to be sure to be back before they closed. As we walked back to the boat Clark decided the best way to get the right materials would be to bring the door to the store.

When we got to the boat, I helped Clark remove the door, and we turned right around and walked back to the store. The looks on the faces of the folks in the hardware store led me to believe that they thought Clark was bringing the screen in for them to repair - something they do not do. They seemed quite relieved when he just asked them to measure it so he got the right materials.

As we paid for the materials, Clark turned to me saying he now needed a place to work on the project. He decided to do the work in the marina's parking garage since the docks were all wet from the heavy rain earlier in the day. As I stayed in the garage with the door and the materials, Clark went to the boat for his tools. Fortunately the rainy weather held off while we got the screen reassembled and installed in the boat.

Fellow loopers on Dream Catcher saw us working on the screen and invited us to join them for dinner, but since we had eaten out yesterday and had fresh vegetables that needed to be cooked we declined. We did however go to visit them after we finished our screen door project. Dick and Pat are following a similar path north to the one Clark has planned out. If we can match their departure time in the morning, we will travel together to our next destination.

At just after 6:00 the thunderstorms returned so we quick said our good-byes and ran back to our boat. While I started dinner, Clark set up the DVD player with one of the movies we found in the office earlier. Very quickly we both decided the movie fell into "that's just plain awful" category, so we swapped it out for an alternate mystery movie. That movie "Gone Baby Gone" was one of those that leaves the viewer wondering which of two endings they would have preferred with no clear answer as to which one is correct.

Since that movie was a bit on the "heavy" side, we decided to watch another. Unfortunately, the next movie turned out to be an even heavier drama where both the hero and heroine died at the end of the movie. I went from having my ethics questioned by the first movie to being depressed by the second. Sadly we had no more time to watch a third movie to counteract the ill effects of the first two. Somehow I think the three-hour true story of Alexander the Great would not have been a light-hearted comedy either.

Clark put on the news and I decided to work on my blog to take our minds off the dismal movies we had just seen.