This week’s celebrity involves an internet group I joined back in May 2006 while serching for a theme song from the program. The first season of the series ‘Simon and Simon’ was playing on the ‘Sleuth’ cable television station. I knew the standard theme for the series but not the first season’s. Finding this ‘Yahoo’ group I noticed they had a caption contest, which is something I had been looking for as a casually challenging game. So I joined and started getting a lot more practice writing captions. Along the way it was asked, noticing my being a caricaturist, why I hadn’t drawn the Simon brothers (Jameson Parker and Gerald McRaney). So I added their names to the current celebrity cup six months ago. The first came up last week and here is the drawing.

I’m not real nuts about the final result. I really struggle with the so-called “beautiful people”. He must be one of them. Simple features arranged in an almost non-defined way. My struggle is not to overly define them. Which I did here. However, I was running out of time, so I wrapped this as it is.

Florida connections: I’ve since learned that the Simon & Simon series was originally to be based in Florida somewhere between Florida City and Key Largo. The original pilot was partially shot in and around Everglades City. While we were doing other research down there, I found a few of the locations. Apparently cost relocated the series to San Diego. Watching the first season, the storylines seemed to be retooled from Florida to fit in California.

Also, Gerald McRaney is now married to Orlando native Delta Burke.

Next week: Back to the humor cup and, finally, one of my very favorites, Groucho Marx.

We celebrated Ann E. Sabo’s big 4-0 Bday by throwing her a surprise party at the Blue Moon Inn in Dunedin. Included in the festivites was also a happy 39th to Tracy and a surprise to my soon-to-be-40 next week brother, Jeff. Further fun was Tracy presenting a secret gift game, where each person gets a gift and can trade with another. Adding to that was Ann’s sister June wanting muffin tins and settling, happily, for a how-to-make-cocktails book.

There two sheet cakes. Ice cream, too. Despite that, we went with Tracy and her husband Greg to a TERRIFIC bar-b-q restaurant west of Alternate-19 in historic Ozona. The Ozona Pig is in an old house and includes homey decorations as with the Elvis tribute on a shelf.

The restaurant had terrific bar-b-q ribs, fries, baked beans, smoked ham, etc. They also have something called the “Bar-B-Q Cocktail” that is a cup of pulled pork, baked beans, claw and a pickle. Quite a place! We will return!

A visit to Silver Springs in Ocala. After 125 years of being around, they must be doing something right. I drew pages of sketches. Here are a few. 

Drew this of a collection of cottages that are part of an old fish camp in Leesburg. I was having a meal with my father at a Steak and Shake on 441 and drew this place while seated inside the restaurant. The fish camp is now part of a trailer park.

This anchor is at the Jupiter Lighthouse park in Jupiter.

The anchor is from a ship that was coming back from plundering South America, the “San Miguel de Archangel”. The ship crashed its way into Jupiter Inlet in 1659. Lots has been recovered from the thieving ship from cannons to bullion from various spots in South America.

Here’s a sketch of the Hall’s HArdware sign in West Palm Beach. The sign is in the shape of a hammer about ten feet tall.

Hall’s opened in 1960 on US 1. Though the business changed hands in the ’80s, the sign stayed and the business is the great hardware store we remember that always has a helpful employee at the ready.

I was down in the Fort Lauderdale area for the New Year. drving home on the first I did my typical Florida history site seeing.

Here’s a sketch I drew of an original Dairy Queen from 1955. The take out only stand sits on U.S. 1 just north of Fort Lauderdale in the city of Lighthouse Point. According to the fellow who was working there, this Dairy Queen opened with the giant neon Dairy Queen sign on top. Eventually zoning laws had the sign taken away and destroyed. After stand was opened a strip shopping center was built behind it in three parts over the years. Over time the shopping center was completely made over and no longer reflects it’s origin. Thankfully, the Dairy Queen has maintained it’s integrity and still looks as it did in 1955.

The employee provided a photo of how the area originally looked. I took an unfortunate blurry photo of the photo. Nevertheless, I boxed in red the Dairy Queen. At the time it was pink. You can still make out the blue neon sign with an ice cream cone on it. Doesn’t that giant green shopping center sign, now gone, look cool!

The day after Christmas found my brother, Jeff, joining Sandra, my father and I. We went over to Don Garlits car museum, south of Ocala off U.S. 75. The museum is a tourist attraction owned by Tampa native and car racing legend, Don Garlits. There are actually two museums. One of older cars and one of the history of drag racing.

Cars are tough for me to draw. The sketching was a good exercise. The drawings are of part of the nose of a 1942 Mercury Sport convertible, a 1964 mustang, a truck and a dragster.

 

 

 

 

After the museum fun we went over to Stumpknockers restaurant south of Dunellon on the Withlacoochee River for seafood. They are considered to have some of the best seafood in Florida, but be warned that their cooking is northern based and not Southern.

  

Sandra and I indulged in the Belleview Biltmore’s brunch Sunday morning. Ann E. Sabo and Jo Ann Fenstermacher joined us for coffee and goodies in the ice cream parlor/ coffee shop in the Biltmore, Maisies. We had a great time. I only got this little drawing completed of a wreath at the Biltmore.

Something else completed were reference photos for next years Christmas card. Thought I ‘d start reeeeeaaaaalllll early this year.

Attended the Orlando Remembered meeting at the Citrus Club in Orlando. Here are sketches of Chairman P. John Camichos and Leon Handley telling his fun of trying to get the Orlando Sentinel to move his paper to his new home down near Lake Lucerne. The subscription department lady informed him she had no idea where Lake Lucerne is. She’s in the Phillipines.

 

Below is an illustration I drew at the meeting of a story that Joe Guernsey told at the table. He related the party he went to as a young boy in the ’30s. The party was at the home of a classmate, Nixon Butt, on Central Boulevard across from Lake Eola. Joe told of the greatest highlight of the party. Prior to the party peanuts were hidden all around the house. At the given time the children were set loose to find the peanuts.

Saturday we headed south so that Sandra could research park areas for one of her upcoming books. We stopped at the Desert Inn for some food. The Desert Inn opened somewhere between 1860 and 1883 as a stop for cowboys and cattlemen to pick up food and/or for lodging. All can still be done today at the crossroads of 441 and 60 just west of the Florida Turnpike. Got a great hamburger! Here’s a sketch of the fellow managing things at the bar.