Voodoo At The Winn-Dixie? That NEVER Happens At Publix...

I read in the online edition of the Stuart News the other day that a deputy in Port Salerno, Florida, who was patrolling a shopping plaza with a Winn-Dixie, encountered two men in front of that grocery store, one holding up a sign asking for money and the other holding up a plastic skeleton. When questioned, the man with the skeleton said it was connected to the practice of voodoo. Port Salerno is just south of Stuart, Florida, where my mother Mary and father Nelson retired in 1976 from Chicago. Although they occasionally shopped at Winn-Dixie, most of the time they shopped at Publix, located just down the street from their condo.  In later years, when I visited my widowed mother down in Stuart, we would head to that store every day, and sometimes more than once.  I took the photo on the left of my mother standing next to her usual parking spot at that store.  And I have to say, I never saw any evidence whatsoever of voodoo at the Downtown Publix, or any of the other Publix stores in the area.

Port Salerno, by the way, is a waterfront community that is the home of the Chapman School of Seamanship, as well as the Pirates Cove Resort, marina, and Pirate's Loft restaurant. It was also once home to a dinner theater owned by area resident Burt Reynolds. He persuaded his then girlfriend Sally Field to perform there, and she later complained to Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show about having to perform at a theater in Port Saleerno, where trains would constantly go by and prevent the audience from hearing your lines. Neither the dinner theater nor the relationship lasted very long.  I took the photograph on the right of my mother and sister Susan walking past the boats of the marina after having dinner on the outdoor deck of the Pirates Loft many years ago.  After the coronavirus wanes, my sister and I intend to visit Stuart and check on the condo, and we will be sure to have dinner on that waterfront porch again.  I intend to question the wait staff, as well as dinners at nearby tables, about voodoo practice in the area.  What do they know, and when did they know it?