Exactly One Year Until The Good Life - Maybe

My sister Susan and I have decided to stop renting out (at least on a yearly basis) the Stuart, Florida condo we inherited from our mother Mary, and take it back exactly one year from today. This is a major step for us, since we have been renting the place out since 2009, when our mother passed away, to cover expenses. We are hoping that between the two of us, we will be able to avoid the living hell that is renting it out for the season (January thru March). Rentals go for a premium during those three months, but people expect everything to be perfect, which it never will be with a condo that still sports a classic, 1970s era vibe. I still wake up screaming from nightmares about our last seasonal rental years ago. But you do what you have to do. The community features 49 buildings around a 9 hole golf course, and 2 units across the street, a short walk from the St. Lucie River, for the anti-social types, where our condo is located. The photograph on the left is of my mother posing at the entrance to the river side of the complex, with our unit's building in the background.

My parents and I drove to Stuart back in April of 1975 to visit my Uncle Bill and Aunt Elsie (my mother's brother and sister-in-law), who had moved to the Monterey Yacht and Country Club (no yachts, just a yacht club due to dredging issues) a few years earlier. They wanted to see if they might also want to retire there, which they did the following year from Chicago. When visiting my aunt and uncle at their unit on the golf course, people would come up to the screened-in porch every few minutes to say hello and see what everyone was up to, as they played the second hole of the golf course. I think that is what inspired my father to buy on the river side. I just loved to stroll down to the river when I visited and take a few sunset photographs each evening, such as the one on the right that I took back in March of 1991. I really enjoyed the peace and solitude of the setting. Of course, our current tenants tell us that there are now groups that go down there together to watch the sunset, which is bad news for us anti-social types. Perhaps those sunset gawkers are just snowbirds - the swine - who come down January thru March. One can always hope.