Pine Island, Florida...it's a strange place. It seems that people always want it to be something that it is not quite. Is it a quaint little getaway with palm trees, drinks with little umbrellas, and sand beaches with lazy people? Is it a growing community of fancy beach houses where the rich can enjoy the view, or is it a haven for rough rednecks escaping the life of the city? For as long as I can remember, I have referred to Pine Island as the "redneck Sanibel Island". Once populated by hardcore commercial fishermen, and now by tourists, it is truly a strange mix of the old and new. There is quite possibly no where you can go on this island that is open to the public. Almost every single spot has some kind of price tag on it. In fact one long running scam used to be at the public boat ramp on the island. A woman used to stay there in a chair and collect a boat ramp fee from the folks that came to use the ramp. The only problem was the ramp belongs to the county and she was keeping the money for herself!
Like most islands, there are people that showed up with money, and then there is everybody else trying to scrape out a living from the tourists. This trip, we were staying in an old house that was built for a commercial fisherman back in the early 1960's and has been remodeled and fixed up for vacationing sport fishing folks. It's a tiny house with really nice things in the kitchen, fancy TV, wifi, giant boat lift and all of the nice things a boater could want on vacation. Our neighbor across the canal is a real crabtrap guy, getting up early every day and heading out with his traps and flock of friendly birds. He looks very rough, but is actually quite nice and my son made friends straight away.
Where the wheels come off this "island-time" thing is that I think there are now a lot of people that live on the island and work on the mainland. I can find no other explanation of why you would come all the way out to the middle of nowhere, 10 miles from the nearest gas station, and then drive 50 miles an hour down neighborhood streets. I see this quite a bit, almost bits of road rage as the locals seem frustrated by slow driving old tourists. I keep thinking "you're here...where are you going?"
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