Scratch ‘N Sniff

“Look Before You Leap”

It’s always best to test the water before diving into the deep end. That was the premise behind Hustler’s “Scratch ‘N Sniff” Centerfold edition in August 1977. As you might expect, young men across the country scratched ‘n sniffed that centerfold to learn what to expect before they took the plunge. Only to be disappointed when they finally got the opportunity to dive into the real thing and found out that it didn’t smell like potpourri. As Aesop’s fable, “The Fox and the Goat” taught us, “look before you leap!” Or in this case, “sniff before you dive in!”

The Villages

The Villages is a master planned “retirement” community located in central Florida, approximately 20 miles south of Ocala and 45 miles northwest of Orlando. It covers approximately 32 square miles in parts of Sumter, Marion, and Lake Counties. According to the US Census Bureau, between 2021 and 2022, The Villages was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the US, and currently has approximately 150,000 residents with a median age of 67 years old.

It has four town squares and fourteen shopping plazas with restaurants, bars, retail shops, entertainment, grocery stores, banks, and various service providers. The community has 115 recreation centers with swimming pools, tennis & pickleball courts, cornhole, shuffleboard, and club houses with an assortment of activities, such as card games, billiards, ping pong, etc. It also has 56 golf courses, with 14 championship (18-hole) courses and 42 executive (9-hole) courses – a golfer’s dream!

America’s Friendliest Hometown

The Villages likes to bill itself as “America’s Friendliest Hometown.” However, most people first hear about The Villages as being “The STD Capital of America.” A 2009 New York Post article called The Villages, “ground zero for geriatrics who are seriously getting it on.” Naturally, this leads to whispers of The Villages being a kinky swinger community utilizing a “loofah code” to identify their sexual preferences (see below). As one person said, “You put a bunch of people in a terrarium with beer and Viagra and things happen.”

Speaking of Viagra, in 2023, the Feds unceremoniously raided the home of Reginald Kincer, a 77-year-old man living in The Villages. After a thorough search of the premises, they discovered $1,800 worth of Sildenafil (generic Viagra) “stashed in his house without a prescription from a licensed doctor.” Holy Cow Batman! The Feds couldn’t go home empty-handed, so they arrested him. After all, this guy could’ve started a Hard Dick Pandemic in The Villages, causing women to scream in ecstasy and men to die from exhaustion! When asked about Mr. Kincer’s arrest, a local woman said, “The man was just trying to do us girls a favor. After all, we didn’t move here to play Bunco!”

After hearing all of this, I couldn’t help but wonder if The Villages would be hosting the first Hide-the-Pickleball World Series sponsored by Hedonism All-Inclusive Resorts, or was this just another example of fake news generated by lonely people who were jealous of retirees having fun? There was only one way to find out, I had to go undercover and “Scratch ‘N Sniff” the belly of The Village beast!

Under the Covers

It’s always easier to remain incognito in a crowd, so I rounded up the Beach Family for a little road trip to The Villages. The four couples signed up for the “Lifestyle Preview,” which included four nights in two 2-bedroom villas, each villa included a golf cart, two rounds of golf per person, and access to all the amenities (pools, pickleball, archery lessons, music venues, etc.) for $75/night per couple! No high-pressure sales pitches or mandatory show & tells, just four days to enjoy “America’s Friendliest Hometown.” Heck of a deal!

(The Villages is an age restricted community for ages 55 and up. Don’t tell anyone, but some of the people in our Beach Family, including my wife, had to obtain fake IDs for the trip.)

After a five-hour drive, we arrived at The Villages, dumped our luggage in our home-away-from-home, and went in search of some loofahs. The Villages has streets for automobile traffic, and it has “multi-modal paths” for golf carts, bicycles, and walkers. Since there are 85,000 golf carts in The Villages, it’s smart that they’ve built multi-modal paths to keep the golf carts off the roads. Also, private golf carts are allowed on the golf courses, so a high percentage of the golf carts we saw had golf bags strapped on the back – and people left their golf bags strapped on their carts, parked at the town square, while they were having dinner and drinks. (No offense to the community where I currently live, but no fucking way would I leave my golf clubs unattended!)

First impressions are important, and my first impression of The Villages was that it was clean and well maintained. The roads, multi-modal paths, bridges, homes, and other infrastructure appeared to be well-kept, and the public spaces were beautifully landscaped. I understood why US News & World Report referred to it as “Disney World for Adults.”

The Village Idiots

To navigate the multi-modal paths, we had to download “The Villages app” on our phones. We would type in our destination and let the friendly female voice tell us where to go. Of course, if we typed in the wrong destination or didn’t pay attention to the friendly voice – then guess what? – we ended up in the wrong place!

The girls decided they would take archery lessons while the guys were playing golf. Imagine four women in a golf cart, all talking at the same time, with biggie-size cups full of mimosas, “pregaming” for their archery lesson. What could go wrong? Hell yes, we made sure that our golf course was well out of range of any errant arrows that our wives might (or should I say “would”) launch into space!

As we were getting ready to tee off on the back nine, we all received text messages with individual photos of our wives posing in front of a target with an arrow in the bullseye. What were the odds of that happening? Oh well, at least we didn’t receive a photo of the archery instructor looking like General Custer after the Battle of Little Big Horn. 

On their way back to the villas they stopped for a postgame drink to celebrate their mastery of the art of archery – i.e. nobody got killed! After a few drinks, they loaded into the golf cart and typed the address for the villas – BUT – instead of “Christopher Court,” they entered “Christian Court.” After a two-hour golf cart ride across the southern end of the undeveloped lands of The Villages and with buzzards circling overhead, they stopped talking long enough to figure out they were lost. Four heads were better than one, so they put their heads together, typed in the correct address, and – BINGO – they got back to the villas in time to change out of their archery clothes and put on their lunch clothes so they could meet their husbands for a late late lunch! (Yes, the girls had special clothes for every occasion – and shoes to match!)

We’re Not Lost…

Since the girls had already explored the undeveloped lands of The Villages, we decided to venture to the north side of the community and have dinner at Sumter Landing Town Square. We could either take a fifteen-minute direct route by car, or a forty-five-minute winding route through the multi-modal labyrinth in a golf cart guided by the navigation app’s friendly female voice. We were on vacation, so we chose the latter.

The forty-five-minute drive during the daytime wasn’t too bad; however, the return trip in the dark, after several adult drinks, was a bit of a challenge – especially when you have two women and a non-human friendly female voice all talking at the same time. We were about fifteen minutes into the drive back to the villas when the friendly female voice turned angry and began to stutter, “Return to multi-modal path, return to multi-modal path…” I wanted to grab the phone and tell the virtual bitch, “We are on the fucking multi-modal path!” After some heated discussion, we concluded that we must’ve missed a turn, so we turned around and headed back toward Sumter Landing. We weren’t lost, we were just taking the long way home!

The friendly female voice was happy for a while, but suddenly turned angry and started her frantic “Return to multi-modal path” routine. I’d had enough, so I stopped the golf cart and asked a nerdy young man in the golf cart behind us how to get to Brownwood Town Square, which was near our villas. He thought about it for a second and responded, “Do you know how to get to the Winn Dixie?” I was sitting in a golf cart, in the middle of a residential area, in the dark, without a map, and my only lifeline home was a non-human female voice, and the nerd thought I might know how to get to Winn Dixie. Never mind, we’ll find our way home!

We finally found our trail of empty beer cans leading us to the tunnel that we had missed, and now we were on the correct multi-modal path. The friendly female voice was happy. An hour and half later we arrived at the villa, poured a round of drinks and had a good laugh. (Note: During our four-day adventure at The Villages, I never saw a Winn Dixie!)

The Cowgirl Incident

The guys finished playing golf and the girls finished their pickleball lessons, so we decided to meet at Prima Italian Steakhouse for happy hour. The heat index was over 100 degrees, so we decided to sit inside at the bar. I was sitting at the end of the bar with my wife, Jaime, sitting to my left, and I had my chair turned towards her so I could join in the conversation.

We were on our second round of drinks when I felt someone bump the back of my chair followed by a female voice say, “Excuse me, I’m trying to get in my chair.” Apparently, the waiter had pulled an extra chair up next to me, and a lady in a multi-color cowboy hat was trying to squeeze past me to get into the chair. She didn’t smell like potpourri. However, being the gentleman that I am, I stood up and moved my chair so she could squeeze through, and in jest I said, “Guess I need to lose a little weight.” The Cowgirl looked me up and down, then replied, “I think you look just fine.” Oh shit, I’m about to get in trouble.

As she sat down, she asked me if I lived in The Villages, and I told her that we were just visiting. She said that she was from Key West and that she was checking out investment properties in The Villages. This was getting a little weird, so I turned to get Jaime’s attention as I told the Cowgirl, “This is my wife, and we got married in Key West.” Jaime didn’t respond, she just left me hanging out to dry. Fortunately, our friend, Wanda, had my back. She stepped up to the Cowgirl and channeling her best Beth Dutton said, “Sorry honey, this rodeo’s over. We’re leaving.” Thank you, Wanda!

At the time, I didn’t say anything, but I’m pretty sure that Cowgirl had a loofah under her cowboy hat! Dodged a bullet!

Deep Throat

The next evening, we were having dinner at Prima, and there was a large table with four rowdy couples nearby. It was obvious that they had started drinking early, after all, “You can’t drink all day if you don’t start early!” The men were sitting on one side of the table and their girlfriends were sitting across the table. They were loud and obnoxious, but mostly funny. But the real show didn’t start until dessert was served.

The waiters brought deserts to their table, followed by champagne glasses filled with a red bubbly drink and a cherry resting at the bottom of the glass. The table was relatively quiet while the couples ate their deserts. Suddenly, one of the women must’ve decided that the show wasn’t complete until it reached a climax. She leaned her head forward and wrapped her lips around her champagne glass, then raised her hands in the air as she threw her head back, swallowing all the red liquid and the cherry in one gulp! The table erupted in applause! Then the next two women made like Linda Lovelace and deep throated their champagne glasses and swallowed the cherry like wanna be porn stars. However, the last woman couldn’t get her mouth over her champagne glass – we couldn’t help but feal sorry for her boyfriend. Hey honey, keep working on it – practice makes perfect!

PS: We knew the couples weren’t married, because “Deep Throat” ends with “You may kiss the Bride.”

Postscript

I’m sad to report that I did not see any loofahs during our “Lifestyle Preview.” However, I would venture to guess that any community with 150,000 people probably has a group of loofah lovers. I will say that most of the people I encountered on the trip appeared to be happy and very active. In fact, a person would have to work hard to not be active in The Villages. Each of the 115 recreation centers hosts a wide assortment of daily activities (see example below), there are concerts with dancing in each of the town squares every night, and there are 56 golf courses! Not to mention, happy hour starts at 11am – so, you can start drinking after a late breakfast!

I was very impressed with how clean and well maintained they kept the community. The homes were not extravagant, in fact, I would say that most of the homes could be classified as “cookie cutter.” However, all the neighborhoods were well-kept. The town squares and shopping plazas provided a wide assortment of restaurants, retail shops, grocery stores, financial services, etc. (see example below).

As mentioned earlier, The Villages has been one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the US; however, as the community grew, the developers included additional amenities (town square, shopping, recreation centers, golf courses, etc.) to accommodate its growing population. Unfortunately, most developers are quick to build more residences that increase the population of the community without adding additional amenities, which reduces the quality of life for everyone.

So, what’s the verdict? If The Villages had a beach, this Beach Bum would rent a U-Haul and become The Village Idiot! But no beach means no young women in thong bikinis, and there’s not enough potpourri to make old ladies in multi-colored cowboy hats attractive. So, I guess this Beach Bum will have to keep Scratchin’ ‘N Sniffin’.

The End

Thank you for reading my story. Your comments, critiques, and questions are welcome, as always. Hit the Comment button below or email me at roger.beachbum@gmail.com

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