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Retired life not the end of the world

By Frank Kaiser
Published March 28, 2006

Can it be five years now that I've lived in this retirement community?

Wasn't it just yesterday that I moved to On Top of The World, where a week consists of six Saturdays and a Sunday and tied shoes are considered formal attire?

So go the jokes, anyway.

Not long after I got here, I wrote:

Eeeeeek! What have I done?

The sign at the entrance to my new home says:

Retirement at its best!

Free Golf!

Recreation Centers!

Lakes - Tennis - Pools - Gym - Bingo

Bingo? Ohmygod. I'm now living in a "retirement community."

THIS PLACE IS FULL OF OLD PEOPLE!

Please say it ain't so.

Did any of us ever dream that we'd ever be living in a place with 10,000 other geezers? A place where hardly anyone under 50 is even permitted?

Five years ago it never occurred to me that I'd even live this long! Yet here I am having the time of my life.

Back then, friends and children questioned our sanity when my wife and I moved from heady and hip Miami to Clearwater. According to the 2000 census, Clearwater is the undisputed senior citizen capital of the world.

Worse, we moved to a retirement community called, of all things, "On Top of the World."

The story goes that one day the developer said, "If our residents are too poor or infirm to see the world, we'll bring the world to them." And so he did.

Fittingly, the entrance is a huge Arc de Old Codger. Drive through and you're greeted by a huge globe of the world, behind which is a long park clustered with Greek columns, statues of assorted gods and goddesses, cherubs and cupids. It's a green, green place with shady trees and expansive lawns everywhere.

The real coup d'coot are the two- to three-story condo buildings themselves. With names like Mandalay, Austrian Alpine, French Renaissance and American Gothic, the facades reflect each travel theme. Look across the skyline and you see mosque towers, bizarre steeples, onion domes, cupolas, minarets, oriental arches and Corinthian scrolls.

It's a hoot! My wife and I live in Middle Eastern Moorish, sans minarets.

We residents play pinochle and bridge, Uno and canasta. We line dance, sing, lawn bowl and wood carve. We golf. We play shuffleboard. We swim.

We have organizations for every conceivable passion, from geographic to ethnic to political. Each month, a 64-page newspaper puts it all together for us.

The financial nitty-gritty? Carolyn and I traded a condo assessment of about $1,000 a month for one a quarter that size and a real estate tax bill of $5,000 a year for one a tenth that expensive.

Insurance, too, is way less here, as is our general cost of living.

By far the best news for most of us retiring to a community like this is that condo prices are still reasonable. You can get about 1,400 square feet of safe and quiet for about $130,000, a one-bed, one-bath in the $90,000s.

Many of my neighbors still work, at least part time. Some would rather work than golf; old habits die hard.

Many others volunteer. We lend a hand at the hospice, churches, Meals on Wheels, wherever help is needed. Often we do jobs we only dreamed of before retiring.

And we laugh. Several times a month there's affordable entertainment, often old comedians from the Borscht Belt who have found new life joking their way through Florida's condos. They're our Las Vegas without the dirty parts.

Frank Kaiser is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in Clearwater. His Web site, www.suddenlysenior.com, includes nostalgia, trivia, senior humor and "222 Best Senior Web sites." Write Frank Kaiser c/o Seniority, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33703.

[Last modified March 28, 2006, 08:55:53]