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This holiday season, we offer a look at life in Pinellas County through the lens of the traditional Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. Today we continue with the second four verses. The series began Sunday and concludes Tuesday.
By Times staff writers
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 24, 2001
CLEARWATER -- Susie Schwalje and Sean Cohen have an announcement.
They're getting married.
The owners of a hemp clothing store in Lake Tahoe came to visit Dunedin with a surprise for their families and friends.
On Thursday, they set out to settle the little matter of the ring.
Schwalje, 29, isn't much of a jewelry person. But that was before she saw the half-carat princess-cut diamond ring at a Countryside Mall jewelry store.
She was enthralled.
"I'm a sucker for the sparkle," she said.
Schwalje and Cohen weren't the only lovers scouring the malls last week.
Christmas and Valentine's Day are the two most popular times for engagement ring purchases, said Michelle Orman, a spokeswoman for the Jewelry Information Center, a national nonprofit consumer group.
"There are a lot of romantics out there," she said.
Cohen, 30, said their decision to buy a ring and get married after five years of dating is clearly to make their families happy.
"We made our commitment a long time ago," he said.
"This will make my 85-year-old grandma so happy," Schwalje said.
Though they looked at more than five gold rings, they didn't purchase one Thursday. But Schwalje still has her eye on that princess-cut diamond.
-- JULIE CHURCH
CLEARWATER -- Real geese are scarce around here, but other snowbirds from Canada are plentiful, especially on Clearwater Beach.
Last week, a flock of 35 volleyball players, alumni and coaches migrated by bus from Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario, for a week of beach volleyball.
Despite the recent chilly temperatures, they were out in their bathing suits soaking up sunshine.
"This is hot," said Tim Verboom, 19. "When we left, it was 10 degrees below Celsius. When we arrived, it was 85 degrees Fahrenheit."
The players frolicked in the Gulf of Mexico and described the nippy waters as warm, salty and refreshing.
Asked whether they worried about the threat of terrorism, 18-year-old Heather Morrow replied, "No, we're much more afraid of sharks and jellyfish."
And these college students were true loyalists, not only about their school, but about their country.
Colin Dalley, 23, had a maple leaf tongue ring. He fretted that he could never wear a belly ring because his stomach is buttonless. Dalley has a slight depression where most people have a navel -- the result of a doctor cutting things unusually close -- and asnappy answer for the curious.
"I had to check it at the border," he said.
-- TERRI D. REEVES
PINELLAS PARK -- West of the pond, cars buzz down Belcher Road. On the far side of the street, dozens of fat orange school buses sit in a long, crowded line.
But here on the east side of Shadow Run Apartments, Mikey Grassl, 3, watches the swans. A breeze blows fountain spray onto the shore as palm trees rustle nearby.
Candy Grassl scoops up her son.
He drops a last bread crust over the fence and smiles when a swan gobbles it up. Grassl hugs Mikey tightly. Tomorrow they will come back and do it again.
-- LISA GREENE
It can be a messy job, milking goats.
Each evening at midnight, Joyce Schroeder pulls on some old clothes and leather flip-flops she calls her "goat shoes."
The goats wait in the milking room, a wood and metal shelter on her half-acre with hay on the floor and chickens in the rafters.
Mrs. Schroeder enjoys the company of her animals in the night air. She rubs their backs and cuddles the bleating babies.
"Every goat has a different personality, just like people," Mrs. Schroeder says.
Mrs. Schroeder, 62, is a city woman from Chicago who owned beauty shops. Two decades ago when she and her family moved to a home on a dirt road off 54th Avenue, she wanted a horse. Instead, her husband, Don, got her a $125 goat, "Lady Bug," as a Christmas present.
Since then, they have had more than 1,000 goats. These days, they have 80, and 21 of them are lactating.
Milking is easy: Reach down and hold two teats, one in each hand. Using your thumb and index finger, cut off the milk flow from the udder. Then squeeze the teats until the milk stops. Repeat until the udder is emptied.
The 103-degree milk immediately is refrigerated in a rusting Frigidaire in the milking room. The Schroeders haven't bought milk in more than 20 years.
"We've been doing this for 22 years now," she says. "This is what we do every single night, and it's no big deal. It's our chores."
Each goat has a name. There's Paprika and Oregano. Pegasus likes to kick over her milking bucket. Odyssey had two babies: Quantam Leap and Quasar. Mrs. Schroeder knows them best by touch.
"I could milk them blindfolded," she says. "I know the feel of their udders so intimately that if I closed my eyes I would tell you who the goat was better than if I looked at them."
-- DEBORAH O'NEIL