June 16, 2015

     Note:  We've been without Internet or phone service for about 72 hours.  This day was before that happened and I haven't been able to post.  I'll catch them up tonight and tomorrow.  I hope you are enjoying my ramblings.  Hope everyone is doing well.  I want to give a special shout out to my friend Vickie King.  She is home from the hospital after surgery and is doing well.  Can't wait to get back to Jax and go visit her.  Also, Richard said to say hello to Walker Norman.  Hello, to Carol, too.

Day #13

     We visited a place I’ve been to several times in the past 40 years.  Each time it is a little more of a tourist place, but still rich in history.  Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) wintered every year with his wife in Ft. Myers, Florida. In 1886 they built their winter home on the Caloosahatchee River and later they called it “Seminole Lodge”.  It was a winter retreat for them until his death in 1931.

Thomas Edison's Winter Home
Seminole Lodge

      A man named Robert Smith of New York (no relation to Marge even if they have the same last name and both came from the same part of the US) owned the property next door to the Edison’s.  He’d built a craftsman-style bungalow in 1911, and it was called the “Mangoes”.

     Edison’s good friend Henry Ford, who in 1913 started the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile, purchased the “Mangoes”.  In 1947, Mrs. Mina Edison gave the property to the City of Fort Myers in memory of her husband.  It was opened for public tours soon after.

 

Henry Ford's Winter Home
The Mangoes

 

     By the time he died on October 18, 1931, Thomas Edison had amassed 1,093 patents: 389 for electric light and power, 195 for the phonograph, 150 for the telegraph, 141 for storage batteries and 34 for the telephone. 

Edison's Laboratory

 

     The homes are beautiful and the laboratory is just like it was when Edison worked there.  The gardens are amazing.  My favorite is the banyan trees.  As the banyan trees’ branches grow out and become heavy, an aerial prop root grows from the branch to the ground and props the branch up.   As the branch continues to grow, another aerial root grows to the ground to support it. 

Brody, Drew, Ty and Thomas Edison
under the biggest banyan tree planted in 1920

 

 

     Harvey Firestone sent Thomas Edison a Banyan tree from India in 1920.  It still grows on the estate today.   One of the guides said that particular one covers about an acre of land.

     Also, the estate has one of the first in-ground swimming pools.

 

  The boys were interested in all of it, even if Grandma felt like the melting Wicked Witch of the West.  Lord have mercy, it was soooooo hot.  HOW HOT WAS IT???   Well, let me tell you, it was so hot I couldn’t eat.  That says it all.

Ty, Drew, Brody and
Henry Ford

Dining Room of Edison's home

 

 

Until next time,

Dolores