Soaking it all in

I miss being young and scaring my family during summer vacations. Oh and I miss the foods we ate during our outings. Our favorite destination was a place in Marathon Key called the Salty Dog Motel. This place looked like something right out of the 1950s. We used to go there often during the early 1970s. The motel sign was this huge motley looking mutt wearing a sailors’ cap and an eye-patch covering one eye. Every room was an efficiency suite, meaning it had a mini kitchen and living area in addition to the bedrooms and bath. AND IT WAS CHEAP! The best thing however was the Olympic sized pool, complete with a 33 foot tall diving tower. I loved swimming. My dad used to call me his little frog because I was always in the pool. There was one time, I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, when my brother Frank started showing off his diving skills. He started off at the diving board on the lowest point of the tower. He bounced once, twice, and then flew in the air and splashed perfectly into the...