One of the first rights of passage I remember growing up was finally being allowed to stay up and watch Johnny Carson. Johnny and Ed were pretty much my first exposure to "adult" humor on TV.
In these pats Ed will probably be part of a lot of local folks conversations and prayers this evening. In some ways he helped put part of this area on the map.
Some probably remember Ed's participation in a show from back in the early 70's called "Ed McMahon and the Superstars". This is the one where athletes from different sports would get together and have sort of a celebrity Olympics.
The entire show at that time was filmed here locally in an area at the time that was almost 100% swamp land. There's always been an underlying feeling that the show was filmed here partly to help sell swamp land in Florida. Which worked very well. The folks who bought lots and later found out there were Bald Eagles living there were especially pleased.
A lot of the old timers have stories of the celebrities hanging out at local homes to eat dinner and goofing around with the locals.
One of my first employees when I took over the "pie" was Ed's lawn guy. His famous story was telling about the time Ed finally asked him in for a cold beer. He thought the fridge would be full of Bud, but instead all Ed had was Miller. He thought that was odd.
In the pic below is the spot where it all happened. The circular pizza looking community is one of the most recognizable Florida terrain features in the FS series. It appeared really well done in FS9 with FreeFlow Fla installed and is represented pretty well also in FSX.
The idea behind the design was that in each pie there would be a different golf course for each day of the week. Every lot in the community was to be either water front with access to the Gulf or on a golf course.
The airport in the lower right corner was originally called Rotonda International Airport and is where all the celebrities and potential land buyers would fly into. I saw a picture years ago of the airport about the time of the show's filming and there were small jets and aircraft lined up almost the entire length of the runway.
In FSX it's called by it's new name Coral Creek FA54.
I was the caretaker of this airport for the better part of 10 years. But during that time it was all but abandoned and only used by a few corp execs or folks using it illegally for various reasons. My duties were to just maintain it to minimal FAA specs and to wrap a huge chain I had around the props of any aircraft I caught there that were unauthorized. To an airport airplane lover it was a sad sight to see.
In the pic:
The arrrow pointing to the circled home was Ed's house. He owned that home up until not too many years ago.
The lowest arrow on the right points to the building that was the 2 lane bowling alley used in the show. It's now the community center.
The next arrow up points to where all the track and field events were held in the show. The race track is clearly visible.
The upper most arrow pointing to the little square water feature was where all the rowing and water sport events were held in the show.
Slightly off topic but just south off the bottom of this pic is an island with a resteraunt on it called Cabbage Key. It's only accessable by boat or seaplane. This was the spot made famous by Jimmy Buffet and the Cheesburger in Paradise song. Supposedly it was one of the spots he used to love to fly into with his seaplane to grab a bite to eat.
Just a small Ed trivia story. So long sir, and thanks for a lot of laughs over the years. :ernae:
