The driver, someone named "Bobby" according to his nametag, shakes my hand. He then hands me my very own ID pin and welcomes me with a bright, toothy smile. I've never seen hair so blonde. There are no roots. It's real. That's not fair.

His hands are big and muscular. His shoulders are broad and his waist is clearly of the gym. You could cut paper on that jaw.

And yet there is no sexual energy whatsoever. None. This guy, this child, is such milky perfection that he makes the Osmond's look like a gang of crack whores. "I hope you enjoyed your flight," he says with complete sincerity and just the slightest hint of a southern accent. It's adorable, but that's all. No pangs to play Mrs. Robinson overtake me.

He picks up my bags with next to no effort and leads the way to the car. We are on a tourist conveyer belt. I can feel my calves losing their tone. New York is a city of pedestrians. New Yorkers walk.

Don't judge. Be open-minded.

This is efficient and it's a nice chance to catch up on my reading. Oh look. They're having a Marinara Festival at the 20 local Olive Gardens. How lovely!

There's advertising everywhere.

Oh my God. There's an ad for a place called Gatorland.

Dunkin' Donuts.

SeaWorld.

Universal.

Hotel. Hotel. Hotel.

Soon we are in the parking garage and facing the car. Oh my. The car.

I've never seen such a thing. It's like a stretch limo and a 70s conversion van had an ugly baby. Flying through a well-executed mural of a cloudy blue sky are America's best-loved animated characters. They're all holding hands, or rather paws and hooves. At the apex of the grouping, actually the hood of the limo is Binger Bunny. His head is three-dimensional. The windshield is his mouth. His ears make up the antenna for the radio.

Katz hisses. Bobby laughs and mentions that dogs regularly chase the vehicle. "The company must like you," he says. "Only VIPs get this kind of treatment." Which leaves me wondering what they do to the people they don't like. Bobby puts my bags into the trunk, closes it and grimaces as he looks into the now purple and pink sky.

"Uh-oh, we better get a hurry on."

"Why?"

"The sun's starting to set," Bobby explains. "The fireworks are going to be going off in just a little bit. That always ties up traffic."

"Fireworks? Is today a holiday?"

"Well ma'am," ouch, he thinks I'm a ma'am, "I wish I could tell you that it was in honor of your arrival but it's not. We have fireworks every night. Sometimes we even have 'em twice. All the parks do."

"Every night?"

"The locals are used to it, but the tourists stop right in the middle of the highway to watch the show. Heck, it's the only free thing most of them get!" He chuckles at his own joke, which I'm guessing he has told many times.

I can't help but notice how excited people are to see what Bobby calls the "Bunny Buggy." Children point and smile as we pass them in our rolling billboard. People get out their phones and take pictures. Thankfully the windows are tinted. I watch the scenery. Hotel. Hotel. T-shirt shop. Hotel. Chain Restaurant. Hotel.

Where is the skyline? Where are the homeless people and broken dreams? Oh New York, I miss you so.

The view is incredibly redundant, so I begin to review the information packet I was sent last week. Basically, it fleshes out the story everybody grew up hearing. The brochure, printed on very nice, heavy, glossy paper with lots of pictures, reads:

"Legends usually have humble origins and so our story begins. The Bingers were once just real people with a dream and the gift to make magic. Miss Mary Thompson and Mr. Art Binger were two young idealistic art students who fell in love on the Left Bank of Paris in the 1920s. Disliking the expatriate lifestyle and yearning for the red, white and blue shores of their American homeland, they married young, bought a small farm in California and quickly had three children to feed. This was during the Great Depression after the Stock Market crashed in 1929. Money was tight. Art and Mary couldn't even afford a simple radio. Entertainment was hard to come by. Imagination and love were the only things they had in plentiful supply. Mr. and Mrs. Binger would make up stories for their enthralled children about their cute pet bunny who shared the family's last name; and so was born Binger Bunny. How the children would delight as he got into wild mishaps and constantly bested the other animals in the family menagerie. There was Lola La Parisian, their cat, Rufus, her he-cat American beau, Whip the Wonder Dog, Bud the plow horse and two chicks named Chester and Kaboodle both of whom lovingly provided the family with eggs until passing away from natural causes after a long and healthy life."

The brochure fails to mention their mother hen named Clucker, which to the delight of stoned college students made her "Mother Clucker." You don't see her anymore. Evidently in a cross-marketing promotion, the Binger Dynasty sold her to KFC and she ended up on a plate.

"Eventually the stories were put down on paper and illustrated ..."

I love these source drawings. They're very American in a wonderful, sepia pastel tone. They're beautiful but don't really reflect the eventual style of their work. Like all things, it evolved.

"The illustrated children stories were published, quickly climbed up the best-seller list and led to a series of animated cartoons. The success of those films became the foundation of a movie studio which still exists today."

"As Art and Mary grew older, they became intrigued with some newfangled invention called television. The Wonderful World of Art, which premiered in the late 50s and ran for more than thirty years, was the Sunday evening foundation of American television. Mr. Binger, the gentle patriarch, became everyone's Grandpa. Weekly he would open the Binger Vaults while visiting America's homes and introduce short cartoons, animated classics or live action movies to an enthralled audience."

This was, of course, way before cable, DVRs, Hulu, Netflix and Apple TV. My sister Teresa, my brother Tommy and I were in front of our color Magnavox with the carved Mediterranean cabinet for every episode. The show was on at seven o'clock, usually just before sunset. We would watch the show together as a family while eating dinner on the wood veneer TV trays my parents got for a wedding present from Uncle Nick and his wife Aunt Josie. If the episode featured a travelogue, my mother and father would talk about how they were going to see those places in person one day.

Mom and Dad.

I thought about them so much while I was getting ready for this move. It's still hard to believe they're gone. I get weepy thinking about it, so I try not to. I thought I was past the tears. Maybe it's the vodka or perhaps this Florida humidity is actually pooling in the corner of my eyes. I fasten my seatbelt.

"Bobby, please turn on the air conditioning."

"Yes ma'am"

"It's Frances. Ma'am makes me sound like your mother," I try to say with a smile.

"Okay, then," his southern manners take a second to adjust as he pauses before adding, "Frances."

"Thank you." Temperature under control, my attention returns to the Binger brochure.

"Eventually the family farm became a theme park just outside of Los Angeles called Binger Village. This galled Mr. Walt Disney with whom the family had always had a friendly feud. He, of course, went to Anaheim and opened...