First Friday Night in Eustis, Florida

April 2, 2004

Story by Claire Ferry

Photos by Bill Russell

The first Friday of every month, downtown Eustis holds a Street Festival.  Each month there is a different theme with bands and food and various vendors.  In addition a static display takes place.  For the month of May, the theme of the event was "Blind Mosquito Bash". 

Prior to the event, we were contacted to see if we could bring a couple of skiffs for the land display, especially since the Eustis Drag Races were coming up.  We were also invited to participate in the drag races as well and this was a way to whet people's appetite for the types of boats that would be present.

A few of the locals, and not so local folks showed up:

Paul Nowak with Heartbeat came up from Stuart, Skip Gillam's Sir Alter Ego, Bob Fierket's Mad Dog, Bill Russell's Flyn' Pony and my Mulford, Lena Dolores was also present.

The evening started out perfect; the weather was beautiful but we were all in for a surprise.  You may be asking....What is a blind mosquito?  Well, I didn't know and no one informed me of what could happen. 

Many people were present that evening and we had quite a few folks stop by to chat.  Many folks recognized the boats immediately and started talking about their good 'ol days living up in Jersey and watching the skiffs run at the races.

The evening progressed quite nicely, we all had some drinks and some good food.  Then it happened.  The blind mosquitoes were out in force!  You want to talk about a pesky little insect that looks like a mosquito but doesn't have the same bite.  These things were horrendous!  They're annoying alright!  They swarm around in MILLIONS - getting into everything and on everything - on the boats, clothes, signs, down shirts, in your eyes, up your nose and I believe I swallowed about 5 of them while talking.

We stayed at the show for about 3 hours then we all packed it in because the bugs were just too much.  We weren't the only ones....most of the crowd had dissipated too.

Remind me not to do this event next year!

Claire