Elvis, Ted Williams' Frozen Head and Beverly Hills, Florida

Since establishing the JanRon Publishing Digital Club, I've had the pleasure of speaking to several members by telephone. Almost without fail the first question they ask is, "Is there really a Beverly Hills, Florida?"

So, while not nearly as notorious as that 'other' Beverly Hills, I thought I would post the graphic proof, that yes indeed, there really is a Beverly Hills, Florida.

This is a screenshot of the coordinates for Beverly Hills, which is located on the beautiful Gulf Coast in Citrus County in West Central Florida.



This is a screenshot of the map image returned when you Google Beverly Hills, Fl. BTW, my house is located right under the dot on the i in the word Hills.



This is Lake Beverly near the community center, located on the east end of Beverly Hills. Unfortunately we're not allowed to fish in it. Dang it, it's so much closer than driving to the grocery store.



The welcome sign to Beverly Hills, just a few blocks from my home.



Ok, so our zip code isn't 90210 and we don't have Paris, Lindsay or Britney (sigh), but Citrus County does have it's share of "famous celebrities". Among them are...

James Best, best known for his role as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on the hit TV series, Dukes of Hazzard.

Gary Burghoff, who portrayed the lovable Corporal Radar O'Reilly in M*A*S*H.

Atlanta Braves Pitcher, Mike Hampton.

Hall of Fame baseball great, Ted Williams. The Ted Williams Museum was located just a few miles from my home until moving to Tampa last year. Rumors abounded in the community that Williams' cryonic frozen head was locked in a freezer vault inside the museum. This could never be proven as fact, even though a few of our "enquiring minds" attempted to do so after having a few too many shots of courage at the Old Mill Tavern.

The building that once housed the museum is now a bank, so it is possible it really did have a freezer vault that the bank is now using. What, you've never heard of "cold hard cash"?

And although he never lived in Citrus County, Elvis has been "adopted" as one of our own ever since they filmed the courtroom scenes in Elvis' movie, Follow That Dream in the Citrus County Courthouse.



The official movie set was actually about 15 miles northwest of Beverly Hills in the towns of Yankeetown/Inglis in Levy County, an event Inglis is so proud of that they renamed part of the main highway through town, "Follow That Dream Parkway".



Of course being the huge Elvis fan that I am, I had to locate the spot where the film was made as soon as I heard about it. A large part of the island has since been returned to the alligators and snakes, but there is one spot that I found hidden among the weeds and Florida scrub, that has a cement slab approximately 4ft. x 4ft. with the initials E.P. written in it while the cement was still wet. Even my 'doubting Thomas' husband, whose name is actually Dave and thinks I'm "a little teched in the head" when it comes to Elvis, admits the initials bear a striking resemblence to this signature, recognized by Elvis fans worldwide...



And you wanna hear something really hokey I sometimes do, that not even my family and best friend and partner, Jan, knows about? Ok, but promise not to laugh too much.

When all of this gets to be too much, and by "this", I mean - Internet Marketing, 'guru product launch giveaway' overload, subscribers who don't bother to read an entire email that gives them the clear option to click a link to opt-out, but will instead write scathing letters accusing us of spamming them, freebie seekers who want everything given to them for nothing and then b***h to high heaven when you don't give them what THEY THINK you should have, or gasp! be brazen enough to include links to our products in an email and then get slammed with "I appreciate the free stuff you give your readers, but how dare you try to build a business by actually trying to sell me something" - and last but certainly not least, at least 1,000 spam emails per day pushing everything from fake designer watches to enlargement "miracles" for something that, being a woman, I don't even have to enlarge...

...anyway, when it all starts to close in on me and I begin to wonder if it might be easier to just 'throw in the towel', I get in my truck, stick a cassette with the theme song from the movie in my tape player, crank the volume up, roll the windows down and sing at the top of my lungs while driving the 15 or so miles through the Citrus County countryside to what I now call "my dream spot".

After an hour or so alone with just the alligators, snakes, EP's initials - and my uninterrupted thoughts - I'm then ready to renew my determination to -

"follow that dream... wherever that dream may lead".



[iamsbm]
Sharon Bray-McPherson

P.S. To the folks who own the Lazy Acres farm out on County Road 488, I do apologize for upsetting your chickens so badly a few weeks ago. I think they must have mistaken my singing for the screeching of an owl and frantically started running for their lives.

Jan Tallent & Sharon Bray-McPherson
JanRon Publishing Digital Products

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