
By Barry Gwinn
bgwinn@comcast.net
As earlier reported, the Drop Anchor Trailer Park today is a gathering of brightly painted and colorful trailers and mobile homes. Mostly empty in the summer, the park fairly explodes with activity in the winter. There is a constant to and fro of residents socializing and visiting with each other, catching up on the past year and enjoying the present one. They genuinely seem to like each other here. They will jump at any excuse to socialize, gathering for monthly potluck suppers (and occasional happy hours) in their sunny recreation center. This year there was a festive Christmas potluck supper; there was a soup supper (Italian wedding soup) scheduled in January; and the men take the women out for breakfast every February. Incorporated now as the Drop Anchor Mobile Home Owners’ Association, the park is governed by nine directors serving staggered three-year terms. For the past 20 years they have had little trouble getting people to serve on the board. The park is a tightly run ship, with various committees seeing that park rules are adhered to. The result is an attractive, orderly, and well-maintained park.
Dennis Grill is just finishing up his second five-year term as president of the board and of the association. Grill, who still sports a natty crew cut, is retired from the information technology department of a Des Moines, Iowa insurance company. “Mike Higuera and I have been kind of alternating as president,” said Grill, “Neither one of us could have done it without Lyle Chamberlain (the park’s long serving secretary).” In 1985, Dennis Grill and Agatha (pronounced aGAYtha) Norton arrived in Goodland and have been coming ever since. Too

Jack Swisher and his waterstill. Stills were manufactured in Lincoln, Neb. and purchasedby Swisher for distribution.Just fill up metal tank and one gallon of distilled water drips into clear plastic container. Process took about an hour.
J.W. “Dub” Abbott is a sprightly centenarian from Louisville. He served a hitch in the Marines in 1932 and retired from General Electric in 1979. He has been coming to Goodland since 1984. He and his wife rented a place on Henderson Creek in 1979 for five years until, at the urging of a friend, he looked over on Marco Island. His wife had wearied of the isolation of Henderson Creek

J.W. “Dub” Abbott in his Drop Anchor mobilehome. Dub was the firstpresident of the Drop Anchor Mobile Homeowners’ Association – 1989.

Residents take pride in colorful homes. PHOTOS BY BARRY GWINN
Jack and Bobbie Swisher arrived in at Drop Anchor Trailer Park in 1974, from Clorinda, Iowa. Jack had various businesses, involving cars, real estate and granite memorials. Jack was a B17 and B29 instructor pilot in WWII. In 1964, the Swishers paid $5,000 for a house in Naples, but after 10 years, sold it for $6,500 and bought a singlewide mobile home in the park for $5,000. (According to Grill, units have recently sold for from $80K to $160K.) The Swishers still spend winters there, but have added a porch almost as big as the mobile home. “I came for the fishing,” said Swisher, “I was hoping Bobbie would like it better than Naples.” When he got there, Swisher found the trailer park to be poorly run and maintained. There were still a lot of transients there with their travel trailers. Wild parties were not uncommon. Allen Greer, who was a successful park developer and, according to Swisher, a past Florida Lt. Governor, bought the park in 1974, the same year the Swishers moved in. Greer resided in Sarasota and had retained the local manager of the prior owners.

View of Margood Park from Drop Anchor, circa 1994. PHOTO BY DENNIS GRILL
Over the years Greer made the park more attractive and improved the standard of living for the residents. Swisher recalled that Greer was instrumental in getting Marco water into Goodland. In 1975 each lot had two water lines coming into it. One line ran in from an artesian well serving the whole park. The well had become polluted with salt when the lining started to rot. The other line ran from a cistern, also servicing the whole park. It was big enough to store and disburse all the rainwater for the year, Swisher told me. “The cistern water was for drinking,” said Swisher, “The well water was only for flushing.” Drinking water that had been sitting around in a cistern was not an attractive option for the park residents. “Many of us had stills, which we used to purify the cistern water,” recalls Swisher, “I brought down a small still from Iowa which could distill one gallon at a time. I sold a number of them to the residents.” Swisher still keeps the still on hand, just in case. Mindful of residents’ complaints, Greer prevailed on Collier County to run a waterline into Goodland. Swisher recalls that at that time, late 1970s, the water works

When Greer bought the park it was overrun with varmints and vermin. The varmints stayed under the trailers, making a stench. The cats in the park did their best to control this crowd, but the competition was keen. “We had some of the damndest catfights you ever heard,” recalls Swisher, “It kept us awake at night.” Greer, who lived in the park, also heard the ruckus. He decreed that all residences must be skirted and those who didn’t comply must leave the park. “I don’t recall any who had to leave,” said Swisher, “It took a while, but everyone complied.” There was no appeal from a Greer decision.
Swisher remembers that the park was a bit of an eyesore. There was a dense gaggle of TV antennas dominating the space over the residences. It was thought that reception was best when the antennas approached the stratosphere. “They were all over the place,” said Swisher, “It was ugly eyesore. A bird couldn’t fly through there. We used to call them the goose stranglers.” When cable came in, Greer had it run into the park and made the residents get rid of their antennas. Once again there were no holdouts.
The park residents were mostly happy about the way Greer was running the place – except for the fact that Greer was raising the rental rates by 10% every year. By about 1986, Swisher and four or five others began negotiating with Greer movement to buy the

Drop Anchor Mobile Home Owners’ Association celebrates its 25th anniversary, March 2015. PHOTO COURTESY OF JACK AND BOBBIE SWISHER
Barry was a practicing attorney before he worked as a Special Agent of the FBI for 31 years. Barry worked for several government agencies another ten years before retiring to Goodland in 2006. Barry is presently the Secretary of the Goodland Civic Association.
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