Lucky Cole Biker Outpost and Photo Studio on Loop Road in The Florida Everglades.

By Ron Thomas Smith
My friend Brian Travis, a West Point graduate, distiller of divine spirits and the foremost Rhumba Box player in South Florida with his band The Yard Dogs, took me to Joanie's Blue Crab down in the Everglades while I was visiting a few weeks ago and then we toured Loop Road and met our new bud, exotic photographer, folk artist & Gladesman, Lucky Cole at his awesome Lucky's Place In The Middle Of Loop Road In The Everglades, a 3 acre compound smack in the heart of the swamp, surrounded by alligators, cottonmouths, wild boar, and more giant pythons than a Tarzan movie. (They had just caught an 18 ft. python down at the Skunk Ape Research Center down the road in Ochopee.) Well, it turned out Lucky was a brother from another mother and the next thing I know we're trekking thru the Everglades with guns, beer & big sticks (Lucky had the gun, Brian had the beer & I had the big stick.) and paying homage to the ghosts at the remains of the fabled Gator Hook Lodge, (No, I can't tell you where it's at. Hell, I couldn't find it again even if I wanted to.) and hanging on the hollowed ground of the favorite bar of legendary Bluegrass fiddler Ervin Rouse who wrote the Orange Blossom Special and played it at that very spot many times on hot summer nights when patrons would shoot their guns off the back porch and whoever hit the stick of dynamite hidden in the tree back across the swamp would win a free beer. Yep, it was a very cool day indeed....

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