A small arrow on a city map points to a building labeled “Liberty Bell Museum”. Funny, I thought the Liberty Bell was in Philadelphia. Here I am cruising around Melbourne, Florida. What’s up?

Curiosity got the better of me. I’m glad it did. Got turned around and lost getting there but hey, you are not really lost if you find what you were looking for, right?

A sign says the museum opens at 10 a.m. I have the pick of the parking lot. It is empty except for me. The museum building looks odd – a round shape with a curved top. Windows are painted on the side. Why no real ones?

Promptly at 10 a.m. a white-haired woman comes out the museum front door carrying a banner with a flag hanging down that says, “Open”. She looks determined. Maybe because she faces a long walk down a long boulevard, a good city block in length, then onto a lawn bordering a street where she puts the sign into a holder.

The Liberty Bell Memorial Museum and Melbourne Military Memorial Park sit together. The grand boulevard reflects that bigger design.

I take it as a good sign someone came out the door and head for the museum entrance. The door opens just as I reach for the handle. A woman holds an American flag. She looks surprised to see me.

“Come in,” she invites. “I’ll be right back to give you a tour.” She too is on a flag mission and puts up the American flag on a pole near the bottom of the museum steps. I wonder do museum volunteers flip a coin to see who gets the long walk flag duty and who gets the short walk?

Inside the main round room, sure enough, there is a liberty bell right in the center. This one doesn’t have a crack.

For our nation’s 1976 Bicentennial Celebration the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London, England, the same one that cast the original bell made in 1751, sent a letter to all 50 states asking if they’d like to buy a bell replica.

Melbourne school children raised $13,000 and a bell was purchased. Florida’s replica resides inside a water tower, recycled to be a museum (hence the round shape and no windows).

You can ring the bell using a rubber mallet. The harder you hit, the deeper the sound. It has a lovely reverb that goes on and on, mellow and mysterious.

I felt it was an honor to ring the bell. With tongue firmly in cheek the docents give me a business card announcing I was now a member of the Ding Dong Society.

Docents, all volunteers, are gracious and knowing. We walked around looking at glass cases and exhibits on the walls. Lots of memorabilia packed in a small space. Melbourne had a Naval Air Station that was one of seven U.S. Navy operational training bases during World War II. They also had a German POW camp.

A hole was cut in the water tower wall and a long rectangular room added for more museum space. In here are many military uniforms, which brought back memories of my dad dressed in his Navy blues.

My docent points out a case full of binoculars. On the wall a small WWII poster says “Will You Supply Eyes for the Navy?” She tells me FDR himself asked the American people to donate their binoculars and include their name and address so the glasses could be returned after the war. The case if full of binoculars never returned because the owners are unknown.

Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. No admission charge. Donations welcomed. The museum sits right next to the Melbourne water tower. Both the museum and the memorial park are part of Wells Park.

The park continues across the street with a huge pond and a walking path all the way around. Nearby are picnic tables and playground equipment.

I loved learning bits and pieces of history here in Florida. Did you know we had a liberty bell replica? Me neither. I’d go back and ring the bell again in a heartbeat.

©2008 Lucy Beebe Tobias. All rights reserved. Lucy is an author, artist, and authentic Florida expert living in Ocala, Florida

Back in the dinosaur days before computer games and cell phones, most kids played outside, riding bikes, playing baseball, doing anything to stay out of the house until dinnertime.

But not Maria Muscalo. She was in the kitchen at the family’s Tampa home, soaking up the vibes and loving it. Maria said she’d sit in a kitchen chair and ask lots of questions.

“I hung out in the kitchen with the old folks,” Maria says, her face glowing with good memories. Her grandfather and grandmother came over from Naples, Italy in 1890. There were eight boys and two girls. Aunt Phil (short for Philomena) taught her younger sister, who became Maria’s mom, the family recipe for biscotti.

I’m hearing the family history as we sit at a table under an umbrella at the Thursday Farmer’s Market at Circle Square Commons in Ocala. Two women approach the nearby kiosk loaded with packaged biscotti of different kinds and sample pieces. Their eyes cut to the free samples.

“Excuse me,” Maria says, gets up and heads for the potential customers. She’s wearing a white shirt with the name “Grandma Rie” in red on one side (the name her grandchildren call her) and the words “Bodacious Biscotti” on the other.

“Hello, would you like to try some bodacious biscotti?”
The two women stand rooted, interested but not moving forward.
“Our biscotti is famous for what is NOT in it,” Grandma Rie says, giving them her 100-watt smile that comes straight from the heart.

The two women look at each other. This is certainly different! They step up, get some free coffee and try the samples. One bite and they’re hooked. Biscotti means twice baked, that’s why it is dry and crunchy, just right for dipping in coffee.

“When I was 10 years old, I learned how to make biscotti,” Maria says. “I often made it with my Aunt Phil but my mom stopped making it after my brother was born when I was 11.”

Maria never stopped. She picked up the family recipe and ran with it.
“Over the years I’ve given at least 10,000 biscotti away to family and friends.”
Her full name is Maria Musalo Canerossi Buchman. She made biscotti growing up, during a first marriage, while raising two sons, all through working full time, then while divorced and remarried now for 30 years to Ralph Buchman.

Last year while making biscotti in her son’s kitchen in North Carolina, her daughter in law said, “Why don’t you stop giving away your bodacious biscotti?”

She came home, pitched the idea to Ralph, a retired CPA, and he said, “Let’s go for it.” And so the business was born. He took care of all the legal stuff.
Did I mention Grandma Rie is 73 years old? What a wonderful role model. Go Grandma!

She holds up a package of her biscotti and says to the two women: “You go to a grocery story and you need a magnifying glass to read the ingredients in biscotti. Not mine, it is very simple. There are no artificial flavors, no preservatives, no added fats.”

Here’s the ingredient list for her Classic Almond: Unbleached wheat flour, white sugar, whole almonds, whole eggs, baking power, salt vanilla extract, almond extract.

Underneath the ingredient list it says, “We only add Love!” I believe it.

The two women buy several packages and walk away smiling.

“I’m having a blast,” says Grandma Rie. “It is my turn.” Here is what she means by that: “I helped my first husband get an education. I helped my second husband with his practice. Now it is my turn. I never had anything I did on my own.”

As we’re sitting at the table, Ralph is helping more customers. He’s smiling. Looks like being at the Farmer’s Market beats being a CPA. Right now they are putting out 200 dozen biscotti a week, baking them under contract with a bakery. You can find Grandma Rie at Circle Square Farmers Market on Thursdays and Union Street Farmers Market in Gainesville on Wednesdays. They hope to expand to local coffee houses and later to national markets.

And now you can order Bodacious Biscotti on line. Her sons worked on a web site and it just went live.

“I love my sons, they are so smart,” Marie says, eyes sparkling. Marie herself had straight As and her dad wanted to send her to college. Instead she opted to stay home and went to work.

Here is this Italian grandmother, starting a new business at 73. She is vivacious and outgoing. I realize when I buy her biscotti (I’m VERY partial to Classic Almond) that I’m also getting a bite of Grandma Rie’s beautiful take on life.

We hug and I’m about to leave. Grandma Rie draws herself up straight, looks me right in the eye and says “You are never too old to start something new.”

Now that is truly bodacious.

©2008 Lucy Beebe Tobias. Her book “50 Great Walks in Florida” , University Press of Florida, February, 2008, is available here.