Don Farmer: Bob knows how to keep Marco safe

If name recognition is a major factor in elections, the next Marco Island City Council should include a man named Bob.

None of the candidates is a Bob. We have a Rob; close but no cigar.

Bob rules, because he leaves his mark everywhere. Every time we try to get from here to there, from A to B, Bob is in the way.

Obviously, I mean the Bob of Bob’s Barricades, our new constant companion. We have 3.45 million of Bob’s orange impediments on Marco now.

Wait, the Bob-O-Meter just clicked up half a mill.

I know we have other brands of barricades here — NES, ABC, etc.

But Bob is the big cheese of manipulating our daily lives.

Tomorrow, for example, traffic will be disrupted for about six hours on the Marco street that goes by Town Center Mall, a bank, restaurants, a church, a funeral home, the Post Office and more.

The city has helpful hints for islanders who, for example, might want to eat at Hoots or visit Island Kitchens.

We’re told to park around the corner and walkover, a concept brilliant in its simplicity. How about this:

Hoot’s should stock a food wagon with its popular dishes, drive slowly on the few roads on the island that aren’t obstructed or restricted and sell, sell, sell to hungry stranded residents who can’t get anywhere.

Other eateries could start a door-to-door sort of meals on wheels caravan to islanders who fear they’ll be trapped in their homes by Bob’s Barricades until sometime in late 2007.

If that aggressive approach to the isolation situation works tomorrow, businesses on North Collier soon might have to follow suit.

Verdi’s, Joey’s, Marco Wine Seller, Cocomo’s and others need to get mobile before Bob and his barricades show up there in May and the city tears up that part of the main drag for 19 months.

Can Guy Verdi do his culinary magic from the back of a flatbed truck? Can the Marco Wine Seller hold wine tastings on a CAT bus as it makes its Marco rounds?

It’s a realistic scenario to imagine banks, bars, barbers, jewelers and a few lawyers going door-to-door to keep their customers until the orange wave subsides.

Some islanders of course will cope better than others. If Publix and Winn-Dixie become inaccessible we could get food by mail from Harry & David, but can we stay healthy from now until Christmas 2007 on cheddar balls and a salami medley?

Other daily life stuff could get tricky. Only the reckless and the feckless will try to fill their own cavities or rotate their own tires.

We’ll survive, of course.

Someday we’ll look back nostalgically at our Orange Bob Square Barricades era. We’ll remember how Bob saved us from driving into construction rubble or stumbling over progress.

And we’ll remember that there never really was a Bob. That ubiquitous barricade company, based in Broward County, is run by a zillionaire named Happy.

We’ll be happy for Happy, one day, after we finish with the roads, the sewers, the new four- lane Jolley Bridge and the high- speed monorail project from Marco to the mega helicopter pad in Goodland.

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Don is a former ABC News correspondent and CNN anchor. Email: don@donfarmer.com.