Miami's Wild West: mobsters, hit men and Lucky Cole

Meet renaissance swamp man Lucky Cole. He's a storyteller and torchbearer for the lost generations of Loop Road inhabitants, who once numbered more than 200 but today can be counted on eight fingers. He's the de facto custodian of the area's history as a haven for gamblers, mobsters, and other outlaws who have ventured into the Everglades since the Fifties. He has been living on Loop Road for a decade.

On his front porch, letter-size photos of scantily clad and naked women, including Lucky's wife, Maureen, form a collage inside the panes of a massive window panel taken from an old school house. The pictures are evidence of Lucky's favorite hobby-turned-business: shooting photographs of women of all shapes and sizes in alluring poses throughout his mucky playground. More about that later.

First, Lucky wants to show me my overnight accommodations. We walk around the main mobile home to the northwest corner of the compound, where he points to a two-wheel travel trailer that is usually hitched to the back of a pickup truck. "There it is," Lucky cracks. "We call it a redneck guesthouse."