A Post from Florida Last Winter

I spent time in St. Petersburg, Florida last winter and visited cousins and friends throughout the area. I hope to go back this winter and visit more places I've not been before.
I wrote this post while there.
Friday, January 20, 2013

My father, long before I knew him, lived in Palmetto, FL with his brother Charlie and worked on Charlie’s farm. In fact, that was when my daddy fell in love with growing crops. Those days produced in him a dream of someday owning his own land.

Sitting around our large dining table, my brothers and sisters and I heard the tales of life in Palmetto, Florida with Charlie, Verta and their family. In his letters to my mother before they were married, my father described the work he did and also the fun he had on weekends. He mentioned going to the beach with other young people.

Uncle Charlie's daughter, Monteen, in her nineties on the right in white.

In my father’s time, the beaches were open to the public.
Weekends meant fish fries on the sand, and young people gathered to dance and flirt with each other. Daddy pretended to Mother, in his letters, that he never had fun and just went along because his sister and his friends were there. With little to do for entertainment, a night in summer on a warm beach with good food and lively young people must have been enjoyable. Today one would be hard-pressed to find a public beach. The high rise hotels own the waterfront.

I try to imagine what it was like in the nineteen-twenties here in this now metropolis with tall buildings and  traffic. I understand that St. Pete has quite a few millionaires and some billionaires living in mansions around this town. I remember hearing about traveling on the Tamiami Trail. In my childish mind I pictured it as a path through woodland. Today I saw a sign for the Tamiami Trail, a wide highway not far from my cousin’s house

For years I heard about Pinellas County where my aunt Oleo and her family lived and also Manatee County. Driving into Tampa and seeing the signs with those familiar names, bring back to me the voices of my aunts and cousins. Because of them, I feel a kinship with this area.

My father finally brought my mother to Palmetto to live and their second child was born there, but she never liked Florida. After a few years she persuaded him to take her home to Pelham, Georgia where she would be near her family.

Today we drove to Clearwater where both my parents once had kin.
We went to the Marine Aquarium to see Winter, the dolphin that was injured and rescued. She had to have her tail amputated and a prosthesis made for her. That is some story. A movie has been made about Winter. I had the chance to see her up close and fell in love with her as everyone does.

On a visit to Palmetto, we saw this giant whooping crane walking on the road.

One day I met one of my cousins for lunch in Tarpon Springs. We ate outside overlooking the water and the boats. A beautiful day with a beautiful soul, my cousin, Pam.

My pretty cousin, Pam, talking 

Those times when Daddy was a young man and lived here seem like light years ago. But those were some of his happiest times. He never tired of talking about his older brother and the other people he knew back then. One of his friends, a relative, was John Council who would eventually become publisher of one of the  newspapers in this area. Daddy said John was one of the handsomest fellows he had ever seen and was a “dandy” with the women. They were "running buddies" for a short time, I think.

I'll always remember, after Aunt Judy moved back to Florida in her later years, she would say, "Florida tomatoes just aren't as good as Georgia tomatoes." I think she had to buy her tomatoes in Florida from the grocery store, but in Georgia, she ate the ones grown by my father in his garden. Fresh beats cold storage any day of the week.

So many things seem familiar to me here, but in truth, I've only heard about them in stories passed down from older generations.That is what we do. Like most families, we tell stories in one way or another, and have been doing this since the beginning of time.

A Woman Needs A Vacation

Emerald Lake in the Canadian Rockies

A rutting bull elk held us captive in our cabin at Patricia Lake in western Canada.


Our family never took vacations when I was a kid. Daddy could not leave the farm, or so he thought. Mother seldom left our neighborhood except to visit relatives. My father didn’t care for planes or car travel. Traffic made him nervous. Too many people and much too close quarters.
My sister and I, while still in high school, planned to travel and see the world once we finished college. She traveled, but without me. I chose to marry the year she graduated. She moved to San Francisco, worked with Western Airlines and flew to places like Hawaii and Mexico City, as well as to most of the interesting sites of the western U.S.A.
Each summer I planned a vacation even though we had little money to spend on such things. Folly Beach, South Carolina, and Boone, North Carolina were two of our favorite spots. I had fallen in love with the western NC mountains even then.
Once we were invited to go skiing at Snowmass, Colorado. We ended up driving through a blizzard for many miles after our flight was cancelled in Denver due to bad weather. Only dumb luck kept us from driving off the road and disappearing in a drift where we might not have been found until spring.
In the days before the airlines charged for even a glass of water, we enjoyed a champagne flight across the country. A couple of glasses of the free champage, and I was soaring on my own with my eyes closed listening to classical music loud enough to drown the sound of the plane.

We toured the coast of California for a couple of days before boarding The Love Boat in San Francisco for an Alaskan Cruise. We were likely the youngest people on board, but we enjoyed every minute.
Now that we are retired, we plan at least two trips each year – one in the fall and one in the spring. In winter or very early spring, I like to escape the cold gray days at home and head for Florida. That’s the time of year I enjoy the beach; when I need a jacket, but the sun is shining and warm enough to dissipate the clouds cob-webbing my mind.

Every few years we take, what we call, a BIG vacation. These vacations involve airports, lots of hassle and fatigue, to go someplace we have never been. One of my favorites was our trip to the Canadian Rockies a few years ago. We were awed by the glorious mountains, lakes like painted glass, and we saw every kind of wild animal you can imagine, from mountain goats grazing along the road, eagles over head and several black bear. A rutting bull elk kept us captive in our lakeside cabin for a couple of hours until a ranger came and frightened him off.

My husband takes no hand in planning a vacation. He says we live in vacation land, and he doesn’t see any reason to leave. But he fails to understand the difference between a vacation for a woman, and a vacation for a man. His life has been one continuous vacation since he retired. He sits on our deck high up in the dogwoods, gazing at the blue waters of Lake Chatuge and beyond at Brasstown Bald. He smokes his pipe, content and happy.

Most women know why I need a vacation. Besides the chance to visit and learn about a place I’ve never been, while I’m there I don’t worry about cooking, laundry, paying bills, cleaning or taking care of pets. Why worry? I’m miles away.
Instead of cleaning the kitchen right now, I think I’ll get busy planning my next trip. Now what did I do with those brochures?

ON A DARK NOVEMBER DAY, SEEKING SUN AND FLOWERS

Any of several popular cultivated violets (genus Viola). Pansies have been grown for so long under such diverse conditions with such striking variations in colour and form that their origin is uncertain.

Pansies with perfect little faces peep from the shadows.

Are you love-in-idleness, Johnny jump-ups or heartsease?

Your family roots reach deep, beyond recorded time,

certainly before the Mayflower parked at Plymouth Rock.

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For all my Florida friends and cousins. On a cold, rainy day in the mountains, I think about your warm sunny weather. I love the beach in winter, want to go there before long. Once upon a time I baked myself in the summer sun on snow white sand, and tanned dark as mahogany. That was before we knew better.
I close my eyes and smell the water, feel the wind, and hear the gulls. Watching the ocean, like gazing into a blazing fire, settles the nerves, sooths the mind, and sends me anywhere I want to go.