Florida was a real switch from Pennsylvania. Florida was the 3rd place i was in school I think. Point Arena, Pennsylvania, and then Florida. We lived in what was probably a ratty trailer park--I'm sure that property now is worth millions, being right on the Bayou like that, with its little white sand beaches and great fishing, if it hasn't been totally ruined for that. Memories of the water's edge alone center around 2 places--the wharf, and our little white sand beach that was just down the path through the trees a little. From the wharf we sometimes fished for crab with a bare hanger; when a crab grabbed the hanger, we ran it home to Anne who had water already boiling for it; from the wharf we jumped into that Bayou, unclean though it must have been, and played in the water for hours at a time. Somehow we occasionally acquired huge tractor inner tubes, and THAT was great fun! Correct me if I'm wrong, but 8-10 of us could stand on one of those at once.
Sometimes we could see eels or gars down in the water...long skinny slithery things, but even through they seemed slightly dangerous, nothing kept us out of the water.
There was a family that lived nearby whose kids would come play with us trailer park kids sometimes...the boy my age's name was Coy. One day at school he was fooling around hanging on the handrail of the school bus doors, trying to be the last kid on the bus so he could sit nearest the front, as we had to fill in from the back always. Just as the bus was going to start rolling, he grabbed and missed or something, and fell under the bus, and got rolled over with those big double wheels. We all had to sit on that bus while they had poor Coy over on the sidewalk waiting for emergency personnel....I couldn't really see anything---i mean, it wasn't terribly traumatic for me like you'd think it might be. He was on the side walk, and was just totally red from the neck down. At that age, it was more a curiosity than anything else. I remember not knowing what to say to his family after that.
Florida was the place of myriads of flat black cockroaches and bazillions of ants. The whole trailer park seems like one big ant hill. And if mom sat any papers down, or almost anything, or even a few hours, it seems like that's all it took for it to spawn a flood of cockroaches once she picked it up again. They would swarm out the bottom and scatter for new dark corners. I'm sure that Florida is where i got my creepy-crawly reaction to both ants and cockroaches. The two-inch brown cockroaches of Uruguay never bothered me like little black ones still do.
Florida's story wouldn't be complete without talking about the little white sand beach i mentioned earlier. I don't remember having to share it with anyone else much. Seems like it was just us--either a couple of us, or the whole family would go there. It was beautiful, and small. when I have to go to a "safe" place, like sometimes you do when you're trying to meditate or relax, i find myself going there. (Of course i go by horseback, but that's what fantasies are for.) The most special times were when the whole family went, like for a night swim....the water had so much phosphorous in it, we were told, that when we swam, little silver bubbles followed after us for 2 or 3 feet. It was so pretty. Of course, all the little minnows tought dad's leg hair was bait, and they'd try to grab them, so if he sat still for more than a second or two, he'd start hopping and jumping, saying, "Ouch! Ouch! Darned minnows!!"
There was the time when Anne and I grabbed a couple of slabs of styrofoam, and swam all the way across the Bayou to some garden party where mom was. I don't remember that she was very happy to see us at the time. It was a fearsome long ways, as i remember.
That's it for now; it's a start.
Were we there in 1956? I think that's where I was baptized, but i'm not sure.
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That trip across the bayou was truly terrifying, but once we got to that point, it was too late to go back. We thought it would be just a short distance, but we kept having to go past little inlets like our little personal bay was, then finally we got to the part where the bridge went across the bay. There the water was really really deep, and it was a long way across, but we'd come so far we were determined to make it.
Mom not only wasn't happy to see us, she was really angry as I remember, because she knew how dangerous it was and that one of both of us could have died.
We should mention the city where we lived - Pensacola, Florida.
I have absolutely no recollection of you guys swimming that far. But I do remember swimming across our little Bayou frequently, from closest point to closest point. I think it was 200 yards. Pretty far a young children, but it shows we were good swimmers. I remember seeing dolphins swimming a little way off from us.
The phosphorus water was magical at night. We loved to swim there and see the water sparkle with every move. We loved being in that water - day and night.
I definitely developed my terror of cockroaches in Florida. I remember going to the little shed outside our trailer to get a jar of something, and a cockroach ran across my hand. I still shudder to think of it. And they weren't little. I remember Mom picking up a mayonnaise jar lid, and one filled it head to tail, all the way across the lid. Honkin big ugly black roaches!
I remember when the boy was run over by the bus. It was quite traumatic for me. What a horrible thing to happen with all the children on the bus. Someone should have come on the bus and talked to us - like some kind of adult words. We just sat there for what seemed like forever and didn't know what to think. It was really sad.
Isn't Florida where we were in Church when a hurricane blew through?
Actually, it was Fort Walton Beach. I'll try to attach a map.
Florida is known for occasional hurricanes, and one came through while we were in Church. After Church, we were quite surprised to find destruction everywhere, but the Church was untouched. We felt we had experienced a miracle.
In the school we went to there, there were a lot of adjustments to get used to, with the new language style. When I was in fourth grade math class on addition, she explained carrying the number to the next column as “toting” the number. We suddenly had to learn to always say “Yes, Ma’am, or yes, Sir” instead of just “yeah.”
The down side of living right on the water was the abundance of sand in our trailer. Mom felt that she was constantly sweeping sand out of the trailer. It was also tricky to drive on. One time Mom broke her thumb while driving. We had what they called a “suicide nob” on our Cadillac and she hit a lump of sand and it whipped the steering wheel around. I guess that’s why they outlawed them later.
We loved to play with the Spanish moss that hung from the trees. Somewhere there's a picture of us three girls with moss on our heads for long hair, and maybe long skirts?
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