Warm Summer Days

Jay & Larry Cir 1953

I'm putting this picture up because it just brings back so many happy memories of long hot summer days in our yard and it brings back pleasant memories of my brother who left us several years ago.

It seems to me that my brother and I spent just about every waking hour on West 12th Street out in the yard.  (That might have been a result of mama saying to us "go outside and do something and get out from under my feet".  That was a common refrain as I recollect.)

Those warm summer days had their own rhythm to them and that rhythm seemed to be so very slow.  It was often filled with long hours of chasing dragonflies with nets in the hot sun where they seemed to just hover until you wanted to catch them.  Or lying in the shade of the porch peeking between the edge of the grass and the edge of the concrete porch searching for rollie pollie's.  (For those who might be interested, the proper name for these fascinating little characters is actually pill bugs.)  

Sometimes we would get lucky in our adventures and our dad or a neighbor would leave something out that would capture our attention and it would be an entire afternoon filled with excitement.  One such day was when someone, I have no idea who, left an old wooden sawhorse and some lumber laying out.  My brother and I immediately saw the possibilities.  That old sawhorse and lumber ended up as one of the best fighter planes ever built.  It had a pilots seat and gunners seat and a moving propeller with guns mounted on the wings.  We built and flew that fighter all afternoon.  That was one of those days when daddy had to whistle for us to get in the house for dinner.  You see, on a regular day mama would just call us in for dinner but when we were deep in one of our adventures it generally took daddy to whistle for us to come in and wash up for dinner.

So that's a short installment for today.

Recollections

Marion County Courthouse Cir. 1948

I thought I'd start this blog with a postcard.  I especially like this picture because it reminds me of the Florida I grew up in.  It is a very small piece of all that remains of a beautiful building and town that was part of the center of my young life.  Sadly it reminds me of a Florida that is very quickly disappearing.

By way of introduction I am a native Floridian.  My family has been living in Ocala and Marion County Florida since 1850 having moved here from other parts of the South.  I am admittedly quite proud of this fact and I hope that this blog will describe in some small way the source of that pride.  This blog is intended to reflect on my youth and growing up in Florida and my thoughts on the changes that have and are taking place in this little corner of the world we call home.

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Recollections

When I was growing up in the early 1950's Ocala was a rather small, even sleepy Florida town.  It was a place that boasted a beautiful grand Court House and Post Office  and town square that was the center of community and family life.  (The courthouse is in the center of the photo below and the post office is in the upper left of center.)  Everything was within walking distance of the Old Courthouse.  We still had drug stores that served fountain drinks.  We had two great theaters and of course the Public Library.  And, Ocala also boasted of having the "World Famous" Silver Springs near by which included the famous Ross Allen's Reptile institute.

Ariel View Town Square Ocala Florida Cir. 1941

 
 Our Street:  My first memories are of living in a small four room house on a dirt street.  It was West 12th Street in Ocala to be exact.  At that time one of the interesting things about unpaved or dirt streets in town was that they were often tared.  What tared means is that during dry periods the town sent crews out from time to time with large trucks full of tar.  These trucks had sprayers on the back and they sprayed the streets with tar to keep the dust down.  The problem was that during these dry periods when cars or trucks went down dirt roads that weren't tared they would raise a cloud of dust sometimes fifty to a hundred feet in the air.  The dust would just drift into through any open window.  In spite of the towns good efforts I don't think our mother appreciated the tar anymore than she did the dust because we were inevitably going to track the tar into the house.  Not much of a choice between dust or tar.  But where there's a worry for mom there is opportunity for children and we took advantage of the opportunity by playing in the tar with sticks and making tar balls.  It was also fun to see if you could get from one side of the street to the other without stepping in the tar.

Our House:  I think our house was a rather typical small Florida white wood frame house with tin roof.  It boasted a front and back porch, a living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms and a bath.  The windows were large and extended down nearly to the hardwood floors.  The house also had a carport and sat on a corner lot and sported a palm tree in the front yard, a pear tree in the side yard, and a pecan tree in the back.  Nope, we didn't have an orange tree.  The yard was a typical grass lawn but filled in areas with sand spurs.  For those of you who might not know, sandspurs are a grass that has a very sharp sticker and is also sometimes referred to as buffelgrasses and sandburs.  Since we kids never wore shoes the sandspurs were like landmines waiting for us.  Especially if you're chasing or being chased.  Now reflecting back I am amazed at how use to them we became and we just seemed to instinctively know where they were.  Kids.  Go figure.

The Weather:  Like most families at that time we had no air-conditioning.  We relied on open windows and screen doors and if we were lucky a summer evening breeze.  I remember many hot summer nights lying in bed with my head near the open window and listening to the "crickets" and hoping for one of those breezes to cool things down just a little.  It always seemed to me that the cool breeze was just outside that screen window and never seemed strong enough to come through.  I also remember sitting by that window on rainy days and listening to the rain on the tin rood and enjoying the cool breezes that came with the every afternoon rain. 

Well that's my first installment on my "Cracker Blog".  It does my heart good to just write about it.