In my last blog about Lacoochee, I stated that I remember hearing my parents say that after the war they were going to leave Lacoochee. I was almost four, but I can remember the honking of horns and crying "The war is over!" in the summer of 1945. Well, we did...all the way to Bradenton, which was a sleepy little town on the west coast of Florida south of Tampa, and that is where my school life began.
We arrived in Bradenton one month before I turned four. My parents bought a restaurant, called the Open Door Restaurant. One of our best family friends in my later years was a man who had come back from serving overseas in the war and who frequented the restaurant.
My parents bought a little house on 34th Street West in Bradenton. There was our house, the house across the street, and one down the block. One of my friends not too long ago said that I really did live out of town, and looking back, I guess that it was. There was nothing west of our house until you got out to 75th Street, where Palma Sola Park is. And there was old Palma Sola in northwest Bradenton. Sixty years later, all that space has been packed with homes and shopping centers.
When we moved to Bradenton, both my parents were working at the restaurant, and I went to the Manatee County Nursery School. How I cried for my mother! My heart hurts today when I see little ones being separated from their parents, and they cry as though their hearts would break. It must have been because of the abrupt change that had come into my life that I felt this sadness.
The winter home of the Ringling Brothers circus was in Sarasota, and since we were so close, I remember going there and enjoying the clowns, the animals, and the circus acts under the big top. I got a big balloon once, and when we got back to the restaurant, the balloon burst right behind me. I remember to this day being hysterical and almost inconsolable. To this day a blown-up balloon almost makes me sick. I don't like to be close to them!
After that year, my parents must have decided that the restaurant business was too much for them, so they sold it and went to work for someone else.
