Lunch with the girls

Last Saturday some girls from my high school class got together for lunch. This has become an occasion over the past few years. There were only six seven of us there. Sometimes we've had as many as twenty. When I started this blog, I intended to chronicle my life for my children to have some more knowledge of what it was like growing up when I was young, and I've wandered from that, but hopefully today, I'll get back to my first purpose.

One of the ladies there is known fondly to us all as Joey. Her mother was my Brownie leader. Now that goes back a long way...to second grade, I think. There was a troop of us who started out in Brownies together and went all the way through high school as Girl Scouts. Some of the girls in high school became mariner Scouts. I dropped out before that.

What I want to say is that many strong ties were made that remain to this day. We went in diverse paths after high school, but some have found their way back to Bradenton to live. Now, many are beginning to look elsewhere as the cost to live here continues to rise.

It won't be long before we celebrate our 50th class reunion (class of '59.) I used to think that only old people graduated from high school that long ago. But I was wrong.

We girls in Brownies all went to Ballard School, which was the school in Bradenton. There were some other schools in Manatee County, but I don't think I was even aware of them until I got to junior high and began to meet kids from those schools.

At Ballard, we mostly moved from grade to grade together, because we were grouped according to our last names alphabetically. In fourth grade, a new school was built not too far from my parents' house, and the kids that were going to go to that school were moved to a clasroom together, so that when the school construction was finished, they could move in without interrupting the other classes.

Jan. 29...I started this a few days ago, and I've lost my train of thought, or I don't remember where I was going with it, so I'll close this for now. These lunches have been so important in my life, reconnecting with friends from long ago. Bradenton used to be a small town where everyone knew everyone else. It has grown so in the last few years, and I used to say that the hometown feeling had disappeared. When Don died, the hometown was all there. Many of these girls and their famiies were at his service. The hometown is still there, one just has to look a little harder for it sometimes.

A true role model

I want to write about someone today who has proven what it is to be a Christian in word and deed in every aspect of his life. I had never heard of Tony Dungy before he became the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He came to Tampa Bay and turned around a team that had had many losing seasons. He had a losing season his first year, but he encouraged the owners to give him time. The next year there was a turnaround...especially in defense. The team finally won a league championship, but they never made it to the Super Bowl under Coach Dungy.

After failing to take the team to the Super Bowl, the owners began looking elsewhere for a coach, and they were very blatant about it. While he was winning the division title, the managers were talking with another man, and he was even lining up staff. The owners fired Tony Dungy, and six days later he became the coach of the Indianapolis Colts. During all the ugly time, he conducted himself as a gentleman and a Christian. His comment about his firing was...they hired me and opened the door.

If anyone reads about sports at all, he knows what the Colts have done this year. At Christmas time one of the worst things that could happen to a family, happened to the Dungy family. Their oldest son was found dead in his apartment inTampa. The world watched as this man and his family came to Tampa to mourn for and bury their son. The public was invited to the visitation. The paper stated that 2,000 came to the f uneral home to express their condolences. The next day at the funeral, nearly 2,000 were at the church to support the family.

One of the Bucs said that he had been raised without a father, and he had learned from Tony Dungy how to be a dad...what a coach! Several said that if there was anyone that they wanted to pattern their life after, it was Tony Dungy.

After the service for his son, Tony spoke to the public, and he affirmed what we as Christians know. We are apart for a while, but one day in His time, we'll be reunited. What comfort! We truly do not sorrow as those who have no hope, but our hope is in God

I heard him speak once at a Success Seminar. I had gone to it because I wanted to hear Zig Ziglar speak, but Tony Dungy was there also. He spoke about succes and said that if we never win a Super Bowl in Tampa, we will have succeeded if we have made a difference in the communtiy. He then spoke about three coaches. He spoke of two football coaches, one in Minnesota, and one in Pittsburgh, and then he spoke of his mother, who was his greatest coach. He said that she taught him Proverbs 3:5,6. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct Thy paths.

When you read this, take a moment to pray for Tony Dungy and his family.

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas---not at all.

Here it is December 5 already. When I started blogging, I thought I'd write often, and I find that time slips by. As another blogger said recently, he finds himself going from link to link, finding the most interesting people. That has happened to me recently. I came across a blog from a lady who lost her husband in an accident. That stuck a very familiar chord, and I left a comment on her blog. After I had done that, I read further and found that her husband had perished in the plane that hit the Pentagon. She was left with two little girls.

I'm finding that trying to return to normal after such an experience is a difficult thing. Nothing is normal anymore. One would think that the further one is removed from a tragedy, that it would get easier. In ways it does, but that deep hurt is always there, you just don't let people know about it, because they feel that after all, you should be over it by now.

I've written a Christmas letter...really just an annual report about the family. I printed it on pretty paper, and then when I reread it, I had mentioned nothing of Christmas. Bah, humbug! I must do an addendum to let people know that I do really rejoice in the Christmas season. Since I've had problems with my eyes, I don't read as much as I used to, but one book that I've read this year is a book called Girl Meets God written by Lauren Winner. What a wonderful testimony of a young Jewish woman, who goes to Columbia University because she knew there would be a large Jewish population there. In a bookstore she picks up one of the Mitford Series, reads it, becomes interested in Christianity, and comes to know the Lord. Her book is basically a journal of her journey, but she makes some wonderful statements about Advent.

She writes: "The calendar tells us that this all culminates on December 25, but really the whole season slouches toward Easter. Jesus became incarnate now, in the manger of Bethlehem, but if His incarnateness is meant to make Him more relatable to us, if we are meant to have better access to God because our God has a body like we have, if we relate to Him better because He knows what it is like to weep and throw up and be tempted and suffer, then the Incarnation that starts on Christmas isn't finished until Good Friday. And the miracles that start in the strange inexplicable Virgin Birth aren't finished until the Resurrection.....Even his birthplace takes us to the Last Supper: Jesus, the Bread of Life, is born in Bethlehem, bet lechem, "house of bread," and at the Last Supper, He will break bread for us, and then on the cross He will break His body. Nothing in Scripture, even the names of birthplace towns, is coincidence."

Our choir sang yesterday a song called, "Pieta," a song about Mary cradling the baby Jesus and singing her lullaby and then after He was taken down from the cross, cradling Him again and singing...we speak the phrases "Jesus is the Reason for the Season," and "Born to Die." Does that really strike a chord.

Having been raised in church and being around Christians all my life, I know I've taken a lot for granted. I love Ms. Winner's book becasue she has taken nothing for granted but has studied her Judaism, has studied Christianity, and God has captivated her heart.

One of the events that became a tradition with my husband and me early in our marriage was to go to DisneyWorld during the Christmas season for the Candlelight procession and reading of the Christmas story...a wonderful experience. A mass choir made up of high school and college choirs from around Florida gathered, proceeded down Main Street, and amassed in the train station for the telling of the Christmas story. The narration is interspersed with beautiful Christmas music...from "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" to the "Hallelujah Chorus." It is awonderful experience.

We're planning to go again this year...for the first time in a long time. I'm so looking forward to going again and remembering. I thank God for the wonderful memories.

I've rambled a bit, but I do enjoy this means of expressing my thoughts.

A very joyous Christmas to any who happen to read this.

We Left Lacoochee...

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.

Where is fall?

I have just returned from spending 10 days traveling throughout the southeast. Leaving on October 10, I traveled to Mount Olive, North Carolina to visit a friend from my daughter's college. From there, I traveled to Yorktown, Virginia to visit my brother-in-law and his family. Finally, and the reason for my trip, I drove to Waynesboro, Virginia to visit my son and his wife.

Everywhere I went, I thought I would see some autumn leaves. Not a one, anywhere! Well, there were a couple, but none to speak of. That did not spoil a wonderful time, however. My son and his wife made sure that I got to be a tourist...they were too, since they have just moved to Waynesboro. We visited Monticello, picked apples at an orchard near Monticello...(they are not nearly as pretty growing on the trees as oranges are.) One would have thought we were at a football game from all the cars that were at the top of the mountain. The view was wonderful.

On that day, UVA was playing Florida State, and we wondered if the game was on the mountaintop. Sad to say, for my friends the Hamricks, and all the loyal Seminole fans, Florida State was defeated by UVA.

As I left Waynesboro and drove down I-81 and then I-77, I was reminded again of the beauty of God's creation. The Shenandoah valley is truly beautiful.

On my way home, I stopped in Gastonia NC to visit a gentleman and his wife. He had been the field leader of West Indies Mission in Haiti when I worked there as a teacher of missionary children. He is 86 and still going strong...

And as I said, not a fall leaf anywhere.

Abraham's Drug Store in Lacoochee

Lacoochee was a booming little town while the Cummer Cypress Lumber Company was in business. Besides the commissary, the business section of town consisted of wooden buildings that were joined side by side. I remember a grocery store , a pool hall (my aunt ran the pool hall in later years) and most of all, Abraham's Drug Store. Elias Abraham, affectionately known as Abe, owned and operated the drugstore.

Abe had the only telephone (as I remember.) I'm told he had all kinds of fun on April Fool's Day telling different people in town that they had a phone call. I have a picture of him and his wife in the drug store. When I was a little girl, it seemed so big. Now when I look at the picture, it seems so small.

Abe's daughter, Lorise, told me that my dad took a bag to Abe one day and asked him to save it for him. He stuck it where the ice cream dishes were. When my dad went back to get it, he told Abe that there was $17,000 in it. Abe said had he known he would have put it in the safe.

I was just turning four when we moved to Bradenton, but I remember hearing my parents say, "When the war's over, we're leaving Lacoochee." I came to the conclusion that Lacoochee must be a bad place to be. Looking back, they surely must have seen the handwriting on the wall. Lacoochee would not last forever. The lumber would eventually run out. They were correct. The town, which Cummer had built in 1922, began to diminish in size when the lumber mill closed in 1959. As I said before, many of the people moved to Dade City, but my parents had decided that they would move to Bradenton.

Some years later, there was a fire that destroyed all of the wooden buildings. Some buildings were replaced. Some of the houses that had been built for the employees were bought by them; others were demolished. Two of the houses now stand in the Pioneer Park in Dade City.

Where in the world is Lacoochee?

I chose to call my blog "Lacoochee Kid." Lacoochee happens to be the town in Florida where I was born 64 years ago. Yes, I am a native Floridian. That may not seem remarkable to anyone, but after the "northern invasion" to Florida, a true Florida native is hard to find. I'm quite proud of that fact, and when I meet someone new, I usually mention that I was born in Florida. The comment often is "I've never met a real Florida native before."

Lacoochee is located in Pasco county, a few miles northeast of Tampa. In its heyday, there was a cypress lumbermill there. My father was from Trilby another thriving metropolis close by. My mother moved to Lacoochee to live with her sister. She and my father met and married in 1933. My father worked at the lumber mill, and my mother ran the hotel.

Lacoochee was a company town. The Cummer Lumber Company operated a commissary, had a hotel, and provided housing for its employees. It really was a thriving community. The lumber mill closed in the 50's, and a lot of the people moved to Dade City.

I was born in 1941, in September, just before the United States entered the war in December. We left Lacoochee right before I turned four, but I have faint memories of my life there. I had two little friends, who along with me, were out to kill those ****. Sorry, I guess I have to be politically correct here. I have pictures of us with our wooden rifles.

My daddy volunteered to serve his country, but he was classified 4-F, so he was not able to go. However, in the lumber mill, because of the number of men serving overseas, German prisoners of war were brought over to work. Part of my daddy's job was to guard these prisoners. He became friends with one of them. This particular man had a little boy who was the same age as me. Somewhere among old photos, there is a picture of this little boy.

One other thing about Lacoochee that I remember is the wooden sidewalks. Riding a tricycle over those boards was not the easiest thing...

Enough for one day....more about Lacoochee at another time.

Why am I doing this?

For some weeks now I have been reading blogs. It all started with my son, who shared with me his posts. I clicked on links from his blog and feel like I have traveled the world. I told him that some of what I read is over my head. I read blogs that are for the most part written by young adults, and I find it very interesting to read their thoughts and wonder why I did not have all these profound thoughts in my younger years. Maybe I did and just did not express them.

As I was talking with my son about all the blogs, he encouraged me to think about blogging and to write down some of my memories of my childhood and young adulthood, my experiences as an elementary school teacher, as well as my experiences in Haiti, when I lived there before I was married.

So that is what I shall attempt to do. I find that it is much easier to journal this way than by writing it all about longhand.