Tuesday 4- Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home

Welcome to Tuesday 4 where we ask 4 questions each with to get you thinking, blogging and getting to know your fellow Bloggers!
We do this in memory of Toni Taddeo who founded it and who was so beloved by so many.

This week, let's talk about your home town or home state.

1. What was your hometown like? Or home state or both!

This is a picture of the Main Street of my hometown in 1957, when we first moved there. On the right is the Doctor's office, Boulware's Drug Store,  Conner's 5 & 10 Cent store, Western Auto, and a saloon.

On the left is the old A&P Store, a Pastry Shop, and various other little stores, a barber shop, and eventually there was a newer more modern IGA Grocery store down the block and then the old A&P store closed. It was VERY small and had wooden floors.

My favorites places downtown were the drug store, where we could sit at the soda fountain and get ice cream, sodas, milkshakes, hamburgers, french fries, and all the good stuff. It was the place to go after school and hang out with our friends until our working parents came to pick us up to go home at the end of the day.

The other favorite place was Conner's 5& 10 cent store, where we could buy all kinds of neat stuff for a nickel or a dime.

2. Did you enjoy where you grew up? Why?

I loved growing up in my little hometown of Tavares, Florida. Back then, in the 1950's-1960's, Tavares was still a small town in the heart of Lake County, the county seat. It was a place where everyone pretty much knew everyone, and people looked out for one another. Although my family lived in the outskirts of town, about three miles out a long clay road that would get very muddy when it rained and hard to traverse, it eventually was paved and now today our neighborhood where my family home was built (by my father in 1957) is a very desirable and growing community. When I was growing up we had very few neighbors and lots of woods, bobcats, occasionally very large diamondback rattlesnakes,  and foxes.  Big Lake Harris was just a stone's throw away. If you liked to fish, large mouth bass were just waiting to be caught from your boat or dock. When I was a little older, we could water ski in the lake, and also there were many places to swim. Back then we rarely if ever saw alligators, but today they seem to be everywhere. To me, it was a perfect paradise.  My sister and I built little forts in the woods, and my older brothers also had forts in the woods where we were not permitted to enter. (but we tried anyway).  

This was how I liked to play when I was little...yes, I was a bit of a "wild thing". LOL.

I also often went home with different classmates after school whose mothers were at home, and who lived in town, since my mother worked, and then she would pick me up when she got off from work.  My older siblings were already in high school and they had lots of after school activities, and my parents didn't want me going home alone. Besides, it was a very long bus ride home and I hated riding the bus.  So it was nice of my girlfriends' mothers to put up with me on many afternoons!  We always had a good time!

Our town basically revolved around county government, school, church, and the citrus industry.  We were in the heart of orange grove country, and the major employer in our town back then was the Lake Region Packing Association., which was a co-op of citrus growers in the county where fruit was processed and packaged and shipped throughout the nation.  Sadly, after 98 years of business, the packing plant closed in 2004 due to the fact that after several big freezes the citrus industry in central Florida began to shut down and property was sold to developers for housing developments and other businesses.  Today our little town has grown into a hub for sea planes and local  tourism.   

My parents lived in the home Daddy built for over 50 years, and then once they were both gone to their heavenly home their house was sold to a local neighbor who loved my parents and was very happy to have the home that Bill & Dorothea built and loved.  Click HERE for a previous post that shows some recent pictures of my old family home.

HERE is another post written about that home.

Of course, I got married at the age of almost 19, and so never lived in this home again from then on. But it was always the gathering place for all holidays and family activities until the day the house was sold.

3. How much did where you grew up shape you?

I have to say probably hugely!!! I don't know how to measure the effect of a lifetime of growing up in a town where we had so many happy connections and activities and memories. Our teachers cared about us personally and made sure we learned not only our 3 R's, but the right way to live life in society.  Our churches played a very important role in our spiritual development as well as helping us to learn to live as good citizens in our community.  Even though I have not lived in this town since I was 19, I still have connections with school friends and even with some of our teachers over the years, until one by one they have mostly all passed away.

HERE is a link to a previous post I wrote about my home church .

And HERE is a link to a post about my school that I wrote recently.


4. What were some of the best and worst things about where you grew up?

When I grew up in Tavares, my mother worked at the Lake County Courthouse, in the Sheriff's Department as a secretary to the Sheriff.   It was quite an eye-opening experience for my "Yankee" mother, who was raised in Ohio and who just wanted to be a farmer's wife in Pennsylvania, where we moved from to Florida in 1956.  My Dad loved farming, but at that time farming was becoming very expensive to do and you either had to go big or get out, so they sold the farm and we moved to Florida for a better life. My Dad at first worked in a woodworking shop, building cabinets for new homes. He was a very talented woodworker, but just couldn't make a good enough living to support our family of six. So he took the Civil Service test and went to work for the USPS, where he continued working until he retired.

I remember going to visit my mother at her office many times after school, and would wait quietly somewhere until the end of her working day.  One of the worst things back in the 50's-60's was that in the deep south segregation was still a very major part of our culture and way of life.  It was probably most evident in this big county courthouse, where we still had water fountains marked "colored" and "white", and you had better know which one to use or you would be corrected immediately. Same thing for public restrooms. There were also different entrances into public buildings for "colored" or "white".  A colored person did not dare to enter a public building through the main entrance, or he/she would be quickly told where they were supposed to enter. There were two distinct parts of town as well...what was known as "colored town" was on the west end of town, and I remember as a child noticing as we often drove through that section of town to get to the road that would take us home that their homes were poor and old and not very well maintained and they did not have nice clean looking stores and buildings like what was in the other part of town.  They also had their own schools and churches.  As long as everyone knew where they "belonged", there was no problem.  But if someone dared to step over that proverbial line, they found themselves in trouble really quick.  As a child I did not fully comprehend all of this and just accepted these things as the way of life there in our town. We didn't know anything different. Although my parents, having been brought up in the north, had never experienced this before and it was a difficult thing to understand and accept.

With the "Civil Rights Act" of 1964, slowly things began to change. One of the first major changes was the beginning of integration into our public schools.  My class was the very first class in our school to receive any black students.  In our sophomore or junior year, five of the very best students from the local "colored school" were brought to our school, four girls and one boy. The school administration selected our class because they thought we would be the group that would be most accepting of these changes.  And I must admit that our class was indeed very welcoming to these new students. We tried our very best to include them in all activities and make them feel a part of our school. It didn't hurt that the boy was also an excellent athlete, and became a very welcome addition to our football team.  As I look back I can't help but wonder how these students felt at that time, being taken from the school they had grown up in and to leave all of their familiar friends, teachers and culture behind to embark on this new journey.  I believe they all assimilated very well and each went on to excel in their own future careers...except for the boy...I heard that he died in a fight of some kind as a young man several years after graduation. That was sad news to all of our classmates. I am still in touch with one of the women on Facebook today, and am very happy to say that after all these years we are still friends.

I think I already wrote about what was the best thing about growing up in my town. I have so many fond memories of growing up in Tavares, it would take a book to write about them all.

Here's just a  few fun pictures from my childhood and youth:

Halloween Party with my girlfriends. I am on the right end with the drum. We were "beatniks".

Campout in our yard with my friends. I am on the right.

This was a friend's birthday party. I am on the second row, next to the last on the right, with the attitude.

6th grade class. I am on the next to last row, in the back.

6th grade class picnic to Alexander Springs. I am the crazy one on the left. I think I have a candy cigar in my mouth. or maybe it's my tongue. I really don't remember...

A little more sane picture. My senior year.

Most of all, because it was a small town,  we had more opportunities to do things and participate in many school activities. When there aren't so many students in the school to compete with for positions, you are able to do things that you would never have had the opportunity to do in a much larger school. 

I loved my hometown, and even though we live about an hour or more away from there now, it will always hold a special place in my heart.

Our old High School Alma Mater says:

"In the heart of old Lake County

proudly likes our land;

For our school, Tavares Bulldogs,

we will ever stand.

For our dear old Alma Mater, 

we will sing our praise.

We will fight for greater glory

For her future days!"

Go Bulldogs!!

I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane with me. I do thank God for allowing me to grow up in this special place. I know this place truly helped to make me who I am today...and that is definitely a gift from God.  

Now let us go visit our other friends on Tuesday 4 and see where they came from!

Also, thank you for praying for my friend Jimmy. He had the brain surgery today to remove the tumor, and I've just heard that he came through the surgery very well.  Next he will have radiation.  Very thankful that all went well, and thank you again for praying!