These cold February days have me day dreaming about my Floridian childhood. Most of my formative years were spent on Florida’s Space Coast, the stomping ground of Major Nelson and Jeannie from the 1970’s I Dream of Jeannie show.
We lived just a few blocks from the ocean, although we rarely went. Hard to believe now that we actually schedule family vacations for that very purpose, but familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose. Our beach was rocky and full of seaweed and many times was a minefield full of clumps of sticky tar that was impossible to scrub from your feet. Still, we would sometimes be lucky enough to spot a loggerhead turtle laying her eggs, scooping sand with her flippers to cover the nest before heading back out to sea.
Our zip code designated our address as Satellite Beach, about an hour south of Orlando and central Florida’s tourist Mecca. We had Florida resident and military discounts to Disney and Sea World, so I lost count of how many times we were there. Once I got older, my friends and I got dropped off at the gate a few times by our parents, kind of like the mall hangout for today’s crowd, except instead of Hollister and the Cookie Store, we got Mickey and Shamu. Space Mountain’s roller coaster in the dark was our version of living on the edge.
The Magic Kingdom wasn’t the only magical aspect of my childhood. Where the Indian and Banana Rivers converged in south Merritt Island,
dragon point, “Annie”; from Florida Today
there was a huge mansion at the island’s tip. There used to be a 20-ton statue of a dragon (named Annie) that jutted out into the water, as if she were scooping up minnows from the shallows. Every time we passed that dragon, I’d dream up stories about her life and what she did there. I heard just recently that the mansion is being repaired and the dragon restored–hurray!
We had no seasons: shorts and flip flops at Christmas, shorter shorts and bare feet in the summer. Palm trees stayed the same all year. The only way you knew the holidays were approaching was the change in inventory at the stores. The first winter after moving away, my freshman English teacher stopped class to let me go outside in the snow that was drifting down. I’d never seen snow that I remembered, and she thought it was high time. Summer must be over because school would start up again, and people wouldn’t run the sprinklers in their yards as often. This was a good thing since we were constantly outside sprinting through our neighbors’ yards, and you never knew when their timers would be set to come on, soaking you with smelly sulfur water in the middle of a good game of tag.
Periodically, NASA would announce a rocket launch, and we’d hurry through dinner so we could sit on the picnic table in the backyard and watch it light up the sky, a vertical plume of flame and smoke trailing from its tail as it sped towards its orbit. For really important ones, we’d head to the beach and sit on the sand, listening in the dark for the familiar bass rumble. It was better than a fireworks show. On their way back from Japan after I was born, my parents had watched on the airport TV screens as the Apollo 11 astronauts took their first steps on the moon. About 13 years later, one afternoon when I was in gym class, we looked up to see the Shuttle Columbia and its escort jets flying home to Kennedy Space Center after its recent landing in California. It flew so low I could make out the windows on its side, and we all cheered and waved.
In January of my senior year, I was in Tennessee home from school for a snow day watching TV as the Challenger exploded in mid-launch. We felt it personally, having watched it launch several times from our backyard. One of my sisters worked at Cape Canaveral, where the loss was traumatic and the effects were felt for years afterward.
When we weren’t peering up at the night sky, we were running barefoot in the sunshine. For a time, my family had a boat that we’d take out onto the Indian River. We’d motor under the drawbridges and through the canals, winding our way to the many islands that dotted the river’s landscape. I loved to putter alongside a gently floating school of manatees, their gray backs breaching the surface like ancient whales. Occasionally we’d hand-feed them heads of iceberg lettuce, their whiskery faces peering at us while they munched.
my brother & me, an afternoon on the water
We would anchor at one of these outcroppings and pile out with the day’s lunch and our portable grill. We learned how to dig in the wet sand at the water’s edge with our toes, finding clams that we’d toss on the grill until they popped open, revealing their salty, slightly gritty meat.
I learned to love seafood. My grandfather owned a charter deep sea fishing boat in Panama City, and we’d regularly stock up on fresh-caught grouper and snapper. My parents would go out at night with friends and throw nets from the bridges, hauling in all-you-could-eat shrimp. My dad had a tour of duty assignment in the Grand Turk islands, and he would bring back coolers of conch and lobster, packed on ice. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized, sadly, that lobster wasn’t an every-day menu item.
One of my friends had a small two-man sailboat. We were not yet old enough for a driver’s license, but she could pilot the little craft around the canals, through the watery backyards of the neighborhood. That was all the freedom we needed, sans wheels.
My father was anxious to leave. Being raised in Wisconsin and Maryland, he couldn’t stand the summer heat. He constantly muttered about the cars, our bikes, and his tools rusting because of the salt air from the ocean breeze. We had to time our exits from the house so as to open the door the minimum amount of time possible, edging through in the briefest of seconds or else he’d yell, “Shut the door!” Obviously we were trying to air condition the entire neighborhood! We were also not allowed to turn on the oven for this reason. The a/c ran constantly, turning him into a miser who constantly monitored the thermostat. But kids don’t see the adult reasoning behind all that frustration. My Florida was an oasis of warmth and ocean breezes, punctuated by the occasional hurricane. We rode our bikes for miles over the flat terrain: to and from school, the library, the movies, friends’ houses. It was a freer time then, before kids were monitored every second through scheduled play dates and after-school activities. We had to be back to our neighborhood before the street lights came on and close enough to hear my father’s whistle for dinner time.
Three of my siblings still call Florida home, so I can easily visit. I have the best of both worlds, with the occasional snowfall and hardwood trees that turn glorious in the fall here and a means to answer the Siren’s call of the ocean whenever I feel the pull. Like, for example, on gray February days like these.
Love it, Bonnie! You make your childhood sound almost idyllic!