Nothing Less Than Idyllic

I was just thinking about a recurring avocation which my friends and I enjoyed during our adolescence.

As spring gave way to summer, and the sun dipped low on the horizon, a mosquito spray truck regularly wound its way down Formosa Avenue. And as that familiar hiss of the poisonous fog permeated the air, the local children took it as their cue to quickly find the front door, and scurry behind the retreating vehicle; their bodies now obscured by a chemical cloud. (How any of us avoided keeling over dead on the road is beyond me).

I was eight, and my second grade teacher, Mrs. Sampson, nominated me to appear in a school play; “The Wizard of Oz.” I was given the role of the Fire Wizard. Walking out onto the stage, my face smeared with rouge, and the audience laughing uproariously, I spilled out the lines I had diligently memorized. “I am Oz, the great and the terrible. Who are you and why do you seek me?” (I have never forgotten my hard-learned lines, and if that play is ever re-staged, I’ll be ready for an encore)!

At that time there were still plenty of lightning bugs, humming birds, and Florida crayfish in “our neck of the woods.” As a child I would venture into a nearby cemetery and chase the lightning bugs. I marveled at the speed and agility of the multi-colored humming birds which so often frequented my backyard, and the orange grove beyond it. I waded in local streams, and allowed the 10 legged crayfish to crawl between my toes.

On weekends we climbed Sand Mountain, a thirty story pile of pure white sand generated by the phosphate industry, and made available for public use. We swam at Crystal Beach, a local fresh-water pond, and we attended the latest movie at “The Ritz.”

I recall the first major storm of my young life, Hurricane Donna. The center of that historic cyclone blew its way directly through my little town of Bartow. My dad suggested that we venture out into the eye of the storm, and I will always remember joining him and my brothers in our front yard, for the few minutes in which calm prevailed, and before the second half of the hurricane renewed its efforts to destroy our little town; (thankfully, a feat which it failed to accomplish).

Time and space would fail me to mention dipping my hand into an ice cold drink machine at Clara's Grocery, and pulling out a bottled coke, which cost all of a nickel, the rotten orange fights between the neighborhood kids, skateboarding to the bowling alley at 15, and bowling an phenomenal all-time best of 280, and setting my mother's washing machine on fire with my chemistry set!

I hardly realized it then, but my childhood was nothing less than idyllic. And in recent years I have often conjured up those sacred ghosts of yesteryear; at least in vistas of my mind.

Precious memories. How they linger.

 

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 5