Insert Florida

Insert Florida

You may ask how I can have memories so vivid of my childhood. One reason being is that I use to lay in bed and recount just where I had been quite often, to commit to memory just exactly where I was in time. Moving as we did was a shocking experience, to uproot and move to a brand new place and culture often would cause an imprint having affected all six senses in some fashion. And so the only memory that I do recall are the one’s that made some sort of lasting impression. 

Before we moved to Austin Texas we made a brief stay in Florida. I almost forgot that we lived there until I saw a news article on television about water babies. (It was news report about children learning to swim in Florida.)

We were stationed at Homestead Air Force Base, years before it was wiped off the face of the earth by hurricane Andrew. After that we wound up in El Paso for six months while my Father was sent on what’s know as an isolated tour to Toole Greenland. At that time, we lived with out Grand parents in Texas. So you can see how we bounced around quite often. This means I had to be in the 3-4 year old range, I started kindergarten at five years of age and that was in Austin.

So I have a few memories from Florida. I remember poking a dead cat swarming with flies with an unwound wire hanger, and when I did its little swollen body made a balloon shrill sizzle as if I forced the last vestige of air from its dead corpse. Some other children gathered briefly at the sight and at the sound we all jumped and ran home screaming.

We did a lot of touring and site seeing while in Florida. We wore a lot of bug spray, burned little strange smelling bug repelling incense and saw a lot of movies at the drive inn. I went on a little fishing expedition with my dad and caught my first fish in the misty rain of some very lush canal park. I remember the worm and hook dangling from its bloody mouth and the fish being of some exotic uneatable type. My dad said. “No we won’t be eating it.” And we released it back into the water.

Mainly I have two vivid memories from Florida. The first was a picnic trip with my parents and sisters to the everglades. My parents chose this out of the way area in the glades park where we parked on a tiny hill. My Mom and Dad began to prepare the quilt and place out a bucket of KFC and the rest of the fixings. We as children ran straight down to the waters edge. The everglades in that area were a mixture of darkness and light, giant mossy weepy willows, large flying insects and echoing calls of various critters. In there it was like stepping back in time to a prehistoric age of ferns, mossy rocks and a cold damp feeling in the air.

My sisters sat down on a log at the bank of the water where it dropped straight down and off into the thick black water of the glades. They giggled and splashed kicking their twinkle toed footsies in the dark waters. I was very melancholy and just laid upon a weird twine of a tree that curled and dipped into the frothing smoky waters of strange black and golden flecks of shimmer reflections flickering upon the surface. Then my eldest sister Lori called out and said oh look at the seahorses. This awoke my interest as three heads popped up about 4 feet from my sisters dangling appendages soaking in the deep water edge of the mossy log bank. “One, two, threeeee. One for each of us.” My sister stated as I darted in behind my sisters to watch the seahorses slowly float in closer. Three cute little heads snouts and eyeballs silently wading. And out of nowhere, I was suddenly catapulted into the sky. Green blue brown grey black colors swirled in my head as my tennis shoes stood upon the sky between the willow trees.

“THOSE ARE NOT SEAHORSES!” My father shouted as he swooped in sweeping us all up in a huge grasp and whisked us off to the quilt picnic spread at the top of knoll next to the car. He softly placed us down with urgency as tiny leaves and Twiggs fluttered at the tail corners of the blanket flipping up like the landing of a magic carpet or the set down of a rocket ship. My mother instantly handed us our plates ready for our consumption. I said. “If those weren’t seahorses then what were they?” My father then said.  “Those were alligators!”

I said like on Merlin Perkins Mutual of Omaha? Everyone laughed and my Mother said. “Oh Michael” 

There is one other story that occurred in Florida but it was on the edge of some paranormal happening and it will be included in the MadomeX archives.

ZeeArcTune©2006

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My Life as I Remember It

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