Growing Up
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Growing Up
. . This is the beginning of the little poet, as his beginnings in a new land. Growing up will come just around the corner, for though just a little boy, many responsibilities will follow as well.
. . It all began one day, as we packed up a small U-Hall trailer & brought our most valuable tools & precious household goods.
. . It seemed a long trip From Wisconsin, to the land of sunshine, where we would never have to face that cold bitter wind, or drifts of snow nearly 3 feet deep, though it was fun to play in, it seemed a never ending struggle to fight the winter, until the melting snow slowly unveiled the season of summer.
. . And though we will always remember the days we played in igloos of piled snow, built snowmen & Cars of snow, even a great big snow Dog, with my brother Kenny, using me as his assistant. The excitement of the new land, has brought us new thrills, & adventure, of our new home. So now, here we are in our new Florida land, in the little town of Haines City, Florida, Where my father took what little savings he could muster & invested it in a business, which was known as Minerva Trailer park.
. . The new wave of the Future, people could live in homes, that moved anywhere they wish to go, by attaching them to your car, but as time went on, they got bigger, & the homes usually were moved once or twice till they come to a resting place.
. . But in the beginning, Haines City was a stopping point, for migrant fruit pickers, & builders, in the ages of prosperity.
. . My first job started soon, as the park was being remodeled, as to become a profitable business, power lines needed to be placed underground, meters installed, water & sewer, & electric dug.
. . But soon there was grass growing on every lawn, & it was my job after school to keep them mowed, there was some help of my little sister at first, but not for long. She became involved being popular with her friends, & there I stood, with a little Sears 20" cut mower, with a teeth like front, up & down the lawns, week after week, a never ending task, until winter came along.
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. . As time went on more powerful & much bigger lawn mowers, led the way for bigger & better things to do, As my oldest brother signed up for the Navy, I would soon be taking over, with assisting my father in the construction, of building trailer lots, & helping in the pouring of concrete patios, so that eventually every trailer lot would have one, & the planned design would be a little more uniform. That all trailers would now have to face nearly all the same direction. My Brother eventually designed a lawn mower from a smaller model, that would mow five foot across, was triangular in shape, & the front wheel would turn in any direction, even backwards. So in time, my conserns of mowing would only become 4 hours a week project.
. . There were not a lot of kids around, but we had the Taylor Brothers to visit with, they were migrant croppers, who came to pick oranges. I was eight years old then, & in our spare time, we went into the near by orange grove, to play games. We also went into the back field, to experience the smoking of weeds. Boy they were bitter. I even tried one half of a Pall Mall Cigatette, There it was, I remember the cool refreshing TV comercial, of Salem Cigarettes, along a cool mountain stream, with a pleasant refreshing mint flavored breeze.
. . Well it wasn't any thing like that. It was more like a burned, dried up, tar like taste, that I wanted to taste no more. So that ended my days of smoking.
. . Ocassionally kids my age would move in, & in a few years they would be gone again. It was always nice to see a girl my age to move in, or sometimes just to visit their grandparents for a week or two, but even little boys need to experience a little of the womans touch. So then my heart glittered for a while, as I found someone, who would be a friend, much like the someone, I would want to be with forever.
. . By now I spent many hours driving tractor, helping to pull trees in the direction, as my father cut them down, so that they wouldn't come upon a trailer near by, as the tree fell.
. . We had a pond dug out, by a construction company, so that we could fill in the low land of the park, for even more expansion. At times I would be attached to the tractor, every day in the summer, once for nearly three months, moving that dirt pile, from the edge of the pond, to become fill dirt over the low land.
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. . I still took moments to play, but toys were hard to come by, & many, I made myself, I had an encyclopedia, that would teach me anything I wanted to know, & there was nature & plenty of junk, to create things out of.
. . I made kites, blow pipes, bows & arrows, sling shots, the greatest toy was 3 foot pvc pipe, I would put a little ball inside, by my hand, upright, We had some China Berry Trees, their berrys were fairly hard & worked quite well. I would bring it back, & then sling it forward, to watch the little balls, shoot out, & I watched it curve upward, & then as it slowed, it would drop down into a little creek.
. . One fellow from Jack's Trailer Sales brought me an old erector set, that his son no longer had use for, of little metal plates, motors & shafts & pulleys, wheels, which kept my spare time busy for a few years.
. . My sister Judy, bought me a little transistor radio once. I created battery packs as big as the hand held radio, for the next two years. I carried it every where I went. Mostly on moon lite nights, I would walk, so I could see any snakes that would come upon my trail, as I walked across the sandy grove, I would walk for hours, crying little tears of lonliness, & listening to the radio, that I treasured so much back then. And many times, I lied down in the sand, & just looked at the stars, & admired all the beauty, that God created for us all to see.
. . In those days much of my time was spent wandering through the orange grove, & going to little Lake Confusion, It got it's name from an old fisherman that wanted to know how deep the lake was, so he carried 500 yards of fishing line, & he seem to never find the bottom, Later it was known, that there was an underground stream, & it led to a lake just seven miles down the road. But then the water was so clear that you could drink from it, we could even see our toes clearly in water, as we stand chest deep, but now, you would be lucky to see your hand, just under the water, for as civilization moved in, so did the polution.
. . As time went on I began noticing, that I had more time to take up the art of bicycle riding & by the age of thirteen, my father started feeling that now we are recovering from a long up hill battle, that a bicycle, was a tool of transportation, for any young kid, to get where he is going. By the age of fifteen, I seem to only spend four hours of mowing time plus an ocassional, maintenance & break down time on the lawn mower, & time to repair the things that got broke.
. . One day while working in a ditch at the age of seventeen, a manager of a resturant, asked me if I would like a job, washing Dishes, at his resturant, the Dutch Pantry, my first outside job. away from home.
. . But as all teen aged kids, I complained that I had to work weekends, & each complaint, left me with one less day to work. But at the end of three months, even though there were some frills there, I vowed never to work in a restruant again,
. . And discovered, that my complaints, let me to almost no work at all. So then, this became the end of my growing up world, & the working world, will become another page of the future
Please be patient with me, Under construction
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