First Sight (article) by Cliff McDuffie on AuthorsDen

Taken from 'Emma Street' First Sight The year is close to 1939 and the family of five children and two adults have moved to a rental property until Dad can find a suitable house to put his family in. This house is on East Emma Street! A big (to me, later not big enough) house painted an ugly brown sitting on a beautifully shaded street in a middle class section of a small, growing town in west central Florida called Tampa. The street is paved with asphalt bricks, as are many streets of that era and there is a canopy of large oak trees covering the street to make a kind of tunnel as you walked down the sidewalk. Yes there was a sidewalk; not all areas in this town had a sidewalk yet so this must be a fairly good neighborhood. At least we certainly thought so. My first impression of the new house was a good one as it had a great big oak tree in the back of the lot just made for boys of five to climb up. There is also an orange tree, a tangerine tree and a grapefruit tree. We have really struck it rich! Needless to say as this was the spring of the year there was a yard full of oak leaves to be raked up by one five year old. My second impression of the Emma St. House as it was to be fondly called in years to come was one of horror. As we entered the house to begin cleaning there must have been ten thousand roaches scurrying about! Let me quickly explain that "roaches" in this part of Florida are the two-inch Palmetto Bugs that love to fly at you if disturbed. Apparently the house had not been occupied in some time and as these "bugs" are prone to do, they came in and occupied the house waiting to antagonize its occupants forever. They certainly did an excellent job of that over the next twenty years. I really have a difficult time remembering exactly how Mom and Dad divided us kids up to sleep as there were three boys and two girls. The girls were both older by two and four years so they probably demanded some separation but in a two bedroom house. I, for the life of me, can not recall where we slept. I do know that the boys had the back bedroom with the bunk beds in it. I did say three boys. Right? I was five, then there was John, three and Ralph, just one. Ralph, for the record was called "Cooger" as he was just as quick and elusive at that age as any kid you would ever see! The girls, Joan (we always had to call her JoAnne) and Clarice were so much older, eight and six respectively, that we boys just kind of ignored them most of this time.

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