Category: Memoir Publisher: Fountain City Publishing
ISBN-10: 0976086700
Pages: 148
Copyright: October 2004
ISBN-13: 9780976086703
Childhood and growing up on the coast of South Florida in the 1960s
Musings on the changes of a small South Florida town, changing during rapid growth.
A collection of tales of childhood. The author writes of his world of tropical beasts and birds, real and dreamed-of, while growing more aware of himself and the world in a small Southern town on the Atlantic coast of Florida.
George Scott is a native of Stuart, Florida located at the mouth of the St. Lucie Inlet. Many experiences of his childhood are common to everyone, though the elements of sandy beaches, hurricane storms, and subtropical jungle add a dimension of wonder and beauty.
The book has more than 150 black and white photographs rendered into watercolor images, and each book also includes a CD screensaver slideshow for your PC computer of more than 250 color images with a soothing soundtrack of acoustic guitar and cello music.
Excerpt
The flora of this particular wilderness area is not what many people expected. It was tall pines, scrubby oak, swamp cabbage and saw palm. It was also shrubby growth of tall, stiff stemmy herbs. Th is jungle of beauty was a fascinating kaleidoscope of organic shapes, objects of wonder.
But still sometimes a rustle could be heard, a disturbance in the distance where there was no wind. We all knew what it was.
We all heard the tales, and imagined more than we heard. The big cats.
Florida has always had the big predator cats called panthers or “painters,” which are a slightly smaller version of the American mountain lion or cougar.
These critters used to range all over the Southeast, from Tennessee to Biscayne Bay, from North Carolina’s barrier islands to the Mississippi. Th ey are gray with darker markings on the face and tail than their western cougar cousin. By my early teen years it was generally assumed panterhs were nearing extinction and weren’t to be found anywhere near where there were people.
Still, rumors and tales were heard.........
They had become ghosts of the swamp, hiding and living in stealth. The Miccosukee Indians, had done the same thing, and had cut themselves
off from the rest of the world, ensuring their independent survival for nearly two hundred years. Perhaps there is a breeding population of panthers still surviving in the shadows of inland Florida, and thriving,
not sputtering in the wind, out where there are no lights, no people, no roads.
Out where the dreams of young boys live.
I first remember the tune “Dixie” being played by a junior high school band at an afternoon football game. I must have heard it earlier, as I knew that I should stand up when it was played. As the first few notes of the prelude reached us, I immediately stood up. NO! the JV cheerleaders yelled and frowned, and shouted. SIT DOWN! …ok….
Those cheerleaders can be mean! Then as the strong, uplifting rhythms of “Away Down South” washed over us, cheerleaders frowned and raised their arms, and the whole bleacher arose. With proud voices we all sang the hymn “Look Away” to Dixie........
During of my fi rst days at the then segregated school I heard a word I
didn’t know. Th e explanation surprised me, so when I got home that day I asked, “Lila, are you a nigger?”
Her answer was swift and sure, and though in days to come I could sit
down comfortably once again, the subtle eloquence of her reply left a
deep-seated impression on me.
Th is was the fi rst time in my life the question of race was raised, the first in a series of profound questions that we all encounter in our lives....
Inside the Methadone Clinic. Addiction to heroin, methadone, and other opiates. Destruction. The primal addiction" of the child, power and control over your own life, the institutions and the characters, the love between a mother and son. This book i
