FAMILY – CHAPTER FOUR – THE WORLD AROUND ME

Posted On November 23, 2025

CHAPTER FOUR

The World Around Me

ONE

The summer of 1962 marked the beginning of a quieter life. Mitzie had gone off to college, and Brick had long since left home. Most days it was just Mother and me. Clarke was gone through the week, traveling across the South for work, and the house felt larger in his absence.

That summer I was in second grade at Maude Saunders Elementary, with Mrs. Beasley as my teacher. My days were filled with swimming, fishing, and wandering the woods and swamps with my best friend, Rex Potter. Rex lived two houses down. He was two years younger but seemed older somehow, thoughtful, quick with ideas, endlessly curious. His father, Jack, was an engineer for Gulf Power and had passed along his knack for fixing things. Rex could take apart a clock and have it running again before most boys his age finished tying their shoes.

By the time we were seven or eight, his room was crowded with model cars and airplanes, perfectly painted, balanced, and arranged. We rode bikes, swam, and fished until the light disappeared behind the pines. During those years, we were inseparable. When the Potters moved away, we kept in touch for a while, though distance has its own way of erasing childhood. Rex died in a car accident in his forties. He left no children.

When he was gone, and Mitzie was gone, and Clarke was mostly gone, the house felt different, more quiet, orderly, predictable. Mother and I slipped into our own rhythm. Some nights we watched television and ate light dinners at home; other evenings we went to The Hut on Highway 90, where hamburgers were served on edge in aluminum trays. I can still see the bright red booths and smell the mix of fried onions and diesel from the nearby truck stop.

Mother still worked at the church. On school days I would walk there in the afternoon and wait until she finished. The quiet could be deafening at times, but I filled it with books, exploration, and daydreams. Weekends were harder. Clarke’s return on Friday evenings changed everything. The air in the house grew tense and formal. Every meal, every small task, revolved around his presence. Breakfast cooked for him, coffee poured for him, projects completed for him.

When his travel took him farther south, we would drive him to the airport in Panama City on a Sunday afternoon. Once he was gone, Mother and I would treat ourselves to dinner at Captain Anderson’s on the wharf. I always ordered Lobster Thermidor, my idea of luxury. Those two quiet weeks while he was away felt like freedom.

Our home sat on Twin Lakes Drive, a sandy red clay road a few miles outside town. The county grader came every couple of weeks, but after a rain the road turned slick and treacherous; in the heat of summer it crumbled into loose sand that made biking nearly impossible. Still, it was our road, a place where children could play and cars were rare enough to hear coming long before they appeared.

Our house was modest, about twelve hundred square feet, built of gray concrete blocks on a slab foundation. By today’s measure, it would seem poor, but at the time it was solid and dependable. Three bedrooms, one bath, an oil heater in the hallway, and a single window air conditioner humming in my parents’ room. Later, small units were added to the other bedrooms and the converted garage that became a den.

The front of the house faced the lake across a wide, wedge-shaped yard, about two hundred feet of shoreline. The high, narrow windows barely let you see the water unless you stood on a chair and pressed your face to the glass. A long porch stretched across the front, the perfect place to watch storms roll in or push toy trucks on rainy afternoons.

When I was very young, a fence closed off the backyard to keep me from wandering too close to the lake. Our beagle, Mabel, quickly defeated the idea by digging under the fence, and I followed her lead. After that, Mother insisted I wear a life jacket anytime I was outside. Mabel and I were close companions until one day she vanished, likely struck by a car or bitten by a snake. I missed her terribly.

The dock was my favorite place: thirty feet wide, fifteen feet deep, its concrete cool under bare feet. A low bench ran around three sides, perfect for sitting, setting down fishing gear, or resting a bottle of soda. A ladder dropped into the lake and a pair of lights lit the water for night swimming. To the right stood the boathouse, half storage, half sanctuary, where Clarke kept the boat pulled from the water and all his gear locked away. To the left, beneath two willow trees, stood a heavy concrete picnic table, perfect for cutting watermelons or making homemade ice cream on long summer days.

Ours was one of only a handful of homes around the lake. The Oertings lived just south of us, the Potters beyond them, then, moving north the Jacksons, the Rhoems, and a few others whose names now blur with time. The trip to town was six miles, three miles of sand road and three of paved highway. We were isolated but not lonely.

On Highway 90, the Tastee Freeze marked the edge of town. Mitzie and I used to go there before she left for college, both of us eating soft-serve cones in the car. She called the little twist at the top a nitwit. I never asked if she meant me.

DeFuniak Springs was small then, two groceries, a few churches, and a handful of stores lining Baldwin Avenue. There was the Piggly Wiggly, Christo’s 5 & 10, Fisher Pharmacy, Wise Department Store, and the bank with its polished floors and dark counters. Across the street ran the railroad and, beyond it, Lake DeFuniak, ringed by white houses and shaded oaks.

The library stood near the lake, cool and musty, filled with the smell of paper and dust. I spent hours staring at its display of Spanish armor and swords, imagining knights and ships and places far beyond our town. Down the street, old men gathered on a bench at the intersection of Baldwin Avenue and 8th Street, the same spot now called The Meeting Place. In my childhood, it was known to everyone as the Dead Pecker Bench, where local old men traded gossip and told tall tales while their wives shopped. It was, in its way, the heart of town.

TWO

Our neighborhood revolved around the lake. Fishing, water skiing, swimming, that was what life there meant. There were boats for skiing, boats for fishing, boats for rowing, and nearly every warm day from spring through fall, there was activity on the water. The lake was where we gathered, where we learned, argued, listened to music, and grew up together.

In winter, or on days too cool for swimming, we found other ways to fill the hours. The neighborhood children rode bicycles, played softball or baseball in the sandy roads, or football in the old cow pasture near the Rhoems’ house. Rex was probably the youngest of us, but he was athletic and fit right in. I was a little on the chubby side and not quite as quick, but I had fun all the same.

The children around the lake formed a small but lively tribe. There was Corky Clarke, a couple of years older than me, outspoken, sometimes disrespectful, but never dull. Then came the Rhoem boys, Johnny, Teddy, Chuck, and their older sister, Pia. Bob Stinson and his two sisters lived down the road, and near them were the Curries: Daniel (DEC), Haynes (HEC), Pat, and Mike. The Carters, Donna and Mike, lived nearby too, along with Kenny and Steve Jackson, Glen Pope, Clyde and Kathy Harbeson, and a few others who drifted in and out of our lives with the seasons.

Not all relations among the families were smooth. Clarke never got along easily with others, and that sometimes spilled over into our childhood friendships. Our house had been built by Bubba Stinson’s construction company, and Clarke had taken issue with parts of the work. His temper over the matter left the Stinsons wary of him for years, which meant playtime could feel divided. Still, we found ways to get along. Children are more forgiving than adults.

The Currie family was unlike any other. Their father and uncle were both doctors, Dr. Howard Currie and Dr. E. L. Huggins. Dr. Huggins kept a small office across the lake from us, while Dr. Currie practiced in town. I remember Dr. Huggins making a house call when Mitzie had her wisdom teeth removed and was in terrible pain. It was one of the last times I saw him before he passed away in 1968. Dr. Currie lived much longer, until 2004.

The Curries’ property felt like its own little world, a cluster of four or five houses full of relatives. Dr. Huggins lived there, along with Dr. Currie, his mother (whom we all called Granny was the sister of Florida Governor Sidney Catts), and a great aunt named Diddle. There were others too, relations whose exact connections I never quite learned, but who always seemed part of the family.

And then there was Uncle Haynes, for whom HEC was named. He was Dr. Huggins’ brother and one of the most spirited men I ever met. He was well into his eighties when I first knew him, but still strong, still working, and always ready for mischief. He helped at the family’s beach camp and would drive with us boys down there to work, to learn, and to play. We adored him, partly because he treated us like equals, and partly because he seemed proof that age didn’t have to slow a person down.

Some of my fondest memories as a teenager were the winter oyster bakes at the Currie compound. Dr. Currie would send a few of us, Pat, Mike, me, and whoever else was around down to Freeport, twenty miles away, to buy a couple of sacks of raw oysters from the icehouse. Back home, we would wash them, load them onto wire baskets, and roast them on the old wood-burning stove in the Oyster House. The place would fill with the smell of roasting oysters and smoke. We’d eat oysters, swallow a few raw, sneak a beer when no one was watching, or sip Cokes from glass bottles.

Those gatherings always grew into something bigger than a meal, a party, really. A mix of cousins, friends, and a few girls we knew from town. The older folks told stories and laughed with us, and for a few hours the generations blurred. Everyone belonged. It was a world of simple joys, food, music, laughter. The kind of happiness you don’t recognize as precious until much later in life.

THREE

Sundays were for church in the morning and, in summer, for swimming, skiing, and outdoor fun in the afternoons. Our family belonged to the First Methodist Church on the Circle. The congregation was modest in size, three local car-dealer families, a couple of pharmacists, several from Eglin Air Force Base, a few business owners, and a scattering of retirees. It was a quiet, orderly group. Methodists are known for their structure, and ours followed the pattern faithfully.

Each Sunday began the same way: opening hymn, lighting of the candles, a prayer, a choir anthem, scripture reading, another hymn, announcements, the affirmation of faith, the passing of the offering plates, one more hymn, the sermon, where more than a few older men nodded off, the closing hymn, extinguishing of candles, and the benediction. Then everyone filed down the aisle to shake the preacher’s hand before heading home, their weekly tribute to God complete.

Before the service came Sunday school: songs, coloring books, and gentle lessons about Moses, Pharaoh, Noah, Jesus. Stories chosen to shape belief without frightening young minds. The message was clear enough: believers went to heaven; non-believers did not.

The Reverend William Shirah, a red-haired man of likely Scottish ancestry, was the pastor through much of my childhood. He visited the sick, buried the dead, comforted the grieving, and kept the church running smoothly. Then came the Civil Rights Movement, and Brother Shirah began preaching equality for Negroes. It was his undoing. The congregation, comfortable in its old south order, rebelled, and he was soon transferred to Phenix City, Alabama, a mostly black city on the Georgia-Alabama border. Punishment for applying Christ’s words too broadly.

The First Methodist Church was not unique. The Presbyterians, Baptists, and Anglicans nearby all drew from the same middle-class white circle: managers, engineers, shop owners, professionals. Our family was no exception. The church, like the town, was a mirror of the world in which I was growing up. White, middle class, self-assured, and largely unaware of the walls around it.

Those walls were everywhere. DeFuniak Springs was divided along racial lines. On the east side of town, along both sides of U.S. Highway 90, lay the Black community, close enough to walk to jobs in town, the sawmill to the north, or the chicken plant to the east. Many of the men cut pulpwood for the paper mill in Panama City or hauled logs to be cut into lumber to Hodges Mill on Highway 83. Many of the women worked as domestics in the homes of the more privileged whites.

Their children attended Tivoli School, the “separate but equal” Black school, until it began phase I of its closing in 1968 and the first black students attended our formerly all-white schools. Few Tivoli students could hope for more than their parents had, though a handful went on to college and later returned to teach. When Tivoli closed, its students and teachers were absorbed into the Walton County system, a change that unsettled both races. I cannot speak for how the Black families felt, but I imagine the upheaval must have been as painful for them as it was confusing for us.

I grew up in the era of segregation. I remember the courthouse signs on restrooms and water fountains saying, “Whites Only and “Colored.” There was the old horse trough on the corner of Baldwin Avenue and 6^th street with the sign that said, “horses & colored only.” “Doctors’ offices and hospitals had separate waiting rooms. Restaurants served one race or the other but not both, though some allowed Black patrons to pick up food at the kitchen door out back. People skied and swam in the lake downtown, but not Black citizens. They could fish from the bank, nothing more.

When the Civil Rights Act passed and integration became the law, the city closed the lake to recreation, claiming high bacteria counts made it unsafe. Years later, Police Chief Clinton Hooks, the city’s first Black police chief, told a newcomer that the real reason was “blackteria.” His dry humor said everything about how little had changed beneath the surface.

I left DeFuniak Springs in the fall of 1969 to attend Lyman Ward Military Academy in Camp Hill, Alabama. That was the first year of full school integration in Walton County. I missed the turmoil that followed, though I also lost touch with friends and felt isolated whenever I returned home for weekends or holidays.

Lyman Ward was an all-white school, and I was miserable for the first semester. I had never been so far from home except for a few two-week summer camps. Yet in the long run it did me good. I learned independence and discipline, and I did well academically. By the fall of 1971, I was ready to return to public school and start again, older, more aware, and beginning to see how the world around me was changing.

FOUR

Family was always an interesting dynamic. Relatives from Clarke’s side and Helen’s side rarely mixed. Most holidays were spent with Mother’s family, the Eagertons, and those were the gatherings I remember most vividly.

We would go to Granny Eagerton’s house for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Her home filled with sisters, brothers, children, husbands, and wives. Older cousins brought boyfriends or girlfriends, and everyone brought food. There was always too much to eat. Granny cooked the turkey and ham; the rest came as covered dishes of various delectable foods and there were always field peas and corn from the freezer, okra boiled with the peas, potato salad, casseroles, pies, and cakes.

Granny had a peculiar ritual with her okra. She would pick it out of the peas after it was cooked and place it on a saucer beside her plate. After she had eaten all she wanted, she would quietly offer the rest to anyone who might like it. No meal was complete without that small ceremony.

Lunch was served around two in the afternoon. Afterwards, the children spilled outside to play while the men napped or watched football, and the women cleaned the kitchen. Granny’s house and yard were perfect for exploring. She had planted forty acres of pines after Grandpa died, so there was no shortage of places to hide. The old barn and smokehouse stood nearby, and if there were enough of us we would divide into teams, gather chinaberries from the trees and throw them at each other until we were breathless from running and laughing.

Uncle Horace often arrived drunk. He fought his demon for years before he finally found sobriety. I remember Granny and Mother crying quietly over him. At the time I did not understand, only that something heavy hung in the room when he was there.

Among the cousins, I was one of the youngest. Older than me were Faustine’s children, Barbara and Ed, followed by Margaret’s; Mark, Mike, and Gerald, whom we called Jay. Jay, or sometimes JJ was the youngest of all, and Mike just a year ahead of me. Margaret’s husband, P.C., was a Master Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine Corps and a flight engineer on C130 aircraft. When he was home, he was quiet and thoughtful, a small man with a rigid military bearing that demanded respect.

As Granny aged, our holiday gatherings moved to Faustine’s house in Pensacola. The faces were the same, and the laughter just as loud. Her big yard gave us all the space we needed to run and play.

In summer, Mother’s family often came to our house at the lake. We would swim, water ski, and eat picnic lunches on the concrete table by the water; sandwiches, potato salad, and chilled watermelon from the little refrigerator in the garage. Sometimes someone brought out the hand cranked ice cream maker, and we would take turns grinding the handle until our arms ached. Those were the happiest of days: sun, water, laughter, and the easy comfort of family.

Clarke’s family was different altogether. They mostly lived within a block or two of one another on the north side of Nine Mile Road in Pensacola. His two brothers worked at the paper mill in Cantonment. His sisters, Louise, whom everyone called Sis, and Elenor, both lived nearby. Louise was a nurse, married to an aircraft mechanic, and Elenor stayed home while her husband drove a truck. Clarke’s mother, Wilma, lived close by with her second husband, Claude Wheeler. We called him Pop. He had retired from the Navy as a Chief Petty Officer and had seen action in the Spanish American War, the First World War, and the Second. Clarke’s father, Nat, lived nearby too, with his second wife, Grace.

I never spent much time with that side of the family as a child. We visited occasionally, or they would come to our house to swim and ski, but my cousins there were much older and our lives rarely overlapped. What I do remember is the constant undercurrent of tension among them. There always seemed to be factions, temporary alliances and lingering resentments, each side offended by something the other had said or done or failed to say or do. Even as a child, I could sense it.

Part of the reason we lived more than an hour away, I think, was to escape that turmoil. Looking back, I am glad we did. The distance spared us from the small wars that never seemed to end among Clarke’s people.

FIVE

I have already spoken of Rex Potter, but I want to say a little more about him. He was probably my first true friend on Back Lake. The Potters built their house just down the road from us, with two lots in between, in about nineteen sixty-one or nineteen sixty-two. I would have been seven years old, and Rex would have been five. Even at that young age he was remarkably mature, with an uncanny mechanical ability that stood out to anyone who spent time with him.

Rex and I became fast friends. We spent our early years riding tricycles down the driveway at my house, exploring the woods in the empty lot between our homes and the woods across the road. We picked blackberries from the wild plants that grew everywhere and gathered wild persimmons which could be wonderfully sweet if perfectly ripe, but full of harsh tannins if they were not. More than once we learned that lesson the hard way. We played with our toy trucks in the dirt road that ran in front of both our houses, fished in the lake, and rode our bicycles on the dirt roads that circled both Back Lake and Lake Stanley. We rode to the Tastee Freeze, to the public park, and through all the trails and woods that connected our little world.

Around nineteen sixty four, Mr. Shoemaker decided he wanted to dig a canal between Back Lake and Lake Stanley on a stretch of low swampy land he owned. His plan was to use the material he dug out to build up the property so that he could construct a house later on. Many of the people on Back Lake were unhappy with his idea, but with no environmental regulations in place to stop him, he went forward with the project.

The digging of the canal produced many cubic yards of wet mud and sand, which were piled onto Mr. Shoemaker’s land. For Rex and me, this became a paradise. When the workers left for the day, we would stomp through the black muck up to our knees, discovering pottery shards, arrowheads, and other relics we could not identify. Looking back, it is sad that the site was never examined by archaeologists, as much of the early history of the lakes was likely lost in that process. But for us at the time it was pure adventure. The mud, the mystery, the thrill of discovery. Those moments are among my fondest childhood memories.

Rex had two sisters, Laurie and Judy. Laurie was the oldest, tall and slender with curly brown hair. She sometimes babysat for me when mom was away at night classes or when she went to Pensacola to meet Clarke. Laurie would stay at our house, or I would stay at the Potters. I liked Laurie very much. She was calm, kind, gentle, and always found ways to entertain me. Judy, about two years younger than Laurie, was another story entirely. She was quite pretty, a bit fuller figured than her sister, but her personality was sharp and unpleasant. She was bossy and mean to Rex and me, always ready with an insult or criticism. In truth, she acted that way toward almost everyone. I cannot recall a single pleasant experience in her presence.

Rex was not my only companion during those years, though he was certainly the closest simply because he lived only two houses away. There was Dale Withey, who lived across the lake, and the Roehm boys, Johnny and Teddy, both a bit older but still familiar faces in our pickup baseball games and our travels around the lake.

In about nineteen sixty five, Clarke sold the lot next to ours to Glen Pope, a local contractor. Glen built a house there and moved in with his family. His wife was Martha, his daughter was Diane, and his son was Glen Junior. Glen Junior was one year older than me and was the very definition of a spoiled brat. He was a bully. Dishonest, mean spirited, and pushy. He and I clashed many times over the years, and I never really enjoyed a single interaction with him. I was not surprised when, as an adult, he ended up serving time in an Alabama prison for abusing his wife and children. He remains a registered sex offender in the State of Florida. None of that shocked me. Some children show you who they are from the very beginning.

There are hours of stories I could share and many adventures worth telling, but this small glimpse into my childhood is enough to give the reader a sense of the place where I grew up. It was a world of lakes and woods, bicycles and dirt roads, friendship and trouble, innocence mixed with the early shadows of darker truths. It shaped me in more ways than I can fully express, and it remains the backdrop of my earliest memories.

SIX

I have already described some of my school experiences at Maude Saunders Elementary School, so I will not repeat myself. Instead, I want to focus on a few memories that were disturbing, formative, and life changing.

In October nineteen sixty two I was in the second grade, in Mrs. Beasley’s class. We were accustomed to fire drills, but there was another drill that carried a much darker purpose, the duck and cover drill. We were taught to crawl out of our desks, get underneath, tuck our heads beneath our hands, and draw our knees to our chests. It was presented as a way to survive a nuclear attack. Even as a child, some part of me understood the futility. A nuclear blast would have incinerated our small bodies in an instant. If we were not vaporized, our fate would have been worse, burned alive or left to die slowly from radiation poisoning or starvation. Duck and cover were never going to save us. It existed to keep the public calm, to conceal hopelessness by giving people something to do.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, fear settled over every home and street. Our small Northwest Florida town felt the danger more acutely because we were surrounded by potential targets, Eglin Air Force Base, Pensacola Naval Air Station, and Tyndall Air Force Base were all close enough that a direct strike or fallout would have annihilated us. I remember the silence, the heavy stillness in the air, the way people spoke in low and careful tones. We stocked canned foods, filled cars with gasoline, and packed suitcases in case we had to flee. The evening news brought updates from Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley as if they were narrating the narrowing space between life and death.

Several families in town had underground shelters, and the courthouse served as a designated fallout shelter. I remember the black and yellow signs with their three triangles posted on the walls, as if a symbol could ward off annihilation. We were led to believe nuclear war was survivable. That was the story the government needed us to believe. We now know better. Nuclear war is not survivable in any meaningful sense. Perhaps a few would crawl out of the wreckage, but humanity would likely follow the path of the dinosaurs, leaving the world to the insects and fish.

Then came Friday, November twenty two, nineteen sixty-three, the day the world stopped turning. Whether one loved or hated President John Kennedy, his assassination in Dallas was a blow that cracked the national spirit. Even as an eight year old, I felt the shift, a sudden hollowing of the world. Something had broken, something enormous, and even though I could not name it, I sensed that nothing would ever be the same.

Soon after one o’clock that afternoon the announcement came over the school intercom. President Kennedy is dead. School was cancelled immediately, though no one knew when it would reopen. The silence that followed was overwhelming. Instructions were whispered, busses were boarded quietly, and parents arrived one by one to collect their children and take them home. Those of us who walked were dismissed. I made the five block walk to the First Methodist Church alone, where my mother was working. We closed the church office and drove home in silence.

For the next four days our little black and white television was a window into national grief. We watched the swearing in of President Johnson, the capture of Oswald, the shocking moment when Jack Ruby shot Oswald, the return of the Presidents body, the coffin in the Capitol Rotunda, the funeral, the procession, and finally the burial at Arlington. There was no other news, nothing else mattered. Only sorrow, mourning, and fear. It felt as if the entire nation held its breath for four straight days.

I cannot say whether the assassination was a trigger that set the nation on a new course or simply a focal point in a storm that was already gathering. That is for historians to decide. But to me it felt like a turning point. So much was happening in those years, Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Viet Nam, Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy, the Black Panthers, SNCC, Emmett Till, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It seemed to me that the assassination gathered these movements like threads pulled tight and wove them into a new force that would reshape the nation, a force seeking inclusion, fairness, and equality. That kind of change terrified the establishment.

Clarke Mason raged against the Civil Rights movement, protested the Viet Nam protestors, despised rock and roll, and fought against any shift that threatened the status he believed he possessed simply by being white. He was born into poverty, but in his mind even poor whiteness was a step above being black in America. I heard him say many times that rioters should be shot dead in the streets, that blacks should be grateful for what they had, that Viet Nam protestors were traitors who deserved execution. That fury against change, that fear of equality, is something I still cannot fully understand. Even today I hear echoes of the same anger from racist whites who believe that someone else’s opportunity somehow diminishes their own.

Our little town changed with school integration, affirmative action, voting rights reforms, and the dismantling of legalized racial separation. These changes were not easy for any of us who lived through them. Yet we were all shaped by them. We were forced to confront the world as it was, not as people insisted it should remain.

I spent part of that era in military school, which was meant to isolate me, but in truth it did the opposite. I met students from every walk of life, wealthy children avoiding integration, military children, Jewish boys, Catholic boys, delinquents avoiding jail time, and even military advisors who taught us about weapons and war. My eyes opened wide to a world far beyond DeFuniak Springs, though not as far as I imagined at the time.

Those years were turbulent, frightening, and illuminating. They shaped my earliest understanding of the world, of fear, of injustice, and of change. And they marked the beginning of my awareness of the larger forces that move through the lives of ordinary people.