| THE ROAD TO ALACHUA by Rosanne Morse OCTOBER, 2010 After almost 40 years, I knew it was time to escape. My adult children had figured that out quite some time before. “We love ya Ma, but we ain’t a-coming back!” We had survived Where the Boys Are, Hurricane Andrew, and the Mariel boatlift. Unwittingly we had become slightly bi-lingual and definitely bi-gourmets (is that a word?) not grits with every meal, but black beans and rice. Yes indeed South Florida was the least “Southern” part of Florida, no doubt. Having coming to South Florida by way of a childhood in Noo Yawk City, how could I now claim Southern roots? What was this bizarre yearning for gracious Victorians and Florida Vernacular (Cracker) homes? Why did my soul soar when I read Land Remembered by Patrick Smith? What fantasy was I indulging? Perhaps there really was a place where people walked; where real trees shaded yards, where people lifted their hands as a greeting– not as a threatening gesture; and where life seemed just a little slower. That was not the 1990’s in South Florida; by then there wasn’t a blade of grass that we didn’t rush to stomp out like a plague. Sometime back in the early 1990’s our Voyager van took our Chevy Chase-type family vacation north up the Turnpike onto I-75 with a peculiar light flickering on the dash. My husband is not one to take chances with a carload of whining children. So at the first possible Motorist Call Box he bailed. Of course back then the Mile Marker wasn’t 399 and we had no idea where we were. After about 15 minutes our savior arrived with a tow truck from a place called Roger’s Tire. They had to call waaaay down to Gainesville for a part so we had time to kill (in addition to some young’uns just asking for it). Since it was winter we risked our lives and actually WALKED, looking for lunch and some distraction. Then an amazing thing happened - we turned onto a charming street called Main and our breath was taken away. Yep, you guessed it, the recently transformed Main Street in “Downtown Beautiful Alachuaaaaa”. We had found it, we ate the beef, and we noticed the actual trees. People were friendly. Could we have wandered into a charming replica of Disney’s Town of Celebration? Or, in fact, had we found an original that even Disney couldn’ t duplicate? Being South Floridians we of course high-tailed it out of town as soon as the car was ready, leaving Alachua in our dust, but with a longing in my heart. Fast forward: my career was reaching the “I’ve got to get out of here” stage but my husband was hanging tough. He LOVED his job, “I can’t believe they pay me to do this”, he crowed. Ahhhh but then they reorganized the company and the Higher Power decided to call his name. “Wally, boy, whatchoo thinking, you think you can eat and drink and live that wild South Florida high-life and not pay a price?” BOOM, zap, fizzle: a mild – mild mind you – heart attack and that man was paying attention! To be continued … November 2010 You may remember where we left off. My husband Wally had just had a mild heart attack. He may be slow to act but he’s not stupid. He reached in his desk drawer and dusted off those retirement papers. Now the ball was in my court. As some of you know, my career was a bit … different. When asked, I often just said “Oh, I work for the government”, especially in a bar or at a BBQ. My husband actually cringed waiting for me to answer. Somehow saying, “Yes, I’m the director of the Sexual Assault Treatment Center and Child Protection Team” seemed to put a chill on the evening. I was a late bloomer so having a career was very important to me. Having a career at all was a bit of a challenge given the times – but that’s another story for another day. After what seemed like ten thousand hours of night school, I eventually got my Master’s Degree and got two great jobs* – yes two, apparently that’s my pattern, juggling many things. *You remember “jobs”, when you were actually paid to do something worthwhile for which you were qualified? After doing the appropriate amount of hard time, I was mentored into becoming the Director of the agency, had a wonderful crew of people working under me and a few good people above me. Things moved along nicely until the “Green Acres” bug hit me. Since I’m surely not Zsa Zsa Gabor, I must have been channeling Eddie Albert’s character when I discovered Alachua. It takes time and willpower to disentangle a 40 year adult life in one place. Real decisions had to be made. First, could we afford to retire? Fortunately, both kids were off pursuing careers and higher education. Fortunately, we were still in the housing bubble and knew after 28 years in one house, we should make a big gain. Fortunately, Wally was a hard-working man all of his life and had a great pension coming. Fortunately, I’ m a bit of a daredevil in some ways. Fortunately, I had an amazing benefactor (another story), so things looked pretty good in that department. Unfortunately, figuring out what we wanted our new lives to look like took a good bit of inner searching and outer driving around! Five acres in the middle of nowhere at $60,000 seemed idyllic and unbelievable; but then again we were city folk so that might not be such a good idea. How about, how about, how about … …and what the heck WAS the name of that place up off I-75 near Gainesville? Meandering our way back from Birmingham one fine winter afternoon in 1998, I found myself looking at pecans, pecans, pecans in Tifton, Ga. Totally bored I picked up a Real Estate booklet and, lo and behold, it fell open to a vine-covered, falling down house on Main Street in North Florida. As Wally imagined unlimited pecan pie, I snuck off to the ladies’ room and called that Realtor lickety-split with my new fangled cell phone. He said sure we could look at the house, how long would it take us to get to Alachua. Counting the time it took me to trick Wally into “finding that cute little town”, I think about 3-4 hours. We pulled up to the house and Wally took one look and said “are you crazy?” Thank God (or whoever you choose) that Realtor was g o o o o o d. Turns out he grew up in South Florida so he knew just exactly what to say to me. Wally was a little harder nut to crack. All he could see was a house about 4 inches off level, covered in some horrible prickly vine. The family room was hanging off the back and, oh goody, it actually had jalousie windows. The floors were covered in what once I’m sure was stunning gold hi- low shag carpeting. Oh yes, it was a dream come true … but did I mention the columns and the wrap-around porches? How about the 14’ ceilings? Or the fact that it was on Main Street and zoned commercial? What I saw was the best of all worlds: a charming small town, a house that was just crying out to be loved again, and the possibilities. Probably I have failed to confess that my tiny South Florida house – and a paid storage shed – was stuffed with books, books, books. Lurking in my inner child was a dream of living in a bookstore. It was time to call my own bluff. So, when Realtor Bob called in mid-December to say there was a contract on the house, I cried. Yes, I did. I sulked, I whined, I grumped at Wally. I tried to get in the holiday mood, but zip, nada, zilch. A Christmas Miracle. Good ole Realtor Bob called again, I think December 19th, the contact had fallen through and “Oh, did I want the house?” Now remember, I lived in South Florida where houses were astronomically priced. When Bob told me the selling price on the fallen-through contract, I realized I could practically buy it on a credit card! “I’ll take it!” “Don’t you want to negotiate?” Idiot! No phone calls to Wally, no negotiations. “Just fax me a contract and I’ll fax it back.” I made a few calls to the “wolf-lawyers” and funding was secured, just like that. I signed the contract and sent it back. THEN, I called my husband and suggested we go out for a nice romantic dinner. We’d been dating since 1961 and married since 1965, so he wasn’t misled. His surprise wasn’t that I wanted to buy the house, but he was a bit stunned that I had actually already signed a contract, on my own, no spouse. This put a “slight” damper on the holidays as we struggled with the meaning of all of this. A necessary pause: TMI (too much information) could boringly go here about the inner workings of long marriages – your imagination. Continued in January 2011 JANUARY 2011 Where we left off…. Wally’s “surprise wasn’t that I wanted to buy the house, but he was a bit stunned that I had actually already signed a contract, on my own, no spouse. This put a “slight” damper on the holidays as we struggled with the meaning of all of this. A necessary pause: TMI (too much information) could boringly go here about the inner workings of long marriages – your imagination. “ Did you ever have a person in your life who you endured rather than embraced? I think we all have them, we had one. Well ironically this is the person who catapulted us to Alachua. Rosanne: “I’m getting tired of you not making a decision.” Wally: “I can’t believe you rushed into this alone.” The unloved innocent observer: “Well most people are afraid of a big changes.” DUH! I AM TRAINED to see these things - talk about the shoemaker’s children having no shoes! I missed entirely that Wally wasn’t against the move, he was just afraid of this change. And then, there is my embarrassment of having to give her credit for her insight. Arrrgh! People who know me know I LOVE change. I look for new adventures, I get involved when I should keep my mouth shut, I give advice at the drop to the hat. My back story is that I was raised to be afraid of everything and at some point in my life I decided to “call my own bluff”. Those of you who read my newsletter may recognize this as one of my monthly columns. I WANTED: a change; to experience small town life; and I wanted to change my daily life. Wally was pretty contented with his daily life. I NEEDED to remember that marriage is a joint endeavor and my husband simply needed a little old fashioned courting. So, The High Springs Herald started to be delivered to our Fort Lauderdale home – just lying innocently around the house. Comments were dropped casually that we didn’t even have to live in Alachua, that it was just an investment. Not exactly a lie. Back to the heart attack. I bought the property in January 1998 and mostly it sat without commitment. Wally was being lulled along but in June 1999 God knocked on his heart. After his surgery, treatment, and physical therapy he began to believe there was more to life than Ma Bell. Lazy weekend trips to North Florida got planned just to check on our new “investment”. • Wally had a local electrician check out the old the knob-and-tube wiring – it was replaced immediately. • Slowly a bedroom was cleaned out, carpet removed, wooden floors were sanded and refinished; everything else was painted white and then we added a bed and dresser. • Clean bathrooms are a pretty big requirement in my life so we tackled one bathroom as best we could. I seem to remember my doctor son screaming “hanta virus” at one point as we unearthed mounds of squirrels’ nests. In other words, we made our own little nest, you know rather than paying those exorbitant $39 a night motel bills to stay in Alachua/High Springs! The trap snapped. We started coming to Alachua every other weekend, alternately adding a Friday or a Monday. I started making sure most of my work got done Tuesday-Thursday even if I had to go in at 5AM and stay till 9PM –just to make sure my calendar was clear for Mondays or Fridays. I started negotiating with long time colleagues. It was not unusual for the new crazy lady in the old Thigpen house to be seen pulling weeds by the light of the Main Street lamps on a Friday night. Wally bonded H.C. Cauthen, the Snapper dealer on Main, through heart attack discussions. Somehow H.C. needed to test-drive lawn mowers just at about the same time our grass was getting too high. H.C. was our first loss in Alachua. One weekend we came up and the grass was two feet tall so we checked on H.C. only to find he had passed on. One Monday night I thought it might be a good idea to go to a Alachua City Commission meeting just to get a feel for town politics. Now remember, this was back in 1998. Oh boy, what excitement! Passions were high. The developer vs. tree hugger performance was on. Coming from South Florida, I knew how important these wars were. As painful as it is, this is democracy in action: people passionately fighting for what they believe in. Even when it got ugly, being open-to-change became a way of life. The struggle for economic development while preserving a high quality of life is a worthy struggle. We need both and I applaud all the warriors. Somewhere in 2000 Wally put in his retirement papers. I convinced HR to put me in a lower position on a part time basis at the same rate of pay since I was overqualified for the job and could get it done in half the time. I negotiated with a former employer to take me back as a consultant. With the age of the computer so much work could now be done away from the office and just in time for my new life. In 2000 we decided we had already moved to Alachua in our minds, now we just had to bring along our bodies. We put our homestead up for sale and sold it in six weeks. I rented an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, and, guess who moved to Alachua full time, you got it – the reluctant husband. We visited back and forth, he hating South Florida more and more; I envying rural life more and more. In 2001 the renovations began on The Pink Porch using Architect Gene Davie Architect and Contractor Jim Cottingham. Wally took to renovations like a duck to water spending money like a drunken sailor until the Contractor realized that I was still the only person on the deed. Quietly he started calling me in Fort Lauderdale. We worked it out. Through the end of 2002 I commuted – yep, 300 miles one way – 5 hours no matter how fast you drove. By June 2004, loneliness finally overcame both of us – after all we had met when I was 12 and he 14. In July I fully moved to Alachua and in September we opened The Pink Porch Bookstore. And poor Wally hasn’t had a moment’s peace since then! PS: In a moment of weakness, and in order to qualify for the 30 year mortgage, Wally is now on the title! Thank you for allowing me to share my “Road to Alachua” story with you. I’m sure readers would like to hear yours - send along a draft and we’ll see what works out. |
