Too Hot to Sleep

November has put a heavy gray lid over us. Days are short and brisk. 

It can get dreary as the routine of gray cloud cover goes on. Short days robbed of daylight by the prevailing gloom begin to be felt.

In Minnesota November is often not a lovely month. 

Thanksgiving helps to redeem it. Pumpkin pie, turkey and dressing, and family and friends gathered, are a great antidote to days edging in. 

For lots of us, as well, anticipation and preparations for the holidays pulsate with stronger energy the darker the days get.

It’s this seasonal mix – dreariness of weather and the homecoming thoughts many of us hold to – that makes November a time to think about dear ones gone, absent from us on earth.

It’s well-spent time to occasionally bring to mind those who’ve left their mark on us, often in lasting ways. 

Perhaps it was this that made my sister think of an old neighbor. She wondered if I knew the year this dear friend of ours passed away.

I did some checking to see if I could find the answer for her. It wakened my curiosity. I wanted to know too. 

This sweet farm woman passed away so long ago. But some folks, while you don’t always have them in mind, you never forget.

The year of her passing was found and the question  solved. But the search kicked off for me vivid memories of pleasant visits with this elderly neighbor when I was a girl.

I liked to walk up her steep hill to sit and chat awhile. They're remembered entirely as forenoon visits.

She often was making bread, or waiting while it set to raise, or was at some stage in baking (cookies and desserts were a given in a farm kitchen in those days) when I called on her.

We sat in her living room. The room had a door which entered from the outside. This was the door used by me.

The door was open to the outdoors in the summer. It made the visiting both informal (green nature and birdsong on the other side of the door screen) and cozy.

I had a seat by the door. She took the easy chair. I don't recall she took her apron off but she may have. Like the flowers outside she lovingly tended, her apron was such a part of her.

Sometimes her husband, every bit as liked by my sister and me as the friend I came to see, joined us from work he was doing outside. 

My visit gave them a chance to "sit a spell." It was a break from tasks which began at early rising. Their work day (as farmers with a dairy herd) revolved around their cows. Milking time took precedence over everything.

We were a companionable trio. Possibly in some way - as I look at it now - the couple were surrogate grandparents for me. Mine lived far away.

Even then, probably, I was something of a historian. The stories my friend told of earlier times were interesting to me.

Her early life which she touched on, perhaps in response to questions from me, have all been forgotten. All but this one about to be shared. 

Why it remains, while the others have faded, is one of the mysteries of memory.

Perhaps it's because it was a story of another summertime – the summertime when she was a girl like me. 

She lived in Iowa then. It was hot Iowa in the summer. Humid nights when temperatures stayed up were common. 

It was before rural electrification. Electric fans to cool a closed-in room weren't an option.You put up with your misery as best you could.

She said on those unbearable nights she slept below the opened window. It was cooler on the floor than in bed. 

On the floor there came across her an occasional stir of air. It was moving air which can be such relief on a beastly hot Midwest night.

Mattresses may have been moved off the beds for more comfortable sleeping. The details elude me now. 

All I remember is how wide eyed I listened picturing my elderly friend brought to the necessity of catching a breath of air below the window sill.

That story illuminated her background as stories of a personal nature can do. 

It’s my connecting point with her and always will be. At ten or so I could image it vividly. It made her past so real.

Ro Giencke

November 17, 2013

 

Beneath the Cottonwood Trees at the River

How good it is to have a line of light at the horizon again as we get up. 

It's like shaking off hibernation to have the earlier sunrise. Hugely appreciated is the setback of our clocks to central standard time.

In time it will be back to dark at 8 AM as days shorten. In the surfeit of the holiday season the late arrival of sunrise doesn't seem as big a deal as now in the industry and energy of fall. So for our newly returned light I am grateful.

Snow comes in later today with totals of 1-4." Weekend temperatures being mild, and foliage remaining surprisingly vivid, we took a drive down the Mississippi River where color is hanging on even better than here. 

The orange, red and brown patchwork  of the wooded bluffs, and the bright yellow leaves of the birch trees in Frontenac State Park above Lake Pepin, made us glad we fit in the color tour which otherwise eluded us as we got busy with October things.

The river road was a coincidental but appropriate prelude to the next thing enjoyed. We had a chance to hear Garrison Keillor. It was at a book signing. 

His new book O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound brought out an appreciative fan base which included us.

Keillor is famously known for A Prairie Home Companion and his Lake Wobegon monologues but it's geographical connection in particular that draws me to his works.

He grew up near the Mississippi River not so far from where our kids were raised. Their play was, in many ways, not very different from his time of youth. 

Although his fields had given way to rows of suburban homes, in which we came as young families to have our piece of land as part of the American dream, the river which marks the eastern boundaries was unchanging. 

The river put something of its timeless quality into the neighborhoods - and I like to think, into the children who grew up there.

Keillor sometimes in those years wrote articles for our big city paper. His pieces may have been on the Opinion page. This I recall less than the interest with which I seized upon any column with his byline.

My favorite articles were his writings about his boyhood in Brooklyn Park. It was essentially country then. 

He biked past cornfields, whiled away hours roaming and exploring and spent extensive time in thought under the big cottonwoods on the banks of the river. 

At the book signing we learned more of his early days. It was a time when a boy could go up in the Foshay Tower, the tallest building in the Twin Cities, and from the top see the countryside that lay about. 

From Hopkins to the west, to the truck farms and potato farms of his area to the north, the city had not yet engulfed the rural.

As a young person (perhaps to earn money for college - he didn't specify) he worked on those farms. He came to know the ache in the small of the back that comes with labor on a potato farm.

Keillor is funny. That's no surprise. It's how clever spills from him that gives him his genius. Clearly it's as natural to him to be quietly humorous as it is to breathe. 

He talks of walks to the school bus in those far off days when the winter elements conditioned you. 

He refers to blizzards in which you couldn't see your hands in front of you. He held up his hands commenting their distance to his face was even closer when he was small.

He tells of school never being canceled. He says this is why Minnesotans are good spellers. 

With school never closing due to weather (his school was Anoka), every lesson plan was carried out, including the emphasis on making excellent spellers out of us.

It was a most enjoyed presentation. Even got my picture with him!

Ro Giencke
November 5, 2013

O is for pumpkins

Writing a letter recently I stopped the pen at October. It was the first word down and at the top of the sheet. 

The O which grandly started out the date caused me to pause a moment.

O is ideal as the starting letter of the month of October it occurred to me. 

October is the month of pumpkins. "O is for pumpkins" may not be alliterative but it's to the point. 

O is the shape of the pumpkins which dominate fall decorations and fill our thoughts with the good tastes of the season.

October in our area has become one big pumpkin patch. Pumpkins sell in stores, at stands in city parking lots (where venders bring their produce) and they glow like big orange bulbs in the growing fields outside town.

Field pumpkins were unknown to me as a girl. I don't recall seeing pumpkins in gardens or planted as a crop. The first October I saw pumpkins in their natural state at the side of the road it took my breath away. It was beautiful to me.

We were small town kids who lived in the country in the summer and went back with the start of school in September. The essence of the season of bringing in the abundance of the land was known to us only in a generic way. 

Country neighbors had the satisfaction of watching pumpkins grow large for bringing in for making pumpkin pies and carving jack o'lanterns. We weren't part of this richness of completion and expectation.

With the return to the classroom summer and the largesse that fulfilled itself in the harvest dropped from our minds. Halloween with bags of candy on the horizon was the harvest we pretty much concentrated on.

Nowadays buying pumpkins in October is like visiting apple orchards. We gravitate to the rituals which, more than the calendar, let us feel the change in the days. 

This year's pumpkin is purchased, carved and rests on our doorstep. It awaits the costumed parade that makes Halloween night go quickly as the treats are handed out.

October is festive with decorations. It holds its own with Christmas soon to come. Pumpkins on doorsteps, tubs of golden chrysanthemums in front yards, cornstalks tied to mailboxes, bright fall foliage and the very red rosehips and other berries which are winter's fruit make it a pretty month.

Pumpkins are also to be seen as canned pumpkin on the grocery aisles. As customers we're being reminded to buy ahead for Thanksgiving Day. It's probably a smart thing to do. 

O is for pumpkins. Perhaps no other month is paired with its motif so perfectly.

Ro Giencke

October 28, 2013

Florida Cracker Cowboys

It wasn't our intention to follow Western painter Frederic Remington around but it appears this is what we've done.

From upstate New York, where he was born, to Omaha where we admired his bronze sculpture at the Joslyn Art Museum, we find ourselves crossing paths with him from time to time.

We ran into Remington most recently in connection with paintings he did in Florida. Circuitous routes often lead to interesting destinations. This is what has happened with Remington and us. 

 From a chance encounter with one of his Florida paintings - the one titled "The Cracker Cowboy" - we've advanced our interest in Florida Cracker Cowboys.

We're familiar with Remington as a Western artist. We've seen his paintings and bronzes as museum displays and as reproductions.

We've visited his boyhood home at Ogdensburg, a small town on the St. Lawrence River. I remember the surprise of it. This man so identified with the West has his roots way back East. 

We commented then that the St. Lawrence River, with its gentle countryside on either side, could have been his life's work. It was right in front of him.

Throw in the beautiful Andirondacks, which shoulder their heights not far from Ogdensburg, and you shrug  at the irony of his missed painting opportunities. 

He didn't consider them missed opportunities. His destiny was in the West. The West gave him the focus and the horizons his artistic outlet needed. 

He found his metier in Western scenes and went on to establish himself him as a premiere painter of  the West.

His paintings and bronzes of cowboys, and depictions of the U.S. Calvary and the Indians of the transmountain West were timely recordings. 

This piece of our country was fading away. The frontier West and pioneering eras which followed were passing from the scene.

The West was being settled, fenced and  tamed like a calf in the corral. Remington captured the courage and adventure of the  West in transition to easterners who vicariously lived its romance.

His works form a powerful collective image of the West. We can't separate the West from Remington. He's the spokesperson through his artistic interpretation and perhaps artistic license.

The fact that his body of cowboy art includes paintings of Florida Cracker cowboys therefore came as news. It started me on a hunt to learn about the cowboys of the peninsular state. 

It's an interesting trail to follow. The cowboys of central and southwest Florida wound up my area of study.

From Kissimmee to Arcadia to the Everglades there have been through the years fascinating cowhands and wealthy cattle barons to fill not one but several books.

This gets me to 1895 when Remington visited Florida on assignment with Harper's Magazine. He was there to chronicle the Florida cracker cowboys who rode what some were calling America's last frontier. 

The August 1895 issue reproduced Remington's paintings alng with his account of his time spent among the cowboys at Arcadia. 

His illustrated report cracked open the mystique of the palmetto cowboys who differed in many ways from their counterparts of the Western range. 

Differences aside, all had expert skills in rounding up and getting their herds of cattle to market. 

They shared the free spirit which it takes to live a harsh and demanding outdoor existence and one which is also joyful and largely satisfying.

Bone Mizell is the Florida cowboy in the painting called "A Cracker Cowboy." Remington has painted him astride his horse which is called a marsh tackie.

Remington didn't invent the name Cracker Cowboy, as one source I read puts it. All the same this picture of Bon Mizell helped make the name stick.

Cracker is a name with long useage in Florida. It likely comes from the sound of the crack of the leather whip which cowmen used to organize and move the herds.

Somewhere I read that Florida cattle were called cracker cattle well back in time. This term, too, probably derives from the cracking sound of the whip which can be heard  some distance. 

The painting of Bone Mizell, and the five other paintings in the series, are the type of illustrated feature a national magazine like Harper's is pleased to commission. 

Readers warm to novelty and they like to entertained as well as informed. Remington's article did all. In addition it put attention on Florida which was becoming a winter respite for wealthy northerners.

Morgan Bonaparte Mizell, known as Bone, is arguably the most famous Florida cowboy. He's certainly one of the best known of his era. 

He was a legend in his time. Remington's painting of Mizell doesn't flatter him. It strikes me as more a caricature of a Florida cowboy than as a portrait. 

This painting, and the other Florida paintings, have a detached quality about them. The artist isn't settting himself up to be the storyteller. He lets the cowboys do that for themselves.

They don't look concerned whether they're being painted or not. Remington has  them going about their business even if the business if keeping an eye out for the enemy. 

In Florida cattle country of the late nineteenth century this means rustlers sure as anything. The cowboys are one with the scene, intent upon what they're doing, in every situation Remington puts them.

The painting of Mizell, of the six in the series, most invites me in. The painting grows on you and you go back to look at it again and again. 

It doesn't  suggest specific action as some of Remington's Western paintings do. It's more laid back. It's a more casual rendition of the cowboy life. 

Maybe Remington was simply catching Mizell's weariness at the end of a day in the saddle. Perhaps he wanted to avoid a heroic theme as one can believe he put into his Western art.

Perhaps he felt something was missing in the Florida cowboys. The rough edges were there as with the Western cowpokes. It was something else. 

Possibly Remington had grown along with the maturing body of his work. He was observing with a more authentic eye.

As a young man Remington went West, to try his luck in the world as young fellows do. He dipped his paint colors in the bright memory of those first impressions. 

This early experience may easily have embued his Western works with a certain vigor the commissioned paintings lack. 

The Florida series is from a different phase of his career, which makes the differences in technique understandable.

I hand it to Remington that of his own honesty he didn't try to paint something into the Florida cowboys he didn't see. 

The characters, less colorful in appearance and performance than the riders of the Western range, are free to reveal themselves to the viewer without painting them larger than life.

Mizell's weatherbeaten exterior, forever captured by dint of Remington's magazine commission, points to his survivor skills as a topnotch Florida cowboy. 

He has dealt with wild animals. He's withstood mosquitoes that can drive man and beast crazy, and which can suffocate a calf to death as they fill its nose and throat. 

He's been caught in torrential rains and burnt by subtropical sun. 

What he isn't able to do is curb in his excessive drinking. It's his biggest undoing and ultimately the cause of his death in 1921 at age 58.

Mizell was famous among his peers and and well known throughout Florida, and became nationally recognizable with Remington's painting. 

To his associates and friends he was the dependable cow hunter whose skills were as legendary as he was.

His cattle skills included expert use of his long braided bullwhip, which was the method for riding herd on cattle in the scrub brush. 

He had something like photographic memory in regard to the cattle brands and personal marks which identified cattle as they roamed free. 

Cattle rustling, rebranding and illegal selling of cattle bred considerable violence in the Florida cattle country. Mizell was mostly legal in what he did but not always by his own accounts.

It amuses me that Mizell, so far removed in all distinctions from the imperial court of France, was given Bonaparte as a middle name. 

His father, whose first name also was Morgan, admired Napoleon and named his son, born in 1863, eighth of twelve children, for the French Emperor. 

The name soon shortened to Bone. Mizell stood over 6 feet tall. He shot up as if to early on disprove physical or any other similarity with the little emperor of the brooding manners. 

He was liked by those in powerful circles and by the ordinary citizen who saw in Mizell something greater than his cowboy skills.

They gained from his vitality. They relished his humor. They respected his basic decency and honesty. They benefited from his generosity.

They mostly tolerated his knack for getting into trouble. All sorts of things put him on the wrong side of the law. 

Somehow he managed to get back on the good side of everyone which added more stories to the legends growing about him.

He was somewhat in the way of being the hometown hero. He wasn't perfect by anyone's measure but many had a certain pride of association with him.

There was potential in him that was held back by many things. People were at ease with him, for the most part, except perhaps when the drinking came on him. He didn't try or pretend to be someone he wasn't.

In cow country, where you got on with jokes and razzing, he was the butt of jokes and the teller of jokes and it didn't much matter whether he was taking it or giving it out. 

It didn't matter usually who was laughing at who. There was a live-in-the-moment attitude that was prevalent that threw caution to the wind. 

You took life as it comes. You enjoy it. You work at what you know and hope it suits you. It didn't take profound thinking for Mizell and his cow hunter friends to own a philosophy. 

The history of cowboys in Florida goes back a long way. Bone Mizell is actually a latecomer in the Florida cattle story. 

Florida celebrates its 500th year this year and this tells you how far back the Sunshine State's cow herding tradition goes. 

Juan Ponce de Leon, the Spanish explorer we remember for the story of his quest for the fabled Fountain of Youth, landed on Florida shores in 1513 and began the years which led to permanent European settlement.

Traveling with the Spanish explorers were missionaries and soldiers. Cattle to feed them were cargo aboard their ships.  

These herds are the origin of the thousands of wild cattle that came to roam free through Florida for the next four centuries. Florida didn't have a fence law until 1950 is a fact come upon in reading about the cracker cowboys.

First in the St. Johns River area of northeast Florida, and then the Kissimmee and Peace River areas, and across central and southwest Florida, cattle herding became a way of life.

It was taken up by the first settlers and their descendants and by new arrivals from Georgia and elsewhere.

The Seminole Indians are also part of the cattle herding heritage. They made the Everglades their land after their native grounds were taken from them.

The cow hand had a hard life. Rounding up cattle into pens in central Florida was almost an impossiblity. 

Rough and wet terrain, thick scrub and climbing vines over which to trip were everywhere. Deep water-filled holes caused horses to stumble or cattle to sink in the muck. 

It was the companionship of the work, as well as the lonely sojourns with self and nature, and often knowing no other way of life, that kept these cowboys at the job.

A friend, learning of my interest in Florida cracker cowboys, recommended a historical novel that he says is part of the reading curriculum in the elementary and middle grades in Florida schoosl.

The book is called A Land Remembered. It's considered important to students as a means of partaking in the state's history through a thoroughly researched and highly readable story.

The author is Patrick D. Smith, a prolific Florida author. The story begins in the troubled years just before the Civil War. 

Tobias MacIvey is bringing his wife Emma and their infant son Zech from the red clay hills of Georgia into Florida to settle and make a bigger life for themselves.

The book is much too engrossing to give much away. One of the places covered in the story is Punta Rassa. I want to talk about this a bit. We came to know about this place, and its history, during a stay at Fort Myers.

Summerlin Road, which we came to know in our time there, is a busy local route to the Gulf beaches. It's named for Jake Summerlin, one of the great Florida cattle men.  

The road somewhat, or very closely (I don't recall now) follows the trail Summerlin used for moving his cattle to Punta Rassa, the shipping port on the Gulf of Mexico.

A historical marker at a neighborhood park a couple blocks south of Summerlin Road as you near the Gulf says the site was once a watering hole used by Jake Summerlin  for his cattle as he moved them down the trail. 

The watering hole was the last watering stop for the cattle before they were went to market at Punta Rassa, the shipping port on the Gulf. 

As the final day on the road it was a chance to water and rest both the cattle and men. 

Summerlin, like the fictional Tobias MacIvey, made Punta Rassa the delivery point for their annual drives.Punta 

Rassa is mostly a footnote to history as you drive by on the Sanibel causeway. Look down and to the right and its remains are below you. 

Punta Rassa was on the south shore of Caloosahatchee River where it joins the Gulf. The site today is a popular boat ramp. 

Sanibel Harbour Resort and Spa is in the near vicinity. A historical plaque on Punta Rassa is a somewhat recent addition.

It's worth a detour to pull off the causeway before the toll booth and take the dead- end Punta Rassa road. 

Pause at Punta Russa, if you do make the drive, and consider for a moment the changes that touch all places as one layer adds to another.

In its heyday Punta Rassa had a significant role. It never was big. It was small row of wooden buildings along the white beach sand. 

Cattle holding pens and the wharfs completed this compact commercial area which was smelly with cow and horse manure and commingling of other odors probably too numerous to single out.

After days on the trail, sleeping in bedrolls, and riding herd on cattle through punishing climate and terrain, Punta Rassa was payment and party time. It was the the end of the journey and its reward.

The din created by the cattle herds and cowboys traveled far out over the estuary. First and foremost there is the bawling of uneasy cattle as they're loaded onto the steamers for transport to Cuba and Key West. 

Horses neigh, dogs bark, greetings are called out  and whoops of celebration play against the brisk cadence of business being carried out.

The smell of manure lies heavy in the humid air. It's not glamorous but cattle driving is a living and many at Punta Rassa at market time can conceive of no better livelihood.

The cattlemen received payment in Spanish gold for their cattle. The buyers at Punta Rassa paid an average price of $14 per head. 

Tobias MacIvey is paid $13,840 in Spanish gold doubloons for the 860 head of cattle on his first drive in Patrick D. Smith's novel. 

As he gains experience, and establishes cattle buying points along the way, he and his crew a few years later make a late summer drive of  2,000 head of cattle and get a correspondingly higher payment.

Jake Summerlin, who played an important role at Punta Rassa as cattle driver and businessman, was a generation previous to Bone Mizell. 

His career in the Florida cattle industry spanned much of the nineteenth century. Summerlin died November 4, 1893 in Bartow, Florida. 

A story on Florida cowboys isn't complete without mention of Collier County pioneer and cattleman Robert "Bob" Roberts Jr. 

Roberts moved his family 100 miles across difficult palmetto prairie by oxcart in 1914 to settle at Immokalee. 

The wide open territory, with its unfenced spaces and free grass, furnished the start to Roberts' successful ranching venture. 

He was active in his local church, community and state cattlemen's organizations. He and his wife Sarah were later joined by their adult children in the ranching enterprise. 

Roberts Road in Immokalee honors the Roberts family and Bob Roberts Jr. specifically. The 1927 two-story Roberts ranch house is the site of a Collier County museum. 

The Collier County museum at Immokalee is well worth a visit. You may find it puts you on a trail of your town to cowboy stories to enjoy, share and collect.

Book sources used for this article:

A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith, published 1984. Winner of Florida Historical Society Tebeau Prize for most outstanding Florida historical novel

At the End of the Oxcart Trail by Maria Stone, published 2001 (family-told record of the Roberts ranching family of Immokalee, Florida).

Florida Cow Hunter  The Life and Times of Bone Mizell, by Jim Bob Tinsley, published 1990 by University of Central Florida Press/ Orlando

Jacob Summerlin: King of the Crackers, by Joe A. Akerman, published 2004 by  Florida Historical Society. (This book is added here although not used in my research).

Ro Giencke - February 26, 2013

Historic Smallwood Store on Chokoloskee Island

Exit 80 is the exit ramp you'll need if headed to historic Smallwood Store from I-75 in Southwest Florida. 

Whether proceeding east to Miami from Tampa, or Gulf-bound from the Atlantic coast, the exit is toward the west end of the Florida tollway known as Alligator Alley.

We arrived at the Smallwood Store, and the charming little Ten Thousand Islands gateway of Chokoloskee Island, by way of another route. 

We were traveling US 41, locally called Tamiami Trail, on a trip to poke around and explore the edges of the Everglades.   

After a stop at Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, and a walk along the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk to the old alligator hole, with eagle sightings along the way, and a gorgeous spiderweb strung between trees with morning sunlight making irridescent lacework out of it, we advanced to Everglades City. 

The requisite stop there was the Everglades National Park north gateway welcome center. 

It was a visit full of interest and learning. The park ranger program gave us new insights into this area which is complex and so amazingly simple at the same time. 

The simplicity is the wonder that surrounds you. All you have to do is open your senses to it to take in the grandeur. It's before you and hopefully it will be for years to come. 

We'd heard about the historic trading post that Charles "Ted" Smallwood started on Chokoloskee Island in 1906. The Smallwood store was our next destination. 

Chokoloskee was the name once applied to the entire Ten Thousand Island region. 

This is information I came upon later as I researched the store. The name is from its earliest days. Chokoloskee means "Old House" and is an old Seminole name.

The Smallwood store followed eleven years after George W. Storter Jr. began his trading post and general store in Everglade on the mainland four miles to the north. 

Both stores traded in alligator hides, deer skins, plumes, pelts and produce from land and sea. The stores, serving the half-wild Everglades region, were vitally important to the customers and communities they served.

Chokoloskee Island was serviced by boat or ferry until 1956 when a causeway was built connecting it to the mainland. 

With the causeway it became instantly accessible by car although  for many it remained a far distant dot on the Florida map. 

As we crossed the causeway we were struck by the lush plantings on the Chokoloskee side. It was late December when we visited and not exactly blooming time. 

Any major brightness of display was in holiday decorations. The explosion of color from flowering trees and shrubs that beautify wintertime Florida typically comes later. 

 Chokoloskee, however, greeted us immediately with vivid stretches of of bougainvillea on both sides of the highway. 

 We think it was bougainvillea but our expertise as such is limited to the Midwest. Much, therefore, gets to be a guess after that.

The flowers were definitely tropical and splendid in their crimson appeal. We felt as if we had been delivered to one of the Carribbean countries.

Color makes Chokoloskee, about a third of a square mile in circumference, a botanist's perpetual paradise.

The island rises into hills as much as twenty feet above sea level. The hills were an unexpected feature to us. 

Much of Southwest Florida is flat scrub and swampland which makes hilly Chokoloskee a pleasant change. The gentle crests and dips were like a ride on the roller coaster after a pleasant day at the fair.

We knew the hills didn't come from a natural process. We believed we were driving upon an ancient Calusa shell mound.

We had learned about the Calusa Indians of South Florida. They were a large and powerful culture which flourished before the arrival of the Spanish explorers 500 years ago. 

The Calusas were a mound building people. Where they camped and lived along the low coastline land was built up over time. 

These man-made elevations provided  protection from animals and some safety at times of hurricanes. Oysters and clams, in abundance in the shallow Gulf waters, served as both food and building materials. 

As a native group the Calusas are extinct but their former habitations are identified by shell mounds such as comprise Chokoloskee's pretty green hillocks. 

The Smallwood store is at the end of the island road. It perches on stilts above Chokoloskee Bay. 

The bay, about two miles wide and ten miles long, is separated from the Gulf of Mexico by the Ten Thousand Islands of which Chokoloskee counts as one. 

Except by sailboat or other watercraft tiny Chokoloskee Island got the remote end of the stick when Florida was put together. It was settled long after other areas of the state. 

The years following the Civil War (1861-65) was a period when the nation was on the move. The 1862 Homestead Act was instrumental in this and there were other factors. 

The War with its fraternal strife and huge loss of life on the battlefields was a game changer. It brought soldiers into contact with places they otherwise would not have seen.

Some liked what they saw and had a hankering to light out and make these places their home after the war was over. It was a seismic shift as the country adjusted to peace and the many wounds from division began to heal.

There was much up and moving as new opportunities were sought and then word would go out of some place even better. 

Families barely had time to unpack their few essential household goods before the itch or the necessity came along to move somewhere else. 

 Immigrants were coming to the country in large numbers for a variety of reasons. 

Folks in the East also had a restless spirit. They were spurred to try their fortunes in the golden West and anywhere where the talk of land was promising.

Land to claim for your own was the real gold at the end of the rainbow for many. 

The first settlers in Chokoloskee's permanent population arrived in the 1870s. There were five families by 1882. The island remained sparsely populated. Neighbors were important because there were so few. 

Fishing and farming, and other pursuits related to the abundant natural resources, were primary means of making a living. 

Ted Smallwood, a North Florida native, settled in Chokoloskee after previous visits to the area. He's a very good example of the American mood in the late 1890s. 

An era of prosperity was building after some rough times. People were seeking out places to put down roots, raise their families and make a go of it in places suited to them.

The Seminole and Miccosukee Indians were among customers at the Chokoloskee trading post which he established in the family's two-room residence.

Until the Tamiami Trail opened in 1928, and other shopping options became available, many from this area of the Everglades relied on the Smallwood store, especially after the Storter store closed with the advent of the building of the Tamiami Trail.

Smallwood learned the Indian language. His store and his linguist abilities were a cultural bridge to the benefit of all. I later read that Smallwood was so trusted by the Indians that he kept their money for them at his store.

He was a friend of Chief Tigertail, a name kept alive with Tigertail Beach on Marco Island, as well as the memory of friendship between these two men of different cultures. 

The present store, which Smallwood built in 1917, is located on the mangrove margins of Chokoloskee Bay. It went up at at a time when the island community was growing. 

The Smallwood family was part of the growth. Five children came to be born to Ted and Mamie Smallwood. The last child, a son, was born in 1917. 

For a long time the post office was at the Smallwood store. Ted Smallwood was Chokoloskee postmaster for 25 years. 

Mail arrived by boat from Everglade, which was renamed Everglades after Barron Collier bought the townsite in 1922.

Customers coming to the store for staples and their mail used the store as a central gathering spot. 

It was a place of welcome, business and hospitality. Neighbors and friends could meet, giving the transactions at the big store counter a friendly touch. 

The Smallwood store weathered more than one hurricane. In 1924 a hurricane blew in the front door bringing in four feet of water.

Smallwood prepared accordingly for the next big blow. He moved the store foundation over a few inches, raised the store eight feet and put in the pilings on which the store still rests. 

When the strong hurricane of September 1926 came through, with widespread devastation,  the Smallwood store remained intact.

Mamie Smallwood, key in her own right as a Chokoloskee Island pioneer, died in 1943. Ted, who retired as storekeeper in 1941, passed away in 1951. 

The store continued operations. It was run by oldest daughter Emma Thelma Smallwood, known as Thelma. 

She kept the store going for another four decades. During this time, in 1974, the store was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Thelma died December 19, 1982 at which time the store was closed. 

Each generation has its heroes and those whose vision includes the past. 

Family members of the next generation of Smallwoods, realizing the historic value of the store, and the story it has to impart to the future, have been at the forefront of its preservation efforts. 

Restoration efforts begun in 1990 have had their snags as do all labors of love. 

The store took a hit from Hurricane Wilma in 2005. It sustained roof damage. The hurricane also blew away the front steps. Replacement and repairs put the old store to rights again. 

The store remains open as a historical landmark and museum with small gift shop. 

A modest $5.00 admission lets you have your time to look at the displays and appreciate the cool air off Chokoloskee Bay as it comes through the open windows and doors. 

You can imagine customers waving palmetto fans in the heat of a summer day and catching the breeze as they pass the open door overlooking the wharf.

You catch their sighs of appreciation of this raised vantage point at water's edge where bay breezes easily reach.

It is interesting and educational to spend time in the neighborly and hard-working world the store portrays. 

As a a taste of the ends of the world it may explain why  visitors to Southwest Florida seek out this site. The Smallwood store, as it turns back the clock and time, is refreshment away from the busy workings of our lives.


Ro Giencke - February 15, 2013