A FIRST VISIT TO FLORIDA

A personal experience of a first visit to Florida.

It was my first visit to Florida. The year was 1971.
However it was not by air that I arrived in the Sunshine State.
It was summer and as a student in Edinburgh it was time to flex my wings before my second year. I applied to work at Camp America and found I had been placed in Massachusetts in the Berkshire mountains.
The children all came from New York and its environs and all were Jewish children. Steve Rubin, son of the camp owner, was an English language Professor at Tampa University in Florida and he had arranged for many Floridian students to go to his father's camp at Pittsfield Massachusetts. So it was at Camp Onota I was placed for eight weeks in the summers of 1971 and 1972, the latter being the summer of the Munch Olympic Games and its terrorist attack on the Israeli team.
At camp were the two Floridian blond Booth brothers as fellow camp councillors. Bob had enrolled in the US Navy at Pensacola in the coming September, his way to avoid the draft to serve as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Jim on the other hand was only sixteen years of age and at that time was a legal car driver in Florida but not New York State nor Massachusetts.
With two weeks to explore the USA before returning to Scotland I had been invited to drive down with the Booth boys and stay at their lake side family home near Orlando.
It was a holiday I could not refuse.
Grandparents visited their Onotans mid-stay, as parents had often flown off to see Europe, and generously gave us monetary gifts to ensure we looked after the children! So armed with $880 (1971 rates) we departed enjoying a final gathering in NYC with around ten councillors. We enjoyed an Italian meal at Mama Leone's, which has since closed. On a recent visit to NYC, I learned it had been run by the Mafia! Not knowing that at the time we set off immediately after the meal at which a violinist played to our table- ahhhh how we lived it up as students!
As we drove south I noticed a field beneath the road and I could not help but comment. "Ah, I see you have Ayrshire cows." Jim was quick to reply. " Hey, you got them in Scotland too?" After further stops at Petersburg in Virginia I noticed the warmth rise yet again but it was a very humid warmth in Savannah. At dawn we crossed into Florida slightly north of Jacksonville and we hugged the coast down to Daytona Beach before heading inland to Golden Rod where the Booth family home was situated.
A typically warm southern welcome greeted me and I was shown to my room. I was particularly intrigued by the contents of the bedside table. No not a Gideon's Bible but a hand gun! I was told to use it if anyone strayed into the room at right through the window. No, it was not likely, but it is an American's right to hold a gun licence and that is their deterrent of choice.
The lawn sloped down to Golden Rod Lake where Jim was quick to launch his speed boat and Bob showed me a few water skiing skills. Within the week I was crossing the wake on one foot , spinning round and leaping what I thought were logs but turned out to be baby alligators. Of course I began with a few falls but the warmth of the water was so inviting.
One afternoon in such glorious heat and warmth in the lake, I noticed a darkening sky. Within a few minutes, the temperature dropped and we made safe all the paraphernalia of the beach garden and craft. Then without warning the most torrential thunder and lightening struck and columns of torrential rain fell for a full twelve minutes. The temperature dropped around 15 degrees and we donned erstwhile redundant jumpers. Yet some twenty minutes later the storm had abated, the sun was out again and the tropical downpour was over. How I wished we had days like that at home.
The following day, a neighbour on hearing a Scot had arrived at the Booths, invited me into his three seater aeroplane and we saw Cape Canaveral (Now Cape Kennedy) on the west coast, drifted down Daytona beach to West Palm Beach and the Florida Keys. We landed in the Everglades to visit gardens and had lunch there before setting off again over Charlotte Harbor and Tampa before returning to Golden Rod.
Before too long it was time to return home and a train from Orlando took me to Washington DC from where our Camp America students assembled with tales to tell since our arrival in America some two months previously.
That was not quite the end of the Floridian story however.
One evening Mrs Booth showed me some of her family photographs. Her grandmother, who had died a few years before, was a Scot from Bridge of Weir. I told her that was not far from where I lived and I would go there, take some photographs and send them on to her. Armed with the family name of Russell I made my mission clear to those of that surname in the Renfrewshire village. One turned out to be a relative. They started to correspond.
That visit to Florida was thirty seven years ago. There have been many changes in Florida since making it everyone's favourite holiday destination every month of the year. But the hospitality, the kindness of the people and the climate remain constant. They await your experiences.

Stay in a Luxury Florida villa during your visit.

This blog was written by
Miller Caldwell
Author and Film Script Writer

Why not place a book in your luggage for the holiday?