Tales from the Suwannee River Country

By Emily B. Curtis

Tales of the Suwannee River Country, a collection of twenty-six stories and essays, traces the personal journey of Emily B. Curtis, who grew up in North Florida during the Great Depression. As a shy young writer and pianist, Emily led a life of poetry and music and later became a teacher. Her father, a local attorney, defended the victims of shootings in the region, which introduced Emily to the world's evils, and ultimately taught her powerful lessons about life.

From stories about small town American life in the South, to regional history and fiction, Tales of the Suwannee River Country will take you back in time to when the world was simpler and more secure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 19, 2002
• ISBN: 9781462088904

Emily B. Curtis

Emily B. Curtis grew up in North Florida, graduated with a B.A. in Education from Florida State College for Women, and did graduate work at the University of Tennessee. She was active in her church, playing piano from an early age, and later became a teacher at Suwannee High School. She currently writes and lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband. This is her first book.

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All Rights Reserved © 2002 by Emily B. Curtis

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I. Small Town Stories

MY THREE PARENTS

DUAL IN LIVE OAK

GROWING UP RICH

HERO FOR CHRISTOPHER

THE OLD SWIMMING HOLE

GOD’S CHILDREN

ALLIGATORS, SNAKE AND GOLF

FIRST CHRISTMAS IN THE NEW HOUSE

THE TWO SISTERS

SUNDAY VISIT

HOMETOWN SCANDAL

MARGUERITE

ORCAS ISLAND

A VISIT WITH MOTHER

II. History

LEO AND BIRD

SEMINOLES

ASSASSINATION

SEARS AND DOWLING PARK

III. Music

DRAMA FROM THE CHOIR

FAITH AND MUSIC

THE RED DRESS

IV. Fiction

ANGEL COME DOWN

VISIT TO AUNT MARTHA’S

MR. BROWN’S CHRISTMAS

SECOND VOYAGE

V. Final Thoughts

FUN, ROMANCE AND SURPRISE—IN A NURSING HOME?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This book is dedicated to my husband, Alfred Curtis, without whose skill in using the word processor, and his insistence I call a publisher, would never have been published.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Permission to use Gator Encounter, originally published in 1982 was granted from Charles Blackwell.

I. Small Town Stories

MY THREE PARENTS

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A Remembrance

Growing up I had two parents who were opposite in personality. My father was quiet and deep thinking, a lawyer who engaged in no small talk. My mother was lively, creative, articulate. Yet in some ways they were alike. Neither was demonstrative; they never smothered my sister or me with affection.

My father’s idea of a kiss was to press his thin cool lips to my forehead. He thought mouth-to-mouth kissing spread germs. Or said he did, with a sparkle in his brown eyes that made me doubt it. Sharing his introspective nature, I knew what that sparkle meant. My mother never kissed me but hugged me quickly if I had been away from home, and asked a hundred questions, never waiting for the answers.

They were alike in another significant way. They enjoyed quoting poetry and used it to express their love, or to teach a truth, or to celebrate an event. The words were not their own, but their intent was plain. Their feelings ran so deep that only this most intimate of the arts could express them.

It all began with mother teaching us Now I lay me down to sleep as we knelt by the bed. Our frame house in north Florida was drafty and heated only by fireplaces. I see her standing by the mantle in her long white flannel gown braiding her smoky-dark hair as she repeated each line. Her voice had a quiet ring to it that made this prayer and everything else she said seem important. The fire lazily licked the dying coals and occasionally popped as we drifted into sleep by this most comforting lullaby ever devised by man.

Mother also read stories to us at bedtime. Never Mother Goose—I had to read that for myself years later—but hearty classics she and Daddy loved. She read The Little Match Girl, and stories about Collette from Les Miserables. Too heavy for children? Perhaps, but we were to learn early, as my mother had, that life is real and earnest. Her own mother had died when she was sixteen. Her father was a brilliant, though irresponsible, lawyer who deserted his family. At eighteen, my mother left her small Georgia hometown to go to Atlanta where she learned to trim hats in order to support herself.

My mother made storytelling an art, using appropriate action and dialogue, sometimes lapsing into the soft Negro dialect we heard around us. She might exaggerate a bit to make a good story. Who cared? The warmth in her voice and the light in her gray-green eyes was truth enough. I had to grow up to realize she had deep insight into people and situations usually missed by others. I was too much in a hurry and absorbed in my music to look for beauty in things. Mother had a way with words that was hard to resist! This helped her later when she started selling antique furniture.

Like the blankets piled on our bed at night to keep out the damp chill of the north Florida winters, my sister and I were enveloped and warmed by poems and stories. Thus poetry became a third parent, a close companion while growing up. If we wanted to go somewhere my mother thought unsuitable she had appropriate verses at hand. She would quote Longfellow:

Stay, stay at home my heart and rest for homekeeping hearts are happiest.

Or Tennyson:

Wait until your wings are stronger Then, you too can fly away.

This didn’t lessen our disappointment; while it could be tiresome, it was better than scolding. Eventually I began to appreciate the use of poetry.

At thirteen I tasted an experience that awakened my lifelong appetite for poetry. I was walking home through a pine thicket one gray winter afternoon. I had just read Rupert Brooke’s Pine Trees and the Sky in English class. Looking up, I saw the trees darkly silhouetted against the clouded sky looking lonely, but free. I had seen them before, but not this way. For the first time ever I felt joy and sadness together. Yet, gladness overcame all, as Brooke wrote:

I saw the pines against the sky, Very beautiful and still, and bending over Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky. I was happy And laughed, and did no longer wish to die.

I learned that poetry is more than pretty words; it is an expression of someone’s experience—something my parents had been teaching me all my life.

Poetry became my passion. As an English major in college I filled my schedule with poetry courses. On rainy afternoons I would hide away in the stacks at the library to read my favorite poems and escape the constant activity of the sorority house. One afternoon I went with friends to see our idol, Ronald Coleman, in a movie in which he recited Justin McCarthy’s If I were King. My mother had quoted from it many times. I thought her warmth matched his.

Ah, love, if I were King, The stars would be your pearls upon a string The world a ruby for your finger ring And you should have the sun and moon to wear If I were King.

I appreciate the Victorians; they might have been prudish about sex, but they enjoyed rich language.

I was the only one in the group who was familiar with this poem. It was then that the uniqueness of my childhood became apparent to me. Among other things I had a mother whose dramatic style matched Ronald Coleman’s.

On my twentieth birthday she let me go to Jacksonville’s largest department store to select a gift. Costume jewelry, perfume, clothes? Indeed not. I bought a volume of Rupert Brook’s poems, which I still treasure. She looked disappointed when I returned. Mother wanted me to be more in the swing of things—to dress well and be popular.

My father and I had a close bond, being alike in looks and disposition. We communicated more with glances than words. When his eyes sparkled I knew that I had pleased him, or that he held all the high cards while playing Setback, or that he was enjoying some joke that his otherwise serious face belied. He loved poetry as deeply as my mother and had courted her with verse from the Bible such as, There are loves celestial and loves terrestrial.

He introduced us to his favorite writer, Edgar Allen Poe, through his occasional rendition of Annabel Lee. (I later learned that my father’s first sweetheart was named Annabel). He also recited The Raven. Later we graduated to Poe’s mystery stories that we read in the junk room on rainy afternoons.

I believe his favorite verse of all was from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur by Edward Fitzgerald:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ Moves on: nor all our Piety and Wit Shall call it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

All his favorites had a tinge of sadness. In spite of his humor, he had a melancholy streak that surfaced toward the end of his life.

While home from college one spring vacation, I went into his room to say good night. He was sitting by the fire. As he turned towards me, I heard him murmur,

Backward, turn backward, Oh Time in thy flight. Make me a child again, Just for tonight.

I wondered what he meant. Much later my mother told me a story and I was able to put the pieces together.

When he was fourteen his mother, whose feather bed he shared, married again. He felt displaced in her affection and carried this unhealed wound throughout his life. In a letter to his mother from college, he describes life as a vale of tears.

Yet, I remember him best for his dry wit, reciting, The boy stood on the burning deck, eating peanuts by the peck. I also remember his reputation for honesty and the esteem with which he was held by his friends and by fellow lawyers in our town.

I have his copy of The Rubaiyat, along with a few of his law books. The leather bindings are flaking with age and dust. I leaf through them trying to find some warmth in their pages, but they are as dry as their covers. I wonder how such a sensitive man could devote his life to the tensions of the courtroom. I think his compassion for people carried him through. During court sessions he would come home to mid-day dinner and hardly eat. I knew he was anticipating the outcome of the trial. Midway through his practice he gave up criminal and divorce cases, despising them both.

In our part