SpeakEasy –

Winter Haven kid here. Our little summer home was in Englewood, on Lemon Bay. Property was so undeveloped that we (a) had sulphur water from the tap for years after building, and (b) cleared the land ourselves from the house down to the edge of the bay. That was one brutally hot, sticky, skeeter-filled, sucky-mud summer. I was 7 and spent it chopping roots and hauling whatchamacallit plants taller than I was. Course there were the fun parts: going to the beach every day, feeding the scrub jays by hand and playing hide-n-seek in our little patch of piney woods.