Clermont

The Picket Fence

Word Count: 1497 Words


The tangerines ripened just before Christmas at the legendary Picket Fence in the charming town of Clermont Florida in 1969. Some of the fruit on these large trees were eaten before they were ripe; the anticipation of the rewarding explosion of juice, the chewy pulp, and the seed spitting was just too great to wait for the fruit to be in season. Even though weeks before Christmas the tangerines were green and tasted bitter, they satisfied cottonmouth, and the munchies, and eating them was worth the risk of a stomachache. Often an abandoned pile of green tangerine peels were left in the middle of the stony black road. This was evidence of where two cars had parked side by side, driver to driver, and while the drivers made plans for the evening activities, they pealed and devoured the green fruit. The driver of the car that pointed west down the hill toward Lake Minnehaha could absorb the outstanding sunsets, while the other driver in the car pointed up the hill might relish in the color frenzy of the twilight.

A stony black asphalt road that ascended above Lake Shore Drive was the Picket Fence; today this road is called Anderson Hill. The Anderson’s owned the fence at the bottom of the hill that gave the Picket Fence its name. It is funny that the fence was never really a picket fence at all, it didn’t have the pointy planks that beg to be tapped with a stick; the fence was a white wooden fence that you would expect to find on a horse ranch. I imagine that some child called the fence a picket fence one day while their Dad sped past the fence on a Sunday drive in their family’s station wagon and that name stuck. My sister says that it was probably a coded name so that the parents of teenagers wouldn’t know where their kids were partying on star filled weekend nights. But whatever the reason it was named the Picket Fence, the days of The Picket Fence are long gone, and the fat tangerine trees are now replaced by spectacular homes that are bold enough to try to compete with the sunsets.

Forty years ago at the Picket Fence, atop the spectacular tangerine grove, the entire panoramic view of Lake Minnehaha could be experienced. At sunset our eyes were drawn to a path that stretched across the lake with shimmering color that lead to the sinking sun. The distant shoreline was hidden by moss draped Cypress trees wading out into lake and guarding the water’s edge by the thousands. From the Picket Fence we were part of the sunset. There was an exciting brightness of color on the shiny green trees that were spotted with splashes of orange after our cherished tangerines became ripe. This brief moment of brightness reflected on our faces, and our faces were set a glow by the explosion of energy that was being experienced by everything around us. As we became absorbed in the event and captured in the celebration of beauty, the enhanced color changing before our eyes was like the sweeping arms of time, accelerating the anticipation of a memorable little town’s party night.

Spanish moss blanketed most of Clermont in 1969, left untouched the Redbug infested drapery would hang from the telephone wires clear to the ground. Osceola Street seemed to attract more than its fare share of Spanish moss. Like an itchy beard it gave haunting faces to the ancient Oak trees that shaded the root-slanted sidewalks of one of the town’s first neighborhoods. Many of the houses hidden behind the moss-gloved branches watched as these trees grew from saplings - trees that were perhaps offspring of their own timbers.

Heat - summer heat so hot you could see it. The three o’clock shower sometimes only sizzled on the smooth black asphalt roads that curved around small lakes on their hopeless effort to straighten and grid the growing town.

The children wore only Levi cutoffs, callused feet, and suntans. We were barefoot not because we didn’t have shoes, but to grow up in Clermont meant most of the time our feet were bare because half of the time was spent cooling off in the clear waters of the 17 lakes in our small town. Callused feet were like badge of honor, especially being twelve years old and freshly transplanted from Ohio. It was necessary to condition our feet like leather to be able to dash from shady spot to shady spot on the melting blacktop roads, and our foot skin had to be tuff enough to stop a sandspur’s needle before it had a chance to penetrate a soft spot, snap off, and remain festering in your foot for years. The lake water was warm and by no means refreshing but it was cooler when you were wet; and when we wore any type of shirt in the summer – even in the shade – it was soon sure to be soaked with sweat. Air Conditioning was few and far between and sometimes we would go to the grocery store just to cool off.

We could escape from the heat, we could hide from the thunderstorms, and we knew where the alligators and poisonous snakes were, but the things that everyone was prey to in Clermont were the fruit flies – gnats we called them.

Yankees tourist drawn to our town by the Citrus Tower thought that the folks down here were genuinely friendly because they thought that we were always waving at each other, but we were only trying to keep the gnats from buzzing in our ears. Over everybody’s head was a funnel of swarming gnats. You couldn’t swat them because they were too small and too tuff, you couldn’t outrun them, the funnel only followed you like a scarf in the breeze, and no spray would fend off these devilish bugs. Horses had been known to go crazy from these gnats as they swarm, covering their eyes in a buzzing horde and blocking out their vision. At picnics when you looked down at your food the pepper was crawling, and in school pink eye was passed around from child to child like bad grammar.

Being the 12 year old son of a new minister and moving to Clermont Florida in 1968 where a shotgun was as common as a flyswatter and the entire town could fit in the high school football stadium was an amazing adventure. Finding out that I was popular being the new Yankee minister’s kid in a small town of mostly southern Baptists was interesting. Coming to a town where the girls came of age at thirteen, and their boyfriends all came to my house to beat me up was the best test of my lifetime. Thank God I was smart or lucky enough to know what was coming so I was able to passed that test and meet them rather than to hide from them. I changed my life at twelve years old that one afternoon, and made some lifelong companions.

Today the time is ripe; and like the tangerines after Christmas, my bitterness has sweetened. I have seasoned past the bitterness of seeing the playground of my youth die and wither away to become divided into 1/4 acre lots with homes that I’ll never be able to afford. I can almost stand it when the dwellers of these eloquent but cookie cutter like neighborhoods call the place that they live Clermont.

Today as I walked past the place were the railroad tracks once were, the rails that as a child I walked on for over a mile without falling off were, in the lingering spirit of the forgotten trains I have had a change of heart. This portion of the railroad track has become a bike path, and as I walked I saw adult men clad in silly bright skintight riding costumes pumping their expensive racing bikes along these new bike paths. As I gave room to the pack of peddle on the path I felt annoyed, cheated, as if something had been taken away from me and now I was now the outsider. Soon I was walking past JC Beach, the place that once was the opening scene to almost all of our wild weekend adventures. As I soaked in the lake’s everlasting appeal I recognized that the charm of Clermont had not faded but only dimmed under the brilliance of my fond memories. I supposed that the silly looking men in there bright shiny bike suits are not unlike the wealthy fox hunters that founded this town centuries ago. And I bet that there once was someone like me who thought that paving over the clay roadways and hilly paths was as disrespectful as the new indoor toilets.