Judge Pope Hamrick Jr.

The most prominent building in our neighborhood was the Capitol and it stood on Monroe Street proudly looking down Lafayette Street towards the modest homes of Smokey Hollow. I could see the dome of the building from our porch and I remember my excitement of seeing Christmas lights that were strung from it at the start of the season. When I walked uptown I used it as shortcut, entering the basement on Adams Street and exiting the front of the building, underneath the wide front stairs. Sometimes I would stop and eat slivers of ice from the large bins kept under the stairs for the office water coolers. On weekend days I might walk up the white marble staircase to the main floor and purchase candy from Marie the Concessionaire. Blind from birth she always recognized me by my voice and told me of the happenings in the building that day. Sometimes I would ride the ancient elevator operated by Mrs. Simpson, my friend Ronnie’s Mother. She sat at a small desk on the basement floor, reading and waiting for the elevator bell to summon her to the different floors. The Capitol was not locked on weekends and my friends and I wandered the hallways playing hide and seek. I soon learned every nook and cranny of the building and even though there was a custodian, we could hear him coming and scamper away in our bare feet to another wing of the building.

When I was a boy, the downtown was crowded with shoppers and on the two main streets Monroe and Adams, the stores sat next to each other with their canvas awnings rolled out towards the street as they had year after year. All the stores were closed on Wednesday afternoons, but on Saturdays, the busiest day, farmers and their families flocked into town, staying all day, shopping and socializing with the friends they had not seen all week. Black customers congregated on two blocks of Adams Street and they enjoyed the day as if it was a holiday festival. Sometimes I walked this street, as there was much to see. I saw mothers nursing babies and others balancing bundles of laundry on their heads as they walked. There were men in groups passing the time of day and strolling in and out of bars and cafes meant only for black customers. I passed a beggar without legs selling pencils from a box. He was just inside a doorway and sat at the same spot every day. Finally, I passed a store that displayed, outside its door a monkey in a cage and I would stand and watch with fascination as it mischievously jumped around. One time I thrust my hand inside to pet him and received a nasty bite that required a trip to our physician, Dr. John Williams, for treatment.

Mostly, I walked up Monroe Street where I passed two popular restaurants, the Seven Seas, owned by my friend Eva’s father, and Holland’s. Both were popular with legislators, and they would sit inside these restaurants for hours and discuss the future of the State. Next was the State Bakery, where customers took a number and waited to be called for their orders. After Lovett’s, the only grocery store on the street, I passed the Black Cat, a dark and foreboding bar and pool hall. Sometimes I would stoop down and peer under its swinging double doors, wondering if I would recognize any customers. Walking along, I reached McCrory’s Dime Store, it along with Christo’s was the only five and dime in town. Customers at McCrory’s were lured inside by the smell of popcorn cooking at the front entrance and the lunch counter extended the length of the building. Sometimes I would see Leroy Collins, the Governor of Florida, eating at the counter alone and I would speak to him and received a friendly reply. The store only served white customers at this counter, but there was a smaller stand-up food counter for black customers at the side entrance. At my age, not understanding segregation, I wondered why I was prevented from eating there as the food looked as appetizing as that served at the white counter.

If I continued walking up Monroe Street, I passed Wilson’s Department Store where my mother purchased fabric and sewed dresses for my sisters. One time she let me pick material for a shirt she made and I wore it year after year. The clerks sent the cash from the transactions to a cashier on the second floor by placing the money in a cylinder that traveled up the side of the walls on tracks making a terrible racket.

Drug stores with soda fountains were much in demand. There were several I passed as I walked down town. Martin and Dalton’s was my favorite since it was across from the Baptist Church and when I was quite young it lured me there when I was supposed to be attending services. Church offerings were placed in small envelopes that provided boxes to check questions such as whether you brought your Bible, were you attending church and did you read your lessons. My offering was usually nickels and dimes saved from my allowance and from selling peanuts and placed in the envelopes every Sunday. But my best friend Bud would talk me into leaving Sunday school early and going to the drug store to purchase a coke or candy. Sometimes without any money we devised a plan to gently open our envelopes and take out a nickel for the purchase. Afterwards, we would happily run off to church, where after a few sermons on the need for money by Dr. Sanders our pastor, I gave up this practice.

Other drug stores were Bennett’s and Fain's. At Bennett’s, rough looking boys with ducktail haircuts sat outside on their motorcycles, smoking cigarettes and waiting to deliver prescriptions for tips. The drugstore was so popular; they opened a second store nearby called Little Bennett’s. I was partial to Fain's across the street because of the five-cent ice cream in a waffle cone. If I looked inside, I might see our neighbor Mr. Branch talking to his friend Dr. Fain, the owner. They both were there the night my father suffered a heart attack at home, and they called every doctor in town before they reached Dr. Briley who came and assisted him until an ambulance arrived.

Monroe and College Streets were home to movie theatres with names like the Ritz, the State and the Florida. At the State you could see a double feature, cartoon, and news for fourteen cents. I suppose it was free if one of your friends opened the exit door next to the stage that led into the alley and let you in. If light appeared during the show, you knew this was happening. The Ritz, although sporting a fancy name, was a little seedy. Inside, one passed through a curtain that led to a steep walkway that was the entrance to the theatre. I saw most of my cowboy movies there and afterwards rushed home to find my cap pistol and run around the house using our broom as my horse, pretending I was Gene Autry out to save the world.

In the summer, if I tired of just walking around downtown, I sold boiled peanuts or hawked newspapers for a few dollars. A basket of the peanuts was rented from a man from Monticello who had the monopoly on the business. He stood in front of Bennett’s Drug Store and silently gave you the bags that you sold for ten cents. Your commission was about three cents a bag, making perhaps enough to go to the movies. You were expected to shout out “Monticello fresh boiled peanuts!” as you walked around town. Older boys staked out territories and ran the small kids away from choice locations. When I tired of selling peanuts, I would go to the back of the newspaper building, down an alley off Adams Street and wait for the papers to come off the press. After receiving a number of newspapers, I walked around town shouting “Daily Democrat Paper!” until I was hoarse and ready to go home. The paper wanted the boys to shout out the headlines, but I never did.

Eating in downtown restaurants was a treat, since my family thought it was extravagant and reserved for special occasions. We always went to the Seven Seas on my birthday and I always ordered fried chicken and strawberry shortcake. Not only did we enjoy the food, but also the restaurants were air-conditioned and we stayed there and enjoyed this treat for the entire evening. On Monroe side by side sat the Busy Bee and Mayflower restaurant along with the Dutch Kitchen, the F&T, and the M&N, owned by my mother’s cousin, Mike Patronis. We rarely ate there, because Mike would never let us pay and my father was too proud to accept a free meal. I remember when Morrison’s opened the first cafeteria on Adams across from the Capitol. Black men in white jackets took your tray to the tables and my father would always give them a tip for the service. My family would go there after Sunday church services at the Baptist Church and hoped we would arrive there before the Methodist and Presbyterian services were over. It was the first restaurant to serve black customers and some of the white patrons stopped eating there, but my family kept going without any concerns, in fact, I think we never gave it a second thought.

Main Menu

Summers in Tallahassee were one hot long day after another. Boys my age shed their shoes the last day of elementary school and kept them off except for church, until school commenced in the Fall. Hot cement and sandspurs caused me to hop around as I made my way uptown. Public pools were not built until later years, and a private pool at homes was almost unheard of. Those families who could afford to stay in cottages travelled to the Coast and escaped the heat. I stayed in town and suffered. I had been taught to swim in the Tully Gym at the College while I was in kindergarten and sometimes my family would take a picnic lunch and ride the city bus to Lake Bradford. The pavilion had a jukebox and when I wasn’t swimming in the cypress tea-colored lake, I would dance by myself in the shelter until discouraging looks from the adults drove me back to the lake.

Occasionally I would walk down Gaines Street and play in Doug Burnett Park. It was small with only a few swings and one lone see-saw that was difficult to ride by myself. Unlike Lafayette, Levy or Myers Parks, with their green grass and rolling hills, Doug Burnett ground was sand hill surrounded by a fence and a small brick building that housed the bathrooms. One summer, Romulus Thompson, the high school band director, came to all the parks and taught the children to play instruments such as tambourines and bells and my instrument was sandpaper attached to two blocks of wood. I became quite proficient and at the end of the summer, all the children from the various parks came together in the band shell behind the courthouse for a concert.

Main Menu

Walking the downtown streets of Tallahassee when I was a boy gave me the opportunity to observe many interesting citizens of the town and I saw them day after day. Occasionally I would pass O’Neal Levy, a much beloved citizen who had lived in the town over fifty years and walked the streets as much as me. He was afflicted from birth with a disease called St. Vitus Dance and without warning would stop and whirl around in circles holding his thumb in his mouth as if to propel himself. I was frightened of him and would cross the street if he came in my direction. One day I could not move away fast enough and he stopped in front of me and said, “your daddy’s a deacon up at the Baptist Church, ain’t he?” I mumbled a reply and ran off, realizing he knew everyone in town. I was grown and living away when he died, but my father sent me his obituary and I remembered him with fondness. Sometimes I would hear a loud commotion and see the Epps sisters coming down the street in their old fashioned motorcar. It was an open vehicle and they both sat upright looking straight ahead as if they owned the town. I would run next to the vehicle until it picked up speed and left me behind. All these things I remember with so much pleasure. The excitement of seeing the Christmas lights strung across Monroe street at the beginning of the season, the homemade fudge sold from the concessions at the May Party, the sounds of the high school band at the summer concerts at the band shell, and the downtown parade on the first day of the county fair. Once I turned twelve and my family moved away from Gaines Street, Tallahassee never seemed the same. All those memories are stamped in my mind. I finished Caroline Brevard and Leon High School and moved away, but always cherished the days I lived on Gaines Street.

Pope Hamrick, July 2016

Main Menu

When I made the decision to write my memoirs, I knew the high school days would be a challenge. First of all, it is coming up on sixty years since I graduated and I wondered if my memory would fail me and further, I was skeptical whether readers would be interested in my undistinguished years in school. After pondering the matter, I decided to write about the school, the teachers, and friends I made, all so unique and distinctive and then I might hold the reader’s attention for at least a portion of my story. After all, I attended the oldest existing high school in Florida and one of the oldest in the United States. While it didn’t hold those records when I was there, it was on its way to becoming a historic and renowned school providing secondary education to thousands of students, who like me, still revere, and honor it long after graduation. As for the teachers and students, well, read some of what I have written and make your own decisions.

The School

I attended Leon High School in Tallahassee, Florida in the 1950’s and looking back, I cannot think of a better time to have grown up. The imposing red brick structure looking down West Tennessee Street was sixteen years old when I started in 1953 as an eighth-grade student. The school provided seventh through twelfth grades, but since I lived on the Perry Highway, I attended seventh grade at the Leon County Seventh Grade Center on Miccosukee Road, next to Kate Sullivan Elementary School. The Center was housed in a dilapidated World War II barracks and regularly the toilets in the lavatories overflowed, flooding all four classrooms forcing everyone to flee outside and wait on the playground until it was safe to return. Once when this happened, I got into trouble when Mrs. Talley told me to run next door to Mrs. Kilgore’s room and tell everyone to leave. Always dramatic, I bust into her room and yelled “abandon ship, women and children first!” This was the last year for the old barracks school as Elizabeth Cobb Junior High School was built on that location. After I completed the eighth grade at Leon High, the school eliminated the lower grades and only provided ninth through twelfth grades.

Leon High School had been part of my life from the time my family moved to Tallahassee in 1941. We attended concerts, revivals, Christmas programs, and even all-night gospels sings in the school auditorium since it was the only place in town large enough to accommodate these functions. When I entered Leon, two of the old buildings that once served as the high school were still standing in the town. The first, built in 1885 was located on the corner of Duval and West Tennessee Streets and in the fifties, it was an apartment building named the Wilsonian and owned by Bill Wilson a contractor who was my Father’s employer for a while. As a teenager, I worked for Kennerly’s Prescription Center and delivered prescriptions to tenants in the building and often wondered about its past as it appeared to have little resemblance of a school. The second Leon, built in 1911 sat on Park Avenue and remained there long after I graduated, becoming a vocational school in 1936 when Leon High moved to its new location.

I never went inside it, but was fascinated by its spiral fire escape attached to the front of the building. As a young boy living on Gaines Street, my friends and I would walk to the school on a slow Sunday afternoon, climb inside it, crawling to the top, and slide down it, going faster and faster maneuvering the turns until reaching the ground. We were never caught, but I often worried about getting stuck in this ancient apparatus and never attempted this exploit myself.

I remember how bewildered and confused I was my first day at Leon High. A thirteen-year-old eighth grader, watching students hurrying along the wide hallways of the school, stopping to retrieve books from the rows and rows of lockers lined against the walls and shouting out to their friends as they ran to find their classes.

My first period was a homeroom that lasted about thirty minutes where I listened to announcements broadcast over a public-address system attached to the wall. The class recited the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer led by a student or teacher. The homeroom teacher kept the student’s grades from all the classes and handed out the reports cards regularly. At that time, Leon was segregated by race, as were most all the schools in the South and it was not until I attended law school twelve years later that I had classes with black students.

After homeroom, I started out to locate my classroom for the first of six one-hour periods. These were anywhere on all three floors of the building and I had to hurry to locate them before the bell rang for class. The teachers were required to stand by their doors, to keep order in the hallway and recognizing them as my teacher for that period was one way I located my room. I recall a recurring dream during this time, which I think lasted through college where I could not find my classrooms in school and finally gave up looking, failing to attend class for weeks and wondering if I would pass the course because of my absences.

In those early years at Leon High, a Halloween Carnival was held each Fall on the Bobby Benson Playing Field in front of the school. Various clubs sponsored concessions with Halloween themes and students paid a few cents to enter these booths hoping to be scared. A Halloween King and Queen were selected and ruled over this Festival and once, I won a caramel cake at a cakewalk. Someone placed it in a box and I carried it around the carnival, licking some of the icing along the way, dropping it often and sitting on it several times. Arriving home, I recall I proudly held up my prize for all to see before my Mother promptly disposed of it in the trash.

The cafeteria at Leon, on the first floor of the school, seemed larger than any I had seen during all my school days. In my seventh grade, the students ate in a small lunchroom at Kate Sullivan and the one at Caroline Brevard, located in the basement barely held fifty students. Leon had two lunch periods each lasting 35 minutes, and students had to rush in order to finish their meals before the afternoon classes. The price for the hot lunch was thirty-five cents, and Miss DuParc, the dietitian prepared wonderful shepherd’s pie and baked spaghetti and students rushed to get in the food line on the days it was served. There were other food choices to pick from and booths were set up on each the side of the cafeteria where hot dogs and hamburgers were sold for fifteen cents.

On one side of the cafeteria, teachers sold candy and chewing gum from a large counter extending practically the entire room. The school had a strict rule outlawing students from bringing candy to class, but most violated it and were rarely caught. I always thought it strange that the candy was sold at school, but students were told to eat it before class. It was almost if the teachers were enablers as they sold candy that was barred from the classroom. My favorite candy was an individually wrapped hard candy called Charms. They were easy to hide in the pockets of your trousers and boys needed to be prepared if a girl asked you in class if you had any candy!

Not every student ate in the cafeteria. Some brought lunches and sat outside to eat and others rushed off in vehicles to Mutt and Jeff’s Drive Inn on Meridian Road. Although fifteen minutes from the school, the trip allowed a short time to eat before students had to hurry back in the thirty-five minutes allowed for lunch. In my junior year, my friend Dennis was sitting in the rear of a truck filled with students hurrying back from Mutt’s when he was thrown from the vehicle during a fast turn on the school driveway. He was flung out onto the cement where he slid on his stomach almost to the front door of the school.

Other students walked up Tennessee Street to Garcia’s, a Cuban restaurant that made the best Cuban sandwiches in town and it was there I experienced black bean soup for the first time. Some students hung around White’s IGA grocery store and some probably walked home for lunch.

Leon Band

In the ninth grade, I joined the Leon band. From a young age, I remembered watching the band march down Monroe Street in parades, passing by in their red jackets, white trousers, and top hats. Sometimes I would follow the band down the street, running long side it, pretending I was the drum major leading the group until the end of the parade. Named the Redcoats, the band adopted its uniform from that of the United States Military Academy and always received superior ratings at Festivals and competitions.

I was fourteen when I got up enough courage to climb the narrow staircase to the band room to speak to the director about joining the band. The room was located in the rear of the building directly behind the auditorium, sitting high enough to look out over the rear parking lot of the school and the backyard of the Brokaw-McDougall house. Below, school buses entered the rear driveway of the school stopping to pick up students while navigating around rebellious pupils gathered to smoke cigarettes out of sight of the teachers.

Seeing the director, I waited at the top of the stairs, until he noticed me and came over and inquired why I was there. When I nervously asked if I could become a member of the band, he looked me over and immediately asked what instruments I played. Trembling I replied in a small voice that, “I once took violin lessons for a few months, and oh yes, in grade school I played the sand paper blocks in the city park band directed by Romulus Thompson,” a remark I immediately regretted. Next, he asked if I read music at which I hung my head and mumbled, “not very much,” which was a lie as I didn’t know one note from another. Looking around the room, he replied that the school provided some of the larger instruments and they had an extra French horn if I had a desire to play it. Following his gaze to the instrument lying against the wall that I thought he was referring to, I nodded in assent, taking his statements to mean I was invited to join the band.

The band director was Oliver Hobbs, who had arrived from Kansas several years earlier, taking the place of Romulus who moved to Monticello as band director. He was middle aged, had white hair, a ruddy complexion, and a bit heavy-set. I had seen him in parades, marching on the first row of the band in a white suit carrying a baton as directors often did but little did I know that I was joining one of the best high school bands in the State of Florida. Oliver was a brilliant musician and teacher, able to take students like me and give them a music education well above that taught in most high schools throughout the United States.

Oliver required every band member to take their instruments home every day after school, supposedly to practice in the evenings and he would check the band room to make sure there were none left there. I lugged my horn home every afternoon but didn’t necessarily practice it there because rehearsals were held all during the week. During the fourth class period at school, the entire band rehearsed and each week there were separate sessions for brass, woodwind, percussions, and French horns. During football season, the band practiced drills on Bobby Benson Field facing the school and gym students would stop and watch in awe as the group marched up and down the field, trying to play in tempo as Oliver ran between the rows shouting out to the students “keep in cadence” and maintain straight lines.

Everyone in the band was required to play an instrument including majorettes. Some of the majorettes were gifted musicians, but the others with little music talent played string basses during concert season and they faked the bow over the strings of the instruments with a smile, no one knowing the difference.

That first year Oliver gave me private lessons during my study hall period and the first songs he taught me to play were hymns. He was patient and understanding as he taught me the basics of playing the instrument. He showed me the correct way to hold the horn, and how to position my right hand into the bell of the horn to muffle the sound. He explained to me that the correct pitch of the horn was achieved by pursing the lips to create the beautiful sounds that the horn was known for. He told me the French horn was one of the most difficult musical instruments to play and when I inquired why I was playing it, he replied that it was the only school instrument left in the band. Sitting in the French horn section, my friend Dean, an excellent musician, would silently point out the notes and indicate which of the three valves to press and I would also watch other musicians and try to mimic their actions hoping to learn from them as well.

Often, I believed I learned to play out of fear. Oliver was a powerful and demanding conductor, a perfectionist who could bring music to life as he directed. Sometimes during rehearsals, he would charge through the band to reach the back rows to chastise an off-key player and students would quickly grab their music stands out of his way to make a path for him. Sometimes if the French horn section needed special attention Oliver would stop directing and have each horn player individually play the notes in question, starting with the first horn player and since I was the fourth horn player, I would anxiously sit in agony waiting for him to reach me. Sometimes when this happened I became so nervous, I had the urge to throw down my French horn and flee down the band room stairs, hiding outside until the class was over. But finally, by the tenth grade through Oliver’s inspiration and assistance from other band members, I began to learn how to coordinate the notes with the horn, learning to breath and blow correctly into it, until I finally felt I could hold my own in a room full of first-rate musicians.

All high school bands in Florida participated in competitions known as district and state festivals. The bands were divided into areas of the State depending on their locations and sizes. Leon’s Band was classified an AA school and competed with larger bands. The bands were judged on performance of compositions picked by officials and given to the band directors early in the year to prepare for the events. The bands were also judged on sight-reading of new songs and for their marching skills. Soloists also performed and received medals for their performances. In my senior year, black high school bands attended these competitions for the first time, and we marveled at their drills and marching techniques and tried to copy them, usually without success.

At the start of the school year, the band concentrated on performances at football games but by January they devoted their time preparing for the Festivals that were held in the spring. In my freshman year at the Festival, the band played Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony that began with a prominent French horn solo played by the entire section. When word got out that the Leon Band was performing, students from other bands flocked into the hall to hear us and applauded us even before the composition was finished. All the demanding work and practices paid off that year and the band received superior ratings in every event it entered.

Before I joined the band,and after I graduated it marched and performed in events out of state. But while I was at Leon, the band only travelled to out of town football games and district and state competitions. On these trips, we stayed in inexpensive motels and Oliver assigned four boys to a room to save money. Usually I shared a room my friends Bud, Jack, Ched and Jimmy and invariably we talked throughout the night, sleeping little, and by morning were so exhausted we fell asleep in the football stands. Sometimes the band did not spend the night and traveled back to Tallahassee on buses arriving in the early morning hours and on these return trips I sometimes went to sleep as soon as I got on the bus, or on a long trip, sat in agony because the driver refused to make a bathroom stop. One of the buses was named Leo after our mascot and I always tried to catch this bus, as it was more comfortable than the other school buses. Returning in early morning hours to the school after these trips, parents would be waiting in cars, for our return, and on our arrival, Oliver would stand in the parking lot and wait until every student was picked up and left the school grounds.

One year while I was in the band it was selected to attend Band Day in Jacksonville. Instead of the cheap motels that we usually stayed in during football season, we spent two nights in the elegant Floridan Hotel on Hogan and Monroe Streets. This was during the glory days of downtown Jacksonville when it was alive with large hotels, banks, and department stores and for once, Oliver allowed two boys to share one room. I shared a room with Bud and with extra time on our hands we saw the movie Blackboard Jungle at the Florida Theatre on East Forsyth Street, the same theatre that would host Elvis Presley the next year, in a controversial performance that almost caused his arrest because of his provocative style. We ate at Morrison’s Cafeteria near Hemming Park, famous for its doorman who guided patrons into the building telling them there was plenty of seating on the mezzanine and finally on the day of the game, we proudly marched down Main Street in the parade before the game and marched again with other Bands at the Gator Bowl.

I recall that Oliver had two children that played in the band while I was a member. Julia, in my class, played oboe and his son Monty, still in middle school, was brought in by his Father to play in a French horn quartet that performed at the state festival my senior year.

The band had traditional songs that were played each year for special occasions. During half time at Homecoming the band played “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody.” At May parties it played “Spring is bursting out all Over” and at Easter Sunrise Services, it played “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” “Pomp and Circumstance” was always played at Graduation along with the school alma mater “The Red Clay Hills of Tallahassee” and all through the year the band played a special rendition of “Dixie” but when Leon was integrated in the ‘60s, the band chose to cease playing this song as it was insensitive to the students. During pep rallies in the auditorium the band sat in the orchestra pit and played “Are You a Lion” and “Cheer, Cheer for old Leon High, You bring the Whiskey, I’ll Bring the Rye.” I always thought this an odd song, as I don’t recall anyone ever bringing any whiskey or rye to the football games. Maybe town folks did.

In my senior year, I took private lessons from Joseph White a French horn professor at FSU and I received two medals for playing in a French horn quartet at the state festival. I remember just before graduation, Oliver took me aside and told me he was proud of my progress in the band over the four years and that he believed I had developed the skills of a true Leon High band member.

I was practicing law in Daytona Beach some fifteen years later when I read in the local newspaper that the Florida High School State Band Festival was to be held locally and it listed Oliver Hobbs as one of the Judges at the competition. I remember skipping work that day and attending the event and waiting until I was able to talk to Oliver. He remembered me and I gave him a ride back to his hotel. Along the way he asked me if I still played the French horn and when I said no, that college, law school, the army, family and other things had taken priority in my life and I had put it aside, he replied, “That’s ok, I just tried to teach my students that playing an instrument and the hard and long practices that followed, gave them the character and conduct necessary to prepare them for the challenges of life ahead and those who finished high school, especially those who played in the Leon Band seemed to succeed in these endeavors.” He left my car that day and headed towards his hotel. I don’t believe I ever saw him again, but you know what he said was right. I never regretted the hard, long, and wonderful days I spent in the Leon High School Band struggling to play the French horn and I can say without a doubt that Oliver Hobbs was the one teacher at Leon that made a lasting impact on my life and I believe his legacy will live on at the school for years to come.

Faye Dunaway

One of my favorite courses at Leon was speech. The speech teacher, Mina Cubbon was popular with the students and they eagerly tried out for plays and gave speeches, hoping to receive awards in the Speak for Democracy Contest or selected for title roles in the Junior or senior class plays.

Speech was an elective course and students in the sophomore through senior years were often in one class. In my junior year sitting next to me was an attractive sophomore named Faye Dunaway. Her family called her Dorothy Faye, but at school she was known as Faye. We became friends right away and I looked forward to our classes together. She was a spirited co-ed with a beautiful smile and striking brown hair. She made friends easily and even though it was her first year at Leon, she became popular with both students and teachers alike, excelling in all her studies and elected a cheerleader soon after she arrived. That year in my yearbook the “Lion’s Tale,” she wrote, “Well, I have known you about a year it’s been so much fun in speech class. There is only one you and you’re the tops.”

That year I tried out for a part in the junior class play, but wasn’t selected and instead got the job as assistant stage manager. I think I only pulled the curtains at the beginning and end of each act and rang a doorbell once or twice, but at least it was step in the right direction for my high school acting career.

Later, I was invited to become a member of the Thespian Club, an organization of students interested in drama and public speaking. Each year the club sponsored three one-act plays entitled “Leon’s Thespian Night.” Both Faye and I auditioned for parts in a play entitled “Pink and Patches” a one-act play by Margaret Bland, published in 1928 and often performed on high school stages. The play had four actors and I got the role of a boy “Rexie” and Faye was picked for the part of his Mother. The setting of the play revolved around the struggles of a poor family in a rural mountain area and the desire of Rexie’s twin sister Texie to obtain a new dress to wear to a special party. My classmates Joann Gresham played my twin sister “Texie” and Barbara Billmyre played the part of a wealthy lady in town.

We practiced the play in the auditorium on weeknights and I remember I would borrow my father’s car and drive to the school for play practice picking up Faye along the way. She lived with her mother and brother Mac on Adams Street in an apartment across from the Greyhound Bus Station. I had been allowed to drive a vehicle only a short time and my father insisted that I call home and let him know I had reached the school and do the same when I left to return home. When we arrived at school, embarrassed I would quietly sneak out of the auditorium to use the one telephone available for students in the entire building. It was in a small alcove just outside the auditorium double doors. Before the invention of mobile phones, it served over a thousand Leon students many of whom lined up between class periods to use it, hoping to make their calls before the bell rang for the next class.

Sometimes after play practice Faye and I would stop at Mutt and Jeff’s Drive In and share a Coke and French fries before I drove her home. Occasionally we talked about our dreams for the future and I remember Faye, saying on those evenings she wanted to be in as many plays as possible at Leon, and laughingly remarked that she looked forward to the day she might become an actor in movies and plays, fulfilling her childhood dreams.

The play was performed in the school auditorium on November 8, 1956 and later that month Mrs. Cubbon informed the cast that the play had been selected as an entry at the Florida State High School Drama Festival at the University of Florida in Gainesville to be held in January. It was arranged that Faye and I were to ride with Mrs. Cubbon and meet her at the school early the morning of the trip. My Father and I drove to Faye’s apartment to pick her up and I remember Mrs. Dunaway coming out with Faye and asking my father if he had money she could borrow to give Faye for the trip as she failed to cash a check. The cost of the lodging and meals had been paid by the school and all we needed was spending money so when he replied that he had given me all his, cash, I spoke up and said for her not to be concerned as I had sufficient money for both of us. I remember saying this as I did not want Faye to stay at home and I surmised if I were holding the spending money for both of us, we would spend most of our free time together! This was the first time either of us had visited the University of Florida, but in three years Faye would attend there as a student and become the sweetheart of Sigma Chi Fraternity. The plays were graded and our “Pink and Patches” received second place and we felt that we had represented Leon High well in the state contest.

I saw little of Faye after the trip to Gainesville, but we would pass each other in the hall at Leon and sometimes stop and recall the good times we had in speech and drama. When our yearbook came out that year Faye wrote in mine “Do you remember the ‘Our Town’ note you wrote me and what you said in it? You said after the play we would probably not be close friends again and you were right a little bit. I never see you any to speak of, but I do still consider you one of my closet friends. You will be good in life, don’t change that personality of yours.”

I graduated from Leon High and left for college and I think I saw Faye a time or two at summer parties in Tallahassee. I was in law school when the movie Bonnie and Clyde was released with Faye playing the role of Bonnie Parker. I went to see it at least three times and I would enthusiastically tell my law school buddies about my high school days knowing Faye. After Faye was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the award of Best Actress in Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown and won the Oscar for the movie Network, my friends at parties would introduce me and remark that I went to school with Faye Dunaway.

I was living in Daytona Beach in 1996 and read that Faye would be coming to Bob Carr Auditorium in Orlando to star in the role of Maria Callas in the production of “Master Class.” Excited, I purchased my ticket and found the official photograph of the play “Pink and Patches” that I had kept all these years. Several days before the play, I realized work would prevent me from attending the play. Disappointed but not deterred, I found a friend that planned to go to the play and she agreed to take my photograph and see if she might get it autographed. After the play, she went to the stage door and asked an usher if he could get the photograph autographed. He soon returned and said Faye recognized the picture and invited her to her dressing room where Faye inquired about me and signed the photograph. When my friend gave it back to me, it read, “To Pope, see what happened, Faye Dunaway.”

In Faye’s autobiography, “Looking For Gatsby,” published in 1995, she wrote, “I’m always reminded of what Arthur Miller said in ‘After the Fall’, ‘You never stop loving the people you loved.’” As a teenage high school boy, I became friends with a remarkable girl, gave her rides, performed with her in a one-act play and travelled to Gainesville to perform it. We laughed together, she wrote in my yearbook and we experienced good times at Leon High. All these things I have never forgotten and I know I’ll remember Faye the rest of my life.

Friends

In the 1950’s not only did students at Leon work diligently at sports, band, chorus, and drama; but also, they struggled to win acceptance and popularity with other students. Those who owned cars were greatly admired by those like me who had to drive their father’s car when available, or dolefully rode the school bus. Occasionally, I caught a ride to school or downtown with my friend Jack who owned a jeep and I remember how important and happy I felt in this open vehicle as we drove around the town waving to friends. In the fifties, there were a few parking spaces for cars in the front of Leon and students arrived early just to get one of these spaces. A student fortunate enough to park a car in front of the school and walk up the wide concrete stairs, through the front double doors into the lobby while other students watched, knew they had reached the heights of popularity. Not having a car, I knew I would never reach this level of approval but sometimes in the mornings when the bus arrived at the rear of the school, I would hop off and run around the building, casually walking up the front stairs and into the school pretending I had driven a car to school. School began at 8:15 in the morning and students would gather in the lobby of the school and chat with friends waiting for the bell to ring for homeroom. The cherished area of the lobby for boys was the hall radiator where they enjoyed leaning against it and watching the girls. The lucky ones who found room to lean against it had a perfect view of the entire lobby. I rarely found room to squeeze into this spot because of the late school bus, but on the days I found room to join my friends along this wall in the lobby, I thought my day was off to a good start.

Teachers

Excellent teachers taught me at Leon, many who had begun their careers when the school was located on Park Avenue and I felt lucky to be in their classes.

I remember, Eunice Johnston my English teacher whose knowledge of Shakespeare, Chaucer and Wordsworth inspired me to major in the subject in college. Dedicated to the art of journalism, she taught it for many years and was instrumental in the establishment of the student newspaper, the “Leon High Life.”

I recall Kathryn Williamson, my history teacher along with Malcolm Longsdon who taught a civics course entitled Problems of American Democracy both opening a new world for me as to past and currents events.

Typing and shop were two subjects I struggled with at Leon. Boys in the 1950’s were required to take a shop classes and girls took home economics. The industrial arts building was separate from the main school building and contained all types of power tools and equipment used in woodworking and other crafts. The typing course was elective, and while the typing classes were normally filled with girls, my parents encouraged me to take it realizing the importance in learning this skill for later life.

Leon owned antiquated manual typewriters with a carriage return and a bell that sounded when the typist reached the end of the paper. I remember the class becoming quite noisy with the clicking of the keys, the bells ringing and the chatter of the students trying to talk above the racket of the machines. Typing test were timed and we were required to roll four pieces of paper into the cylinder of the typewriter, placing carbon in between to make the copies. I spent half the valuable time allotted for the test adjusting the carbons between the papers after I rolled them into the carriage. Also, if I misspelled a word while typing, I had to correct it with a rubber eraser and then correct all three copies, using up valuable time. Sometimes in my frantic attempt to erase the word I would make a hole in the paper and then I was really in trouble. By the time most of the other students had finished the test, I was still trying to keep the original paper and carbons inside the typewriter ribbons. Occasionally, I just gave up and handed in my test paper holes and all, which did not help my grade nor impress Mrs. Reuter, who had been walking up and down the class aisle looking at her watch ready to signal the end of the assignment.

O.D. Roberts the shop teacher had little patience with boys like me, who could barely use a hammer. The purpose of the course was to familiarize the students with woodworking tools, teaching them basic woodworking skills. In the first semester I decided to make a leather wallet since it was simple and a project I believed I could complete. I remember cutting the leather, stitching it together and struggling to sew in the zipper for the money pouch. I was proud when it was completed and gave it to my brother-in-law for Christmas. He seemed pleased to have a leather wallet, but left it up to my sister Gay to tell me years later that it fell apart after a couple of months. In the second semester, our project was to make a wood birdhouse or small bookcase. We started out by shaping a block of wood with a planer and were required to show it to O.D. and get his approval before we proceeded to the next step. After I planed my block, I proudly presented it to him for inspection. H would take his pencil, marking it with the comments, “too high here and too low there.” I would take it back and re-plane the wood, only to be rejected again and again until the rest of the boys in the class had almost completed their project and I was still trying to plane my block of wood. I don’t recall that I made a very good grade in shop that year.

Fearing Polio

1950’s Tallahassee, along with other cities in the United States, experienced the dreaded polio disease and often school classes were cancelled and parts of the city were quarantined. Attending a movie once, I became so moved by the March of Dimes short features showing children in iron lungs, I ran out to the lobby and emptied my pockets of the change I had saved to purchase candy into the large barrels set up for donations. Football games were cancelled because of the polio scare sometimes even while the teams were in route to other schools. When Jonas Salk developed the vaccine in 1955 I was a Junior at Leon and can recall receiving the vaccine with the entire student body and faculty who lined the hallways to receive these welcomed injections that gave us new hope for fighting this paralyzing and contagious disease.

Clubs

Sometime during my junior year, I was instructed to come to Mr. Steven’s office, the school principal, and since I had not been summoned to his office before, I knew I was in trouble. To my surprise, he informed me that I had been invited to join both Key Club and Jr. Civitan Club and he told me this was an honor as I was the first boy to receive an invitation to join from both clubs. He told me I could join only one of the clubs and I had one week to decide and after much consideration, I joined the Jr. Civitan Club. Leon had several service clubs that selected its members by a vote of the clubs but less than ten percent of the class belonged to these selective organizations. One of Jr. Civitan’s projects was selling Claxton Fruitcakes during the Christmas season and my friend Pleas and I won the award for selling the most fruitcakes after Tom Brown, a former football coach at Leon who lived in Country Club Estates, bought our entire stock to give to his employees as gifts for the holidays.

All students at Leon were required to take study hall, which was held, in a room on the third floor, above the library. It was larger than the regular classrooms, holding about fifty students. Woodrow Riser who we called Woody behind his back was the teacher in charge of the room and after signing a roster indicating our presence, students were expected to study in this hour-long class. I studied occasionally, especially when preparing for examinations, but much of the time I spent talking to classmates sitting around me. My yearbook in my junior and senior years is full of inscriptions from classmates which began with “I remember all our little talks we had this year” and I am sure many of those took place in study hall. In my senior year my friend Bud and I devised a plan to skip study hall and attend a movie at the Ritz Theater on Monroe Street. The Ritz, one of the oldest theaters in town was the favorite of many of us growing up in Tallahassee. Most of the cowboy movies popular in the early fifties were shown there but in 1956, the Ritz was in decline and labeled itself an “art theatre”, showing movies for “adult audiences”. Neither of us knew what the term “adult audiences” meant but were curious to find out and willing to skip school to attend the afternoon movie. I recall walking up Tennessee Street, nervous and hoping no one would recognize us. What we failed to take into account that “adult audiences” did not include two seventeen-year-old high school students and the ticket taker turned us away without hardly a glance. The Ritz finally closed for good in 1957 and I found no reason to skip class for the rest of the year.

Senior Year

Once I began my senior year at Leon the days passed like the blink of an eye. Soon it was Thanksgiving and students from each homeroom carried boxes filled with food for needy families down the aisle of the auditorium during assembly while the Glee club sang ‘Come ye Thankful People Come.” It was Christmas, and the Glee club performed their White Christmas concert. Spring arrived and my friend Kaye reigned as Queen of the May Party. Popular from seventh grade, her mother Eloise “Honey” Bachelor taught us at Leon and coached girls in sports and called all the students by name. The junior–senior Prom was held and I asked Mary Alma to be my date. Our last school party was held at Buck’s house and Senior Day was held at the Coast. At the end of assembly seniors walked out for the last time while juniors by tradition remained in their seats, and senior boys asked girls to walk with them at graduation, a cruel tradition since girls who received no invitation walked alone at the end of the line. Commencement was held on Saturday June 8, 1957. A little over three hundred of us graduated and we held our rehearsal at Centennial Field on South Monroe Street expecting to graduate there, but it rained and we received our diplomas at FSU in Westcott Auditorium. We met in our homerooms before the event to collect our caps and gowns and then rode school buses to the campus. Earlier, Mary Alma, Bud, Judy and I celebrated together by dining at the, Skyline Restaurant on West Tennessee Street, a somewhat expensive establishment saved for special occasions. After graduation, a late supper sponsored by the parents was held at the country club and afterwards diehard graduates sauntered off to attend a free movie at the Florida Theatre.

That night after graduation I remember riding back to Leon on the school bus to hand in our regalia and to say our final farewells. There was a long stretch of silence on the bus with little conversation from the graduates and I wondered if they were thinking, like me of the many marvelous things that had happened since we started Leon. I recalled the four years as a member of the Redcoat Leon band, struggling to master the French horn. I remembered my friendship with Faye and the dreams we shared, never realizing her aspirations would soon come true. I thought of my pal Bud and his mischievous ways and friendly smile. He touched those who knew him at Leon with his warm and caring personality. I remember pondering that night what the future held for me after attending Leon five wonderful years, but by the time the bus reached Leon and I said my goodbyes and left the school for the last time, any anxiety I felt turned to confidence and I knew I was ready to start college and meet the world.

Main Menu

My mother, Esther Gay, was born in Jefferson County in 1902, went to school in Monticello and came back to teach there after attending Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee. Many of my relatives lived in Monticello including my grandparents and uncles. She and my father were married there in 1928.

My first memories of Monticello were the years my family lived in Tallahassee and my mother and I would take the greyhound bus to visit my grandparents. These were the war years of 1942 when I was three years old. The bus station in Tallahassee was on Adams Street across from the Baptist Church, next to the fire station. Eventually it would move to its present location on Tennessee Street when the old terminal became the police station for the town.

Getting a seat on a Greyhound bus in Tallahassee traveling in any direction during the War was not an easy task. All the buses and trains were packed with soldiers and sailors trying to reach their destinations. The Government published flyers to civilians proclaiming, “ Is this trip really necessary?” I imagine my mother always thought it was necessary for us to pay a visit to her parents and if she could, would try and get at least one seat for the two of us.

The bus trip to Monticello, about twenty five miles away took about an hour since it stopped several times to take on passengers who stood along the road waving to be let on for the remainder of the trip. Later when I was older and took the crowded bus alone to Monticello, I often stood in the aisle for the entire trip. The bus was segregated but sometimes, black riders beckoned me to sit with them in the rear of the bus and I was happy to take up the offer and rest my legs.

At that time, Monticello had its own greyhound bus station on Washington Street across from the Perkins Building. It was located around the corner from the “Café” on Jefferson, which got business from riders who had to wait and change buses.

In the nineteen forties, my relatives were considered newcomers to Jefferson County by longtime residents whose ancestors had lived there since the eighteen twenties when the County was named for Thomas Jefferson. My great-grandfather William Wright was born in Dublin, Georgia and moved to Jefferson County in 1867 after serving in the Confederate Army. Having been shot and captured at Gettysburg, he was released from a Union prison camp after swearing allegiance to the United States and walked home. I am not sure where home was, but he soon moved to Jefferson County and married my great-grandmother Martha White settling five miles north of Monticello. He became a successful farmer and well-liked resident of the area where he was soon appointed justice of the peace and known as Judge Wright. He helped establish Hopeful Baptist Church near his farm and both he and my great grandmother are buried in the Hopeful Cemetery. Neither the farm or church exists today, but several years ago my cousin Charlie and I traveled out an unpaved road in the direction of Metcalfe to see the graves, the tombstones barely legible from age.

My grandmother Ollie Wright was born on that farm in 1884 and married my grandfather Hugh Lawson Gay who died at a young age from Typhoid fever. My mother and Uncle Hugh were born of this marriage and shortly after the death of Hugh Lawson Gay, my grandmother married Charles Lafayette Jones a bachelor from Monticello who had worked with my grandfather. Of this marriage my uncle Fate Wright was born and the entire family moved to Monticello where, with the exception of my mother, lived on Mulberry Street their entire lives. Then Mulberry Street was an unpaved road, which began downtown on Washington Street and curved down pass Palmer Mill Road, turning up onto Jefferson Street. Even as a young boy I remember parts of Mulberry as unpaved, and the cars traveling up and down the road stirred up so much dust and grime it was uncomfortable to sit on the porches of the homes that faced the street.

My uncle Fate was born in a frame house close to the end of Mulberry but moved shortly afterwards when my grandfather rented the second floor of the Palmer house. on the corner of Palmer Mill Road and South Jefferson Street. This house was built before the Civil War and was the home of Dr. John Palmer and his wife Laura. Dr. Palmer, a physician and mortician practiced medicine in a small building next to the house and worked as a mortician in the basement. He became well known as the inventor of a cough syrup, which he named Elixir 666. It was sold by the Monticello Drug Company and now and then I used to see it on the pharmacy shelves. Folks brave enough to try it reported that “it burned like hell.” In later years, the house was labeled “haunted” and the story was repeated that Dr. Palmer experimented with dead bodies, draining the blood from them which he kept in a bucket. However, by the time my family lived in the house, Dr. Palmer had died and his wife Laura lived downstairs with her son Dabney.

Historians described the house as a story and a half and my mother lived there with her parents and brothers the entire time she attended school in Monticello. One of the largest oak trees in Jefferson County sat in the back yard of the house and she and my uncles would play in the tree for hours on end. The tree still stands, but once when my mother was passing through the yard, one of its larger limbs fell barely missing her and a wing of the house, an event that would have caused serious disaster.

While my mother Esther, called Essie by her family, loved to talk about growing up in Monticello I never heard her speak of living in a haunted house or about the strange happenings that were written about the Palmer house. I know the family usually used the rear entrance even though the house faced on Jefferson Street and that explains why I say they lived on Mulberry Street.

After my grandparents moved to 315 South Mulberry Street, which faced the rear of the Palmer house both Laura Palmer and Dabney, who was the town telegrapher, had died; Dabney’s widow, Clara Palmer, lived alone in the house. Elderly, she still drove an antique car almost daily to the Palmer Cemetery. Charlie and I would sit on our grandparent’s porch and watch her slowly maneuver the vehicle out of the car house and drive up Palmer Mill Road to the old graveyard. Sometimes we would follow her the road trotting behind the slow moving car, but soon gave up this odd procession once she entered the graveyard. In high school, Charlie ran errands and did small tasks around the property for Mrs. Palmer, which entitled him to a key for the back door. During this time as a teenager I paid my first visit to the Palmer house when the two of us quietly toured the mansion one afternoon while Clara took her afternoon nap. I tried to envision all five of my family members living upstairs in the nineteen twenties and what Monticello must have looked like during that time.

My mother graduated from Monticello High School, originally called The Jefferson Academy, in 1921 and during that time, all twelve grades were located in the historic school building on Washington Street. She and her brothers, Hugh and Fate studied there, except for a short time when the building was remodeled and school was held in the St. Elmo’s Hotel downtown. A photograph showing students on the porch of the hotel portrays my mother on the first row barely recognized, but I cannot pick out my uncle Hugh who would have been in school at the same time. My uncle, Fate, was to be in her second grade class the first year she taught and but when he delightfully discovering that his older sister was to be his teacher, became so unmanageable, the principal made her home school him until he passed to the next grade.

My step-grandfather Charles Lafayette Jones was a storeowner in Monticello for over fifty years. He began only selling dry goods but by the time I was a boy, operated a candy store on Cherry street. The building where his shop was located was known as the Marvin Anderson Building. It was demolished in 1976 to make way for the Farmer’s and Merchant Bank. The store consisted of one small room, which held display cases for candy bars, cigarettes, snuff and tobacco. In front, was an old fashion coke box, which opened from both sides, where he kept ice and soft drinks. He never allowed customers to reach into the box but pulled out their sodas himself, snapping off the top of the bottle using the mounted bottle opener then handing it to the customer.

Before candy bars were sold from vending machines, his store was popular with residents of Monticello who crowded into it on Saturdays when the town was packed with farmers coming in from the county to buy supplies for the week. On this day my grandmother would work in the store along with my grandfather while patrons, black and white, would stand in the small area inside in front of the coke box and visit until they had finished their refreshments. On weekdays the store was popular with students who came to the store and purchased candy bars and drinks from my grandfather who they fondly called “Candy Jones.”

In the fifties, the sidewalk along Cherry Street all the way up to Dogwood, was covered by a tin awning held up by poles which shaded the walkway and as a boy, I would climb the pole in front of my Grandfathers store and touch the tin covers, trying to remain there as long as possible. I would stay at grandfathers store for hours, sitting outside on a ledge by the window, eating candy that he let me choose, watching shoppers and cars traveling the busy downtown.

In early years my grandmother’s cousin Bessie Wheeler and her husband Cary, who lived near Hopeful Church in the country would come to town and eat Saturday dinner with my grandparents. In later years, the Wheeler’s grandson James and his wife Linda would reside across the street from my parents in Tallahassee for many years.

My mother’s brother Hugh graduated from Monticello High School at age seventeen. Smart and industrious, he worked after school in B.W. Johnson & Sons Rexall drug store on Dogwood Street and after graduation, attended the University of Florida for one year, but the Great Depression forced him to come back to Monticello where he continued to work in the drug store. In his twenties, he took the Florida pharmacy examination and made the highest grade that year of those taking the exam. At that point in time it was not necessary to obtain a college degree to become a licensed pharmacist and when the last member of the Johnson family died, Uncle Hugh purchased the store and successfully operated it until he sold it to Charles Jackson in 1966. He kept the name B.W. Johnson & Sons and evidently purchased much of the entire block including Waldo Harris’s grocery store. The town physicians, Dr. Williams and later Dr. Brinson rented the second floor of the pharmacy building and most of their patients would walk downstairs to have their prescriptions filled by Uncle Hugh.

I remember as a boy spending time there drinking cokes and eating ice cream at the soda fountain while reading comic books. I would sit on the floor next to the circular rack that held the comics near the entrance of the store and read them until I tired of this pursuit and placed them back on the rack to be sold. The soda fountain covered one wall of the store and Mrs. Ingram kept busy making ice cream sodas and banana splits for those patrons that carried enough change for these luxuries.

Sometimes, I would walk back and talk to Uncle Hugh while he filled prescriptions and though he talked very little, concentrating on his work, he occasionally asked me to empty a trash basket to a larger can out the rear door. In his southern accent, he pronounced it “rare door.” Once a sign was placed on the exit indicating it as the Rare Door and whether the sign painter just made a mistake or was participating in a joke, Uncle Hugh never replaced it and later years when the property was divided, a restaurant was opened in this part of the building called The Rare Door.

Once my mother began teaching In Monticello and received a regular salary, the family purchased their first house at 365 S. Mulberry Street, just two doors down from the Palmer house on the opposite side of the street. Still standing today, it is a large two-story house with double front porches. The house dated before the Civil War and was large enough for the entire family, including sufficient rooms upstairs to rent to the newly married Waldo and Evelyn Harris. Once my uncle Fate married his wife Pearl, and my cousin Charlie was born, my grandparents, with the help of Uncle Hugh who now owned the drug store, bought 315 South Mulberry Street on the corner of Mulberry and Palmer Mill Road across from the backyard of the Palmer house, where they lived until my grandmother died.

Map Showing Locations

A frame house with a wraparound front porch, my grandparents lived there alone while Uncle Fate and his family continued to live next door. Mulberry Street and downtown Monticello was where I spent most of my time when I visited my grandparents every summer in the fifties. When I was ten, I received my first bicycle at Christmas, but my parents required it to be kept in Monticello fearing Tallahassee traffic. I knew the occupants of most of the homes on Mulberry Street. Behind the Perkins Building, Waldo and Evelyn Harris lived with their daughter, Martha Lynn who was a year younger than me. We would ride our bicycles together through the streets of Monticello, but had boundaries, never crossing the highway into the center of town. Next door, my grandmother’s cousins Eva and Ivey Connell lived in a house, which is still standing. Ivey, never married, played the organ at the Baptist Church and Eva was married to Mr. Martin, a photographer who took his photographs with a large camera which sat on a pedestal, covering his head with a black cloth, holding a flash in one hand. He took several family photographs of my sisters Gay and Janet and I, probably charging a reduced fee since we were relatives.

Woodrow Cone and family lived next to the Palmer house and I sometimes played with his grandson, Sonny, occasionally seeing Mr. Cone’s daughter, Lorene, who worked uptown in the dime store. The story goes that when the elder Mrs. Cone was on her deathbed with family gathered around, someone came into the room and remarked that Fate Jones was mowing his lawn across the street wearing Bermuda shorts. “This,” she said, “I have to see.” After going to the porch and seeing Fate, she lived five more years. The Snipe family lived behind the Cones and their son Bobby, about my age was well known in the community. Annie Arndt the telephone operator for Monticello lived on Mulberry Street next to my uncle Fate. Everyone knew her familiar voice as she responded, “number please” and she always informed the caller if someone was away from home on vacation or just out for the day. Occasionally, the sounds of show tunes were heard from Annie’s house and we knew her son who played the piano was home visiting from New York.

My grandmother’s brother, Smith Wright, lived on Waukeenan Street with his wife Ethel and daughter Alva. When I was a boy, he was the Chief of Police of Monticello and probably the only policeman, except for a night patrolman. The small police station next to Simmons Drug Store was unmanned when Uncle Smith patrolled the streets.

There were no two-way radios in the Monticello police car, and Uncle Smith would be alerted of callers by a bell attached to the outside of the station that rang and heard all over Monticello whereby he would come to the station and answer it. If it rang for long periods my Grandfather at the candy store would remark with irritation to the whereabouts of Uncle Smith knowing that my uncle had a pig farm outside of the town and many times during the day he was there tending to his pigs and not hearing the calls. I believe there was very little crime in Monticello in those years!

My uncle Fate Wright was my mother’s youngest brother and was a half-brother since he was born to my Grandmother Ollie and my step-Grandfather, Fate Jones. As a youngster he was mischievous and outgoing and probably loved living upstairs in the “haunted” Palmer house. He relished telling Charlie and me some of the stories of the house, many we think he invented. As a teenager, he loved to tease my mother and when she came home to be married grabbed her engagement ring and threatened to throw it in the chicken pen. Graduating from Monticello High School, he attended the University of Florida and hitchhiked to school at the start of the school year, once catching a ride with novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling. At the outbreak of World War Two, he joined the Navy, returning to Monticello to marry and to work for the postal service. He often told the story of arriving home from the service after being mustered out, riding a crowded train from Chicago to Monticello that dropped him off at the New Monticello train station. Located about two miles west of the town on highway 90, it was on the L&N Railroad line that provided service for the Southland train. He was the only one that got off the train and, not expected, waved down a passerby who gave him a ride into town, much to the surprise of his parents. As a boy, I remember the station and the train bridge that crossed over highway 90. Traveling by car from Tallahassee with my family to visit my grandparents once we passed under the train bridge, I knew we were close to the town. Monticello had three train stations to my recollection during those years. In addition to the New Monticello station, the Atlantic Coast Line provided train service through Drifton several miles outside of Monticello and a third small station located in downtown Monticello, which trains backed into town from the Drifton station.

On returning home from the Navy, Fate began delivering mail. As a boy, I remember him working in the Perkins Building, which was the post office for many years. Charlie and I would sit on Grandmothers porch on Mulberry Street waiting for him to walk home at the end of the day and would race up the street to meet him Once he retired, he was hired by the sheriff and served as a popular court bailiff where he completed his working career.

I thought the summers long and hot in Monticello in the fifties. Charlie and I would go to the Jefferson Theatre on Washington Street every time the movie changed. Obtaining candy from grandfather’s store we would bypass the candy and popcorn concession and head to our seats. Black patrons sat in the balcony and entered the building from a separate entrance that led to a second floor. Afterwards, with little else to do, we would rush home and play the parts of the actors in the movie until dark. Once we saw Bob Hope starring in the “Lemon Drop Kid” and after the show we stopped at Grandfather’s candy store, got bags of Lemon Drops and hurried home to act out the movie. To this day I have never eaten another Lemon Drop. On sweltering afternoons, Fate’s wife Pearl and Grandmother would take Charlie and me to Lloyd’s Creek for a picnic and afternoon swim. The Creek had a large oak with a hanging rope that bathers grabbed, swinging out into the water. On occasion we would stop by the Laffitte’s Store in Lloyd for a coke. Ten years later my sister Gay would marry Rondeau Laffitte, the storeowner's grandson and name their second son Lloyd.

Other days, Grandmother assigned me chores such as shelling peas from Grandfather’s garden or collecting eggs from the chicken pen located at the rear of the house. Scared of the rooster, I made this a quick trip hoping he was sleeping behind the chicken house. Occasionally when Grandmother was canning preserves, she would send me up to Mrs. Kelly’s Grocery Store to purchase jar tops. Located on the corner of Cherry and Dogwood Streets, the store was dark and shelves half empty of canned goods. My grandmother generally purchased her groceries from Harris’s but Mrs. Kelly sold these necessary provisions. Frightened of the elderly storekeeper who seemed to question my very existence in Monticello, I purchased the jar tops after answering all kinds of inquiries from her and hurried home.

The fire department on Mulberry Street was a volunteer company in the fifties and the firemen were called to the station to man the trucks by a siren attached on the top of the station roof. Probably Annie the telephone operator took the distress calls and activated the siren, which was heard all over town. If the call came in the early mornings when I was sleeping it would always wake me up as I slept in my grandparent’s house on Mulberry Street and I always wondered where the fire was located. I also heard the clock in the courthouse tower strike the hours all night long and the fire siren that blew every day at noon to test the device.

In high school my cousin Charlie was a member of this volunteer fire department and was allowed to leave class if the siren blew during school. He recalls that many times when the warning was activated many of the high school boys rushed out of the building as if they were firemen and those not firefighters would simply go home. Evidently it became such a problem the principal finally asked the Chief to give him a list of names of boys at school who were members of the department so he could monitor their departure.

In 1926 after teaching in Monticello several years, my mother concluded that she might be destined to be an “old maid” as it appeared there were few eligible bachelors in town that met the approval of my grandfather. The school superintendent in Jefferson County helped her obtain a teaching job in Umatilla, Florida, where she met my father and came back to be married in Monticello at the First Baptist Church in 1929. Soon, moving to Tallahassee, she and my father lived there happily over sixty years.

After my grandparents moved to 315 South Mulberry Street, I recall the wonderful holidays I spent when my parents and sisters traveled from Tallahassee to eat Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners with all my relatives at my grandparents’ house. Often my uncle Hugh Gay, his wife Ruth and stepson Ed attended. They lived on Pearl Street and the holidays were a time of restful relief from the drugstore, which was opened six days a week. My great uncle Smith Wright and his wife Ethel and daughter Alva would often come along with his married daughter Dorothy and husband Vance Harris. Dorothy, a Monticello teacher and Vance the city manager, along with children Ray and Jeannie also lived on Pearl Street. Uncle Smith’s other daughter Lucille and husband Mike Patronis, owner of M&N Café who lived in Tallahassee, along with Uncle Fate, wife Pearl and Charlie came and completed our large family.

As I grew older my summertime visits to Monticello grew shorter and shorter since selling boiled peanuts in Tallahassee and hanging out with my friends kept me at home. But the peanuts were from Monticello and I was instructed to yell out’’ Monticello fresh boiled peanuts” as I passed down the street of Tallahassee.

As the years went by and I left home to attend college and pursue my career, I longed for the summers I spent in Monticello in my youth. I remembered the long hot days spent playing with Charlie and Martha Lynn, passing time at my grandfather’s store, taking the shortcut through the courthouse to get to the drugstore, and going to the Jefferson Theatre to the movies to escape the hot summer days in the town. In June of nineteen sixty-one my grandparents traveled to Macon with my parents to attend my college graduation and it was the furthest they had journeyed from Monticello.

In later years, not too far off, the Marvin Anderson Building that housed my grandfather’s store was demolished; my uncle’s drug store was sold, my grandparents’ house was sold and became a kindergarten, and one by one my relatives died or moved away. Still I always remember Monticello and Mulberry Street and the happy days I spent there will continue to live in my memories.

Main Menu

Living on the Perry Highway in Tallahassee in the 1950’s with my family was one of the best times of my life. Unlike our house in town, where I walked most everywhere, our new house was 2 and 2/10ths of a mile from the state Capitol. My dad measured it with the car odometer and we always included the 2/10ths when we gave directions. We also had to say, “just before the Florida Motor Court and if you pass it, you must turn around and come back and it’s the first house on your right.”

In 1949 at age ten, I moved with my parents and two sisters to the house, leaving Gaines Street where I had spent most of my childhood. The downtown area of Tallahassee, which we left, was changing and entire blocks were demolished to make way for new state buildings and many of the old homes were beginning to see better days with renovations.

Anticipating the move, we would travel out to Highway 27, the official name of the road, to watch the building of the house. I remember thinking it was a long trip, traveling out to Lafayette Street passing Smokey Hollow until we reached the small gas station at the corner of Magnolia Drive. From there we drove onto the old two-lane highway until we reached the land east of Tallahassee to watch the house go up. My father’s friend, Mr. Roadcap, built the house with the help of neighboring boys and I recall Jack Dull always saying “we built your house!”

The house was considered “in the country.” Soon after exiting Magnolia Drive, both sides of the Perry Highway (US 27) contained rolling hills and pastures. Not until the cutoff to St. Augustine Road did other houses appear. Dr. Edson Andrews’ new brick home sat on the south side of the highway with its green lawn and beautiful trees. It was the only home in the neighborhood with a swimming pool, a luxury that was rare in the 1950’s and I spent many happy days in the pool with their son Jimmy.

After the Andrews’ house, several one-story residences sat on the other side of the highway where the Browns, Dulls, Woods, Aldersons, and Cassels lived. The patriarch of all these families, Mr. Roadcap, lived with his wife in a large section of this area. He owned many of the surrounding homes, having purchased the land in the early forties. He would rent the homes only to good friends who he treated with respect, as if they were his own family. My sister Janet and her husband Bob rented one of these houses for a while and my niece Susan Pooley Currie was born while they lived there. The Roadcaps kept farm animals including cows, pigs, and chickens with acres of land which seemed to go on forever.

On the other side of the highway next to the Andrews house, stood the Ashenharts two-story brick home. It is still on the highway as a business. Prominent in town, Charles Ashenhart served as the Superintendent of Mails for the US Post Office and was a friend of my father’s. He appeared to have operated a farm previously because a small barn remained behind the house.

In early years, my friends and I used the barn as a clubhouse, going there occasionally to hold secret meetings and escape chores at home. As I recall, we did not actually have permission to use it and we would appoint a lookout for the gardener or Bessie, Charles’s wife, who might be lurking in the area. Not all the kids in the neighborhood were chosen to be members of the club and one time, outsiders Jimmy and Jack, tossed rocks on to the tin roof convincing us that gun shots were fired causing us to flee the dilapidated structure and head for home! I was told to zig zag so I wouldn’t get hit.

Louis Bevis and his family lived next to the Ashenharts, their home facing Linda Ann Drive, a short street with old one-story homes and apartments still remaining to this day. Louis, a pharmacist, owned Hicks Drug Store and Bernice his wife, an excellent teacher, did her best to tutor me in math (without success) as my brain never seemed to absorb even simple arithmetic. My friend Laura White lived on Linda Ann Drive and during the long hot summers when we were not at the clubhouse, Laura and I would lay on the Bevis’ immaculate green lawn with Ruth Ann Wood and Jack’s brother Tom, my best friends in the neighborhood, and waste away the day until we were called home for supper.

Location Map

Across from the Bevis home facing the highway, was a small house where a family with attractive daughters lived. I forget their last names and if I remembered it, I don’t think I would mention it. The kids in my neighborhood rarely got into trouble, but once Jack, Tom and Jimmy spent the night at the Dull’s house and after dark crept over and peeped in the girl’s bedroom window. What they expected to see I’m not sure, but they must have caused a racket, because Mr. Whoever-His-Name-Was came outside and fired a shotgun or something into the air. The boys scared to death dashed back home without detection but the next day it was the talk of the neighborhood. When I heard about it, I was offended. Not because the “peeping tom” excursion took place, but because I was left out and not invited to the overnight sleep over. In later years, this house was converted to a Mexican restaurant, unusual for the area, and remained there in business for many years.

After Linda Ann Drive on the Perry Highway was a deep gulley or ravine that looked out over the woods. As boys, Tom and I would follow a stream from the gulley into the woods climbing our way over fallen trees and brush until we reached a small waterfall that ended in pool of rocks and sand.

Beyond the ravine, our home stood next to the Pike’s house. Their son Wayne, who was my age, was my companion for movies in town when we could get a ride. Across the highway a dirt road, Paul Russell Road, connected the Perry Highway to St. Augustine Road a canopy road which was lined with beautiful homes. Nearby, Mr. Tacco owned a horse stable called the Trot Away Club and he would always chase us off his property when we trespassed into the stables to look at the horses. Just east of our house, the Florida Motor Court sat on the crest of a hill with cottages, restaurant, and a service station. Owned by the Carrins, their daughter Teresa was in my class and lived with her parents behind the station that served the motel.

Our house, built by Mr. Roadcap, was brand new when my family moved in. Not as spacious and grand as the Andrews’ and Ashenhart’s, it sat back from the highway, reached by a long driveway which led down to the home. It had a porch covering the entire front of the house with the exception of one side that held the kitchen. Iron lattice posts, which my father was always painting and repainting, surrounded the porch with stairs leading up to the front door. The inside living and bedrooms were wood paneled, fashionable then, but which we tired of after a few years. My bedroom looked out over a wide back lawn that ended at the edge of the woods. I wish I had kept photographs of the house, but the only ones I could find were parts of it with family members standing on the porch. On Gaines Street, I had slept in the dining room on a daybed in our two-bedroom house, so I was thrilled to have my own room. My sisters shared a room, but they were soon off to college and only there on weekends, so I thought the house spacious with only my parents and me living there.

The address was 2304 Perry Highway but when we first moved in, it was Route 2 Box 147E, and it was outside of the city limits of the town. Our mail was delivered to a small tin mailbox attached to a pole on the side of the road in front of the house, and if we had mail to be picked up, we raised a red flag affixed to the box. During those years there was no garbage pickup and it was my job to take all our refuse daily out to a large bin on the edge of the woods and burn it. Also, without a city sewer system, my father and I had to empty a grease trap on a regular basis, an unpleasant task wherein we had to lift a large concrete block away from the hole and use buckets to empty out the trap. I was always afraid I was going to slip and fall into the foul waste and never seen again. My father, always frugal and letting nothing go to waste, fertilized all our plants and bushes with the remnants of the grease trap, and our lawn had the prettiest flowers and shrubs in the neighborhood.

These were the years before Highway 27 was four-laned and homes and small motels were scattered along the road with the woods and fields on both side until the road reached the Correctional Institution Road now called Capital Circle. This road connected the Perry Highway and Jacksonville Highway and halfway on the road was the federal correctional institution. A prison which sat high on a hill surrounded by barbed wire with brick buildings and watch towers. The few times there was an escape from this facility, a siren sounded which I could hear from our house and I often wondered if the fugitive was hiding in the woods behind our house and I should take him some food like Pip in “Great Expectations.”

The Perry highway drive-in theatre was located on the corner of where this road intersected with the Perry Highway. When I received my driver’s license, I would take friends in our family car to the theatre where we laughed, talked, made out, and occasionally watched the movie. Sometimes, I took my mother to this drive-in and I remembered taking her to see “Around the World in Eighty Days,” a long and boring film which I thought would never end.

Just beyond our house was Victory Garden Drive a street with only a few blocks. My friends Pete Lund and David Kaiser lived on this street and sometimes Tom and I would ride our bicycles to the end of it and pick blackberries, hoping someone would make a cobbler for us. Barbara, Pete’s sister and serious bird watcher, followed rare birds throughout the neighborhood. Every now and then, I would look into our back lawn and see Barbara walking rapidly with binoculars, gazing up at the trees with note pad in hand.

During those years I rode the school bus to Caroline Brevard and then to Leon. While living on Gaines Street, I walked to Caroline Brevard, but on the highway, the bus was my only transportation to school. The driver, A. D. Harris, owned a grocery store and service station on the Perry Highway and driving the bus was his second job. He always wore a coat and tie and called each kid by name. Sometimes when the children were rowdy, he would stop the bus, and lecture them, but never threatened to kick them off. At Christmas, he kept a box of apples at the entrance of the bus and offered each of us one as he wished us Merry Christmas.

Never owning a car during my high school years, I either rode the bus or hitched a ride with a classmate or my parents when they left for work. Also, a friend, Judy Holt, sometimes gave me rides in her small car with a rumble seat where I could stash my French horn. Occasionally I caught rides with the Cassels, Dean their son who played French horn with me in the band, was one of my best friends.

In 1955, polio was rampart and children under 15 were vaccinated with the Gamma Globulin injection. Soon the public pools were closed and we only swam at Lake Bradford or the Andrews private pool. Mrs. Andrews always asked the kids in the neighborhood if we had received the shot and also if we could swim. After the eighth grade my good friend Jimmy left home to attend a private boarding school, and swimming was usually curtailed until he came home for holidays.

In the fifties, the Cold War raged and frightened everyone in the entire United States. Tallahassee was no exception. Air raid sirens were mounted throughout the town and civil defense practice alerts were held to prepare for nuclear attacks. My mother while working in the registrar’s office at FSU related that one morning the employees were instructed to crawl under their desks when the sirens sounded, but later remarked that the window air conditioners were so loud, they never heard them so they kept on working. Once, in 1955 the city had an exercise where the citizens were instructed to leave for pre-determined evacuation sites after notification by civil defense authorities. All the roads including the Perry Highway were packed with cars heading out of town. My friend, David Brand related that during this exercise, he rode with his father, a city official, through the downtown area and though it spooky since there were no vehicles or people in sight. When the exercise began, my parents were both at FSU and drove out the Perry Highway and when they arrived at our house pulled off and put the car in the garage staying there until the drill was over. I remember my mother saying that they were not going to drive to a hot field and sit in the car when they could just go home and wait until it was time to go back to work. I don’t know where I was that day. I think I was at summer camp. I would have enjoyed being part of it. Our family still lived on the Perry Highway during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and for several weeks the highway was jam-packed with military caravans day and night, heading to South Florida to set up missile sites.

I was out of school and in the army but remember this period as more frightening than the earlier preparations in the fifties when the United States and Russia prepared for war.

In June of 1955, my sister Janet, went to a Baptist camp in Glorieta, New Mexico for the summer as a counselor. My mother and father both corresponded with her during this time and I kept their letters full of news of Tallahassee and her friends back home. Weddings were popular social events in town during the fifties with parties and showers preceding the marriage and the letters were full of news about the activities. In one, my mother wrote, “I had a shower for Ann Gandy. We borrowed Mrs. Mitchell's punch bowl and served sherbet in ginger ale with icebox cookies and ribbon sandwiches. Not as many people came to my shower as I expected, because Mrs. Joyce had a party for Pat May.” Most people invited to weddings in town purchased their gifts from jewelry stores like Moons and Stafford’s. One of my summer jobs was driving the delivery truck for Moons. Customers would come to the store after receiving wedding invitations and look at the bride’s registry and pick out gifts. After they were wrapped, I would deliver them to the bride’s home and it was customary for the families to display the gifts for all the friends who stop by and see them.

In one letter, Mother wrote, “We were invited to Pauline’s wedding. We sent two iced teaspoons, because one was $1.70 and we didn’t want to seem cheap but we have bought five wedding and graduations presents this summer. Her wedding was pretty but they could have used a steam iron on the bridesmaid’s dresses.” As a teenager, I didn’t particularly like weddings and tried to stay clear of these activities.

One pastime my family liked was attending movies. During the 1950’s, free movies were held in the amphitheater of the Kuersteiner Music building at FSU. It was a popular way to spend one’s time and many people in Tallahassee took advantage of it. Part of the Opperman Music Hall, it is presently named the Owens Sellers Amphitheater and mainly used for outside concerts. In the letters to Janet, my mother talked about these movies and in one, she related, “we went to see Stage Door at the free movie last night. You remember your dad once played a part in it when it was performed at Florida State College for Women.” The college was always recruiting men in town to play male parts at the Conradi Theatre. I would go by myself, if I had a ride to the university and I remember seeing “Three Coins in a Fountain” and “Climb the Highest Mountain.” Years later, I owned a home in Helen, Georgia, close to where this movie was made.

While living on the Perry Highway the state began the extensive program of widening Highway 27 to include four lanes, and a portion of the properties along the road were purchased for this project. Part of our lawn along with the other homes were taken and after the new highway was built, our house was a lot closer to the road. In 1954 when the project was started, smudge pots filled with kerosene burning all night lined the road, an enticement for the teenagers in the area who drove their bicycles around these old fashion warning lights. For almost two years the residences of the Perry Highway suffered the inconvenience of the widening of the road. In an August 4, 1954 letter to my sister still in New Mexico, my mother wrote, “Yesterday afternoon was our church picnic at Winthrop Park. I bought an old hen at Lovette’s and made chicken salad to take with us. Just as I put the salad in the bowl, the crews started pouring tar (imagine on Sunday) and we were not sure we could get the car out of the driveway. Finally, we called Ron to come get us and I put on your old brown shoes and walked to the Roadcaps to waive him down. By then, the sand was all the way over the new part of the highway, but he could drive over it and finally picked us up and we went on to the picnic.” Finally, to the relief of all who lived nearby, the highway was completed with its four lanes reaching all the way to the Capitol a magnificent thoroughfare which was renamed Apalachee Parkway.

As I grew older in the 1950’s and headed towards graduation from Leon High, the days of playing in the old club house and roaming the woods behind our homes finally came to an end. Turning sixteen, I obtained my driver’s license and my parents agreed I could have a birthday party at our home on the Perry Highway. I was allowed to invite fifteen boys and fifteen girls who were not to bring dates as thirty kids was all our house would hold. I placed my small record player on a table on our porch, expecting the group to dance, but instead we climbed the firetower a half mile away and played hide go seek in the woods. These were the days before the wild parties you see on TV, but then again, I don’t know all that went on in the woods. My father grilled hamburgers and hotdogs and everyone seemed to have a good time. I mention this party only because it was the only one I ever had on the Perry Highway and I remember it as special remembrance of the time I lived there.

As the years pass, my sisters married and I left for college. Changes to our neighborhood begin to happen overnight. The friends I grew up with and had so much fun on the highway left for school or jobs. The highway, now four lanes, brought in additional traffic as subdivisions began to spring up and people in a hurry drove to their destinations. The farmlands and woods turned into commercial businesses and in 1963, my parents moved nearer to town and the property became a Chick-Fil-A drive-thru. The Roadcaps stopped keeping farm animals and their expansive property was soon sold to become a Target store which is still there today.

The Dulls home became a Quality Inn (now closed), which I sometimes stayed in on trips to Tallahassee just to reminisce. I would try to reserve a room which looked out at the Andrews old property and the Ashenhart’s brick home. The Andrews long ago sold or gave their property to the YMCA and the house and pool was used for some years before the Y built a new building which is now closed. But the brick walls of the Andrews house remain on the Apalachee Parkway to remind those of us of the wonderful years growing up on the Perry Highway in Tallahassee.

These stories are chapters from Pope Hamrick’s Memoirs.
More Tallahassee stories from his memoirs will be added as they become available.

Back To Top