A Visit to "The Stone"

May 3, 2009 - Sunday

Having grown up on a farm there was never a time when there was nothing to do and if I thought there was nothing to do my father soon revised that opinion. I often thought that I was slave labor during that growing up period. After all what sense did it make to go out in the fields with a burlap bag and a pick and dig out "doc" (burdock), put it in the bag and carry it out to a place where we could make a bonfire and burn it. Oh, by the way be careful that you don't drop any of the seeds or next year we'll have more to dig out. Dad also hated Canadian thistles and they were one of his personal vendettas for extinction. Those were just a couple of things that at the time didn't make a lot of sense to me. Another activity that I usually tried to be scarce for was "picking stones". After the fields were prepared for planting there were always rocks and stones that appeared out of no where. Why and where did these come from every year when you worked ground? They were like a crop that just popped up. Well obviously freezing and thawing had something to do with it so off we would go with a tractor and trailer armed with manure forks (a six prong fork with the prongs about an inch and a half apart). Back and forth over the field we would go picking up any stones that wouldn't fall through the prongs and throw them in the trailer. Dad would help with any that I couldn't lift myself. At least I got to drive the tractor sometimes which was a thrill for me as a kid and probably the only redeeming thing that I could find about "picking stones". My mother had an interest in special stones that were egg shaped and worn smooth called glacier eggs. She always requested that if we saw any of those we had to save them and take them back to her.

Once the trailer was full we would head off to the edge of the "little woods" where there was a small area of swampy water close to a tree with a little drop off. We would back up the trailer until the back end was in or close to the water, pop the clutch a few times jerking the trailer making the rocks slide out into the hole. Apparently our family had been putting rocks in there for years and it had never filled up. Dad said that it was quicksand and don't fall in there or you might not get out.

As I look back on that period I now realize that I was learning a lot of life's lessions about hard work and creating something to be proud of. I now believe that our farm was one of the best manicured farms in our corner of Summit County. The edges of the fields along the roads were always mowed, crops kept cultivated, weeds under control and that was something that my father was proud of. Work was not something you did on Sunday however and it was an extreme condition that caused us to work on that day of the week. I was talking to my sister Fayne today and she was telling how grandma taught her to quilt but they never quilted on Sunday. Grandma told her that stitches you put in on Sunday you had to take out on Monday with your nose. Not sure what that means but I'm sure that my sisters didn't quilt on Sunday.

One of the first things that I had on my agenda when visiting Florida and Kissimmee was to visit "The Stone". As mentioned before my grandparents used to winter in Kissimmee back in the thirties and forties and made a lot of friends there amongst the other northerners who came there to escape northern winters. Fishing was apparently a pastime as some of the old family albums have photos of long strings of fish requiring a person on each end to hold all the fish up. Also shuffleboard was popular and at some point (probably in the 30's) the Kissimmee Tourist Association was formed and a number of shuffleboard courts (I'm guessing 50 or more) were installed close to Lake Tohopakeliga in a city park.

Below you can see that they are still in use today.


What about "The Stone" you ask? Well in the late thirties the mayor and a local doctor at the time decided that a monument honoring the tourists and the states that they were from should be erected. Apparently it was a popular project and they ended up with stones and other artifacts from all the states (48 at that time) and 20 foreign countries. My grandparents Ephraim and Ada Ritzman participated in the project bringing what must have been a favorite stone from the family farm. I'm sure picking the right stone must have taken a lot of consideration with the abundance to choose from. It is kind of heart shaped and appears to have more of a quartz content than sandstone. Obviously a very sincere stone, I like it. At least there was one less to pick up when I was a kid.

Below is a view of our stone. Just touching it somehow puts me in contact with my grandfather and part of our family history.

Closeup below, note E. Ritzman at bottom of stone and dated 1941.

Overall view below.

If you are ever in Kissimmee Florida please stop by the Monument of the States and find our family stone on the monument and touch it for me. If you go down Main Street heading south to Old Town Kissimmee turn left on Monument St. (almost to downtown) and you can't miss the monument. Facing the front of the Monument our stone is on the left side about three fourths of the way back and about eight or nine feet up. Drop me a line and let me know if you find it.

Florida Rememberance Trip

May 7, 2009
Once again I am a number of days behind real time in updating our blog. I'll blame some of it on my lack of ability to link to the internet with my laptop via a hardwire connection and getting it to communicate with the cable.

We left home on Friday May 1st for a trip to Florida. An opportunity to share a time share with some of Joan's cousins presented itself and we decided to join them. One of the things that made it interesting is that the condo was in Kissimmee. Kissimmee was the town that my grandparents used to go to in the winter after they had retired from farming back in the late forties.

Kissimmee was once a wintertime gathering place for retirees from the northern states and located in central Florida. It is just 10 miles or so from Orlando and Disney World now lies almost straight east of Kissimmee. My brother used to lament that our grandparents never bought some of the land there that was cheap back in the forties. Of course who would have ever guessed what happened there over the next fifty years or so.

As we left home and began driving south I got thinking of what it must have been like to drive south to Florida in the 40's and 50s. Quite possibly it was in a Model A or post war 40's auto. I do know that grandpa and grandma used to also take the train to Florida and that was the norm for grandma after grandpa died. I don't remember too much about grandpa because he died when I was only about 6 or 8 years old (I'll have to go back and check the records on that). Grandpa was a farmer and that took a toll but an accident involving a fall from a ladder while painting the barn took a larger toll on him. In those days broken hips were not as repairable as they are today. In his era farming was done with horses and dad remembered their names and used to tell about plowing with them when he was young using a three hitch team and a fresh horse resting at each end of the field that would be switched out giving a little rest to the others. Dad said that grandpa never liked the first tractor that was bought especially after he ran it up against a tree and never drove it again. Back to grandma taking the train to Florida. The last few years she went to Florida someone in the family would drive her to Washington, DC to get the train and then she would ride it from there all the way to Kissimmee getting off only a couple of blocks from where she stayed.

I can remember that when I was around 8-10 years old my parents would head to Florida for a couple of weeks during January or February getting someone to take care of the farm and milk the cows while we were gone. Milking was probably the primary chore during that time of the year so there wasn't a lot of other things to do and was about the only time that they could get away. I have some faint memories of those trips. A couple of the things I remember was that going through Georgia you had to be careful of speed traps especially in Jesup Georgia.

As we were going through southern Georgia this trip and we began going over a number of concrete surfaced bridges on the Interstate and the thumpety thumping of the tires on the expansion joints brought back memories of riding over long bridges with wood planks years ago before Interstates. We would have to slow down some for the bridges. The bridges were long over the seemingly endless swamps in south Georgia. I guess it's not a lot different today with the frequency of the thumping about the same due to travelling 40 or 50 miles an hour then compared to 70 to 80 miles an hour today.

It would be interesting to know the routes used back then, if they're still there, and retrace the trip on the old highways.

We drove down the Interstate to just north of Charlotte on Friday and then drove on down to Kissimmee on Saturday. Back in the forties that must have been at least three to four days of travel and at least three days in the fifties. When I was a kid I used to like to stay in the motels on the way and was really upset when the trip came to an end. I remember mother used to always request to go in and check the room for cleanliness, bugs, etc. before we would actually pay and numerous times we would leave and go looking for another motel. I also vaguely remember as you got into the deep south the racial issues with signs for "colored people" to use different restrooms and other facilities. That was never an issue with my parents. Dad always said that they were just like us with just a different skin color. I'm glad that I was raised that way.

We were making pretty good time on Saturday and considering that we seldom hit the road before 9 or 9:30 AM these days (we are retired after all) we were about on schedule to arrive and meet Joan's cousin around 8 PM at the condo. We were on Interstate 95 about parallel with Daytona Beach when we caught a blurb on the radio that there was an accident blocking 95 on the north lane but both north and south were stopped. My plan was to take the next exit but we didn't make it before the highway was a big parking lot. Now we were sitting and it was warm. We left the A/C on for a while running the engine but decided to forgo that and shut things off and opened the windows. There was a pickup truck about two cars up in the center lane and after about 15 minutes or so the passenger side door opened and a tall blond gal with short shorts, long legs, barefoot, and a top with skinny straps got out and slowly sash-shayed around the back of the truck to the left side and reached down into a cooler in the bed and pulled out a can of beer and handed it to the driver. She made the return trip to the passenger side and got back in. Hmmm, that was interesting!

After about an hour the police opened up the highway and we were on our way again.

We arrived safely at the condo around 9:30 PM.