The View From Here: Ah, the haunts of my youth

The haunts of my youth were so delightful for me to revisit, I'm afraid readers will have to indulge me as I take another walk down memory lane. Just to make things simpler, when I refer to U.S. 41 here, I'm referring to Old 41 Road.

At the center of Old Bonita, there stood a rather basic structure. It was made of cypress poles with cypress planks for the walls and screens for windows. It had a tin roof on cypress pole trusses and storm awnings that were raised and lowered by ropes from inside and a solid wood storm door that could be shut over the basic screen entrance door. The floor was made of smooth and level concrete.

It was simply called "The Pavilion" and ran lengthways east and west approximately where the Community Hall now stands. All town functions took place at the pavilion, and here's a partial list: Saturday night town dances (square, reels and round), teen record hops, Wednesday and Friday night movies (a dime to get in), Boy Scouts, the library, Woman's Club, Exchange Club, Chamber of Commerce, Easter egg hunts, church picnics, fundraising dinners, Teen Club, town meetings (such as the one where we decided to purchase a fire engine), political rallies, etc. etc. etc. It was truly the hub of Bonita.

Though not that significant, at the north end of Bonita Springs west of U.S. 41, and just north of the Rosemary Drive canal was a beacon light. It was a very powerful light that stood on a tower about 25 feet in the air and rotated.

One lens was white, and the other was green, thus it sent out a white and green flashing light that could be seen from miles away. When we were returning from a trip late at night, we knew we were almost home as we saw the welcome sight of the flashing beacon.

A very important part of early Bonita was the town baseball team. The playing field was on the southeast corner of U.S. 41 and Terry Street and home plate was approximately where the Hess store now stands. The infield was red clay, and it had a tall wide net for a backstop, and there were bleachers along the west side of the field.

The team had regular uniforms with 'Bonita' blazed across the front, and they played teams from all around the area. They had some really great ball players such as Armond Humphries, Jack Herlmier, Herb Henning, George Galloway, Ken and John Emil Hogue, Lester Liles, Donnie Strickland, Owen Downing, to name a few. If I left someone important to you off of the list, it's not intentional, just poor memory.

My next memory of something that virtually no longer exists in Bonita Springs is a fruit: the guava. This, to me, is the manna of all fruits, and I can't believe we let it slip away. At one time, every yard had three or more guava trees growing, and when the season came, the grounds would be covered with fallen fruit.

They were so proliferous that kids like us would go around gathering the overripe fallen fruit and have guava fights. Every use for the guava was a cut above the same use for any other fruit in the United State. Some examples: guava jelly, guava syrup, guava butter, stewed guavas, guava juice, guava pie, and finally, my mama's famous guava cobbler topped with a scoop of ice cream. It was a dessert for the gods.

Thinking of things that are no longer around, I had a great uncle in Georgia who was about 75 years old at the time, and he used to say, "You know, Byron, it's a funny thing, but there's not any old people around anymore. There used to be a lot of them a few years back."

This conversation came to my mind one Saturday when I was having breakfast with my three cousins and we mused as to how there were no more old timers coming to the pioneer gatherings, and it dawned on us that we are them!