Florida 2021...Heading North for Home

Said my good~bye to mom and Kelly on Wednesday Night, then headed back to the Red Roof, watched some World Series and packed for the morning trip back north...

I had planned on stopping by the Gulf Shore area of Alabama to see my old football officiating crewmate and umpiring partner, fellow Air Farce Vietnam Vet, and buddy...John has had stage 4 Lung Cancer since late 2017 but despite the dire predictions, he has survived for over 4 years now, and him and wife moved from Ohio to Alabama last spring...the weather however, and my restlessness, decided to get the best of me and I instead headed straight up I 75...also missing a stop in Kentucky to see my long time friend and former broadcast mate, Andy Magione...it just wasn't in the cards. 11 days on the road and moving from motel to motel, had gotten the best of me. Nearing 73 that came as no surprise, despite feeling in reasonable health for my age...

So up the Interstate heading into some major rains, which would strike about

the time I hit Ocala in West Central Florida...traffic came to a stop on more than one occasion, but I still managed to make it to Cordele, Georgia, and the Colonial Best Western, where me and the family have made many stops...great, albeit aging, motel, and stay...always a great, hot, breakfast, thrown in with the $89 price tag...

A decent sleep, not great, but decent, was had and up for breakfast, and headed

north, with Atlanta, Knoxville, and more rain ahead...Kentucky was the worst as I was delayed by 3, count them, Three, traffic stopping accidents, which delayed my arrival home on Friday Night by a couple of hours...I finally arrived back in Celina by 10pm...happy to be home.

Grading the trip:  Fishing D-,  Travel Conditions  C-, Weather in Florida, B+, Hot and Humid, but for the most part rain free, except for the travel home...Flagler Beach A, Stay at Tom's A, Venice C, Naples C+, and Everglades B...overall I give the trip a C+...had better, had worse, didn't see some of the people I planned on, but for the most part, I enjoyed the time away...

Photos-Top Final Sunset on Venice Beach, Florida, Driving in the Driving Rains on I 75 near Ocala, Sunrise from my first floor room at the Colonial Best Western in Cordele, Georgia, and bottom Sunrise at Flager Beach looking out from my motel balcony ...

 

My Favorite Places, Part #1

A third straight day of sunny, partly sunny anyway, and less humid conditions, with temperatures remaining in the 70s...it was nice to get a few "normal" Spring days, after the extreme conditions of early Spring, wet and cold, and the past two weeks, hot and humid.  Some showers might appear late tonight and then again through Thursday...but nothing out of the ordinary is in the forecast.

Sam and I worked together, probably for the last time this baseball season(but you never know), at Celina last night.  He took the plate and I had the bases in a well played contest between the Junior ACME Bulldogs and their counterparts from Convoy Crestview...the Crestview Knights remained undefeated, scoring 4 in the 6th inning for a come-from-behind 5-3 win.  Sam is back at Celina tonight while I travel to Rockford for a Parkway Panther JA game.

My Favorite Towns, Places, Locations, etc  Part #1

I got to reminiscing the other day, not only about the places I have lived, but the places I have visited, even for a short while.  In my 62 years they have been varied at the seasonal temperatures this Spring...some good, some bad, some not really either, but all were interesting in their own way.

Take for instance Celina....where I hang my hat these days.  I have always held a love, hate, relationship with this town of 11,000, situated on Grand Lake.  Visiting here for the first time in the Summer of 1960, then moving with the family of mom, dad, Mike, Marty, and 4 month old Kelly, here in October 1962...right at the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  So, off and on, for almost 50 years, Celina has been my home.  Off when I left for the Air Force and when the family moved to the south part of the lake to Montezuma for my High School Years.  Off again for the Air Force, back, then off to Upstate New York...back again for another 4 years, before Patricia and I headed to northern Wisconsin, Kokomo, Indiana, and Dodge City, Kansas...finally chucking the moving around world of Radio News, and settling on Coldwater Creek a couple miles south of Celina in late 1980....and moving into town again in 1990, and finally buying our current home in 1995.  The one thing about Celina, no matter where I lived, I could always count on returning here, and calling it home...some of the best days of my life have been spent in and around Celina, likewise, some of the worst.

I watch as our once middle class neighborhood gets infested by drug dealing rental units at one doorstep, and white trash, at the other...Celina is changing, not all for the better that is for sure, but despite it all, I will probably remain....too old to move, and a bit too stubborn to let the interloping trash drive me out.  Our first house was purchased in this neighborhood in 1974...I moved back into it in 95, and I'll be damned if I will move out...unless somebody wants to give me twice what our old Church Parsonage is worth...then, perhaps, I can be bought!

My other two "Home Towns" are the small bergs of Venice, Florida and Scott, Ohio, where my dad was born in the winter of 1917...and near where my great-grandparents Nelson and Mary Ann Houseworth settled at the end of the Civil War.  Most of the early Houseworths are buried in the Scott or Blue Creek Township Cemetery...I lived in Scott from the time of my birth(in Van Wert) in 1949, and lived there until we picked up stakes, when I was five years old, and moved to south Florida.   Scott hasn't changed that much since I lived there, at least size wise.  But our family ties died out with my Aunt Eva passing in 1998, Scott is not where I would choose to live today....but there is something to be said for small towns.

Which is exactly what Venice and South Venice, Florida were when we arrived in the summer of 1954.  We made South Venice, then Venice, our homes for nearly a decade.  Venice was a small town of just over 1000, when we arrived, a population which would "explode" during the winter months, when the Midwestern, and Eastern folks would come down for the Winter...most of the population were transplants from those locations.  today, nearly 60 years later, the population has exploded year around, and you can hardly tell where south Venice starts and where Sarasota begins some 23 miles to the north.  Venice, while I still enjoy visiting and vacationing there, is not the town of my youth...it is not likely I would move back there.  For one, it's too crowded, too expensive, and frankly, too damn hot 9 months out of the year.


 So there are my three "Home Towns"...Celina and Scott, Ohio, and Venice, Florida....next I will look at the places I have lived at for a short time or visited, and list with photos, my favorites....I believe it will be a long list, which I have not even began to think hard about yet.

back later>>>>

Photos/Venice,Florida, Montezuma and Celina, Ohio{1954-1968}

Still fall-like this morning, no rain in the forecast for a few more days. It was 47 this morning, temps will slowly rise to near 80 for highs by the end of the week.

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Tomorrow I make my trek to the Joint Township Hospital, across the Lake, to visit a Dietitian. She will go over my diabetes 2 diet plan for the next 6 weeks. I already started on that path this past weekend, with the help of Patricia...already dropped about 5 pounds, without giving up a nightly beer or two, and without feeling hungry. Tomorrow we will fine turn the plan, and go with it to see how it all works out, before calling the Doc for another blood drawing around mid October.

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Marxist Alert___

Glenn Beck has been going after the Obummer Administration great guns on both his radio show and his 5PM EST Fox News TV show....the Marxist-in-Chief and his minions are in a panic as Barry's poll numbers are dropping faster than a turd in a 2 story high outhouse. The Kenyan has surrounded himself with a surly crew of Black Racists/Marxists and White Liberal Socialists...and Beck is exposing Obama for what he is...A Chicago Street Radical with a hard core Marxist group surrounding him. Many he has placed in "Czar" positions, just Google up "Van Jones Communist". This son of a bitch is pushing hard for a Socialist/Marxist Utopia, and we better be ready to revolt against his plans. Beck wants everybody to be peaceful in their protests, I'm not so sure that that will work....keep your powder dry, and your basement/storeroom stocked with essentials.

-----Photos of places I have lived{part 2}

1954-1968___

On to more pleasant subjects....

The Houseworth Family of Stan and Margaret lived in Venice, Florida, for about a decade from the early 1950s through late 1962. We started out in South Venice at Alston's Cottages{see yesterday's photos}...Alston's was something akin to the old Travel Court's you can see in old movies from the 30s and 40s. We lived there from 1954 through mid 1957...then on to the Venice By-Way, before finally buying a house in the Edgewood Section of Venice City in the fall of 1958.

Dad and his brother, John, purchase a gas station in South Venice during those years...he finally sold his share to Uncle John in late 1962, and in October of that year we headed to Celina, Ohio...where I have lived off and on for the past 47 years.

In 1963 we moved just outside the small town of Montezuma, Ohio, on the south side of Grand Lake, and just 3 miles from Celina....the folks purchased a house in the fall of 63 that put us within walking distance of Whiskey Run at the edge of the small Lake Front Airport. Whiskey Run is where I would learn to Ice Skate...spent many a winter weekend day there during my early high school days.

Living on the outskirts of Montezuma, going to school in Celina from 1963 until my Air Force days began in June 1968...I learned to drive, drink, and on occasion, open my big mouth at the wrong time...looking back, it was a growing experience, if not an always fun one.

Photos-Alston's Cottages in 1954, mom marked our humble abode with the "X" on this post card she sent to Grandma Houseworth{double click to see large version}. John and Stan's Phillips 66 Gas Station...it was located in South Venice, near Alston's. Me{left}, Mike, and sister Marty in 1956..sister Kelly, born in Venice, didn't come along until the summer of 1962. Whiskey Run near Montezuma, where I learned to Ice Skate and freeze my toes. 1967 the year I graduated, sitting on Dad's Dodge Charger, not half as bad ass as I thought I would like to have been. And finally Dad's Marathon Station on Main Street in Celina, as it looks today...he purchased it in the fall of 1962.

Drought Buster

1:30PM

As I have written, we have had a very dry summer, and for the most part, what rain we've had in the area has been north....this latest "gully washer" is no exception. Most of the rain, and it has been heavy, has went north...we have had a couple of strong storms this morning, but nothing so far like the guys in Nappanee(where we deliver the RVs out of) or even Rootstown, Ohio(where I am scheduled to pick up a RV for repair). Multiple inches in most locations north and northwest.

Brings me to the point, I contacted the owner, and we've decided to delay the pick up and return of his RV until Wednesday at least....not opposed to driving RVs in the rain, but the roads and Hoosier's parking lot are under a bit of liquid....so delayed it is.

Greenville this morning, again tomorrow...will pick up Sam in Van Wert tomorrow evening, and drag him with me to Rootstown and Nappanee to pick up his car at the Indiana site on Wednesday.

Patricia back to school, Anissa back part-time to the Cheryl Ann Workshop, she will split her days....seems to work best for her if she is not at one task too long....part of the multi handicapped world that none of us can figure out.

45 years ago

_____________"Where were you in 62?" As the poster line from the movie American Graffiti asks....I can't remember exactly what I was doing the last days before beginning my 8th grade classes at Venice(FL) Jr High, but I know our time as residents in south Florida were coming to an end. We would pack up our belonging, rent out our house at 328 School Street, and head for the unknown in Celina, Ohio. I could not foresee what it would be like to pick up and leave the home and friends I had known for my school years to that time and move back north to Ohio, a place I was born, had relatives, but really never knew. Mike was in his Junior year, that really had to suck, Marty was in 5th, Kelly just a newborn...

After the experience of moving to Celina and having to adjust, I swore if I had kids, I would not pick up and move them during the middle of school..especially High School....and I stuck to that promise to myself....whether they appreciated that is not important...it was important to me.

photo: Looking out my front porch about 20 minutes ago, at the welcome rain.

prh

Minneapolis/Ft Wayne

6:30PM

Back from a Hot Day at the Fort Wayne Wizards game...not much breeze and about 95....Patricia and I only stayed until the 7th....Wizards were up 2-1 when we left and that was the final. Cory Luebke, the local kid from Maria Stein, pitched last night, getting no decision, but pitching well after a shaky first inning, in which he gave up 3 runs.

Speaking of baseball, our annual get together in Minnesota was planned for this weekend...after the disaster of the I 35 Bridge we had second thoughts, but have decided to go ahead and take off for the Twin Cities in the AM......a mess, and a tragedy for sure....God bless those people and their families involved in this.

Will be the last entry until at least Sunday night when I get back....no computer viewing when on vacation.....just won't do it.

41 years ago
______________Decisions, decisions, 1966 got a job offer from Marsh Supermarkets to be a carry-out boy...only other job I had ever had was back in Venice, delivering the Sarasota News....the decision is....play(or more likely sit the bench) football my senior year at Celina, or make some money, so I can buy a car. Being a 5' 8" 130 lb defensive back 2nd or 3rd stringer made the decision easy....I was forgoing my football life and sacking groceries.

Met my best man Rick Person there and a few other life long friends, Paul Andrews, and more. The decision was the right one...had a 62 Falcon by late fall, and never looked back on the senior year(we finished 8-2 after going 9-0-1 the 65 season) with any regrets....I was a late grower anyway, finally hitting 5' 11" and 185 when I was shipped off to Vietnam. The Marsh gig lasted only until my graduation was secure, and then I took an assembly job at the Huffy Bike plant, where I would work until June of 68 when I joined the Air Force, and then work a year or so until after my discharge. I decided that factory work would not be my life's quest....but Marsh Supermarkets got me started, 41 years ago this month.

prh