Sometimes I hear a song and I am taken right back to a time, and with Google now I can really “kind of” visually go back too.
It was my first official run away from Leesburg at 13. My mother and stepfather lived in South Miami. It was the first time I was exposed to a metropolitan area and I loved it. There was always something to do and it never involved an orange grove.
The top right building was my Junior High School, where I was awarded the school superlative…”Girl with the Best Sense of Humor, 1969”. Superlatives were better than valedictorians, it was a huge deal at my school, (back then you kind of graduated, but not with all of the pomp and circumstance just a big school prom like dance and awards). I was so amazed and surprised and tickled that just being myself was noticed. I was not surprised when I found it online all these years later...that it is now a magnet school for the arts. In Leesburg I had been criticized for being funny, I was told it was rude, crude and unladylike. No friend or family member in Leesburg ever acknowledged or asked me about how it felt to be acknowledged by the students and faculty of a large metropolitan school for such an honor. It was not anything they understood and I was not the homecoming queen....so in their eyes... it did not count.
Killian High School (lower right) was a serious culture shock. A huge brand new school built for the single purpose of achieving racial integration. The high school was bigger than the first Jr. college I went to and a hotbed of civil disobedience. A week did not go by that at least one bomb threat did not get us all out of class or a urinal was not blown off of the boy's bathroom wall. We had lecture classes in huge auditoriums or lecture labs, bigger than most colleges. It was scary as hell...but exhilarating at the same time...The possibilities were endless!
Oh and Dadeland! (Upper Left) may have been one of the first real malls and my official introduction to Jordon Marsh and Burdines, which no one even remembers now! But there were so many small and amazing boutiques where anything could be in style…and oh yes there was…. Spencers…Black lights…psychedelic posters…candles.... the definition of a generation! It is where I learned how to create my own style and shop!
And finally home.... 6460 SW 73rd St. South Miami, FL (bottom left) The little house, the first place where I was accepted just the way I was. It was the beginning of growing into who I was… and would be. (And the clock that sat on the shelf in that house and chimed every hour, is now in my house still chiming, still telling me...it's ok)
I would be dragged back to Leesburg at 16, through legal custody wrangling I was criticized, punished, chronically restricted from most social events. I suspect in today's world it would be considered emotional abuse. I was being browbeaten into becoming socially acceptable, to fit into the Leesburg box, but Leesburg would never fit me again, I had found out there were options in other places.. Leesburg would never ever fit me again nor would I ever allow it to make me feel "less than" because I did not fit it. There was nothing wrong with me it was the Leesburg mentality of the 60's and 70's.. As I look back I understand and appreciate all of those that love the comfort and simplicity of a small town. I can see the sense of safety in a narrowly defined social, religious and political structure of a small town. But I can also appreciate that I am NOT a bad person.... because I do not want to be a part of that ever again.
"Give Me Some Kind of Sign, Girl" Brenton Wood
