Several years ago the newspaper here in Columbia, South Carolina ran a series of articles, submitted by readers, telling of their experiences while growing up in Columbia. I sent the editor an article about growing up in Florida and he said they were only accepting local stories. He called me back and said that this Arlington place sounded like a really neat place to grow up in, so he decided to run it. Here is a picture of the article and the story. After reading the story, I would like to ask, Whats in your trunk? :-) Title: Snips and Snails and Squirrel Tails What are young boys made of? The nursery rhyme that we all know tells us that we were once made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. As a young boy, I was an avid collector of all things rare and precious. Like most boys, I had my comic books and my baseball cards. However, hidden from public view, in a large secret trunk, was my other extraordinary collection. In my cabinet of curiosities I had no puppy dog tails, but sealed in numerous envelopes, leather pouches, and cigar boxes I kept a bountiful array of nature’s most unusual artifacts. Until this past summer the contents of this secret chest were last viewed sometime in the early 1960’s. For years my children had heard tales of my strange collection. During their summer vacation at their grandmother’s house in Florida, she told them she had lugged, for more than thirty years, this unwieldy trunk around from state to state. The time had finally come to open it. After moving six times which carried her to North Carolina and now back to Florid, Grandmother had retired to a patio home that was located near the home that we had lived in almost three decades ago. Actually, her new home in Ft. Caroline was now located in the old woods that I used to explore. With much anticipation we circled around the trunk. Taking a screwdriver, I pried the flimsy lock from the hasp. Lifting the lid ever so carefully, I propped it open, revealing the musty contents. Rolled neatly and tied with twine were several homemade maps I had drawn. Unknown to me at the time, my maps were similar to those drawn more than 300 years ago by the Spanish, French and English explorers of early Florida. Ponce de Leon , Jacques LeMoyne and John and William Bartram, like me, had carefully etched the rivers, streams, swamps, and woodlands around the River of May -- the river now called the St. Johns. At the end of our cul-de-sac, a small trail entered the the woods and followed a meandering tidal creek through the deep ravines and high hammocks of mossed-draped oak, hickory and magnolia trees. Eventually the trail ended on the bluffs of teh river. From here I had a commanding view of the vast and sweeping marsh that extended for many miles to the Atlantic Ocean. It was here on the river’s south bank, on a flat and broad knoll, in the summer of 1564, that French Huguenots under Rene‘ de Laudoniere settled a small colony they named Ft. Caroline. On this river bank, as the tides slowly nibbled away the shore, I collected bits of Indian pottery, arrowheads, fossilized shark teeth and petrified sea snails. In the late fall of the year I would camp under the stars, sleeping only on a bedroll. A small fire kept me warm. By morning the smoke from my fire lingered over creek and filled the ancient, dew-damp woods with the faint odor of smoke. Beneath the towering pine trees, hickory and oak trees, I would ease about with my single-shot 22 rifle, trying to outsmart the elusive squirrels. On my map I marked this treasure-laden spot with an X. And it was on this ancient spot, where the tidal creek flows into the river, I soon realized that one way of life eventually seeps into another. It has been told that the poet William Wordsworth read Bartram’s eloquent travel writings on Florida and passed them along to his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge was reading about the the St. Johns River’s “venerable groves and solemn shades...wafted by the winds” when he fell asleep dreaming. When he awoke, he set down the words to his unfinished poem, “Kubla Khan.” In the very bottom of the trunk I suddenly remembered the contents of a cedar cigar box I had taped shut. “Open this carefully,” I instructed my children. Opening the box revealed several folded layers of tissue. There under the crinkled tissue, layered like sardines, were about a dozen snipped, furry squirrel tails. We placed the tails outside on Grandmother’s sun porch to air and freshen them. Later during supper we heard a chattering commotion coming from the front yard. The box of squirrels tails was empty! A scurry of squirrels had come down from the trees and carried off the tails. The great-great squirrel-grand-descendants of 30 generations ago had come to claim their ancestors! As time passed, the gently rolling land an long the river has been cleared to make way for suburban waterfront estates and posh golf courses and patio homes. The Bartrams had stopped here and collected fossils, seeds, and plants, stored them in large ox bladders and sent them to the Royal Society in London. William Bartram mentioned in his writings the squirrels of Florida, and he too, perhaps took a few furry tails home with him. Although the physical beauty of my former hunting ground in Arlington has been altered I sometimes like Coleridge have “a vision in a dream of paradise.” And that paradise we all know consists of snips and snails and, occasionally, squirrel tails.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:58:42 +0000
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