A FLORIDA SKETCH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 291, 8 December 1937, Page 22

A FLORIDA SKETCH.

TYPICAL AMERICA. BARTOW'S CELEBRITIES. SMALL TOWN'S QUAINT CHARM '(By'IKA WOLFRRT.) BARTOW (Florida). Average temperature: Warm. Average rainfall: Sufficient. Average income: Average. Tourists roar through here on the Havana special (5.21 a.m.). pass overhead in Tampa and Miami-bound 'planea, rocket through in buses and motor cars, see spacious, quiet streets, spacious, quiet homes, see Broadway. Broadway (Bartow) has one movie theatre —the Ritz (Saturday night's special double feature: "Empty | Holsters," "Bad Guy")—three restau- | rants (plate dinner, 35 cents), a 5-and-10 1 store, a pool room, the I'olk county coiirthouse, two doorlens drugstores, in which the judge, sheriff, lawyers, hangers-on, crackers, farmers, merchants and philosophers discuss affairs of State and football games; filling stations, a gift shoppe and huge oak trees, .nosHhung. the moM brushing slowly and softly against the slow, soft wind. Statistic*. Population 5800, including one Mexican, a thousand frog huijters, swamp whackers, strawberry farmers —one of j , whom lost 10,000 dollars in a single night of frost—sages, wits, pundits, PoohBahs. untouchables, yokels, professional murderers, travelled men of affairs, tongue clackers, book-lovers (very few; George Seiler. of Seiler's news saind: j "I've stocked books and stocked book*, I and I've lost money on every book I've I stocked"), character assassins, obscure I gentlemen, struggling stubbornly to ' make their personal lives decent and generous. Local Sound* and Sights. The crwp click of the heel* of 90-year- . old Samuel S. Green as he strides briskly down Main Street's pavement on his I way to his daily job as the town's libra- | rian. First to come (six days a week, plus two evenings), last to leave, his average i* a day missed every ten years. . . . Bootleggers (Polk County, surrounded by wet counties, stayed dry by four votes in the last referendum) sneaking out of pool rooms, gasoline stations, and bar-B.Q. stands, bottles under their shirts, to «erve the local bibher* in ears parked in front. . . . The forlorn look on the faces of "Juke Joint" (diae, dance, drink and right) proprietors from here to Wachula. as they contemplate a tourist season without slot machines (now banned from , Florida). . . . Lilian (Honeychile) Rhodes, blonde and pert, dispensing Southern hospitality from behind her saucy, frosty nose in the local Western Union office. | Town Talk. i C. D. McGregor's bird dog is lost. It answers to the name of "Mutt." Fred Calvert is eager to swap a new standard [portable typewriter or a combination luggage and ten-house trailer for either a milch cow. or an electric refrigerator. . . . What leading pillar of the law is , known around town as "Old Baggy J Pants." and what former prominent local official ha* dedicated a little song to him entitled "Nobody knows where von got that nose, but you sure got more than your share." . . . The State Convention of the W.C.T.U., mctting here this week, is having trouble finding a nice restaurant that doesn't serve the legal 3.2 beer. At Dickey's thev were told they could have a private' dining room where they wouldn't be embarrassed by the sight of a bottle of beer, j but that's as much as could be done. i Good gal. Dickey, standing by her j regular customers. ! Town Folk. Old Bill Hooker, long-haired, thickhaired, once known as a Wyoming bad hoy. His porch rocker creaks softly as | he spins yarns of his bush-whacker days, how he drove the last load of supplies to Custer before the general wa<* "massacreed," the curious way in which he became a friend of Buffalo Bill. A man had called Hooker—without a smile —that certain something. Hooker, in an avalanche of mercy, shot him in the arm instead of the hear,t. and that access of piety won Buffalo Bill's partnership. Old "Whiskers" Brown, president of the local Townsend Club, a thin, little man with a face like a shrunken apple perched on a frail slat of a body, has beautiful, long brown-grey and white whiskers, soft and wispy, trailing from his mouth like a plume of wind-blown smoke. Is one of the many who believe that great hordes of Spanish gold are buried in the forests of Central Florida. Wants "the spirits" to help him find it. Has spent a considerable portion of his long life heeding the call of "the spirits." tramping out to the Florida forests, digging a hole through a patient night and watching, patiently, as it filled with water. "Didn't hear the spirits right." he would say, and trudge off home to listen some more. Frogskin Bait. Middle-aged Roy T. Gallernore, Annapolis graduate, submarine officer in the war, now publisher, editor and manager of the Polk County "Record." When his submarine engines broke down in the dangerous waters off the Russian coast,

he rigged sails out of every piece of cloth on board and became one of the few (if not the only) men to bring a. submarine into port under sail.

Old Louis Parisot, born in the same house as Pasteur, studied under and worked with the creator of bacteriology. Now comfortably retired. Worked here as a chemist for the phosphate mines and analysed moonshine for the county. His big trouble, people tell you, was he didn't know how much to charge.

W. F. Eger, Bartow's best fisherman. Catches 16-pound bass in a river. The only man in town who can come back on a windy day with a mess of fish. His bait? Real frogskins pulled over a

wooden plug. Made them for himself first. Then people started asking for them. Word got around and finally the mail order houses arrived. It's still a hobby with him (he's agent for a meat packing concern), but he's got five people in his garage sitting all day stuffing frog skins (which he buys from local frog hunters) with wood.—(N.A.N.A.)