"UP THE CREEK"- A Few Stories from Gainesville's Rattlesnake Creek Neighborhood

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                                                        UP THE CREEK

An Occasional  Neighborhood Newsletter- July, '23

   Everyone's hiding from the heat this summer. I'm doing my best to poke around to see what's going on. The biggest news is the opening of Denise's barber shop.

    While the outside looks a bit funky the inside is clean and pleasant. Here I am posing with,"Larry", the gentlemen who

keeps the place lookin' good. 

    Its gotten great reviews online  One says, "Denise has a pretty face and she knows how to cut hair". I'm sure its worth a trip to Melrose.

HOUSING continues to be a major problem in every American city.  It's the homeless, unaffordable rent and home prices, and

so much more.  Looking for answers, "Gainesville Neighborhood Voices" has formed a group to comes up with solutions.  We had our first roundtable discussion last month. We'll have another in a few weeks.

  

Isn't RING PARK special? Our creeks, like the one there, are one of our city's greatest assets. The Alachua Conservation Trust has a subcommittee working to preserve all of our city's greenways (the flood zone land next our creeks). Much of it is forested land on private property. We are trying to get the City to use the $8 million in its tree mitigation fund to purchase land next to the creeks. This will preserve these properties for future generations.

 Want PRETTY PLANTS?  We love our front porch coleus's because they're bright as flowers all the time. The cuttings  grow easily. 

 Its time to trim them back. If you want any let us know.

LONELY?  Get a dog.  I was driving by the county's dog pound and decided to stop last week.  I checked out the homeless pooches.  70% are pit bulls and most of them seem,mmm, quite angry. For $50 you can get a pit or, one of these sweethearts.

When you pass by the sad-eyed orphans you wants to take them all home.  

I did see one, "Freddy", get adopted by a happy couple. I took a picture of them getting their picture taken.

Freddy and his new family had much to celebrate, including this month's Big Event,

 

the FOURTH OF JULY. It rolled by without too much fanfair in Gainesville. It had the usual "Let's Roast in the

Sun Concert" on campus, followed by fireworks.

 Micanopy had its charming parade (why doesn't G'ville have one too?).

    After the parades are over what do you do on a

HOT DAY IN GAINESVILLE ?

    You can sit in the shade by Rattlesnake Creek. If you'd like to cool off and get a skin disease you can lay down in its cool, flowing water produced by street run off.  

 

If you'd like your water clean you can take a dip one of our springs, or, in the new pool at Westside Park.  It cost just four bucks (half that if you're hair has lost its color).

 

Drinking cold beer and listening to live music at Satchel's Pizza works for me.  When I visited last Saturday night Satch himself was holding court. 

 We discussed one of his long-time projects, the restaurant's  "Faces of Man" mosaic. 

 

He made it all, including the tile pieces, himself. 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Like Satchels, our many museums are also air-conditioned. 

    We go to the Harn Art Museum on Thursday nights because it has an incredible collection, it often has live music, and, (did I already mention this?) it is air-conditioned.

    They also have "The Camelia Cafe" on the lower level.  We had dinner there. Its a simple soup, sandwich, & salad kind of place

with a view of the sculpture garden outside.

 

    

 

 The museum's current exhibits include an outstanding grouping of Jerry Uelsmann's photography and their latest show, 

"Under the Spell of the Palm Tree", the Rice Collection of Cuban Art.

 

One could spend many Thursday nights there taking it all in.

 One of my favorite pieces is sculpture parked out front, "Everyone Wanted to Fly".

    This is a new kind of hybrid, a 1953 Chrysler New Yorker with a 326 c.i. Spitfire Straight 8 under the hood paired with four GE B-47 turbojets suspended under the wings.

    Unfortunately no one is allowed to fly it or even sit inside.

     Satchel's has its own airplane. Its not a hybrid but at least they let you sit in the cockpit to enjoy dinner. 

     

Neighbors Tina and Ward drove their Big White Guppy camper van to New England to escape the heat.

 While Ward flew off to Taiwan to do one of his architectural performance pieces, "The Islands",

The Islands

 

 

Tina traveled to Vermont to try to talk her friend, Bernie, into running for President again.

Tina meeting Bernie at a Fourth event

 

    

 

 

 

  It amazes me that terrific events come to town that few people know about.  In the old days, when we had real newspapers and people reading them, this would be less likely to happen.

      

       Five days ago a dramatic performance, "Black Like He", was staged at the Phillips Center.  Eight men acted out different vignettes that flowed together incorporating dialog with music,  dance and song. Each part related to the challenges of being a black man in America. 

The cast and crew after the show

 

 

My wife and I both thought, "This is an amazing show. We're so lucky to be among the few who knew about it.  Sponsored by the UF Arts in Medicine program, admission was free. On top of all that, the entire building was air-conditioned!

  In this loony world, where we are bombarded with dorky commercials, it can be hard to learn about the good stuff.

   Bats are good. They fertilize plants, eat insects, and inspire certain super heroes to do great things. But it is hard to hear them.

For moment we forgot it was hot.

    That all changed when our friend, Phil, came to visit Sunday night. He had a bat chirp amplification device. After the sun went down (and the temp dipped below 90) we ventured outside to watch bats take over the Gainesville sky. 

 Gradually, when it was almost dark, we not only saw them but heard their clicks as the flitted madly about.

After a few minutes someone noticed that our yard was not air-conditioned.  "Yikes!" we exclaimed as we scurried back inside to bright lights and artificial cool.

    If you made it this far, thanks.  Quite a slog wasn't it?  If you're in G'ville July 27th, come meet us at Art Night at the Harn. There will be great art, live music, and most important of all, air-conditioning!

                                                 ___________

MAYBE PIGS CAN FLY

       It's happening. This airborne oinker thing is taking off.  Since we started planing December's Flying Pig Parade I'm seeing more and more of those winged critters.

       Last Sunday I was at an event that including a

reading of "Maybe", a book by Kobi Yamada and illustrated by Gabriella Barouch. It's about the thoughts of a young girl. There's little pet pig by her side.

      She wonders about everything one can do and everything that one can be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"You are the only you that has ever been or ever will be. "

 

 

 

 

"Maybe you will invent something that no one has ever seen before."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your life is yours. 

 

 

 

 

Try as many things as you can try. See as much as you can see.

 

 

 

 

Maybe you will help others to see the beauty in each day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

or speak up for those who
can't speak for themselves.

 

        

 

 

 

 

 

   The book reminds us of all of the magical, unbounded potential we hold inside. 

       

 

And of course, at the end, the little pink pet reaches her potential as she takes to the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

                             _______________

THE TREES ARE FREAKIN' OUT!

      It's ridiculous how men try to prove their worth by arm wrestling, engaging in war, and even in pissing contests. Any chance I had in the last one ended when my prostate gland started expanding years ago.

     A Miami urologist explained, "It's restricting the flow of your urine and will only get worse." When worse meant getting up to pee four times a night I knew things had to change.  

    

    Last week I underwent  an operation to reduce the size of my prostate. It will allow me to whiz like a normal guy again.

    I'm glad I did. It went well. 

   As silly as it sounds, it's thrilling to be able to hit a tree four-feet away once more.  For a moment it's as if I have found a small part of my lost youth.

      It'll take a while to recover. I can't ride a bike for a month. In the mean time I made a thank-you card for my surgeon.  It reads,

    

SUMMER FUN- PART ONE

     Our camper van was spending too much time in the driveway. Last month we took it north to enjoy friends, family and cool mountain air.  Our first stop was the faux-alpine village of Helen, Georgia.

It was like Micky Mouse in lederhosen. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What was even stranger was the red gypsy wagon we rented nearby.

With no campsites available we reserved what seemed to be something more spacious than our Toyota van. We soon learned it was smaller, had torn sheets, and smelled like dirty laundry.  The van suited us just fine that night.

     

 

Camping in North Carolina's Cataloochee Valley is always extraordinary. Since elk were re-introduced a few years ago, it is not uncommon to have these 600-pounders lumbering past the campground.

     

 Stranger than Germanic Mickeyland was the Jeff Mathews Museum in Galax, Va. This is a personal project, a life-long collection of one man and his friends. 

They started with arrowheads and when they had too many, they began turning them into weird "Indian art". 

 

 There might have been 20 cases of these sharpened stones

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clovis Jackson and his award-winning arrowhead mosaic

 

 

"Eclectic" does not go far enough to describe  a museum that displays the tonsillectomy chair where, for years, Dr. J. Glenn Cox scraped those bothersome lymph nodes out of his patient's throats, 

next to,

 

     

 

a display of assembled plastic movie monsters.

   

 

Nearby was what was said to be the city's first electric hair curler machine.

 

 

 

 

 

And not far from that,

 

 

 

a "complete dental office" which took me back to tortured times of my youth. 

 

 

The museum founders took great pride in the killing exotic animals for display.

"One of the world's largest mounted Kodiak bears" the sign said.

 

 

Their forebears took great pride in killing Yankees in an effort to preserve slavery during the conflict known as the Civil War. 

 

Many people donated photos of their ancestors to the musuem's Civil War display

"1861- One Confederate is Equal Of Ten Yankees".    

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While there were over 500,000 enslaved people living in Virginia at

the time of the Civil War (and the black population is three times that now) there is no mention of them in the Jeff Mathews Museum. The closest thing to it are two carvings of Congolese warriors purchased on an African hunting trip.

     Many Virginians have fought in wars since then. One of them, World War II, came to an end when an American B-29 dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima.

     You can see the bombing that won the war in the lower level on the Jeff Mathews Museum.

   

 

 

     Less momentous is the dashing black car that won the city's

soap box derby back in 1952. 

  

 

 

 

 

History was made again 27 years later when Galax's Kylene Barker was crowned Miss America.

 

 

 

 

This corner is devoted to her remarkable achievement.

 

I met her dad once, the only person who has ever told me, "Y'know, my daughter was Miss America".

I was impressed and being single at the time, asked if she was too.

Dad let me know she was married to some fella she'd met in Nassau. 

    A little bragging goes a long way in Galax, Va.  The legend of Talmadge Jones may go on forever just because he donated his little green wagon to the Jeff Mathews Museum.

 

           You can visit this marvelous collection Wednesdays through Saturdays, 11 and 4 p.m. Admission is free and donations, happily accepted.

         After visiting Jeff's museum we headed home with visions of Miss America, painful tonsillectomies, and Johnny Reb ("ten times tougher than any Yankee") dancing in our heads..

Thankfully, they did not dance long,  I started thinking of creating my own museum.  Would you come to it, "Glenn's Incredible Driftwood Collection"?

                          _______________________________

 

 

 

NEIGHBORHOOD NEWSLETTER

UP THE CREEK, Florida Park's Summer Newsletter

                                                                      -Glenn Terry

 

 
     Welcome to another perfect summer in Florida Park, one of G-ville's coolest communities. A few weeks ago we greeted new neighbors with a watermelon party. All of them live on our block.

 

    Terri and Tom bought the house behind us three months ago and are busy fixing it up. They are serious sailors who spend half of the year aboard their Shannon 38 breezing around the Caribbean. This winter though, they'll probably still be creating the GNV abode. 

 

     David and Ha bought two houses west of us. They have been in Gainesville 20 years but wanted something closer to town.

     Lisa bought the charming 2-1 on the corner next to them nine months ago. Extensive renovations seem non-stop there.  Amazingly, she grew up in Coconut Grove next to the grandparents of her new neighbor, Ward.

     A home designer, "Mila", purchased the distinctive Nicholson House on the NW corner of 11th Ave and 20 Dr. over a year ago.  The re-building seems to never stop. It could go on for another year.

 

 

TOM ROCKED HERE

Our former neighbor on 11th, Barbara Arnold, has

purchased the classic, mid-century Tench House on NW 24th St.  She had us over for a tour. It was designed by Coconut Grove architect, Alfred Browning Parker, in 1967.  Benmont Tench, the keyboardist for Tom Petty's band grew up

there and it is said they recorded their first album in the living room.

 

Our home-town rock legend is now, "Dr. Tom".  Mr. Petty was awarded an honorary doctorate of music by the UF posthumously last spring.

 

BIG BOY LIVES!

 

    Our neighbor on NW 17th, Gaurav Lohiya is a  talented architect. He is employed at Walker

Architects at the site of the former Bob's Big Boy Burger Restaurant on NW 13th St. When I asked him recently, "What happened to Bob and his cheeseburger, the statue that used to be out front?", he let me know Bob was still smiling, re-located out back. Thank you, Gaurav!

???

What's with the ice cream shop on 13th and 16th Ave.?  "Sweet Dreams" moved there 15 months ago and it still doesn't have a sign out front. It's gotta be the only store that lacks one.

Maybe its really a speak easy and their ice cream flavors include moonshine and absinthe!

Our neighbors on 14 Ave., Dan and Brenda, returned from their 9-month sabbatical in Denmark. Dan confirmed that they had a terrific time. Perhaps we can make Gainesville more like Copenhagen. We can put a Little Mermaid statue by Lake Alice and turn Rattlesnake Woods into a Tivoli Gardens.

11th Avenue artist, Ward Shelley, took off for Taiwan two days ago. He will the spending a month there creating an architectural performance piece. He has promised to tell us all about it on stage at the Limestone Theater this fall. It is conveniently located in my front yard.

 

CREEK CLEAN-UP

     A couple of months ago we rallied the neighbors to

clean Rattlesnake Creek (photo below). Walking in the cool, shallow water with tall trees all around amazes. Walking a creek is one of the most wondrous things you can do in Florida Park.  

     I met with the county subcommittee that helps protect our creek green-ways two weeks ago. They have been working for years to acquire more land adjacent to our creeks.  I reminded them that some of it is for sale in Florida Park.

 

 

 

BIKE ACCIDENT

How often do you get a phone call saying, "I need some help. I got run over by a truck". I got such a call from a neighbor, two months ago.  

My friend was riding his bike on a sidewalk when an oil truck emerged from a driveway. It dragged him (underneath) down the street and fractured a few bones. He also lost a lot of skin but he's healing, recovering to the point where he's riding a bike once more. The lesson, he says, is "drivers should look both ways when entering a roadway".

UPNA

Our University Park Neighborhood Association keeps doing all kinds of good things. We are trying to have noise ordinances enforced, new parks created, and

meeting with city commissioners to come up with new ideas to resolve our city's housing problems.

 

Would you be interested in serving on our board?  I have been on it for three years now and it is a pretty interesting bunch. Contact me if you're interested, bettermiami1@yahoo.com .

 

DUMP TOUR

   

Fourteen of us had a transcendental experience at our county's dump/recycling center last April. We had a rollicking good time rolling along in the dump's "trash trolley". We went as a group but anyone can sign up for the weekly rides.

ON THE WINGS OF PIGS

We're busy trying to raise $10,000 so we can put The Flying Pig Parade on the streets of Gainesville December 30th.  We have monthly meetings and are busy applying for a number of grants. The City usually helps pay for parades but they're low on funds this year.

Our neighborhood Halloween parade is coming up on Tuesday, October 31. That costs next to nothin'! 

 

       (Below, the wonderful people who are creating our new parade).

 

LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE DADS

Here's hoping you dads have a Happy Father's Day tomorrow. We are going to the Father's Day concert at Heartwood, 5-8 p.m. Mike Boulware will be introducing his new surf band, "The Green Room" and "Zee-R" a Brazilian band that plays American rock'n roll will perform as well. Free admission and free beer (well, the first one) for those who have experienced fatherhood. 

 

Happily, I qualify,

Glenn