Many years after the cottonmouth in the creek incident that happened when I was a kid I had another run in with one. I had been living up north and returned to Florida for the winter and was staying in Gainesville.

I had a leather shop on Cape Cod and decided to open one for a few months in Gainesville figuring I could make some cash with all those college students.  Well, I broke all three rules of “location, location, location,” and rented a space in a little strip mall on out beyond the car places off Main Street.

The place was too big so I put up an 8-foot wall down the middle and rented the other side to an Asian grocery. To get my license I had to be inspected and the town told me I couldn’t build a wall without a building permit but I assured them I had in fact built the wall despite the lack of permit and the Japanese folks were quite happy over on their side. After some head scratching they gave me a permit for a temporary wall with the promise that it would be removed when I left in six months and the Japanese people took over the whole space.

Speaking of permits, because I had leather dye I also had to have a metal fireproof cabinet to keep it in. Since I had already built a wooden cabinet I just went to a local newspaper and got some of their old metal printing  sheets (pages in pre-computer newspaper days were printed from thin metal plates and rollers) and wrapped them around the cabinet. More head scratching and I got my permit for that, too.

I did not make much money, doubt if I covered the rent but I did have fun.

While I was in Gainesville that winter I rented a funky doublewide sitting on a couple of acres north of town about a mile off of 441. There was a creek running through part of the lot and plenty of woods. Apparently the previous renter must have been in the pot business because I found a bunch of old aquariums out in the woods, some with a few small pot plants still growing in them.

One day when I was out walking I saw a really big cottonmouth down in the creek trying to eat a good-sized dead catfish. The catfish was stiff and its side fins with nasty spines in them were sticking straight out. The snake would start with the tail of the fish and work his way up to those spines but he could not get them in his mouth. So he’d work back down off the fish and then angle around and start from the head. No luck.

That’s where I left him, chewing on the dead catfish, but I got to thinking he was pretty big and close to the trailer and my dog liked to explore. So I called Fish and Wildlife and they sent a very nice guy out who caught the snake and was going to turn him loose further away from people. The guy warned me that moccasins are very territorial when they have babies and are likely to be aggressive in ways other snakes are not.

Shortly after he left I went back to the creek and unbelievably there was another one, even bigger than the first. I called the Fish and Wildlife guy back and he came over for the second snake. He took his pole with a looped rope on the end and went down in the creek bed and nabbed this one too. The snake was a good five feet, maybe a little more and fat, as big around as his forearm.

“This is one hellacious cottonmouth,” the guy said as he dropped the moccasin into a container in the back of his official pick up. “Call me if you find anymore,” he said as he bounced down my heavily rutted sand driveway.

Luckily I saw no more cottonmouths and before long the winter ended and I headed back north missing Gainesville and sand roads and shadowy lives lived on the edge of town even before the city limit sign disappeared in my rearview mirror.

I love Christmas. I like getting and giving presents in equal measure and remember how I would save pennies from my allowance in the ‘50s for months so I could go shopping for Christmas presents.

My mom always gave me a few bucks, maybe as much as five, so I was pretty well set those days. The dime store was always the first choice since it had so many inexpensive things to pick from. Granny got a scarf and she would wear it to church or prayer meeting. Poppa got a pipe, some snuff or some tobacco in a can. Momma got classy rhinestone jewelry and poor Daddy got stuck with socks or on very good years, a new shirt.

There was the occasional bottle of Evening in Paris or Jergens Lotion for the gals and Old Spice or Aqua Velva for the guys stuck under the tree and little delicate figurines that took their place on shelves on Christmas morning. 

As I got older I got better about shopping in odd places for gifts. I would go to the Tackle Box and look for fishing things for Daddy and Poppa and would venture into those nice jewelry stores downtown where one could still get something small but special just a few bucks. Those clerks were very nice to me, a young skinny girl clutching a couple of dollars and looking for the perfect present and they never failed to treat me nicely and let me look at all kinds of things I could not afford.

As a teen I discovered the stationary store and gifts expanded into little notebooks, boxes of writing paper and thank you cards and fancy pens that no one really had any use for or wanted except maybe me.

And one year when I was very young I took one of Poppa’s snuff cans, washed it out and painted it Chinese Red. I can still remember going over to the Commissary in Gulf Hammock and into the far corner where paint and hardware were stocked and picking out that tiny can of Chinese Red enamel paint. I slaved over the can so there was not one brush stroke on it. On Christmas morning you would have thought I’d given him a new car the way he fussed over that red can.

I don’t know what he finally did with it but it was around for years.

Under the tree for me were guns and holsters and sets of plastic cowboys and Indians. One year, the year I had polio and still managed to pass the second grade, I got a real bicycle. And amazingly Santa found us no matter where we went, once even tracking us down in a little trailer in the desert as we trekked from Florida to California for a brief try at life on the other coast.

But the most important thing I got from all that giving and receiving was the lesson about how good it is to show appreciation for what people do for you not because of the thing they give you or its value but because they cared enough to try to make you happy. 

That’s what we all did as a family, over and over, year after year, try to make each other happy. And mostly, we did. 

But the arrival of those malls was a turning point and most of America has gone through it. First a town is tired of being old-fashioned and gives up its center to become modern and at the same time everybody wants to move to a new concrete block house in a new subdivision far away from the tired wood frame houses closer to downtown. Then later you realize you feel lost and disconnected and you hope Disney or someone will build one of those old-fashioned town replicas near you so you can move in and feel at home again. Or maybe you stayed put and got lucky and are still living in one of those downtown homes near the Duck Pond that have all been redone by now.

In the years since I grew up Gainesville has embraced its historic buildings and many are restored and back in use including old houses and businesses. There’s been a lot of repurposing — car dealer to dance club, post office to theater, movie house to concert hall, restaurant to offices — and some of it has been pretty good. People love Gainesville and compared to some Florida towns it remains a really good place to live. 

Newnan’s Lake still beckons from right outside of town though it has a fancy parking lot and boat ramp where you are not likely to get stuck in the mud trying to put your boat in. Cross Creek and the memory of Miz Rawlings is still just down the road and so is antique-laden Micanopy out between Gaineville and Ocala. The Devil’s Millhopper is still there but now it’s a state park and you can’t scramble down the side of that deep sinkhole and explore the little creek on the bottom or pull your car in late at night for some closed-eyed heavy breathing and kissing. Now there’s a raised walkway that you must not leave it. 

Maybe it’s for the best that the juke joints are gone along with the late night café down the street from my first apartment that sold chicken sandwiches that had whole pieces of fried chicken, bones and all covered with a slather of mayo and some lettuce and tomato. I don’t think the BBQ place just off 13th is still there with its challenge that if you could eat its hottest sauce, you could eat for free. 

Oh but sometimes at night there are ghosts in the trees along the dark narrow roads leading in and out of town. Roll down your car window and you can almost hear singing in the distance or the sound of laughter soft and far away mixed in with the other night sounds.

Joni Mitchell nailed it, “Don’t it only seem to show that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. Paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

(All photos this page courtesy of Florida Archives.)