The Way We Were Wednesday - Istachatta Florida

 Sometime in the early 1960's my grandparents started snowbirding, going south from Michigan (as Spo describes it the land of perpetual snow and ice) to Florida in the winters.  My grandfather worked for Ford for over 30 years, then left in the late 1950's to move to the farm and keep bees. Bees in Michigan are a seasonal farming operation.  There was no reason for them to stay in the snow in the winter (my parents started doing the same thing when I was in the 8th grade.). 

They bought a newly built one-bedroom house in a fishing village called Istachatta on the Withlacoochee River (Google it, it is a real place.) When I say a one-bedroom, the first year they were there they added on, adding a bathroom and eliminating the out-house that had been build with the house. (Before zoning and building codes.) It was an escape, a second home. They spent winters there together for about 15 years. It was there one winter that my grandmother came to the realization that my grandfather had dementia. After my grandfather died, my grandmother spent one or two winters there alone, then sold and moved across the state to where my parents had bought their retirement home. When she bought the house in Titusville, she remarked that it was the fourth house she had owned, and the first one that had an indoor bathroom when she bought it (two of them.) 

That little house was my first experience in Florida.