Sometime in the late 1950's my grandparents started spending at least part of the winter in Florida. In 1961 or 1962 they bought a very small house that had just been completed in the fishing and railroad village of Istachatta, Florida. The house was just a living room, bedroom, kitchen, two covered porches, and an outhouse. Yes, a new house in the early 1960's without an indoor bathroom.
Within a couple of years they had a bathroom built, closing in a side porch to do so, and had a carport added on. They enclosed the front porch with windows. And they spent about 15 winters there.
Istachatta is on a nice river, and hosting visiting fishing parties was a major part of the very local economy. Canals from the Gulf of Mexico were only about a 20 minute drive away, offering saltwater fishing for a change of pace. My grandfather loved fishing (and hunting.) My grandmother enjoyed getting away from cold snowy winters. They had some wonderful friends there, played a lot of cards. Television reception was terrible, and cable TV was not an option. So they spent many evenings playing cards with friends, and reading newspapers.
It was their winter escape. It fit their personality. My grandfather had grown up in poverty. The house in Istachatta was comfortable and inexpensive (they paid less than $5,000 for it.) The house filled their needs with little excess.
My family visited there a couple of times, the first time in the 60's when I was a toddler, the second time in January of 1972. I took this photo on that trip, my mother and grandmother standing in front of the house. I was in middle school. My brother and I stayed down the street with friends of theirs, a retired school teacher.
There was a tiny local general store, and post office. It was fun to walk over and buy a Coca Cola, and listen to the locals. Passenger rail service had stopped running, freight came through between the store and the riverfront "fish camp."
My grandmother (on the right in the photo above) spent one winter there after my grandfather died, then sold it, bought a larger home on the east coast near my parent's last home. She remarked when she bought the house near the space center, that she had owned four homes in her adult life, and it was the first one that had an indoor toilet when she bought it.
I did a Google search, the house is still there. It has new siding, and air conditioning. But not much else appears to have changed. It looks good, my grandparents would be pleased.
Great old photo. I love those Google searches of places from my childhood. Amazing how little that area has changed given how much has changed in so much of Florida
ReplyDeleteThe store is long gone.
DeleteI suppose the area around the house has been much more developed now.
ReplyDeleteThere are probably twice as many homes.
DeleteI love a Google walk around places I used to live; sone have changed a lot, and others seem stuck in time.
ReplyDeleteOn of the homes I built in Florida is blurred out on Google.
DeleteMy parents loved to visit Florida also. They would rent a place on Boca Grande and it is beautiful there. We could never afford to own a place there but some of my siblings and their children still head down there every year.
ReplyDeleteMy Mom used to say, "If heaven isn't as nice as Boca, I don't want to go!"
Both of my grandmothers, and my parents lived out the end of their life on the east coast near the space center. My brothers live in central Florida.
DeleteIt's hard to imagine a house for $5,000. But If I recall correctly, my dad bought a house to rent out around the corner from where we lived for $3000 back in the 50's. I often think about how shocked my grandparents would be that cars cost in excess of $20,000 now and houses hover around the million dollar mark. Twenty-five years ago, I remember thinking how shocked my grandparents would be to know that I fly back and forth between Phoenix and Chicago just for work. I know for a fact that my grandfather had never been in an airplane and here I was doing it every week.
ReplyDeleteMy kitchen remodel, cost more then my first house did. I paid more for a parking space in the garage, than my parents paid for their last house. Now they bought their last house in 1976 in a badly depressed market (they were looking for a place to live in retirement not a place to earn a living.) Neither of my grandfathers ever flew (while alive, one of them was shipped from Florida to Michigan after he died.)
DeleteI am always fascinated by folks who winter in warmer places for months at a time. How on earth to they do this/afford this? Keep up two places? I have no experience.
ReplyDeleteThere answer was it cost less, the homes in Florida were inexpensive, and they escaped the cost of heating homes in the north in the winter.
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