Wednesday, February 2, 2022

I'm Absolutely Amazed


The chickens come running when Mr. Moon walks out of the back porch with the bird seeds in his hand. They know they will get the old seed that he knocks off before he puts the new seeds in. This is one of the high points of their lives. They chatter and bawk and Liberace calls his tid-bitting song and all is happiness for a few moments. It makes me so happy to see them all so excited, to hear them talking about their great joy. 

Y'all. The craziest thing happened to me last night. I was scrolling through Facebook, as one does, and I'd been tagged in a post from a group called Sebastian, Florida Historical Group. The person who tagged me is one of our landlords when we go down to Roseland. He and his husband own the little pool house on the river where I am so happy. He said in his comment that I might be interested in joining the group. He knows how deeply I love Roseland, how many memories I have of my time there. Roseland and the people who lived there when I was a child have become almost mythical in my mind. Totemic. 
Most of you know this as I have written about Roseland and the river and some of the people I knew there many times over the years and have followed me there, in this strange and virtual world, as I've gone back and visited. One of the earliest posts I ever wrote about a person I remember from Roseland was in 2009 and you can find it HERE. 
It's a story about a man named Chester who lived in Roseland when we moved there in 1959. The first lines of that post go like this:

When I was a small child and lived in Roseland I saw Jesus Christ driving a tractor down the road one day, followed by children and dogs.

And that memory of the man whom I learned was not Jesus Christ but a man named Chester, has stuck with me ever since- over sixty years ago and I can still see the scene in my head, clear as day. Chester was practically a legend in his own time in Roseland. He was, to put it mildly, eccentric. He lived with his dogs and the stories about him abounded. Many of them seemed improbable. And a few years after we moved to Roseland, Chester disappeared and people said that he had moved to Brazil which seemed as improbable as anything else said about him and later, a report came that he had died down there, from malnutrition which was not out of the realm of belief in that all he ever seemed to eat was canned food, never warmed up, cokes, and peanuts, all of which he shared with his dogs. Bite for bite. Sip for sip. This is true because I witnessed it. 
Anyway, I have wondered about Chester all of my life. I have often thought that perhaps I was the only person in the world who remembered him and maybe, in fact, he'd been a dream. 
He was not. 
The first post on that Facebook group, the very first one I read, was about Chester. 
There were even pictures. Here is what the man who I thought was Jesus Christ looked like. 


Dark-haired, long hair, beard, dogs, tractor. 
Chester. 
You could have knocked me over with a feather. 
There was a long, long post about him, written by a man who had known Chester when he (the author) was a child and if what he says is true, Chester was as different and strange and eccentric and brilliant as he was rumored to be. 
Not only that, he did indeed move to Brazil. He cut his hair and beard, went to Miami several times to get a passport and a visa, and here is a copy of that visa. 


I am still boggling. 
After I had moved on, finally, from the post about Chester, I continued to read on and my god! I found names of people I'd known, whether in posts or comments, pictures of places I knew as a child and know now. Stories of people who were Roseland pioneers, including a woman I knew as "Aunt Katie" who seemed a hundred years old when I met her and listened to her stories about the Indians who paddled their canoes past her house on the river when she was a little child. 
My mind is blown. And frankly, I am amazed at how much I remember and how much of it is accurate. 
Do you remember me talking about Joy's store where we would go and buy Popsicles and bologna? Turns out her name was spelled Joie and she, too, was one of the Roseland's early residents. Here's a picture of her in her store. It is exactly as I remember it.


Do you see that doorway in the background? That is the entrance to her and her husband Ralph's home. They did indeed live in the back of the store. I dream about Joie and that store frequently. 
As I said, totemic. 

Anyway, I have barely scratched the surface of what is to be found in this rich cache of a history which is mine as much as it is anyone else's if that can be based on memory and the intensity and experience of the few years I lived there. I feel as if I have finally found the pirate's treasure chest that I always knew was buried somewhere in the boggy mud of the Sebastian River bank and that it is filled with shining jewels and pearls and pieces of eight, silver and gold. 
One thing I have truly realized is that many, many eccentric characters were drawn to live in Roseland which I had always had a sense of before I even had the language to define that. 
Perhaps that is part of why I loved it so much. 

There will be more, trust me. I have even made contact with a man whom I remember as teen-aged boy who I know will have a memory of Fossil Island because his father took us there. I have never been able to find any information about that little dredge island where you could literally stumble over the fossilized teeth and bones of mammoths. 

But for now, that's enough. 
I had a good day in town. Jessie and I got together for lunch and then she picked up Levon and we re-met at Costco. 


The first thing he did when he got into the car was to put on his seatbelt and then check his rearview mirrors. 
Safety first!

And guess what- another picture! This one of...
Well. Can you guess?


It's Brenda of the beautiful mermaid eyes! Isn't she gorgeous? Yes. She is. 

And Rachel got her gallbladder out today! She is fine and resting at home now. I dropped off some food and tulips for her and kissed her and Hank. 
It's been a big day. 

Off to make dinner. I'm embarrassed to tell you what we're having tonight so I won't. 

Love...Ms. Moon


42 comments:

  1. I was about to say that you had stumbled upon an online treasure chest, buried in the shifting sands of Internet Island but you got there before me with that particular allusion. How very lovely to make those connections. The very name "Roseland" suggest a mystical place that is half-remembered like a dreamscape.

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    1. Exactly! We may all bemoan our devices and the way the internet can BE divisive but sometimes it is a beautiful and wondrous thing.

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  2. Your discovery of the Roseland history treasure chest is thrilling. I loved this entire post. ♥️

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    1. Oh, dear Radish King! To see you here is also thrilling. Thank you. When I first found the picture of Chester I honestly thought about sending it to you and then I thought, "Why would she want to see that?" But I think you would have understood.

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  3. you are having bologna and popsicles for dinner. I guessed it right off! I think I just read a story about a couple who lived there in Roseland in the fifties- the people of a white nature burned their house to the ground killing both of them. I guess facesmack is good for something. You found "kin".

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    1. no no , that was Rosewood not your heavenly little town of Roseland. Jesus looked better with hair and beard I think. Brenda is absolutely gorgeous!

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    2. Yes. People do get Rosewood and Roseland mixed up. No connection.
      I agree about Chester's hair and beard. He was also barefoot all the time. Which leads me to think that he was the prototype hippie and why I was so eager to become one.
      Isn't Brenda beautiful?

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  4. That's a great find for you on Facebook. It's great for your memories to be proven true! Chester certainly would look like Jesus driving a tractor. His story sounds sad but maybe it was the life he wanted anyway.
    What a busy day for you!

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    1. Chester's story is sad but I really don't think he could have lived any other way. He did things the way he wanted to do them and no one was going to tell him otherwise.

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  5. What sn amazing discovery. And now you can confirm that your memories are accurate, that's a precious thing. I can see a lot more adventures coming up, on that group and in person. Great day.

    I hope Rachel does well. That's major surgery, not to be taken lightly. Big adjustment for the digestive system.

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    1. Yes- I can't believe how accurate the things I remember are. It's very gratifying in many ways, one of which is that I have a relative who has told me many times that I remember things that did not happen. i.e., making them up.
      I assuredly am not.
      You're right about gall bladder surgery. It is much more serious than getting an appendix yanked!

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  6. Enjoy your new link to your old home!

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  7. What a wonderful day for you. What a lovely, happy post to read. Solid gold.

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    1. I feel as if I have stumbled upon solid gold. I swear!

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  8. How very cool and fascinating!! I do hope some more stories will come forth from your discovery of the Sebastian FL group!
    Brenda is lovely. Her sweet smile would brighten anyone's day!
    I hope Rachel has a really good doctor that will advise her on supplementing with bile salts after her gall bladder removal. I did not and suffered for several more years until I discovered it on my own. Down the road if she is still having problems it might be worth googling. Hope she will heal quickly and be well.
    Angie D

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    1. Oh, there will be more stories. As I dig deeper, I keep remembering more things I want to find out about. It's really sort of insanely wonderful.
      And isn't Brenda just a bright beautiful light?
      I'll mention the bile salts to Rachel. Thank you!

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  9. PS my guess for dinner is hot dogs? Or Spam? And whatever it was is just fine. Yall eat very well 99.9% of the time so Enjoy!
    Angie D

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    1. Ding! Ding! Ding!
      I did make some other actual good food to go with.

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  10. Roseland, Fossil island, what wonderful place names. Great memories for you too.

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  11. That is all beyond amazing. Remember Kurt Vonnegut's "kerasse" in "Cat's Cradle"? It reminds me of that. And you know, Mary, you above all have spun these stories from your memories and your prodigious creative imagination for so many years, not just entertaining us but actually enriching us. I love especially this thought that Roseland drew eccentric characters and that you've known that intuitively forever. I think of those lions that stand guard at the little pool. Thank you for sharing all of this with us.

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    1. Yes! I think of kerasses a lot. Especially false ones which I never want to be part of. But this feels entirely different- a true one. Roseland has inspired my imagination like no other place I've ever been. It is that sort of place. It was, as I have said so many times, magical. As magical as that lion pool.

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  12. Oh wow! Write the book of Roseland, Mary, pleeease x

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    1. Well, there have been a few very small volumes written. I need to get my hands on them!

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  13. Well, that IS a big day! And this is a terrific illustration of how the Internet, for all its flaws, can be such a miraculous thing -- a "Hive Mind" that ignites memories in all of our individual brains. It's AMAZING that you not only found Chester but now have a picture of him, AND his visa application! Interesting that he was born in 1915, so he was already in his 40s by the time you saw him meandering around on his tractor.

    I'm encouraged that your memories are so accurate. I think we all come to doubt our memories over time but maybe they're better than we think they are.

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    1. I thought of you and the lifetime question you had about that German stamp and how, through the internet, you have been able to solve it. I swear, Steve. I think that finding that picture of Chester is one of the most pleasing astonishments of my life. And it's such a clear picture!
      As to my memory- it is so good for things that happened sixty years ago but if you ask me what I made for supper two nights ago I would have to really stop and think. This is such a stereotypical thing for an aging person to say but by god it is true for me.

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  14. A treasure trove of personal history, how amazing and wonderful. And that line about seeing Jesus on the tractor is a perfect first line for your memoir or novel about growing up in Roseland, pure and brilliant and true. Gave me shivers to tell you the truth. Also, sending good thoughts for Rachel's quick healing and how lovely seeing Ms. Mermaid Eyes and knowing that Levon already understands safety rules of the road—though of course he would!

    PS I tried to leave this comment three times last night and kept getting an error message, so I'm glad it's gone through now. Oh Blogger. What janky code are you bedeviling us with now?

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    1. WHAT IS WRONG WITH BLOGGER? Sometimes, when I lose a comment and go to write it again, I'll copy it before I try to post it in case that one gets eaten too.
      I am going to ponder what you said about that first line. Oh, how I wish I'd never lost my thirst for getting words on pages! Well, I still do but mostly in this format.
      Isn't Brenda just a glorious spirit? And she is as sweet as she is beautiful.

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  15. What a wonderful post - and how lucky are you that someone was thoughtful enough to hook you up with that group! I'm sure it'll inspire a treasure trove of new posts! But I wonder if Chester ever went to Polk County. When we bought our house there my sister and I flew out to furnish it. It was pouring down rain and at the traffic lights was "Chester", dressed in a loin cloth and holding a huge cross!

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    1. I am so lucky that my friend and sometimes host hooked me up. He loves Roseland and he does truly know how much I love it. I don't think that was Roseland's Chester. I doubt he gave a thought to religion. His eccentricity did not lean that way.

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  16. I think you should write a book, seriously.

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  17. Well, how cool is that! And the entertaining chickens too.

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  18. You will be off and gone in Roseland for some time, and more power to you. Bless the man who tagged you.

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  19. Absolutely fascinating! Of course I had to google Chester and learn a few more details about him. The photos look remarkably different - I see what "clean-cut" means. If I (knowing nothing about Roseland beyond the snippets from you) am intrigued, I can only imagine what this connection means to you. As Joanne says: you will be off and gone in Roseland for some time. Bless YOUR heart!

    Chris from Boise

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  20. There's a place in my life which has that mythical quality you describe, and so I can imagine the amazingness of finding a whole bunch of memories about it, with photos too. I'm not surprised you feel like you found a jewel chest. How wonderful!

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  21. Oh I'm so late to reading this you may not even see my comment but I have to anyway. I'm gobsmacked by the Roseland stuff so I can imagine how blown away you must be. And a picture of Brenda - how wonderful. She is beautiful!

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    1. I always get email notifications of comments so yes- I have read this! Thank you, Jill.

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