The Neighborhood
The neighborhood was built in 1955-1958 and was called Golf Club Manor, consisting of all new houses with mostly baby boomer families with children much like the shows like My Three Sons or Leave it to Beaver that we watched on TV. It did not take long after we moved in that we became friends with the kids in the nearby houses. Our house was the third house from the end of the street that ended on University Avenue. The first house on our side of the did not have any kids and the man was the uncle of the Almeida family that lived in the house across the street. The next house was a family that had two older children in high school at the time, so we hardly knew them. Then there was our house followed by the Kennedy’s that had a Sharon Fey and a boy Donnie. The next house had a family that had two older children. The next house was the Thayer’s who had two girls one named Nancy who was the same age as my sister Brenda. On the other side of the street was the Almeida family that had three children, two boys and a girl with the oldest boy being a year younger than me and was named John but we all called him GooGoo. In the next house lived Mrs. Nelson who had no children but was the aunt of Tom Petty and when Tom Petty’s sister would visit her my sister Brenda would go over to her house to play with her. The next house was the Lyons who had on son Doug who was two years older than me. The next house was where my grandparents lived for a year then the Weaver’s moved in who had a daughter and two sons the oldest was Hank who was my age and Hank, and I became good friends. The next house was the Hundsons which the father was the principal of Gainesville High School, and the daughter named Elizabeth who was the same age as my sister, and they became good friends. There were many other kids further down on the street and on the next street over which we also knew and would occasionally play with. At the opposite end of our street lived the Cade family, who the father, Dr. Cade became well known for inventing Gatorade. They had seven children one was a son the same age as my brother, and they became friends. Over the following years there would be other families and kids in the neighborhood that would we get to know.
In the late 50's and early 60's the city would spray for mosquitoes in the summer. A "fogger" truck would go up and down each street in the early evening spewing out a giant cloud of fog behind it. The neighborhood kids would often ride our bikes in and out of the fog with it stinging our eyes and making us choke. Sometimes I wonder if it was DDT they were spraying and what that might have done to us!
Updated: 05-29-2023