It was cold in Atlanta on Barbara’s 16th birthday which happens to be on the 16th of January.  The day before she had received a birthday card from her uncle Bob Schwander who birthday was on the same day as hers.  She had sent him a birthday card too and hoped he got it in time.  Her birthday fell on a Friday, so the next day her five best friends, Shirley, Fay, Charlotte, Mary Anne and Phyllis all came over to the Junior house for a party and Barbara opened presents and afterwards her mother and father took the six of them out to a nice restaurant for dinner.  After dinner her parents dropped them off at the school to a see a school play.  

Barbara finished the tenth grade doing quite well making all A’s and B’s except for one semester she made a C in English.  The week after graduating, her father gathered the whole family in the living room and told them he had sold the house and they were moving to Florida.  Barbara was so unhappy she cried for two days  Her father put signs up around the neighborhood for a yard sale which he then sold most everything they had, the furniture and other household items.  The following week they were in Florida where Fred rented a house on Lake Weir. A few weeks later Fred bought some road front property in Ocklawaha on Highway 25 which circles Lake Weir whereby summer’s end he had a roadside business built facing the road and a house for them to live in on the backside.  The business continued selling chenille products as well as fresh oranges and other fruit, shell decorations, yard decorations and, yes, pink flamingos for what would a roadside stand in Florida be without pink flamingos.  Fred loved making the shell decorations. He would buy boxes of shells at wholesale and the glue them together making such things like ashtrays, lamps and toys for children.   Barbara never would forget the time she was left to tend to customers while her father and mother were away on some errand and her little brother, Corky, got into the pink paint for the flamingos and got it all over himself.  Not knowing what to do, she took him down to a nearby hardware store which the owner helped clean Corky up.

The Junior Roadside Stand
Chenille breadspreads hanging, lawn ornaments to right.

Updated: 12-10-2021

1948 Flemington Church