Page 23 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

CHAPTER 03 - Leaving New Jersey

As a fourth grader in 1941, I was surprised to learn that we were moving to Florida.
When I heard this, I imagined it was like a jungle with large trees and vines with
monkeys. I excitedly told many of my classmates at Cranford's Cleveland School that I
would write about my new world. I wrote their addresses on a thick red tablet. When
we arrived in Green Cove Springs, Florida, I asked my mother where the tablet was. I
was shocked when she told me she didn't know. Not finding it made me feel like I was
cut off from the many friends I had in New Jersey.

We lived in a one-room frame building on a field
about a mile west of the springs in Green Cove
Springs. My father worked as a carpenter at
Benjamin Lee Field, a U.S. Navy base about a
mile south of the town.

I thought I would die of thirst the first few
months. We got our water from a water faucet on
a pipe about 50 feet from our cabin. The water
tasted horrible...like rotten eggs! I learned that it
was sulfur water. To make it more palatable, we
chilled it in a glass bottle in the refrigerator to
reduce the yucky taste.

The heat and humidity, not to mention the
intensity of the sunshine, prompted me and my brother, Richard, to spend most days at
the swimming pool in town by the spring. Even though the water reeked of sulfur, it
was cool and refreshing. The white building next to the pool had black lines with
numbers on the wall. There was an edge of a shadow of an adjacent wall slowly moved
to mark the hour of the day. This was a unique form of "sundial" that told us the time
during the many hours we spent at the pool.

Around mid-summer, we moved to St. Augustine, which was not as hot because it was
closer to the ocean. We lived only a few blocks from the historical sites, such as the
Castillo De San Marcos and the Old Schoolhouse. Every few days I headed to the
hobby shop to purchase a new model airplane kit because as soon as I finished building

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