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Family
Marriage: Children:
  1. William Roscoe CLICK: Birth: 14 AUG 1923 in Tampa,Hillsborough County. Florida,USA. Death: 27 FEB 1973 in Miami,Miami Dade County,Florida,USA

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Notes
a. Note:   80's:
  " I was born near Uncle Dan's (possibly Daniel Gorman )place, half-way between Willard and Cave Springs, Missouri. Dad run (ran) the store and we lived next to it. Uncle Dan and Aunt Joe (possibly Joanna Wadlow) used to take us for ice cream cones at Springfield. Herbert gave me $1.00 on the fourth of July and I kept it until the next Fourth. He gave me another $1.00 and I broke it to put $.05 on a game of chance. I lost three nickels before I gave up gambling.
  Uncle Herbert loved horses and had a fancy rubber tired buggy at Ash Grove. Wild mustangs were a problem and run-a ways were not uncommon. Keen-o was a favored horse, but Uncle Herbert broke two or three ribs in an accident one time.
  Dad wanted to get out of the Ozarks and went to Alberta, Canada. Uncle Herbert went with him with a team of oxen and they went to Edmonton, the capitol. They had to abandon their pony with their backpack when they got lost and thought they would never see family again. They built a raft though and made it back to civilization. They homesteaded 160 acres, but came back home to find their mother had Bright's Disease.
  After her slow death and funeral, Papa took me, his eldest son, and went on a boat from Ft. Myers, Fla. to LaBelle on the Caloosahatchee River. A man from the Lakeport Land Company took us through Palmdale and we landed at Fort Center that was Lakeport, or a tent town with wooden floors. 200-300 people lived there and it was October. The land was dry and we could see a stretch of 30-40' of deep muck, cracked open. Papa took muck back home in a shoe box. The richness of the soil was unbelievable to everybody.
  October 19, 1912 at ll:00 a.m., we all got off the train at Arcadia, Florida. The sand was one foot deep in the main street, but Papa bought a home and hired a donkey to haul our trunks to the house. By 3-4 p.m., we'd bought a three-burner Puritan oil stove at E. T. Smith Hardware to cook our meals. We bought a bed and a cot and made a fire for the first night on bricks in the backyard.
 Dad, myself, (14 years old), Spurgeon and Sherman (younger brothers) got jobs at the H. C. Schraeder's Packing House. We had to check the oranges to be sure they still had their stems and wrap them in tissue for shipping north. Dad graded them as they came by on a conveyor belt. Culls were taken by the workers and it helped feed the families.
  I hated the smell and taste of the sulphur water and caught typhoid fever. It took three months before I could sit up and stand with my strength back. I made boxes at $.01 each and I got so good I could make 500 each day. In Missouri, I had only been able to make $.50 a day, working Saturdays.
  Dad bought a second home with an orange grove on Nocatee Road, half-way between. He then bought land at Palmdale, swapped it for land near Gator Slough; then he bought squatters rights' land from a Capt. Thomas Sutton. He got a pie shaped piece of 60 acres along the Lake for $1500. Dad sold Uncle Herbert and John, the Swansons and Hookers some of it. He also figured his kids should have some of it.
  They got 75 avocadoes, lemons, sour oranges, and white silver wyandotte chickens. The eggs could be sent to Key West. It cost $.02 to mail a letter."
  Dad walked from Arcadia to Lakeport with an overnight stop in Venice, several times.
  In 1926 came the hurricane. I was now married and living in Tampa when I heard about the storm. There was a shuttle from Moore Haven to Sebring. The Sheriff at Sebring had asked for volunteers to go with us because I had a mother, father, two sisters, and two uncles and their families, not heard from. Three or four men came and we caught the spray train from Tampa. The boxcar had food, outboard motors, blankets, bread, and folks made hamburgers and hot dogs to take.?connection? I went to Sebring and went with the Red Cross the 10 or 12 miles from Moore Haven to Lakeport.
  Pogey Bill was the Sheriff in Okechobee and said he had never heard about any hurricane. We took canned goods, got the Gulf Refining man up and took the doctor. Charley Close (Lakeport resident) waded out in water up to his chest and they threw him some canned peaches and corn.
  We docked at the Dyess' house and Uncle John and Uncle Herbert said Laura and Will's girls just left. (Gloria's Grandmother, Laura, and Aunt Ruth and Aunt Josephine.) The American Legion took them out to Venice. The Friday night winds and water had almost rubbed their hide off. 125-240 MPH winds for over 8 hours.
  The top of their new Willis Knight car washed away, but the frame stayed. Dad climbed up a grapefruit tree and a cypress stump held the house. Then they got into a big cypress tree and rode out the storm.
  Uncle John was up in his attic and said the cow floated by going faster than the house. Herbert and Kate were in their attic and were able to re-build.
  "As a young man, I was engaged to a girl, but found she was already married to an Ohio fella who wouldn't give her a divorce. Mama destroyed the letters she sent to me after we split up. I was in Tampa dating a girl and her Mama and sisters thought we would marry and started crowding me. I took my yellow sapphire ring back and called it quits.
 I asked her girlfriend, Garland, to go to the picture show (we didn't call them movies, then.) She didn't know that I had not dated Louise (her friend) for 4-5 weeks. I took Garland out every Friday and Saturday to Sulphur Springs for swimming and dancing and then called to tell her I had a date with another girl one weekend and couldn't see her. Her Mother said it broke her heart. I dated Garland again and her Mother said she needed to get home earlier, so I bought a car. We got engaged for 8 mos. I bought a new 2-bedroom bungalow, furnished it throughout. We had about 35 friends and relatives for the wedding and told them we were honeymooning in St. Pete. But we just drove downtown and went on to our new home.
  I leased the Garcia Avenue bridge Standard Oil station with one pump. I went to 3 pumps and met the Tom's Peanuts man with the franchise for Florida out of Columbus, Ga.
  I built a 20' x 40' warehouse and had salespeople. Then I bought a Mack truck steam cleaning machine because roads were so bad.
  I opened a restaurant serving hot dogs. I made so much money I didn't know what to do. Sherman came to work with me for one year; then he bought a Hupmobile and went back home. Dave worked for me and went to school at Hillsborough High. Then he went on to Miami University at Oxford, Ohio.
  I built a galvanized icebox for fish from Okeechobee.
  My station was the largest Standard Oil in Hillsborough County and got the top rebate for a while until the government stopped that.
  I built a second station, Sunniland # 2 in silk stocking row area. It was on Popwood Avenue and I had four pumps there which was big business. It is now a nightclub in Palma Ceia.
  That was the roaring twenties!
 1929 CRASH!
 The Road contractors owed me $4,000. We attached his cars so he gave me a note for six months. He went broke. Then I did cash business only and had to let some go.
  I had $1,000 and we came over to the Lake. I bought a 1,000 yard net, and fished with Rich (this young man dated our Aunt Ruth-Uncle Henry's widow) and Sherman. I converted a fish boat with a Model A motor in it.
  Banks wouldn't let money go and soup lines were everywhere. I planned to work for a survey company and haul men out into the lake.
  Captain Thomas (Garland's stepfather) came by to find me one day and said he needed me to go with him to watch his equipment down in Dania. I would need to turn the motors, pump out, and get $175 a month, with board and groceries. I went right with him because his insurance called for it.
  When Sug (that was my mother's pet name, short for sugar) came over in our Model A, '29 Ford and wanted to move to Miami, I got a job selling Kelvinators.
  I didn't like it, but got a rented apartment for $8.00 a month. There were about 60,000 people in Miami then. (Maurice tells me Gainesville, Fl has around 100,00 now in the year 2,000.
 )
 Fred C. Evans, a Miami real estate man, asked me if I was a 'bottle man' and when I said no, he hired me for a 60/40 cut, commission. I told him I needed pay every week for my family so he gave me apt. houses to collect rent from and maintain. He gave me a place to live for 30 days (the house owner was from Lebanon, Tennessee) and a salary of $25 week.
Note:   Joseph Roscoe Click's story as voice-recorded, in his late 70's or early


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