Guest Columnist - Greg Ganas shares about The Good Old Days

Special to the Herald

By Greg Ganas

Many, many years ago (mid 40’s) before my parents were married, my grandfather came home to his three young adult kids and said if any of you would get a pilot’s license he would buy an air plane. My mother stepped forward. She got the license, he bought the plane. She loved flying. My father, not so much. They lived in Ft. Pierce. One day they were flying out over the ocean. When they were coming back in they didn’t know exactly where they were and they were low on gas. They finally swooped down low enough to see a road sign. That was the last time my dad went up with her.

When my brothers and I started school she became a horticulturist. She didn’t have a degree but she had the knack for it. We lived out on Golden Lake across the from the Sanford Navel Air Station on 5 acres so she had plenty of land to work with. She didn’t have a company per se. Someone that needed some landscaping would call her and she would gather up the plants, put them in the back of her station wagon, with Henry the yard man, and hit the road. (When my brothers and I went on a Friday night date, we would never ask for her car because there was too much dirt). She was very well known in Sanford for her landscaping. She landscaped the Florida State Bank and a lot of other businesses and homes in Sanford. She was in the Sanford Garden Club, PEO, (you can ask any PEO member and they won’t tell you what that means), and the president of the Florida Garden Club Association at one time.

When my Dad retired from the Seminole County school system (mostly as Athletic Director at Seminole High) he built a greenhouse so that he could raise some plants from seeds. By then my Mom was about finished with what she was doing but that didn’t stop him. He loved to play golf and was the golf coach at Seminole State College for a while.

My brothers and I loved living on the lake. My dad told the story that when I was 3 years old I rode my tricycle off the end of the dock. It was about 8 feet deep. He stood up there for a while thinking I would come up. When I didn’t he dove in and there I was, still holding on to my trike. When I was 5 years old, Johnny Russell and I started a fire in the woods next door. It got out of control. Our maid called my Dad who called the fire department at the Navy Base who came over and put it out. Yes, I got in deep trouble.

When my brothers (Gary and Freddie) and I grew older we loved playing in the woods with the very few other kids in the neighborhood, John and Ralph Wight, Kip Braden, Eddie VanFleet and, ew, there were also some girls, Dee Braden and Susan McCaskill.

We would shoot BB guns and Bows and Arrows. We would look for, and catch, snakes. If we wanted to go over to the Wights house across the lake we would swim. It was about a quarter of a mile across. There was a canal that went from Golden Lake into Lake Jesup. We caught a lot of snakes along that path. We would get up with the rising sun and come home when it went down.

Mister Wight would often take us to the drag races over in Samsula on Friday nights. As the story goes (unfortunately I was not with him this night) he was speeding thru Osteen and was stopped by the Constable. He got the ticket and told the Constable to give him another because he would be coming back later. When Mr. and Mrs. Wight would go out on Saturday night we would get in his Corvette and run up and down Marquette Ave. We never got caught. Ralph, John, and I started a little camp fire in their field one afternoon and it spread a little more than we could handle. Mr. Wight had to call the Fire Dept. Since I had started one earlier in my career, they blamed it on me. You can only imagine the punishment we got.

Things have changed some out there. There are a few more homes on the east side of Ohio Ave. There are a lot of homes being built on the south side of the Lake Mary Blvd. extension. The Airport has bought some of the property on Marquette. It ain’t what it used to be.

Oh Well,

The Times They Are a Changing.

Greg Ganas