The History of Palm City

we are really blessed to have all these people come forward tell us about Palm City tonight's program is the history of Palm City and these are people who live in Palm City or come from families that have lived in Palm City a long time i'd like to introduce Let me try and get them in order i I don't have you all connected now but Johnny Leaden raise your hand johnny John member of the board long time Pop City holly Hyatt her her father was my first veter yeah and then Forest Yingling which was Horus there you go and Dennis we went to school together he tells me that all the time and then um Karen

Mallerie Morrison and Kieran's brother Jerry and they they go way back and Mary Ray Smith mary there you go have I got everybody joanne Smith made it i'm so glad you're here tonight thank you we're going to miss Gary tonight and you're really going to be on my side whenever it's all over because Gary's supposed to be MCing tonight and he's feeling bad okay so hopefully you'll be better and I'm not a real native of Palm City but I spent about 20 years there i lived in Palm City for about 20 years and what we're talking about tonight mainly is 20 years before that so or more or more judy and I were in the

first grade together this is a connection and I volunteer at the Harriet Museum the Heritage Museum Monday and Tuesday so if you've never heard about the Stiller part of Martin County I'll tell you about it when you come by me okay it's been a real pleasure i was invited to be there for that and I just want to say a little bit about how much history there is there it's amazing i never knew my family had such a part in Martin County's history it's a It's a short window but it was a window and it was an opening that started out with mosquitoes there were enough mosquitoes for everybody to go around okay all right

so Palm City had them too all right uh the program we're going to start out tonight with how long have you been in Palm City where were you born there all right can we start do you all got a mic on that end no you're going to have a mic you're going to have Can't have mine we'll start right here with Mr mallerie okay my sister and I moved here hold it hold it up to your mouth yeah we moved here in 1945 we moved down from up just east of Cleveland our father had a job at a defense plant uh when the war ended he lost his job and decided to come down here

and visit the grandparents his mother and his stepfather had been down here since 1939 or 1940 and his stepfather had actually been down here as a young man before World War I he was down here with uh with his family um he moved back up north and then came back about 1939 or 40 so when the war ended and our father lost his job we gassed up the Lincoln Zephr and started out came down to visit the grandparents how many days did it take in that back then to come drive down here probably four or five yeah just you know you couldn't couldn't make very good time there weren't any interstates or anything i know

but we after that we used to go back up every couple of years in the summer and visit relatives we had relatives in Pennsylvania and Ohio and all over the place so we were back did you camp out or something going down stopped in motel motel let me say that as we go on just feel free to participate if you have a question you want to ask we're open okay okay uh our grandfather's family were some of the original pioneers out on Loop Road they were in Ohio and of course Chillingsworth was advertising 10 acres of land and you would get a free lot in the city well they bought that they came down here

started an orange grove uh my grandfather was uh more a teenager so he was but his two brothers are listed in the old Palm City school list of children and um they got frozen out so they went back to Ohio and granddaddy just he just couldn't wait to get back to the beautiful St lucy River over it was clear back then and they could get anything they wanted to to eat all he talked about was Florida Florida Florida then he had to go into World War I and uh then he met my grandmother after that she had been divorced and they married and he just all he talked about was Florida Florida Florida so as

my brother said in 1939 they came down here but he was one of the original pioneers out there and we used to ride out on Loop Road and do you remember there was two cabbage palms right out by the road and that grandpa said that's where their their drive went back into their land but the I couldn't find it now the palms are gone long time ago but anyhow uh we came down and I have to tell you this we daddy said "Now we'll go down and see the folks we've never seen Florida we'll go down and see the folks and when I get back I'll look for work." Well when they got back they

decided to sell the house and come to Florida i had one month in the first grade in Ohio and they pulled me out and uh then I had my sixth birthday on the trip down so we I know exactly when it was we were uh I have to tell you about Jerry and I I won't I'll let you guys talk in a minute i have I have to tell you about Jerry and I now Jerry's two years younger than I and he doesn't remember some of the things but we when we left Ohio we bought Daddy bought this little house trailer well you can imagine what it was like back then and we pulled that

we pulled into a campsite in Orlando one night and was to stay the night and my older brother Ralph was six years older and he didn't want anything to do with us you know so he so Jerry and I took off you know we found the most wonderful beautiful trees and they had this gray hair hanging from it oh it was wonderful and we thought this would make the most wonderful wigs we were indoctrinated to Florida real quick oh we got So we we had that then then we when we were just dumb Yankees we didn't know anything we went to the beach one day and there were the most beautiful royal blue balloons all

over the place and we thought "Oh we'll have fun popping these." Well about there was an old gentleman that was fishing and he got a hold of my parents real quick said "Don't let them." So we got through those two things and we managed the uh Sansbur and we managed the Jacksonville beans so we a saw grass we got through all that so we we pretty well had our show together after that but boy those those wigs were pretty for a while we learned about the Sand Spurs in St augustine Castillo de San Marcos stopped there on the way down and I was barefoot and I went running off across the grass there and then

I just stood there and screamed and my father had had enough of me by by that time i I guess I hadn't been very good on the trip and he was going to go and really tie into me until he got up there and discovered that I was in the middle of the sand spurs couldn't move well granddaddy and grandmother's house houses are still when you come across I call it the old bridge when you come across the bridge where the high-rise is that's where the the old hotel was that blew over in the hurricane and then right next to that there's the four next four cottages my grandfather built those and uh they're still

standing and people living in them so good deal who tell Well I'm Joanne Blackstone Smith and my parents I was born in Miami i wasn't born in Palm City i was born in Miami and my parents moved to Palm City uh 3940 that part of the years and um my grandmother had a big old wooden house on 714 up there on a piece of property where now sits the Presbyterian Church in Palm City and that's where we were raised on that piece of property there in Palm City and we had a little house behind my grandparents house back there just a little wooden house and my father was um uh on the dredgeboats at that

time when they were building the canals he was a dredgeboat man and um mother didn't work at that time but eventually mother went to work for the AMP store and she retired from the AMP store here Katherine Blackstone and um so we lived in Palm City there and it was very a very wonderful childhood at that time um we had at the foot of the Palm City Bridge is a little two is a big two-story building there with green awnings and that was our grocery store that was our post office and we could ride our bikes from out there where the P Presbyterian church is we could ride our bikes and nobody would bother you

we go up there and get candy or whatever and mother would get things that they needed you know and and um we could back then it was so quiet and I did not go to school in Palm City uh we finally eventually you know all had to go to the Steuart High School at that time and uh we rode a school bus mr markle drove the school bus from and I think his road is still in Palm City you know Markle Road and and uh Ludham Road mr of them drove the bus to the church for Sunday school and we went to the little congregational church out there in Palm City on the river and

he'd pick us up in his little wooden station wagon and take us to church on and Sunday school on on Sundays and um so eventually my father we we were I have a I have two brothers and uh we got older you know and daddy decided that he would uh maybe have to have a bigger house cuz we had a tiny little house my parents had a a black iron stove to cook on they had an ice box where the iceman would come and deliver our ice and our milkman and eventually they got you know an electric stove and so forth and so on but uh finally my father bought property which is now across

from the Martin County High School right there and um we owned he owned that whole piece of property from Caner on to the river and he built our home there so we left Palm City when I was about maybe 11 or so but um Palm City was a wonderful time of life out there at that time we we had a good life out there i don't think children today realize you know how much they have as opposed to what people our age and maybe a little younger than I am but uh you know had such a good life out there and I you remember I used to ride my I used to ride my bike

out to your house and we go to the swimming pool that's right we did our house our property backed up on Danford Creek i made a note about that and I forgot it uh our house backed up on Danford Creek where the Danford uh residential area is right now and we had a path back there through the palmettos and the pine trees and stuff and we could go back there and swim in that creek every day which we mostly did in the summertime and Karen would write Yeah she would ride out and we would go swimming in the swimming hole almost every day nobody bothered you it wasn't contaminated you know and it was just

you know it was a good thing to do on a nice summer day but that was where Danford uh the residential area is now Danford Creek that was behind our house did you ever see any gators back there what gator any gator no gators we didn't worry about gators and we didn't worry about snakes and things like that we were young and you know you're not afraid nothing bothered you then we We just had a You know what they say about gators in Florida you know I can tell if there's a gator in Florida in Florida you put your hand right there you pull it out if it's wet there can be a gator there

well I'm Dennis Jingling and I wasn't born in Palm City either we moved from Pennsylvania down here when I was five me and my brother Craig we were both born in Pennsylvania but we grew up in Palm City and like she was saying Palm City was one of the best places Yep you could grow up in and as far as uh swimming holes and sand spurs we weren't allowed to wear our shoes we had a pair of shoes for church and a pair for school when you came home they come off and our feet were as tough as leather we could walk through surs without a better trouble and people would follow us doing it

you know and we just laugh at them and leave them standing there but the swimming holes there was a good one out at Bill Mat's place it was an artisan well and uh that's where pretty much everybody went except for up in All-American Boulevard and talking about gators if you could see them we knew we were all right so we would swim as long as you could see them that wasn't too smart on our part we're all still here none of us got eat and as far let's see i'm Palm we did a lot of camping and we camped almost every weekend someplace in Palm City and then some of the boys we went to

church with Freddy and Lance Kale and Jimmy Vantine and we used to start going out on that island uh west of the bridge and we built a log cabin out there but we would go out in the summertime for two or three weeks at a time and we would eat whatever we could shoot with a BB gun we'd never come back into town we never And if you couldn't find a boat or one of them didn't have a boat work we'd swim across there to that island but uh we camped almost every weekend and I remember one of the notes here is if we ever got any trouble yeah well I'm going to tell you

some of the trouble we're allowed to tell you i can tell you the bomb they built a bomb shelter at the end of uh Second Street between Second Street and First Street and uh I guess we was maybe 10 years old we finally broke the lock off of it because it started raining so we got down in the bomb shoulder to the camp and we lifted the lid up real slow make sure nobody was there and uh the one boy said it's clear and we opened it up with their set Slater Gross Jim Mills and Herman Waldron so so much for peeking out and finding the cops i'm trying to think of anything else you

know you guys are just bringing up a lot of memories i remember my dad took off Jim Mills's dog's leg back in ' 65 he got bit by an alligator yep my dad amputated that so that was a great And that little store in the corner Mr mrs gerard yeah that was our bus stop yeah we had four stores in Palm City we had Gerards Ramy's and you took your life in your own hands if you ever ate there sunshine Sunshine Grocery and then Shaw's Grocery up in Ninth Street but uh Palm City was a good place kind of okay well I think they've pretty well covered you got to put it up to your

mouth oh okay there you go they've covered a lot about Palm City um I was born in Palm City or in Stewart in 1943 and um my father was born on the island between Palm City and Port St lucy and I can't for the life of me think of it now there is a memorial out there and uh so I don't know what year their family came down here but they had a um sawmill out on the island and also pineapple plantation and they had to take a boat to get there a ferry and then in 1939 my dad decided they were going to move to Palm City and um I believe they moved there

in 1940 and it was dirt roads and even when I was young it was mostly dirt roads and it was a wonderful place we could go anywhere mat spawned um played in the river i mean of course we weren't supposed to be playing in the river but we did and um it was wonderful back then and it was still nice when I raised my children out there with these guys even even they didn't spoil it your name of your father that was on that island cruz Henry Cruz and uh now I'm the only one left here so same with me um but it was it was a great place um on stores in Palm City

for a short time and Donette might remember there was a Mr dolman that had a store on Cornell for Cornell just a few years and he was nice mr gerard was not nice she wasn't we did not like going down there we were scared to death of them and there we took pop bottles down there better not be a speck of anything on them but um we were a little bit afraid of going down there we didn't go a lot mr domen was really nice but um and the first um I believe the first church was the one that was on 9inth Street on 34th orever and then in 1957 I believe was it Joe

that they built Palm City Baptist 1957 I think and so a lot has changed same with the school when I went to work and Nancy was there and um it was just um what eight classrooms six six classrooms six and um now there's um I don't know what the population is of the school but I'm sure it's well over 600 students and we had what one or one bus another short bus yeah well that and the whole time I went to school there was only one bus that busted us from Palm City from all the way out on the grade to Stewart High School one bus one bus and it was sometimes not full and

we always liked it when the Palm City Bridge went up and wouldn't go down yep cuz that meant we we got to go the long way around by the locks mhm the bridge that way we were late for school and nobody cared and those were the good days you had brought up something i was going to comment on it and I forgot i was just going to say something going to Palm City School mrs crawford was my third grade teacher she was mine too yep and I bet she remembers it she She was the sweetest one because coming from second grade Miss Wallace who would Oh gosh who would choke you out if you looked

at her wrong all right miss Crawford's sweetheart i'm uh Forest Jingling i'm Dennis's brother he's him and my next down below him are the only two Yankee kids that they had here so I'm not a Yankee no we were uh I was born in 57 and my grandparents um were uh Lee and Satie Delo had come down from Georgia and that's on my mother's side and they come from Georgia back I can't even tell you when but my mother was born in Solo um then my father he came down with his parents when they were building their house on First Street and come down every summer uh every winter because he they did construction and

stuff but I was born of course Palm City didn't have a hospital so I was born at Mark Memorial in 57 and getting back to the things in Palm City you know I can I can remember the water in the river being pretty pretty clean i don't remember it being clear cleared but I you could see 4 foot and my mother she had told me one time that the manatee pocket was actually pretty much crystal clear but when they cut that canal in you know the St lucy canalis would ruin everything but uh you know growing up here was good we like I say we had Mat's pawns my brother had horses and we would

ride horses bearback all through Palm City you know in the summertime yeah we just and you know collecting pop bottles and all that and taking them to the store of course we always went the sunshine cuz Mr gerard he was the one I thought was on the fugitives they were looking for We didn't go in there very much old black and white television didn't have a really clear picture but no it was a good time we could go uh like I said go to Mat's pond we go to the river we fished in any place that held water we hunted pretty much anywhere we wanted because nobody cared um we'd ride our bikes over to

the causeway or the beach and fish and there was just no no hurry about anything because you couldn't go home and stay in the house cuz that after you got up in the morning you were basically booted out of the house and don't come back till supper and cuz there were seven kids in our family so I don't know how my mother did it poor thing but uh yeah that was a lot of boys six boys and one girl yeah so but anyway here you go mr johnny Leighton he's got all kinds oh boy where'd he begin well I started in I was born 42 at Mark Memorial my dad built a house out on

Fifth Street his uh parents had came down from uh Pennsylvania in 1913 and when they bought acorage out on the farm they called it they gave him two lots in town and dad bought the two lots from my grandmother so he built us a house there and uh we had horses well Fifth Street now is 30th Street we He had six horses at the house a milk cow and a pig and uh that was Forest's girlfriend only look good in lipstick and we used to have bike races when you came off the old Palm City Bridge to the the first cut off to the left which Walton's on two houses they are Cornell and back

on Cornell and on the main Martin Downs Boulevard now they call it and we'd have bicycle races there and you'd go somebody's house to play and wasn't many boys there and uh there's Vince Hickby Bobby Worm Ed Bozon lived across the street we had a big yard we played football baseball or softball and uh I moved to Stewart when I was 12 and then back to Palm City when I was 21 but uh we all had our own fun and and there wasn't many people out there mrs mallerie was my uh Cub Scout teacher and then uh Mr uh Eve not Evelyn uh Velma not Velma the Higgby lady oh Benson's mother what was she

very she was not a nice girl i don't know oh and then we had Susan Krauss from Krauss and Crane yes she was our Yes dead mother for a few years but growing up Palm City was great and my dad bought 100 acres in 46 and we had 130 head of cattle on it when he sold it but uh he was always chasing cows you got cows but it was a great place to grow up you knew everybody in the neighborhood and trouble was called to your parents before you got home that's right there you go yeah try having another bringing up such great memories and talking about bicycles and unfortunately um we didn't have

bicycles we just had horses so we're always jealous of the kids that lived in what's called the old numbered streets cuz they could ride their bicycles to somebody else's house and before we could do that of course we had to call up the horses and and brush them out and saddle them and then we could ride in and I remember very distinctly uh we'd ride our horses to the base of the Palm City Bridge Leighton Park now and there was a hitching post there and we'd hitch the horses up and we'd walk out on that catwalk the old Palm City bridge and that little sandbar there on the other side of the channel you know

perspective changes when you grow up you know and you're older when we were kids we thought that was forever we'd hitch your horses up walk across that catwalk and then we'd swim all the way to that sandbar and we'd play until the tide came up and then we'd swim all the way across the channel which is like from here to that door but we were always jealous i remember we didn't ride the bicycles we tried to ride bicycles from our house on 714 i think a lot of y'all remember that you know where Doc Hayatt you know where dad had his place and we tried to ride the bicycle that was a main intersection there

that was the only way to get into Stewart was off the turnpike 714 so 714 the map that was the biggest intersection and I think that's how my mama ended up winning her school board race she and all the other mamas got out there one year and they had their picket signs because they didn't want their children riding to Palm City Elementary School with no sidewalk so I still have pictures of my mom and all the other Palm City mamas and she's got her pants suit on and they were protesting they wanted a sidewalk to get their kids to uh Palm City but yeah my dad was uh raised in Fort Lauderdale Lauderdale High flying

L's no longer there um University of Florida unfortunately they did not have a veterinary school when he did Fort Lauderdale High they did two years University of Florida quit worked on Babcock Ranch and then uh not quit he had to get money and then he did his BS and then he had to work again so he worked on Babcock Ranch and then got his premed and then went to work as a traveling drug salesman in the meantime then he they didn't have a veterary school here then so he had to go to University of Georgia got a veterary license met my mom then had one two three kids before he got his doctorate moved back

to Palm City he was from Fort Lauderdale and wanted a smaller place so moved out to Palm City and yeah like just all these great memories mat Pond we used to take the horses to all the ponds and they were our diving boards you know we we'd put the horses out there we'd dive off and then we'd climb up their tails up their hawks and you know dive off again and this is I brought a picture it's kind of cute the gators every year used to go in the back here and there was a mud hole and they'd lay their eggs and then they'd come up to this pond every year when the when the

babies when the babies hatched they'd come up to that pond and daddy either fish them out and relocate them to the dinner table yeah we called them wampas yeah that's what uh Ti Gonzalez and I call them wampas cuz you know you couldn't eat gator you eat wampas but anyway one year uh that one picture is my sister there he got one of those little baby gators and he put a piece of tape up his nose and let us take it to Palm City Elementary for show and tell so there my sister holding up her little baby gator to show and tell so anyway been then been just great fun um miss a lot of

oldtimers great fun are there any questions i have one questions creepy i just thought uh Iris Wall I read her book from Indian Town um and she was a cracker girl because the cows I realized were wild so the cows that you had were they wild or did they uh import them into uh Florida no they were just old scrub cows but you could open the door and they'd climb in the car would you where was Py when you go over the bridge all I remember is taking a left to go see some friends where were these first second third fourth streets when you came off the bridge you come on the bridge make a

left on that road that you take a left so that's it there were 16 streets they're now called 29th 30th 31st is that Cornell cornell right over the bridge to the left is Cornell but then it was First Street 2nd Street 3rd Street we had 15 streets and then the last one was All American Boulevard yeah yeah i think 12th is now called Every other street was paved paved or did you put oil with stones i No there was stones put into to the asphalt asphalt years ago and all American was oh some kind of rough it had the real high stones sticking out i think the street I live on 36 Terrace is still

Mhm is about that wide and still I think they all have original i think it was 13 now when you go over the bridge so you say to the left is town uh when did Lighthouse Point have built that was there also yeah it's always been there that was It was built later point was No that was built in the That was That was in the in the mid60s yeah early 60s yeah in the 60s when you came across that bridge went to Map Road yep you either went left or right you didn't go straight and I think it was 1984 peter Cummings bought that whole that whole bit that's now called Martin Downs and

built Martin Downs Boulevard but back there Yeah crank Creek Ranch bill Mat had Crank Creek Ranch that wasn't a country club and there was no road to it you had to get there remember you had to take a left or right if you took a right when we were growing up the road ended at Map Road which is Map Road now there was no road there when we were kids so I think you went to the right to the right was the lane library where there were when you took that left or right at map that empty spot there were flowers being grown that's berry road berry road is dairy is what who owned that

property and it was a big dairy property and they had a lot of cows the berry road was the flower farm I am There's one more uh question um my husband came down 1965 uh with two other not with two but two other young guys from West Virginia came down and they taught in India town at Warfield and uh the first year he said we stayed in shacks in Palm City where did they live meagerly of course uh in Palm City in shacks that could have been anybody's house back what was your husband's name johnny was asking "What's your husband's name?" Uh he was Jim Kelly and um Jim Ross was another one and um

Oh Steve Biola was the third okay they came out of West Virginia oh yeah and did you teach with Jim who Jim who Ross he lived in Park City he lived in Park City yeah um Scott and Kelly Kelly the last name you said no kelly Ross kelly Ross ros children uh probably at home but I don't have any but he had a uh uh when my husband was dying a couple years ago I found this book on I'm your grandma or I'm your grandpa and our grandchildren are very little just uh two five and seven so I wanted a history and I asked him if I asked the questions or write them down anyway

one question in particular was what affected Now here's an 82 year old man at this point uh something about what affected you most in your life and he said Indian town and I knew it you know cuz he was kind of lost in Massachusetts and I don't know how he stumbled into teaching in Indian town uh but um and this one woman um so I hope to meet her uh and see who she is black woman a black kid and he said she was a strong and bright and I can't remember exactly but I brought that book down what's your name uh Brenella McIntyre mcintyre and her son or grandson was on a major football

team and McIntyres are still out there but I don't know if she's Yeah she is uh it's just that um in Indian i haven't met her yet any other questions thank you that was great i just wanted to say too in Palm City I'm I'm a little be before a lot of this and um we not one person has mentioned the wooden Palm City Bridge and when we had to learn to drive my parents you know and and they had to go to town once in a while that bridge was such a rickety bridge you don't forget that bridge and I don't remember the date when they started building the Palm City bridge that is

now But nobody's mentioned that that bridge was treacherous to have to drive over especially if you were on the school bus you know and stuff like that that nobody mentioned that bridge but we dreaded going back and forth across the horses we did not like to go across that they would not go across that bridge and my mom would not go across that there as a when my parents had to drive across that bridge it was like you know bumpity bumpity bumpy but I just wanted to mention that because I haven't heard it mentioned most of them have grown up after we left we left Palm City I guess when I was about maybe 11

or something daddy built our home over right across to Martin County High School back there on the river and um uh we moved out of Palm City and then all the growth began you know and Martin Downs came along and it's not what it used to be but you don't forget that Palm City bridge that bridge is so narrow that if you we fished off of it as kids and when semi come by you had to bend over yeah and I can remember the school bus when the school when another truck was coming this way and we're coming this way sometimes the truck had to back up and lots of times you could look out

the window of the school bus and we'd have this much from the railing i'm not that it was scary it wasn't much of a railing i mean you were chat off mr cwell used to drive the bus he'd scrape the the bolts every morning be pass somebody that bridge was also very treacherous there were there was more than one car that went through the railing and ended up in the river for And I remember when I was very young I they were out there dragging the the river um Yeah looking for bodies because the car had gone through and I was standing there watching when they pulled one of them up we were there we

were there when they pulled the body out that was the nipper boy it was treacherous that that bridge was very treacherous that incidentally the bridge tender lived in the little house out on the bridge yes he did and uh he parked his car down at the end and he'd walk out to his house and and we always the kids always got a kick out of it because we could you could always tell when one of them he or his wife had gone to the bathroom because there was just a pipe coming down so much for Queen River like a little bit of of put things in in proportion here i was I looked up the

census uh figures for looked up the census figures you can't get the census figures for Palm City because it wasn't incorporated but Martin County in 1940 census had 6,295 people that's the whole county wow 1950 there was 7,87 by 1960 it had a little more than doubled it was up to almost 17,000 now in in 2024 it was almost 165,000 so 2024 the population of Martin County was approximately 26 times what it was in 1950 and it was a it was a wilderness it was the frontier i mean we lived right off Cornell right at Sixth Street and I can remember when I was a kid I I was 12 years old when I got

I bought my 22 rifle and you could go out I went out in my backyard and shot tin cans in the backyard well you don't do that now someone told me about the population in 1975 and I still remember this they told me they said "You know we double in population every 10 years." And I went "Nope." And it has held to be true from 65 to 75 we doubled 75 to 85 that figure doubled 85 to 95 that figure doubled so it's it is just mindboggling when you look past like you were saying past like probably 1960 we doubled every 10 years i love it when I hear these people say "Well I moved

here in 1975 and it was such a lovely little town." And I said "Try 1945 when it was paradise." It was paradise i found and I think all all the locals do people you know they move here and by doing so they contribute to the traffic and the growth and the overall congestion and right about 9 year mark when they're here about nine years they start griping about the traffic the road and the overall congestion the same things that they contributed to does anybody on the panel remember who owned Gro store before they bought it uh what store they're on the corner the corner of Cornell and that was Jo that owned it fred Jo

fred Jose he had the dairy out on Loop Road yeah which the Moore brothers bought there's a morning there's a more crowd morning crowd right there are you Harvey's son son yeah okay so there was Nuke Harvey Doc Doc and Ed there's four brothers when we came down here the business district of Palm City was when you came off the bridge right there at the corner of Cornell there was an old wooden two-story building yeah fred Jose it had a had a general store it had the post office and it had one gas pump out in the front that was the business district for pumps and then they tore that down soon after 49 store

well everything blew away in 49 oh I'll be back um uh the the lot that our grandfather was you talked about the lots uh that your your father bought the lots that u were given by Chillingsworth yes okay the one that granddaddy had I don't know how he got it from the rest of the family because he had all kinds of brothers and sisters but he ended up with that lot it's on it was on 32nd Street and uh the Clubans I don't know if you remember the Clubans okay they lived in the the little house was one of the houses that they brought up from the the base in Hog Sound yeah the Army

the Army base campur camp Murphy murphy and so that's what he put on there was a little but it's it's a new house there now i drove by the other day and it is no longer there i have a question this lady here yeah um my parents moved here in 1950 my dad came with Grum and Aircraft mhm and they had dad needed places for the people coming down from New York to live in and they stayed in a place called Selfish Lodge does anybody know anything about that was it still there no no no it's been gone for years okay it was there by the church that was right down the street from where

we was the baby when they Well there's nothing there oh they they used to give us kids the most wonderful Christmas party every year was a Christmas party and I don't know if you remember or not Karen but in the off season we were allowed to go down and play shuffle boards and allowed to go inside and play uh table tennis we went in there and um they had a card room a game room board games i remember and it had a beautiful fireplace in there yes right in the center remember that right in the center remember they raised chinchillaas yes they did i see children don't remember that and don't ask me out yeah

but when the rules ready local kids were allowed oh no we weren't allowed to go down there during a season we uh we knew better i love to to tell a newcomer that oh yes I'm from Palm City i said you know when I was a kid we used to skate at the foot of the bridge and they look at you like you've absolutely lost your mind we did every 15 or 20 minutes we'd say "Oh there's a car coming." We'd all get out of the road and then we'd get back we had our hopscotch there and our skates remember Jo you mentioned you were swimming in Mat Pond you said where where was that

cow pasture he had an artisian out kind of almost where San Hill Cove is right now sanville Bridge right before you get to San Armalini Road if you went all the way out there was a cattle guard there which the cows couldn't jump and then you went out through his cow pasture and he he put those wells in because he grew tomatoes and he would clear the field off and and then he'd plant grass for his cattle so that's all gone now yeah oh yeah well there's also one off of Murphy Road that we wouldn't let them come to that was ours so it was across from Mat Mat's house my other question is does

does anybody have a memory of 1959 1960 when the uh the discharges were four times what they were in 2016 back that's that's the highest that the river had ever gotten from the lake yeah from the lake why were there sandbar guys kind of extended out there by the Palm City Bridge they were put there with a dredge yeah with a dredge to dredge a channel every year mhm and that's spoil island they pump it up there i remember the first protest I went to about the discharges in 1974 out in February 74 so it's been a long time that bridge they were talking about if you happen to be up there fishing and two

tractor trailers happen to meet nope mhm you climb you went swimming you went on there wasn't enough room cuz there was only like a railroad tie in the bottom of the railing stood that's what you stood on and if they come by they h they were bouncing across that railroad tie and you either you threw your pole in and you jumped in they say this picture is a little remnant of that old bridge just a remnant when they were tearing it down and it really like like they're saying it was Yep and there was railroad ties rickety railroad ties and we you know we didn't have air conditioning growing up so after about 7:30 at

night there was no traffic coming into Palm City or out but any car you come across you could tell somebody was coming or going you heard you knew who was in it yeah when I was dating and when I was in high school I was engaged to a boy in Fort Pierce and he'd bring me home 12 1:00 in the morning and I would stand at the door till I heard him drive across that bridge and con then you hit the then you hit the drawst yeah my mother I I when I was in high school I had a job in a grocery store in Stewart after school and I I had had a motor

I had a motorcycle and my mother said she could always tell when I was coming home because she could hear my motorcycle coming across the Palm City bridge does anybody remember probably um cuz I think it was at Kenards when they brought the Clydesdale uh Budweiser Clydesdale horses there with the wagon the grocery store there in Colorado do you remember it i do good i wasn't listening no you didn't i knew I knew I saw them i don't remember what year it was i was young i was probably six i got a couple of pictures it was real funny cuz the the old Christmas parades daddy get all the horses that's one picture daddy and

my mom made all the blankets you know we all matched and we had a sign called the Hyatts you know we had our horses and we that was a big thing we marched in the Christmas parade every year you know that was not much going on so most of the traffic in Palm City was the exiting off of the turnpike right yep yes it was really the only way called the gateway the gateway to Martin County because it's the only way you could get in and out of Martin County but you were talking about Mrs leland out there she was our school bus driver and she'd be in prison today but if if you caught

up with her bus she pulled over and put you out and it didn't matter where you were at absolutely your butt got put out in the side of the road and then when you got home your parents tore your butt up again right yep mr martha would do that too i was telling uh Lear and Paul out there where they've got that house on Map Road now um that uh John Leton good friend Paul you know um what the hell's Felipe i said that was it we had We went out to the end of Map Road Miss London and there's Chicken Farm there and that's where she u-turned yep and came back yeah i was

trying to tell them where they live right now i'm still on uh John you know that's that was it that was the end of the road wendy has a question do any of you remember the three boys that was killed on a Palm City bridge nippers nippers and camel remember them two nippers and a camel yeah yeah i don't remember their names but it was the old bridge nippers yeah they had they had just dropped off one of the boys uh over near where the high school is now he lived over there and then they headed for Palm City and and the rest of them got killed he he was I trying to think what

his name was but he was one blessed boy let me tell you talking about that the bridge just he was talking about the island to the south of the bridge well there was a big sandbar going to that island from them dredging out the channel and we we got to where we'd go out on that island and dove not even on the island and sandbar and dove hunt because you could shoot them birds going to roost turtle doves and they float no the the ringneck or the regular dove oh yeah dove and uh we did that for a couple years until somebody happened to move down from somewhere started complaining were killing all these birds

and the only ones we were killing were the dove you know but he couldn't eat he couldn't eat his supper it made him so sick but that ended that then he shot at us that was the beginning of the end that was Yeah sorry about that well listen when was the bridge the Rick the old wood bridge built i remember the Giltons lived out there and they used to talked about how they took a boat back my father worked for Mr gilson 15 and when the there was a storm that with the 49 hurricane they had to go by boat and their boat turned over one day and my dad just about drowned 1920 torn

up that hurricane really you didn't trip on that bridge 1919 1919 was there was there was a ferry that went across before that 199 we took I took uh my friend Sharon and I which she was in her Rambler for and took Tonet's sister Sarah home and it was late at night you know but curfew maybe 10:00 and we come back over the Palm City Bridge and this lady was in front of us and she's waving around her Sharon don't pass her so we come up to the Palm City bridge and boy the bridge thing was down for and then was the turn stop and she went right through there and so we stopped and

she didn't go off the bridge but then I found out there's another way to get to Palm City like you said when you had to go around i never knew that i don't really remember the war over there her dad she had CB her dad one more question the motor city i think Tom City was too mean i was going to say they were too crazy over there palm City was too mean for the Ashley you haven't heard the good stories a lot of good stories about Palm City yeah does anybody remember the Arundo shops during the war my mother was a plane watcher and she would take us with our little lunch and we'd

go out there climb the tower that big tower was out there for a long time and she was a plane watcher out there at the Arundo shops that's now a big marina I think out there on the canal now but that was an active place back then when when we were young at Pop City great okay thank you