I can’t ever remember there not being a Teeney but my story has to start in the years before I remember anything.

Thinking the War would soon be over, my father, Eugene (Gene) Powell had quit his job in Oklahoma with DuPont making smokeless gunpowder in November of 1944 and headed to West Palm Beach with my mother and a four-year-old little boy. His plan was to join up with three of his brothers, Clarence, Jim Reid, and Charles, who had been farming in and around Hendersonville, NC in the summers and in Florida during the winters. They had a lot of acreage planted in tomatoes out around the Range Line and 20-mile bend and needed all the help they could get.

Without getting into a lot of detail…here’s what came down: winter tomatoes in Florida in the 1940s were harvested green to be shipped refrigerated in ice-bunkered semi-trucks to major markets in the Northeast where they would be gassed to ripen them after their arrival. Tomatoes that had even begun to ripen (star breakers) when they were picked and made their way to the packing house were routinely dumped in the nearest canal because they would surely rot before they could ever reach their destination in Philadelphia, New York or Boston.

It was near the end of the growing season in March of 1945 that, rather than discard them, my father loaded up a pick-up truck with boxes of these ripe tomatoes and headed into town. He had no trouble peddling off his load to restaurants and “mom & pop” grocery stores and decided to repeat the excursion the next day. After a week or so, Daddy was encouraged by the manager at the Morrison’s Cafeteria to “start selling all the other fresh produce” along with his tomatoes. The only problem was that there weren’t going to be anymore tomatoes because the season was over, the fields were picked clean, and the Powell boys and their crews were heading back up to North Carolina where the Spring planting of corn and beans was already underway. What to do?

As it turns out, my father Gene, along with Clarence and Charles joined up to form Powell Brothers Produce Co. The plan was for Clarence to load up trucks at various farms in the Carolinas and Georgia for Charles to drive down to West Palm Beach. They rented an old cork insulated refrigerated warehouse built in the 1920s by Kraft Cheese, bought an old tractor-trailer, a pick-up, and a 2 1/2 ton Diamond T and persuaded two of the farm crew to remain in Florida to help get the business started. The two men that volunteered to stay behind were Garland “Red” Moffitt and James “Teeney” Logan. Both had known my father since childhood and had been raised in and around Horse Shoe, NC where the Powell family lived and farmed the bottom land along the French Broad River.

Almost from the start, things didn’t work out the way they were planned. Clarence shipped a full truck load of rock-hard clingstone peaches that there was no market for and Charles would get drunk in some roadhouse along the highway all too often. After only a few weeks, Clarence and Charles had washed their hands of the new business in West Palm Beach and Powell Brothers had no brothers.

Even though citrus and some leafy vegetables were still being harvested locally, the only way to get all the other items that a new produce supplier needed to maintain an inventory of what their prospective customers demanded was to travel down to the old Miami Produce Market on virtually a nightly basis. This meant that someone had to crawl into the big stake bodied Diamond T about 10:00 PM, drive two hours down old State Rd. 7, spend hours haggling with hucksters and large wholesalers, load the truck with the baskets, sacks, crates and boxes in each purchase, then drive back up the road to the old warehouse on Clare Ave. in West Palm Beach. By now the sun would be coming up and this was only the start of the day’s work!

After unloading the truck and rotating and stacking the produce in one of the coolers or on the potato and onion platform along the railroad track at the back of the building, orders that were being called in on the phone by customers had to be assembled, loaded back on one of the trucks and delivered. My mother was always in the office to answer the phone and we even lived in the back room sleeping on cots and cooking on a hotplate for the first month or two.

Somewhere along the way we picked up an additional piece of the family puzzle. Deloach (Loach) Tinsley, after being shot at by the Japanese in the Pacific, just showed up one day and hung around for forty years. This trio that, ironically, enabled Powell Brothers Produce Co. to get off the ground and thrive beginning in 1945 weren’t brothers and weren’t named Powell…….they were, and will always be remembered only as, “Teeney, Loach, and Red”!

Of the three; Teeney was the only one that, reflected in the crucible of time, was truly irreplaceable. Sometime in late 1946 my father came to the conclusion that he could not continue his nocturnal trips to Miami. The business was growing and there just weren’t enough hours in the day. The strain on my mother, who had to run the warehouse while Daddy was trying to get some sleep in the afternoons, was just too much for a woman that was now pregnant with her second child. After only one trip riding along with my father to learn where to go, Teeney had more work on his shoulders and a new job description.

For any of you younger folks, (and at my age that includes all of you) that are reading these ramblings of an old man, I think I may need to paint a little reminder. Life in the South in the 1940s for a man or woman of color was much different than it is today. James Logan was a black man that was about to push himself into a business world that had never seen his likes before. The phone rang around midnight and the man on the other end of the phone said to my father: “Gene, if you think I’m going to sell any produce to a nigger, you got another thought coming!” According to my proud family accounting, my father’s words were short and simple: “well, the gentleman you are referring to is James Logan and if you don’t sell to him you won’t sell to me because he’s got my money in his pocket and I’m not coming back!”

There were some anxious moments before Teeney got back to the warehouse that morning but, when he did, the truck was full. James Logan had become the first accredited black wholesale buyer ever on the platform of the Miami Produce Market. As the years went by there would be many more but none, white, black, or Latino would demand more respect.

Teeney’s stature and importance in the business was much deeper than just that of a key employee. All of the Powell boys had a problem with alcohol and my father was no exception. On a few occasions, especially around the Christmas holidays, Daddy would “go on a toot” and disappear for a day or two. You can’t be in the business of supplying food to customers serving hungry people on a part-time basis and, had it not been for Teeney, my mother could not have made it alone. Driving down to Miami to buy the items on a list is important but making out that list and knowing how to price invoices is even more crucial. In my father’s absence, my mother was totally dependent on Teeney to know how many bushels of jumbo sweet potatoes Harvey’s Bar-B-Q would need to make their pies or how many crates of artichokes the chef at the Breakers Hotel might order for a special party for King Hussein of Jordan and how much to charge each of them when the time came.

Teeney had a special name for most people he worked with or around. My father’s first job when he got out of College in 1936 was a one year stint as a school teacher at Mills River School. It was at this time that James Logan probably started sarcastically calling Daddy “Professor”. As the years passed Teeney had shortened it to “Fessor” and that was how he always addressed my father. I was not so fortunate…the only moniker Teeney ever gave me was “Needle Dick”.

I worked at the warehouse every summer around Mr. Logan (somewhere along the line I decided that the name “Teeney” was disrespectful and elected to make the change). I even took his place driving down to Miami after I turned 18 and he went on vacations. By then I had gone off to Ga. Tech and gotten married but, after 5 years of learning how to be an engineer, I only worked as one for 3 months at Lockheed in Marietta, GA before moving back to Florida in October of 1963, hooking back up with my father, Teeney, Loach, and Red and going back to selling “taters & onions”.

James (Teeney) Logan and Jimmy Powell (the car is a brand new 1964 Dodge Polara)

The years after my wife and I got back in town are a blur of babies, business, buildings, and bustle. Our sleepy little produce business grew and expanded. By 1969 we had changed the name to Powell Purveyors, Inc., built and moved into a new warehouse next door, and expanded our product line to become a “full line food service distributor.” We now sold, not only produce, but frozen food, meat, dry groceries and even cleaning supplies. All of this did not, however, diminish the importance of having Mr. Logan still overseeing produce purchases, inventory control, and keeping his huge lettuce trimming pocketknife on the ready to insure that everything stayed, or at least appeared to stay, as fresh as the morning dew.

It was during these years that Teeney’s mother passed away and he traveled back to North Carolina and, according to what his sister Nelley is now telling me, saw most of his 14 brothers and sisters for the last time. I can only imagine what being raised in a family so large that they virtually ran out of names must have been like. I thought my father was kidding me when, as a young boy, I was told that Teeney had a brother named Tutum and a champion bean picking sister named Athlete.

It was falling back on his family’s farming experiences that got Teeney started in his next phase of life….one that I admire most of all. He had moved his family a little north to Riviera Beach and began farming a small patch of ground out west of Military Trail in his spare time. Why he chose the crop he did … I have no idea but over a very short period of time Mr. James Logan became a major grower and wholesaler of the finest scallions (green onions) on the market. He perfected the art of cultivating and growing what we referred to as “pencils” instead of “bulb green onions” which were the norm of the time. He started out growing and harvesting just enough to keep the Powells supplied but was soon selling his merchandise to every produce company in town and even filling order for the same wholesalers he had been buying from for years in Miami.

Teeney was approaching 60 years of age and had been wearing a broad leather back brace for years. I very vividly remember the day he came to me and said he was leaving us. His words were “I just can’t do the lifting anymore…it hurts too bad.” In a few days he was gone and there was no retirement party or ceremony…there just came a day when …

After all these years I feel as if a chapter is missing from my life. We went on in the late 70s to expand the business many times over and moved, still another time, into an even larger new warehouse in Riviera Beach in the summer of 1982. Our move was accompanied by cocktail parties, open-houses, and employee-supplier get-togethers. We did all of this but, to my knowledge, Teeney was never invited and I don’t remember his name even being mentioned.

A few years back I had an occasion to be driving near Horse Shoe and decided to pay my respects at the gravesite of my grandparents, Mama and Papa Powell. While trying to find the Old Camp Ground Cemetery, I drove up a dirt road and stumbled on an old church and smaller graveyard. Curiosity getting the best of me, I found many of the headstones with “Logan” on them and knew immediately that none of my kin were buried there. I went on to find the Powell’s resting place and hadn’t given the instance anymore thought until very recently.

Genealogy is one of my favorite pursuits. I’ve tracked mine and my wife’s families back many generations but you always reach a point where you can’t go any further. My roadblocks were simple, too many John Powells in 1700’s Virginia and Conklins marrying Conklins in 19th century New York. But I got to thinking…what if I was a black man? If I was, I would know, before I started my research, that the trail would probably end in 1865. To this end, and stumbling on an old photo of Teeney and myself, I remembered the little church and cemetery in Horse Shoe and went to work on Google.

Here, in our 21st century informational wonder world, no one can hide their trail…not even Tutum or Athlete and certainly not Nelley or Fred or Joe Mann or Paulette. My search for Teeney’s roots has led me to the Logan Chapel and an extended family that, as best I can tell, has extraordinary pride in where they came from and those that came before them. They have embarked on a quest to refurbish and preserve the first black church in the region. The place of worship was founded by freed slave families led by their patriarch John Wesley Logan soon after the Civil War.

John Wesley Logan

   For over 100 years, descendants from these families gathered at the church the second Sunday in September but these homecomings have been interrupted because the Chapel has been deemed unsafe for use. I’ve been in contact with Teeney’s daughter Paulette Smith in Charlotte and my son Bobby drove up from his home in Greenville, SC to meet with Fred and Nelley. They are the last of the 15 children (ages 93 and 86).

Fred Logan and Bob Powell

    Bobby and I are trying to work with Joe Mann, a distant nephew of Teeney’s that’s a building contractor who lives in Columbus, OH. We have offered to help finance the renovation of the old Chapel but are running up against the “age problem”. All of the Logan clan that still live in and around Horse Shoe are motivated but all of them are older than I am and that’s…well you know.

I’m offering this modest written tribute to encourage all of the far-flung Logan family and those they hold dear to continue their work, maintain their heritage, and to never stop in their efforts to create a culture of family pride. The only Logan family member I’ve ever known was James E. Logan and, by virtue of these pages I’ve written, no one in my family will ever forget him.

Jim Powell

…the living poinsettia is from Nelley, Fred, Paulette, and all your loving family

…the green onions are a remembrance from Fessor and Needle Dick

Much has been said about the abduction of underclassmen at Palm Beach High School on the day of the fruit fight in the spring of 1958. Since everyone who took part in the affair, or even only witnessed the happening, can relay a certain perspective; what is true and what may not be true about the great kidnapping has become obscured over the years. I offer the following narrative only to clarify some facts that few of you are aware of and to encourage, even challenge, anyone to question their accuracy. Within the framework that follows all of the individual stories you have told your children, grandchildren, and friends over the years should fit very nicely.

I did not attend PBHS in our sophomore year. My parents had graciously allowed me to go off to military school in Georgia. The primary reason for allowing my “voluntary exile” was my determination to join a fraternity and the social gyrations involving rush parties during the summer after our 9^th grade year. It seemed entirely natural to me for a 15 year old to graduate from watching World War II venereal disease documentaries in P.E. classes at Conniston one month to watching movies of naked ladies and swarthy Latin guys that didn’t even bother to take off their black socks the next month. Films like these became standard fare at rush parties in the back rooms of various locations that summer. Like I say, it seemed natural to me but my Father heard about it and was somewhat more narrow minded.

The genesis of my knowledge of “fruit fights” began that summer when I was invited to a Tau Delt rush party that featured an organized orgy of overripe vegetarian warfare. I don’t remember the details or team selection process but the location was the same as that we would use in the future – Brute Hill, as it was referred to, on the beach just south of the Seminole Golf Club.

I have no idea what transpired in the year of my absence, but late in our junior year (1957) the crew at the Campus Shop decided to resurrect the past and challenge the seniors to a fruit fight. Details elude me but the gauntlet was picked up and the date was set.

Because my family was in the fresh produce business, the task of rounding up rotten tomatoes, oranges, and other noxious delectable’s fell to me. By the time the chosen day arrived I had scoured all of the farms and packing houses from Delray to Ft. Pierce and had amassed two very large open U-Haul trailers of fermenting ammo. These trailers were parked at a secret location to keep the seniors from getting them and the word was out that the upper classmen had only gotten their hands on a bushel or two of scraps from the Farmer’s Market and would probably have to show up with “nothing but their jock straps”.

At this point the plot thickens. Two of the senior leaders were Ronny Slack and Jim Beaver, football teammates of mine and guys I was destined to face three years later when Ga. Tech traveled to Gainesville to play the U of F (yes Schiller, I know Florida won 18-17). Hearing that I was in charge of ordinance for the juniors, Slack and Beaver decided to eliminate me from the mix. Whether by force or subterfuge I do not remember but I ended up with my hands cuffed around a 15 foot tall steel standpipe on the Water Company property out off Old Okeechobee Rd, just west of the Shriners Club. I was told not to worry – “someone would come out after the fruit fight and set me free”.

What transpired next is hearsay to me but I feel certain it is true. When word got around that Slack and Beaver had kidnapped me, some of my fellow juniors decided to take action. Who these brave fellows were, I’m not sure but we will, via Ruthie Hall, surely soon find out!

Now back to certainty. My classmates show up at Powell Brothers Produce Co. on Clare Ave. with two senior hostages: Carl Lawson and Homer Greene. The captors tell my father that I have been snatched by the seniors and to keep the hostages locked up until my release. Daddy, willingly and in good spirits, gives the captives warm coats and locks them in the fruit cooler. Whether my timely release from the handcuffs or the large number of apples being eaten by Carl and Homer precipitated the first action, I do not know but by the end of the school day all were free and the fruit fight of “57” was back on track.

I’ll leave it to others to describe our total humiliation at the hands of Bruce Jordan and the other seniors but let it suffice to say that “it was not a pretty picture”. After being attacked from the rear (geographically not anatomically speaking) and being flushed in the rotten slop in our own U-Hauls, I ended up striped naked walking miles along the sand only to hide behind a phone booth at the Singer Island public beach waving at cars and begging for a dime to call home. My laughing father brought me a pair of pants when he picked me up.

Flash forward to one year later.

Jocks at PBHS were always scheduled for P.E. in 4^th period so the net result was an hour and a half lunch period encompassing both the first and second session punctuated with a brief “get out of sight time”. With all this time on our hands, the typical Campus Shop conversation usually turned to the more intellectual pursuits in life like detecting fake gator shirts, the thinness of the roast beef on the 10 cent sandwiches, and the ever reliable fallback: lies about who was “getting some”.

Only this day was different. The fruit fight was looming but boredom set in early in first lunch hour and someone decided it would be neat (cool was still a weather term) to go back in time and snatch a few underclassmen. As is so often the case, the mission sort of mushroomed. Confirming what others have recalled, Frankie Moskowitz’s 1956 Chevy convertible played a key role but other cars and drivers were used over the next hour and a half to transport captives. The result was that somewhere between 70 and 100 juniors, and maybe even some sophomores, ended up incarcerated in the potato and onion shed at Powell Bros. My father had learned a lesson from the year before and chose not to put apples, pears, and strawberries in harms way with a group that had probably been carted off on an empty stomach.

One after another, cars would deliver a load of detainees and race off to pick up another batch. It was a scene right out of Stalag 17. Prisoners trying to climb the wire mesh gate to escape while the guards, Johnny Riggs and Robert Benton, were rapping their grasping fingers with wooden slats from cantaloupe crates. Riggs, showing a sadistic bent and his jailer genetic heritage, took particular pleasure in letting them get almost to the top before administering the “coup de back on your ass”.

Finally my father decided that it was time to bring things to a halt. Adjacent to the potato and onion shed was the equipment room where a toilet with no seat and the refrigeration compressors were located. Also in this room was a long ago boarded-up window that came out in a hidden corner of the shed where the captives were held. Taking a claw hammer, Daddy pried the boards loose and showed the guys in the cage the way out. The opening was too small to allow more than one man at a time and, once out, they still had to get past the sentries to make their escape. To solve this problem my father suggested they continue to demonstrate at the wire mesh to distract the guards while slipping out of the window one by one to form a small army in the compressor room.

The plan worked to perfection. At virtually the same instant a large group of prisoners rushed out of hiding, overwhelmed Riggs and Benton, opened the wire gate for their comrades and scattered on foot in all directions. As they did so, an automobile drove up and Mr. Adolphson stepped out.

How quickly the juniors got back to the Hill I don’t know but I don’t think Mel gave any of them a ride. The next recollection I have was in Mrs. Myers’s 5^th period English class when those infamous words came over the intercom….will the following boys please report to…………………………

Jimmy Powell

The 1400 block of Clare Ave. in 1947 was not an “upscale” residential neighborhood of West Palm Beach. It was in Bonnyview, near the back side of the National Guard Armory, around the corner from Alice’s Bar & Grill, and a few doors east of  the Bell Telephone truck park and Murphy Construction Co. On its south side the only thing that separated it from a fetid stagnate canal was the Seaboard Coast Line railroad. Along this stretch of asphalt, and next door to each other, were three identical wood frame two bedroom (plus a screened-in sleeping porch) rental homes. They were all built up on concrete blocks and were inhabited by the Morris, Powell, and Upthegrove families. My family lived in the middle house.

I was a 2nd grader at Central Elementary. The Upthegroves were an elderly couple and I don’t remember anything about them, but I can never forget the Morris clan. If my memory is correct, there were 3 or 4 children but I only remember two….Frances, I believe the oldest, and the youngest that was only ever referred to or addressed as “Little Brother”. I’m sure he had a name but it was never spoken.

The Morrises were the neatest family. They raised chickens in a wired-in coop in back of their house next to the railroad track. The kids went barefoot all the time except for school and, because of them, I got to do the same thing. Frances and Little Brother seem to have an endless supply of wooden toys that, I was told, were made by their father. Mrs. Morris made all of Frances’s dresses from saved flower or butterfly patterned soft cotton feed sacks. She did all of  this and more but what I so vividly remember about Mrs. Morris was what she accomplished with a single huge cast iron pot!

The big cast iron pot always sat in the same spot in the back yard. It was perched up on a few red bricks and usually had hardwood ashes under and around it. The only time the ashes disappeared was when Mrs. Morris scooped them up and put them IN THE POT! That’s right……in the pot. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Every Monday morning Mrs. Morris would fill the pot with her family’s dirty laundry from the previous week, then cover the load with clean water (I think there was a hose but I’m not sure). To this mixture that had now become “her wash” she would toss in a block or two of homemade lye soap and build a fire under and around the pot with small pieces of oak kindling. She had a long-handled wooden paddle and would periodically come out the backdoor to stir her, now boiling, clothes. After rinsing, the entire ensemble would be hung out to dry on the chicken coop wire fencing and the longest string of closely packed clothes lines you’ve ever seen.

Once every few months Mrs. Morris had another chore that had to be undertaken. This one was also laundry related but may have been necessary for other routine household applications. What ever the case, it also involved the big black cast iron pot.

Was she crazy? Why would anyone dump wood ashes into a pot? … I guess for the same reason that same person would proceed to dump weeks of accumulated kitchen grease and lard in on top of the ash before adding a few gallons of water and starting a new fire under the whole nocuous mixture–she was making her family’s lye soap.

Okay, we’ve seen how the matron of the Morris household utilized her back yard crucible for soap alchemy and laundry, now let’s get to the best part of the story: if on any given Sunday afternoon or holiday she decided to clean the pot real good, wring the necks of two, maybe three, big fat old hens, chop off heads and feet ……..gut um out, then  put the kids to work picking feathers ………… fill the pot with just enough water to cover the birds, add some sliced onions, carrots, and celery, bring to a slow boil ……….. an hour and a half, plenty of salt and pepper……thicken broth in pot with a quart or so of roux ………….. retreat to the kitchen with the cooling cooked hens ……………….pull and set aside all the, now tender, white and dark meat, ……….. round up some flour, baking powder, salt, milk, and some of that leftover lard to cut in ………. rolling out the dough on the flour sprinkled big kitchen table, cutting them into little squares…………. running back outside to drop them into the, now rapidly boiling, cast-iron pot of golden nectar one at a time…………15 minutes or so more, then move the pot off the flame and dump the chicken meat back in.

Every friend, neighbor, and near-by relative had already been invited and if I have to tell you what Mrs. Morris was cooking up, you’re too dumb, too skinny, or too Yankee to need to know.

2018 – Eli never met Mrs. Morris 

During the summer of 1990 my wife Dee and I vacationed in Foscoe, NC. We rented a cottage where Nick and Marcy Coppola had a summer home. I was born in the mountains of North Carolina and still have relatives around every turn of the road. Yes, I know…..it’s so beautiful, and it’s so cool, and it’s so peaceful and quiet, and it’s so laid back and it’s………I’m sorry………it’s so boring! I once was told that if you spend too much time in the NC mountains, your brain will turn into a walnut!

That’s an exaggeration but I did end up trying to find ways to occupy my time. We all did–before the summer was over, Nick, Nick’s brother George, Mo Mustaine, and myself had all, as a joint endeavor, begun to explore the culinary galaxy. Nick and George experimented with new and exotic Italian tomato gravies and the best pastas to go with them. Mo convinced his wife Linda that a retired electrician really could start a new career as a Master baker and I set out to replicate the renderings of a long ago big black piece of cast iron.

I learned little from what the others cooked up……..some dishes were delicious and all of our creations were palatable except Mo’s pumpkin pie (don’t ever try to actually make one from fresh Halloween type pumpkins – use canned). I did, however, accomplish one monumental achievement that summer. Through trial and error, I finally came to the realization that a true southern dumpling is really nothing but cuts from the thinly rolled dough of a southern biscuit boiled in liquid rather than being baked in an oven. This discovery has enabled me to pass on to my grandson, Eli, the encouragement and capability to, not only impress all of the young ladies he will amorously pursue over the next few years with a perceived folksy down home wholesomeness, but to, more importantly, be encouraged in years to come to bore all of his family and friends, as well as present and future high school and college classmates, to tears by e-mailing collections of rambling endless lines of misspelled run-on sentences like the one you have just read.

Jim Powell

Elias Powell and “Pop” (Greenville, SC – 10/7/18)

just a note:

Zelda Frances Morris graduated as a member of the National Honor Society from PBHS in the class of 1957. I found Frances, now Frances Woodward, living on Old Thomasville Rd. in Cairo, Georgia. She’s with the only husband she’s ever had and two grown sons. Little Brother passed away a number of years ago. She has no internet, but I mailed her a hard copy (with pictures) of the above. On the phone Frances was crying when she told me she remembers all of what transpired on Clare Ave. those many years ago and, incidentally, she still has the big black pot.

This man was so important to my family that I just wanted the entire “Class of 58” to know a little more about his life and its impact on all those around him.

……. a lengthy Eulogy read by one friend to a lot of others:

Nick Coppola just showed up. No one ever introduced us and only years later did I learn that we were in the 9th grade at Conniston Jr. High when I first came in contact with the new boy from Palm Beach and Magnolia, Massachusetts who had never played football and had a last name ending in a vowel.

After a year in military school and my first days at Palm Beach High in the late summer and fall of 1956, we got back together. It was 2-a-day football practice time and all I remember were piles of smelly sweat-soaked tee shirts, socks, jocks, shoulder pads, … and Nick Coppola. He was in the locker right next to me, had gotten a lot bigger, and had turned himself into an outstanding interior lineman. Our friendship didn’t, how do we put it?, blossom–it just slowly happened. Over the next two years, he and I hung out with Sammy Bigbie, Frank Madsen and some other guys and did the innocent fun things that 1950’s high school boys were expected to do.

The years right after high school graduation are a blur. I went off to school in Atlanta and Nick spent a year or so in New York City and back in New England. We stayed in touch during the summer months. He enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve and, after six months active duty on a buoy tender on Biscayne Bay, was back in town. He went to work with his father in the dress shop on County Rd. and picked up right where we had left off. Madsen, Billy Wilkinson and Nick formed the nucleus of a pretend to work during the day, party all night, kaki clad, penny loafered, no socks, blue blazered, “playboys of the Palm Beaches band of brothers”. I was socially occupied with a beautiful girl that was somewhat narrow minded and thus forced to enviously observe from afar as my buddies recklessly sacrificed themselves in various watering holes on a nightly basis.

On Saturday, August 25, 1962, Nick was my best man. I should say he was my “second best man”. The even better man was the Nick my ushers and I had spent my bachelor party with the night before! I woke up the last morning of my life as a single man hung-over with my arms around Johnny Riggs on the Coppola’s living room floor on Lund’s Lane.

After our wedding and the reception that followed, Nick disappeared! Dee and I had taken a three day honeymoon and by the time we got back in town – the question on everyone’s lips was; “where is Nick Coppola?” His father had come over to my in-laws home on Ave. Hermosa and told them that no one had seen or heard from Nick since the wedding and he hadn’t been back home or at work!

My new bride and I left for Georgia a day or two later and still had no idea what had happened to my friend. We didn’t have to wait long for the mystery to be solved. I had already rented a cottage in northeast Atlanta and one evening during our first week in town we had a knock on the door. Yeah … N.W. Coppola.

Whether it was visions of marital bliss, loneliness, or some other primal need, he never, over all these years, told me … Nick had left the wedding reception and driven non-stop from West Palm Beach to Buffalo, NY without telling anyone. It was the first time we had ever heard of her but there was no doubt that there would soon be a Mrs. Coppola and her name was Marcy. Nick was in love and time would prove that his disappearance and the long drive were inspired by God and meant to be.

After Nick and Marcy married the four of us became inseparable and the good times seemed to never end:

The fall of 1965: a week or so spent living in the basement apartment at Nick’s family’s second dress shop in Blowing Rock, NC. Dee and I had a 1-year old baby girl and Nick and I decided to pickle eggplant and quit smoking.

Our spur of the moment Saturday afternoon decision to pack sandwiches and drive down to the Keys! We didn’t leave West Palm until after dark and somewhere on the turnpike near Miami, after our on-the-road picnic, Marcy fell asleep. Being a New Yorker, she had no idea how long the drive would be. She, also, had no concept of how long she had slept nor what time it was when we pulled into an IHOP in Homestead. We woke her up, told her she had slept all night long and that we were at the end of the road in Key West. Telling her that “the sun would soon be up and it was breakfast time”. We ordered only coffee but she ordered the blueberry pancake super combo and couldn’t understand what had happened to her appetite or why we were laughing at her!

1972: the night the four of us rented a cabin at Jonathan Dickinson State Park and, since Dee and Marcy were on a diet, when morning came they went “havers” on their glazed donut – 14 times.

Sometime in the late 1960s, Nick came to work at Powell Bros. Produce Co. on Clare Ave. One afternoon Daddy, Nick, and I were in the office doing books and taking orders over the phone. I answered a call and a man with a southern drawl asked for “Eugene”. That was my father’s first name but only family from North Carolina ever called him that.

Turns out it was my Uncle Clarence and, after hanging up, Daddy turned to Nick and I and said:

“Shorty’s coming to work here. He’ll be getting in next week and we gotta get him and Bertha a place to stay.”

It was summertime and business was so slow we couldn’t keep the help we had working more than five or six hours a day. I piped up and asked:

“Why are we hiring someone else to just sit around?”

Daddy came back:

“We got nothing to say about it – it’s Shorty.”

James “Shorty” Hunter had worked for the Powell family his entire life. I was told that his father and grandfather had done likewise for the Dobson clan, my paternal grandmother’s family back in Burke County, NC, dating back to before the Civil War. (I’ll let you draw your own conclusions). Seems he had gotten too old to work in the fields picking beans and cutting cabbage so my uncle was retiring he and his wife to Florida. Only when he showed up at the warehouse the following week, did we realize how hard it would be for Shorty to fit in.

In the produce business (circ. 1968) there were only a few tasks that had to be accomplished. It wasn’t rocket science–some took orders over the phone before writing up and pricing invoices. Others traveled at night to a farmer’s market in Miami, Belle Glade, or Pompano and brought their loads back to the warehouse. Still others filled the customer’s orders, loaded the trucks and made deliveries. Although the jobs were all hard work, they were relatively simple and required only a strong back and two basic skills … drive a truck and know how to read. James Hunter couldn’t read or write and had never in his life had a driver’s license.

Enter “Mister Nicks”. That was what Shorty had started calling him and, soon after he came to work, Nick found out that an exception could be made for the written part of the exam and embarked upon a month-long project to get Shorty his driver’s license. In the afternoons after everyone else had gone home, Nick would put Shorty on a booster seat cushion behind the wheel of one of our pickups in the parking lot of the old National Guard Armory across the railroad tracks from the warehouse. Afterwards, Nick would drive Shorty down to the “Project” on Southern Blvd. where, on his own time, he had found and arranged for a government supplemented rental home for the Hunters. Every morning at 5:30 AM, the routine would begin anew when Nick would pick Shorty up and bring him in to work.

With Nick’s tutoring and verbal assistance at examination time, Shorty got his first driver’s license. Now Nick took on the more difficult problem – Shorty being able to read the invoices and make deliveries. No, I’m not going to tell you that he taught a seventy year old man how to read but he did work out a system of loading trucks and separating the individual orders that, combined with customer honesty and Shorty’s memory capability for the stops involved, got the job done.

The important take away from this whole episode is the fact that Nick Coppola gave unselfishly of his time and effort to another human being–one that could never repay him. And it didn’t stop there. A few years later, Mr. Nicks set Shorty up in the landscaping business at the properties he owned and even solicited other accounts for him. Hunter Lawn Care owned only three pieces of equipment … an old Ford pickup that Nick had donated, a walk behind power mower and the signature long-handled axe which served Shorty as a weed-eater.

To Nick, family was everything. Soon after he came to work with us there was an occurrence in Palm Beach County I’m sure few of you remember. The public school teachers went on strike. There was a civic crisis and the call went out for college educated volunteers to teach classes. Having recently knocked on doors and been a poll watcher for the Goldwater campaign, I fancied it my southern conservative anti-union duty to step into the breach. The next day I found myself teaching an American History class in the Old Shop Building at Palm Beach High. At lunch time I called my father back at the warehouse to make sure everything was okay.

“Things are fine but I had to get your mother to come in to help out on the phones, Nick called and said ‘he wouldn’t be coming in today'”.

Puzzled, I ask Daddy if Nick was sick?

“No he’s not sick. He just said that his brother George is a teacher and that ‘if you were going to take his place – he certainly wasn’t going to take yours!”

That was my first and last day as a school teacher. I was back at Powell Bros. the next morning and so was Nick.

My brother Brad returned from the U of F in 1971 and Nick Coppola came to the realization that “blood really was thicker than water”. He had become an integral part of our growing food service business but he had also been acquiring a few rental properties and felt, rightfully so, that his and Marcy’s future lay in borrowing money from Rumsa Eassa or Vince E. at the bank and buying more houses. Nick operated with a simple business philosophy: pay as little money down as possible, fix them up and either rent them out or move Marcy and Chris in for a year or two before planting the geraniums, selling um off, and moving on. As all of you know – he was right again.

During all this Chris was growing into a tall handsome young man and times were good. Nick and I sailed the Keys, relived our glory days, and planned for an even brighter future. In 1989 we sold the food business and Dee and I spent the next three summers in Foscoe, North Carolina where the Coppolas had taken up residence. Chris graduated from Appalachian State and came back to West Palm Beach to build a successful career for himself. Nick and Marcy were right on his heels and for the entire decade of the 90’s we were all back together again.

• ** Christopher Coppola died at age 33 in his apartment in West Palm Beach on Friday evening March 31, 2000. He wasn’t found until mid-day on Monday. Nick had to break out a window only to find his son dead on the living room couch, the shower running, the TV on, and his blue blazer, slacks, shirt, and tie laid out on the bed. Nick never let Marcy see his body; he didn’t want her to remember him that way. Within a few years, Marcy was also dead … obstensibly from some rare genetic condition, but really from a broken heart.

The world didn’t stop turning fourteen years ago but in most ways it did for Nick and it certainly did for Marcy. Today, as I say goodbye, it’s only been the happy years I’ve chosen to remember and I can hear Nick whispering to me right now – “that’s enough Powell, sit down!”

Before I do, I want to leave you with one thought. During the sixty years I knew Nick Coppola, he performed every service and act of friendship under the sun for me and my family. Everything from regularly whitewashing our old 1920’s stucco house on Flamingo Dr. to providing for my parent’s comfortable retirement by marketing, selling, and drawing up the mortgage agreements on our old warehouse when we moved to Riviera in 1982. He spent hours in very personal and candid conversations alone with my father and was told things no son would ever hear from a parent, drunk or sober. Nick goes to his grave having known more about me and my family than any man or woman who has ever lived. During his lifetime, I asked him to help me at every turn with tasks both great and small but, even with all of the hardship and personal grief he faced in later years, he never ask me for anything. Not money, not advice, not sympathy–nothing. It is almost as if the good Lord put Nick Coppola on this Earth to be …

** note: This paragraph was not spoken as part of the eulogy for obvious reasons, and did not appear on the written copy I read from. But, I did manage to slip all those many pages under Nick’s folded hands before they closed the casket.

Jim Powell

My writings are similar to my life. I seldom get it right the first time. There are notable exceptions; my marriage for example, but all too often I look back at what I’ve done and wish I could have another try.

At my family’s behest, I’ve begun to collect all the scribblings I’ve come up with since Sammy Bigbie and I first started planning our cruise around south Florida almost eight years ago. Before that time there was little collected and much of what I’ve put on paper (if I can still accurately use that term?) since that time won’t warrant rereading by anyone except some genealogically inclined old man, probably named Powell, with no full-time job in, let’s say, the year 2158 AD.

In momentary retrospect, there are a few glaring exceptions. Some of the stuff I’ve written might actually be interesting or entertaining if I had been able, or taken the time, to tell a more complete rendition and accounting in the various episodes. Since much of my work, this piece included, has been directed towards a captive group of only friends, family, and high school classmates, I’ve taken great license in leaving out key happenings and motivations. In my mind, I’ve been telling myself……..”why write that down? They know what I’m talking about! They were there! They lived through the same experience!” Did any of you really need to be repeatedly told what was “on our City’s western border, reared against….”,  that Frankie Moskowitz’s two-toned “56” Chevy convertible was the lead get-a-way car in Florida’s largest ever case of kidnapping, or that the bigest danger of ever entering the Cat Cave came, not  from being trapped by a series of  rock  falls, but  from being cornered by a gang of grease balls! (To demonstrate my delima: just ask a complete stranger or even one of your own kids to tell you what that last sentence was all about!)

My point, hopefully, being made; I need you to let me fill in some blanks from the past.

In June of 2013, a few days after our 55th Reunion at the Hilton on Singer Island, I bared some hidden feelings by offering “my sincerest appreciation and admiration” to a few unnamed classmate attendees and those that had accompanied them. Even in the closing sentences of that writing I mentioned no one in particular because, at the time, I was convinced it was not “the proper thing to do”. That was certainly an accurate assessment but, with the passing years, there is no longer any reason why I shouldn’t finish a long overdue tribute to four remarkable individuals. I hope you will agree.

courage (as originally written in June of 2013)

And now back to the real world.

For over a year now we have been able to plan and look forward to something special. We were destined to spend a wonderful weekend attending our reunion. It was masterfully staged and the compliments to the classmates in charge have been voluminous and sincere. I echo those sentiments and hope we don’t, in fact, wait 5 more years to meet again!

In the meantime, I have some reflections that are of a personal nature and probably should not be expressed but I need to get them out and hope they are received with charity.

The word “courage” is not usually associated with attending a class reunion. When we celebrated our 10th at DuBois Park in Jupiter we were all 28+- and the only courage it required was the decision to wear a bathing suit. For our 20th at the Breakers Hotel we were all into status and success. The guys placed self-promoting adds in the reunion program touting their entrepreneurial prowess and the ladies broke out those second diamonds and starved themselves for weeks to squeeze into that little black dress. I don’t remember courage being required by anyone to attend this gathering.

By our 25th in Port St. Lucie and our 30th in Ft. Lauderdale we were all aware of the classmates we had lost and of some in failing health. We also knew or heard rumors of other’s financial failures, marital distress, problems with children or parents and all of the other challenges life holds in store. We were aware, but at these reunions it was fun and frivolity! The classmates that had chosen to attend were all at the top of their game. Everyone was radiant and self-confident and the word “courage” was still confined to the dictionary.

The setting for our 50th was not conducive to personal interaction. In many ways it was Cecil B. DeMille and a cast of thousands. The affair reminded me of any number of conventions I have attended only this time the delegates just happen to be old acquaintances. There was no tour guide but sometimes I felt like there should have been. Like the other lemmings, I dutifully trooped over to the little house on Flagler Dr. in back of St. Ann’s and gathered on call in the old library but something was missing. As with most of our other reunions, we had reached the high point on Friday night when we had lingered at the tables after the cocktail party and just talked. It was one on one and meaningful but even then you never sensed that it took any semblance of courage for those you spoke with to even be in attendance.

Flash forward to a few days ago. The 55th was a perpetual Groundhog Day of Friday nights! It was fun on top of fun. But not everyone was there? It was easy not to sign up for this program. Let’s see–-perhaps travel cross country, drag a reluctant spouse, incur wrath by not offering to drag a reluctant spouse, attend functions timed more around afternoon naps than entertainment value and the ever present fear that no one else looked as old as you did. All this and you got to pay for it to boot. The age issue aside, to overcome these and most other concerns took sacrifice but not courage.

We did, however, have a few in the Class of “58’ that, although not acknowledged for doing so, showed extraordinary courage by simply choosing to attend. We all know who they were and their presence made the reunion all that more rewarding. To these individuals and especially to the angels that accompanied them I offer my sincerest appreciation and admiration. I regret that I did not personally express these feelings while at the Hilton to anyone. I’m not sure the timing would have made it a proper thing to do. That’s what this letter is for.

I love all of my classmates but some of you are both extra special and courageous.

                                                    Jim Powell

5 years down the road………………..what we need for closure:

Tommy Weatherford was wheelchair bound and withstood pain and hardship to travel all the way from Tennessee for our 55th. His beautiful wife Beverly was always at his side. He left this world on February 18, 2016.

Don Lomas died on January 21, 2014, only 7 months after attending our Reunion. He had endured many years of battling a rare and disfiguring disease that couldn’t touch his mind or spirit but finally took his body. Janet was with him at the Hilton and holding his hand when he passed.

Courage!? …… Just what is courage? Ask yourself; if afflicted with the same physical or emotional handicap that either of these two men endured, would you have attended the 55th Reunion of the Palm Beach High School Class of 1958? Or, even more poignant, as a woman could you have supported his participation and encouraged your husband to endure what you knew he would surely have to face? 

………save us a place boys …….. we’ll all be joining you soon…………..

                                                    the Class of 1958

Dear classmates,

Sammy and I have completed our voyage and now is a good time to reflect on a wonderful 12 days.

Seafood Festival in Everglades City (2012)

There is no need to tell about what we did or where we went because, thanks to Ruthie Hall and Mr. Bigbie, everyone has followed our every move. My thoughts this “morning after” are centered on the matters that could not be conveyed by email text and photos. The many hours Sammy and I had to backtrack on the days of our youth. To be able to make the confessions and ask the questions that a man will only answer truthfully when he has acknowledged his own mortality and many years have transpired since sitting on the bench backs at the Campus Shop. I’m sure if we could have had the entire male population of the Class of “58” on board with us, and sharing our candor, we could have resurrected the virginity of all the ladies on the Hill. Well almost all.

Knowing that our classmates were following us made all the difference in the world. This mind set let us not only capture the moments as they came but inspired us to seek out and create those that might be of interest to others. Unwittingly, the crew of the Blue Heron had become characters in a sort of reality TV show for a very exclusive and special audience. Sammy did not have time to get bored with me because he was always faced with another deadline from Ruthie for “more pictures”.

I want to thank all of “Wildcat Nation” for the support you gave us. I want to extend special thanks to Martha Carter for her fabulous needlework on the burgee and to the “notorious 9” that met with us along the way. Each of these classmates sacrificed in their own way to make our passage unforgettable.

Jerry Browning             (promised me he would not report the engine failure on our Champagne shake down cruise – he lied!)

Doris Wedge        (questioned the sleeping arrangements when the engine quit in the middle of the river – almost like she had heard that story before?)

Johnny Wallace            (first one on the dock at Clewiston – he drove all the way from WPB and swore it was not to shack-up with Rosanne Tracy)

                                                            Rosanne Tracy            (tears in all our eyes when we kissed and said goodnight at the marina in Clewiston – it was late …..9:15 PM.)

Sandra Peacock            (what can I say?.. a beautiful lady that put out the “muck mat” of welcome in Clewiston like no one else ever could have. Sandy, our prayers are with you and your husband.)

Billy Wilkinson            (a Club Med for a home and a welcome including a newly installed 50 amp shore power cable kept us on Marathon for two nights)

Connie Berry              (after finding Miami’s “no name harbor” for our anchorage; a wonderful visit and a very personal and challenging revelation about her youth)

Norman Jones            (a man so determined to meet up with us that he was going to row an 8 foot boat from the Riviera causeway in 45 degree 25 mile/hour winds)

Cynthia Bryant            (our only two time hook up; Cynthia was almost a third crew member and was aboard both on our first and last days…by the way, the strudel was fantastic with this morning’s coffee!)

That’s it. Enough said., I love you all.

Jimmy Powell

The following is an edited excerpt from a year to year journal that I have compiled for my five grandsons. In its original form it is much more family oriented but I tried to cut out the genealogy and get to the remembrances. 

Frank Madsen was one of my best friends during our high school years. As most of you are aware, he and I were active in the PBHS sports programs. I was a better than average football player who also played basketball and ran track. Frank was a fantastic basketball player who also played football and excelled in swimming and diving. In June of 1957 Frank and I had just finished our junior year at Palm Beach High School and were destined to have quite a summer ahead of us.

All of the coaches knew that the two of us might form the nucleus of some of the following year’s sports teams and one in particular did not want to waste the summer months if it could be helped. Coach Hank Williams was the head basketball coach and end coach on the football team. To his way of thinking, what would work out better than to devise some plan for Frank and I to spend the entire summer practicing basketball and football.

“Co Hank” figured out a way to get Frank and I signed up at Chimney Rock Camp for Boys as work campers for the summer. This meant that we only had to pay half the fee but, in turn, would be called upon to help the councilors in running the camp. The camp was, and may still be, in the mountains of North Carolina just east of Bat Cave near Hendersonville.

Naturally this can’t be just another “WHAT I DID OVER MY SUMMER VACATION” story so let’s get to the fun.

On the morning of our departure both of us had our suitcases in hand and were dressed in coats and ties. The somewhat formal attire was suggested by my father who was an expert on the mode of travel we had chosen to get to North Carolina. Soon after sunrise Frank and I were at the intersection of Belvedere Rd. and Olive Ave. with our thumbs out HITCHHIKING! My father had been raised during the depression of the 1930’s and had been faced with many situations where this was the only way a young man could get from place to place. He had no doubts that two clean cut high school athletes would have no trouble “thumbing” the 700 plus miles from West Palm Beach to what had been his old stomping grounds. Eugene Powell was raised in Horse Shoe NC.

Daddy may have had no doubts but Frank and I soon did. It became readily apparent that somebody might like the idea of having one six foot stranger as a traveling companion but nobody wanted two of them. The sun was getting higher, we were starting to sweat and after an hour or so we decided to split up. We would turn our journey into what virtually everything we did together eventually became……a contest.

First we flipped a coin. I lost, walked over to the Howard Johnson’s restaurant that covered the entire city block across the street and, taking a seat at a counter next to a window that offered a full view of where I had left Frank, ordered a cup of clam chowder. The agreement was that I would give him 30 minutes to get a ride without me and after that he would yield the site to me and he would give me a shot at it. It was also agreed that we would race to see who could get to my Aunt Tude’s house in Hendersonville first.

No sooner had my chowder been put in front of me than, without me seeing anyone stop, Frank was gone and the race was on. I was in such a hurry that I think I left my food untouched, put the money down, picked up my “grip” and ran out the door.

I don’t remember all of the rides I got that day but I do remember one of them. I believe the old man picked me up on U.S.1 in downtown Jacksonville (there were no interstate highways in 1957). He was driving an old forest green two-door Nash sedan with black smoke pouring out of the exhaust. As it turned out it was burning so much oil that the entire back seat was filled with full and empty bulk oil jugs. (In the 1950’s you could buy cheap re-refined “bulk” motor oil pumped from 500-gallon tanks but you had to furnish your own gallon jugs.) We would pull off the road every twenty or so miles and add a quart or two.

Just after leaving a red light at Callahan, FL, still on U.S. 1 near the Georgia line, there was Frank standing alongside the road with this thumb out. Naturally I waved and hollered at him as we started to pull out of the intersection. Forgetting our contest and reverting back to the concept of camaraderie, there was my buddy running along with his suitcase banging on the roof of the Nash and exhorting the old man to let him in the car. It was like a scene from the old “Keystone Cop” silent movies of the 1920’s. The old man had no idea who this maniac was and, even if there had been enough room in the front seat or in the back with the oil jugs to squeeze him in, he had no intention of stopping. At that point I was laughing my head off. I wasn’t sure if the car I was riding in would last another mile and if it did I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in it but I was sure of one thing–I was definitely a nose ahead in the race.

As it turned out I ended up, I forget after how many rides, spending the night in an old two story wooden hotel on the main street of Augusta, GA. The next day, I again, was on the road. All I remember was one long stretch along route 25 just north of North Augusta, SC. It took forever to get picked up and I remember the old barns that seemed to mock me from the red clay fields along the road.

Most of the barns along these and all the other highways in the “50’s” deep South were painted the same way……no paint at all but a big sign “SEE ROCK CITY” painted on the side. The only break in the monotony as I walked along the asphalt were the small sequenced “Burma-shave” signs along the highway.

Sometime in the late afternoon I reached my aunt and uncle’s house outside Hendersonville. Frank was waiting for me. He had beaten me by some 3 hours, having spent the previous night in Orangeburg, SC. As I remember it he had had much better luck than I had. He was picked up by some guy in a brand-new Buick Roadmaster. His ride even let him help with the driving. That’s why he said he didn’t mind going a little out of the way by going northeast to Orangeburg. Knowing Frank, if it had been a good-looking woman I would have won the race and he’d have ended up in Bangor ME.

There was much more that happened that summer. Frank and I were thrown in with a lot of boys from the Coral Gables High School football team and their coach, Nick Koty (the premier high school football coach in the State of Florida whose recommendation later that summer to the coaches at Georgia Tech proved to have quite an impact on my educational prospects). The boys from Gables were full-blown councilors working for the camp and they were also the defending State Champions (only one champion in 1956, no Class A, Class AA, or Class AAAA etc.) and the Chimney Rock Camp was a de-facto Coral Gables private farm system for summer training. (a matter of interest as previously mentioned by Jerry Browning: in the first game of the year for both schools: Palm Beach High – 14, Coral Gables & the Asian Flu Pandemic – 7). Lest we “jocks of old” get too stuck on ourselves, I seem to recall that there was another Palm Beach High football game played our senior year in which the victorious team scored 14 points. Does a wooden horse outside the walls of Troy or the advertisements on the vending machines inside the men’s room at Billups filling station give us a clue to jar our memories as to the team in question? hint … the Lake Worth Trojans defeated PBHS 14-7.

Frank and I actually did a little work that summer. We taught boys how to make things called lanyards. We snuck into the town of Lake Lure and then wondered why? We tried to set up a still but never had the courage to actually drink the awful looking liquid we ended up with. Many of the younger campers, whom we were supposed to oversee, were from wealthy families in Cuba. They spent the summer running around in the mountains playing cowboys and Indians Cuban style … Castro and Batista. After Fidel took power on Jan. 1, 1959, I suspect those that played the rebels changed their minds as they and their families found themselves on the ferry to Key West having had everything taken from them in the revolution. We spent the summer listening to Pat Boone being “fond of sand dunes and salty air”, playing basketball and football, canoeing, and visiting Hendersonville and Asheville. Frank was writing love letters to my old flame Betty Newsome (as it turns out Nick Coppola was helping her read them). I was writing letters all summer long to a girl a year older than me that I had only been out with once or twice (Pat Quigley, whom I would have only one date with after returning at the end of the summer – she dumped me). On our visits to town Frank would take my cousin Sharon out. Sharon ended up in WPB teaching at Jeff Davis Middle School where my 8^th grade sweetheart Sandy Cliff was Principal.

The style rage that year was to wear as much pink and charcoal as possible. I’m having difficulty convincing my grandsons that the two colors are what any red-blooded American boy would be caught dead in but, as you know, it was. We had charcoal pants and pink shirts, pink pants and charcoal shirts, pink and charcoal socks, sports coats, even handkerchiefs. The shirts all had button-down collars and the pants were always accompanied by the extra skinny little belts with, not one, but two or, sometimes, even three buckles. Where the money came from, I don’t remember, but by the end of the summer the Belk’s Department Store in Asheville had my wardrobe for the coming school year ready to go.

Dee always asked me in later years how her husband had turned into such a slob when I had been such a neat dresser when we first started going out together during my senior year? I suppose it was the pink and charcoal … or maybe it was just the magic of the summer of “57”.

Jim Powell

The Class of “58” have reached the age of becoming irrelevant. Living in Florida, we tend to feel right at home because most of the others you see in Publix or at the Post Office are in the same boat. Lately I have fought the onset of irrelevance by pursuing tiny projects with both zeal and frugality. I am writing to you, my Classmates, to bring you up to date on the last totally unimportant task I have undertaken and, most notably, how little it cost me to do so! All of you do things just like this on a day-to-day basis but have the good taste not to bore me by filling Ruthie’s website with written accounts of the details. As you are all aware……I’m not handicapped by good taste.
My latest project had its Geneses at our reunion last year. Jimmy Harrison had presented each of the attendees with a fantastic PBHS commemorative coin and, as we were leaving on Sunday morning, he approached me asking if I knew of anyone who could not be at the reunion but “would like to have a coin”? He had a few extra and put 4 of them in my hand. Last summer I gave 2 of them to Classmates I see regularly but the remaining pair were relegated to the console in my Toyota. In the back of my mind I knew what I wanted to do with one of them but just never got around to it.

A few months ago I was with Max Gelders visiting Billy Wilkinson and his wife Karen in Marathon. While seated in his real estate office, Max asked Billy if he could “have one of your business cards?” At the moment, the fact that Max took the card and spent a prolonged period of time gazing at it did not attract my attention. What was noteworthy was what happened later that evening. We had gone with the Wilkinsons to a restaurant for an early dinner and were driving the rental car back toward Homestead when I noticed that Max had taken Billy’s ReMax card from his shirt pocket and was gently holding it in the palm of his hand. Max is never quiet, he talks all the time, but with the card in his hand there was total silence. “Mesmerized” is the only word that comes to mind – Max had a new keepsake in life. I smiled as it dawned on me that; longtime residents of nursing homes aren’t ever handed business cards and probably go the last years of their lives without ever seeing one. When we got back to Homestead Manor, Max rushed in to tell his nurses where he had been and, most important of all, show them his new 2″ by 3 1/2″ paper treasure.
Back home, it was time to take one of the coins and do something with it! I not only decided to send one to Max; I would get his name engraved on it like some of my Classmates had done for others. Wow! something to do – now where to go?
Who does engraving?
Jewelers do engraving!
That’s it – I’ll go to a jewelry shop – but which one?
Just then the TV gave me the answer – “He went to Jareds!” So off I went to the “Galleria of Jewelry”!
Ten miles away, I parked the car in front of a Fort Knox like building with 2 inch thick bullet-proof glass doors and walked in with my PBHS coin in hand. As I entered, a middle aged attractive woman rushed over to greet me and asked if I’d “like a cup of coffee or, perhaps, a bottle of sparkling water”?
“No ma’am, I’m just here to see how much it’ll cost me to get a name engraved on a coin.”
“Oh! okay – come right into my office and we’ll see how we can help you. First let’s just fill out a little paper work.”
Twenty minutes later, we had filled out two customer information forms. I had given her my name, address, phone and e-mail, wife’s first name etc. and chosen an engraving style from a silver selector plate she had on a chain around her neck. I was getting a little concerned. Standing up, I said:
“Lady, all I want is a dollar figure and somewhere along the line you’re going to give me one – how much?”
“Oh! it’ll be $59.90 and you can pick it up on Wednesday.”
“I don’t think so…..” and I left the store.
My wife just shook her head when she heard the story. “You’re just ‘CHEAP’ that’s all. How do you know that wasn’t a good price?” You have to realize that my wonderful wife, Dianne, is the consummate “comparison shopper”! When she sees something in a jewelry, clothing, or department store – she compares it with what she already has and, if she likes it better, she buys it!
But getting back to my search for relevance; I’ve spent the last few weeks researching a new approach and I’m proud to be able to report a successful conclusion. Yesterday I had planned to drive down to West Palm Beach and JC Martin Jewelers on Forest Hill Blvd was not far out of my way. The young gentleman on the phone had agreed to charge me $22.00 for a simple engraving on a flat metallic surface and assured me it could be done while I waited. But the story only gets better (or worse if you’re already having a hard time staying awake reading this narrative). While waiting, I struck up a conversation with one of the employees and told him about Max and his situation as well as a great deal about the PBHS Class of 1958 and directed him to Connie Berry’s website. What pops up but a full, two sided, picture of the very commemorative coin he is working on!
Looking at me, he asked: “How many people got these coins?”
He had seen all the photos of our reunion and, what appeared to be hundreds of frolicking rich old farts acting like teenagers. When I just looked at him and said:
“Everyone that was there and most of the ones that weren’t. There has never, in history, been more kids packed into a single three-grade school in Palm Beach County and there never will be again. A lot of them still live around here and have breakfast every Thursday morning about a quarter mile down the road.”
His eyes lit up and he disappeared around the corner!
After a half hour or so, the jeweler came out with his handy-work. He had, not only, engraved MAX GELDERS on the scroll of the coin but had filled in the letters with a matching maroon coloring. When I took out my wallet; he waved me off and said “no charge – I hope Max enjoys it and maybe you can tell the rest of the Class of ’58’ where we are.”
Leaving the store, no one in the parking lot would have mistaken me for a Captain of Industry or a Banking Baron. Let’s face it; no one pays any attention to us anymore but, at least for a moment, I felt like a big man on campus, like the employee of the month, like …………….well maybe not, …………. but, at least, I did have a little more spring in my step and I seemed to be standing a little straighter ……………………………………. is that relevant?

Jimmy Powell

I want to sincerely thank all of you who have lavished compliments on me over the past few days, and even in months past, concerning my relationship with Max Gelders. I love you all and you’ve been very kind but it’s time for a little prospective and reflection. I’m not deserving of your compliments. The man we truly want to shower with accolades is a little acknowledged Classmate of ours that will, hopefully soon, be handed ……………..the second coin!
Last Easter Sunday when I first stopped by Homestead Manor to pay a surprise visit, Max was excited to see me but he was even more thrilled with the prospect of calling his best friend on his cell to share the moment. He soon tried to do so, but could only leave a message. This was the same Classmate that had first brought Max’s location and predicament to Ruthie and Edye’s attention. During our time together that morning Max told me, repeatedly, how this same friend stopped by regularly with his family and would sometimes take him out to his favorite restaurant.
As all of you are aware, Max did not attend our little get together on Singer Island. Max’s friend was also absent but nobody noticed. His name was never mentioned and, to my knowledge, he has never taken part in any of our internet postings. He may be a mystery to most of us but he has been looking after Max for years and has never felt the need to tell anyone about his good deeds.
This past November boredom set in and I, once again, went to sea. This time I got no further than Biscayne Bay before ducking in at a Homestead marina. I had decided to lay over, rent a car, and visit a (new)old friend. Soon after I picked up Max at the nursing home, he was on his cell phone and calling his best friend. This time he got through and handed me the phone. It was an awkward exchange. What do you say on a cell phone to an old Classmate you’ve never spent any time with while your driving around killing time with another old Classmate you never spent any time with? The conversation ended with Max’s friend saying to me “well it sounds like Max is having a good time and that’s all that matters!”
Max calls other people regularly on his cell phone; Ruthie, me, Jim Anstis, Mike La Cagnina…the list goes on and on. How does a man who has no money and lives in a nursing home spend that much time on a cell and pay for it? If what I’ve heard is correct; with the help of a friend.

Dee (Conklin) Powell and Max remembering the good old days on Fern St. in WPB

Dee and I traveled down to Homestead this past week and I’m sure most of you would like to have been in my shoes. In Acts 20:35, Jesus tells us we are “more blessed to give than to receive”. As a Christian I placed one of Jim Harrison’s  commemorative coins in Max’s hand and selfishly felt blessed by doing so.

The coin had Max’s name emblazened on it and he almost began to cry, but the greater gift I had for Max was from all of us in the PBHS Class of 1958 and he won’t be keeping it for long. We all know that, religion aside, every person alive is blessed and emotionally rewarded by having the ability to give something to another. So to this end, and from all of us to Max, we offer …………………………the second coin.
Jimmy Powell

Spending our youth in the South, I suppose we all fancy ourselves as experts on meat that comes off the grill and what it is coated with. I enjoyed Lamar’s remembrances and I hope I can be of some help in his quest for the “holy grail of mustard based BBQ sauces”.
Lamar mentioned an establishment “north of Roosevelt High”. I assume he is referring to a location on Tamarind Ave. and, as strange as it may seem to most of you, this was one of my old stomping grounds!
Beginning in grade school and continuing until I went off to college, I spent most of my summer Saturday and Sunday afternoons sitting on the back of an old stake-bodied truck in front of Stevens Brothers Funeral Home on the corner of 17th St. & Tamarind Ave. I was in business! There was no sign but none was needed. The old Diamond T would be loaded to the brim with “Congos” or “Cannon Balls” (watermelons) and a couple would be displayed cut in half and smiling in all their crimson glory. On one of these weekends something happened that members of my family are still laughing about.
Unbeknownst to my parents, a family friend from North Carolina and his wife were traveling through WPB and decided to pay a surprise visit. The couple did not know where we lived so they did what all of us did in the “50s”; they picked up a phone book. It was easier than they imagined – nestled between E. B. Powell (my father Eugene) and the E.W. Powell was Eugene Powell and the address was somewhere off Rosemary on 12th or 13th Street. When the folks drove by the house and saw the neighborhood they were convinced that they had better go back to the phone book for another try because “the Powells definitely did not live here”! Looking for a phone booth they made the turn onto Tamarind Ave. and there I was plugging a melon for one customer while another was “thumping” a likely candidate and reaching for his wallet. They recognized me immediately and drove on by without even slowing down. No one knows for sure what was said in the car but seeing me had assuredly removed all doubts about where we lived. Within a few days my father and mother were getting phone calls from friends and relatives in Hendersonville asking “if we can help out because we hear the produce business isn’t doing too well?”.
Having established my credentials let me dip my finger into the Tamarind Ave. Bar-B-Que joint world of mustard sauce expertise. First, I’m sure it was there but I don’t remember a restaurant north of where the Blue Front was located (before their move to PB Lakes Blvd.), just south of 15th where Roosevelt High was. My personal favorite was Harvey’s on the SW corner of 7th and Tamarind. Lamar, I suspect this is the restaurant you remember because both the meat and rib sandwiches came inside lightly toasted white bread dripping with yellow nectar! The old man behind the caged counter just inside the door to the right was Albert and he never had much to say. He had his back to the pits and smoker and spent most of the time hammering away on pork ribs and butts with a meat cleaver. Being Caucasian and observing protocol I, and all of my friends, realized that we were not allowed to actually enter the dining area so, when we were picking up our food, the counter was as far as we got.
As strange as it may seem, this segregated interaction extended even into my workday. As a boy I would ride on deliveries and help carry the produce in the back doors of the kitchens or storage areas. Deliveries to Harvey’s were always the same – 2 bushels of jumbo yams. This was the key ingredient in their famous sweet potato pies. When the driver I was with was black I would wait in the truck while he walked through the kitchen into the restaurant and collected the money from Albert. When the driver was a white man or in later years when I was driving the truck myself, we had to wait outside while one of the kitchen help took the invoice inside. We never gave it a thought, it was just the way it was.
Albert’s nephew opened McCray’s Bar-B-Que on Old Dixie in Riviera and, although the sandwiches were a little different, the sauce was virtually the same. Last I heard; McCray’s is still in business at different locations in Palm Beach County including a semi-mobile unit on 45th St. in WPB. I haven’t eaten at these new sites so I will let our classmate experts to the south fill you in.
A good start at finding what you’re looking for would be a stop off in Ft. Pierce on any of your trips this way. Dale’s Bar-B-Que has two locations there and Dee and I routinely travel over 40 miles, round trip, for a fix. As far as the sauce recipe is concerned, check with Avon Pinder. He did, and may still, work for Dale’s food purveyor: Cheney Bros. All of the main ingredients (dry and prepared mustard, cider vinegar, etc.) in the exact proportions (except tomato catsup) would be exposed by going over their invoices for a few weeks.
Keep up the good work Lamar and if your picking up the tab and need a second opinion on any of the best Bar-B-Que joints around – (772) 223-9482.