A hundred and eleven years ago, my paternal grandfather was born in Mount Dora, Florida. His father was recruited by John Donnelly, the first mayor, to be one of the first, if not the first, doctor in town. He was set up in a modest home on 6th Ave between Donnelly and Alexander, around the corner from the mayor’s elaborate Queen Ann home.
When I visited—in my early teens — I usually stayed in the front upstairs bedroom, which overlooked 6th Ave. We were uphill, so I had an excellent view of the turret of the Donnelly house and the lake beyond. For this young boy, it was a magical house and I’m sure the origin of my love of Victorian architecture. This is the model for the Quinn’s home in Cooter Crossing.
During the summers of my grandfather’s youth, he and his sibs were shipped back to their maternal grandfather’s farm in southern Indiana. It got them out of the summer heat and provided much-needed labor on the farm. Years later, I would continue this tradition of summertime on the farm—the Florida farm.
My grandfather left Florida for the second war between the nations and ended up settling in Indiana, where his children and his first grandchild were born. My family moved back to Florida when I was five and pilgrimages to Mount Dora began. On long weekends and holidays, we’d go back to The House, like salmon returning to their spawning stream.
The House fascinated me. It was the oldest thing I’d ever been in—nothing like my grandparents’ houses back in Indiana. It was cluttered, dusty, and a bit shabby. Layers and layers of family stuff piled on the side porch. Family photos going back to the birth of photography. My great-grandmother, a tall, frail woman who stayed in her high-backed chair in the living room or a wicker lounge on the front porch, dominated it. She seemed stern, but I felt nothing but love from those intelligent and intensely blue eyes.
Her youngest child, my great-uncle Dave, returned to Florida after the wars and was her caretaker. By the time I arrived in the world, Uncle Dave had bought 60 acres east of town, hoping to cash in on the post-war citrus boom. A big freeze dashed that hope. The Farm, as it was known in the family, sat on the edge of one of the bluffs common in Lake County.
During my early teen years, when I spent most of my summers in Mount Dora, The Farm consisted of an open-air barn, which had four stalls. One for milking—yes, I can milk a cow by hand, and three for horses. It was closed on the north and west sides and had a loft for storage. Being Florida, and the quirkiness of my family, the wooden hull of an old sailboat was up there. So, I grew up with the idea that strange things can be found in old family barns.
The livestock comprised about a half-dozen steers, a milk cow, chickens, cats, a dog or two, horses that my uncle boarded for cheap, in exchange for letting the family ride them when we visited, and Queenie, a thoroughbred-quarter horse, who was the love of my uncle’s life. The cows and horses would graze among the “froze out” orange trees or on the west pasture, but we’d always feed them some sweet-feed in the evening before sunset. This was an old-timer trick. It got all the animals to gather themselves so you could inspect them. The feed was little more than a treat, especially in the summer when the grass was high. If someone didn’t show up, then you’d go looking. Leaning against a corral railing, as the sun set, surrounded by cows chewing cud, and horses nuzzling you is deeply nourishing to the soul of a young man—well, probably any human.
Land rich and cash poor is a phrase often associated with family farmers and this described Uncle Dave. Honey was his gold and Orange Blossom Honey is the purest gold. Honey production is very labor intensive, especially back in the 1970s. You had to move the beehives to follow the blooming of the orange trees. This is called following the flow.
The trees start blooming in the south and then move up the state. The beekeeper changes out the full hive boxes with empty ones so the bees can make more honey. Uncle Dave had his own honey house on the farm. We’d take the comb frame out of the box and trim it down with a hot knife that’d open the ends of the comb cells. Then the frames are loaded in a massive centrifuge. It spins at ultra-high speed, throwing the honey out of the wax combs. We’d drain it into five-gallon buckets to take to a commercial distributor or bottle up some for personal use and sales. This was pure raw Orange Blossom Honey—talking nectar of the gods here.
Needless to say, this necessitates a lot of time on the road—hard to do when there’s a farm to manage. This is where free family labor comes in—that would be my thirteen-year-old self. In the 1970s, no one batted an eye at the thought of a 13-year-old watching a house in town and riding his bike out to The Farm to take care of a bunch of animals. Thank God, because I had wonderful summers.
The house was hot: no A/C and a metal roof with no insulation. Even before global warming, it was a sweat-box. I opted to stay on The Farm most of the time. I’d just ride back to town to collect the mail, the honey money, and put more honey out. For decades, Uncle Dave would sell honey on the front steps. He’d leave various-sized jars with the price on them and a coffee can. People would take a jar and actually leave money in the can. Never any theft—Old Mount Dora.
An ancient travel trailer nestled in a clump of oaks just south of the barn, next to the big tank for the well. The trailer was less than clean, but hey I was 13. It had a bed, a mini-fridge, a sink, a two-burner gas stove, and a table. What more did a boy need and it was cooler than The House. I rigged a shower from a hose in a tree with an old wooden pallet to stand on and I was set. Don’t tell anyone, but after my morning rinse off, I didn’t always put clothes on—well, sometimes my boots—there were sandspurs after all, so a naked kid, livestock, and 60 acres to himself. Huck Finn and Peter Pan, eat your hearts out.
Did I mention it was hot? After morning chores—mostly milking and egg gathering, I’d spend most of the day soaking in the water trough next to the barn. What did I do? Glad you asked. I made up stories. Lots of stories. I also learned cows are superb listeners—much better than horses. Especially old #42, a cream-colored steer. He’d sit in the cool shade under the tree next to me and chew away on his morning cud.
In my junior year of high school, my dad got a job in southern—like southern border—Arizona. I was ripped away from my beloved Florida—at the time my boyfriend lived across the street and the family boat was tied up to the dock in the backyard—and the ancestral home. It wasn’t pleasant. I unfairly resented the Sonoran Desert because it wasn’t Florida—no boat and no boyfriend—and it wasn’t until I was an adult, having left and returned to Arizona, that I could appreciate the desert for what it was. Of Paradise and Purgatory is a letter of belated love and reconciliation.
As I mentioned, I did two stints in Arizona, college in eastern Washington, and grad-school in Minnesota. Nothing surprised me more than this Florida Boy falling in love with Minnesota and settling in. During that time, I started playing with the idea of writing—bits here and there in my beloved genres of sci-fi and fantasy. Nothing stuck or got done, but I studied and read everything I could on writing. Then there was the Great Recession of 2006. I was middle-aged and lost my job, most of my savings, and was facing homelessness. So I did what my family did—headed back to Florida. But I wasn’t 16 anymore and the Florida of the 1970s was no more.
I mourned the Florida that was, and honestly, my youth—how middle-aged of me. I also mourned the loss of The House and The Farm after the passing of Uncle Dave. Intellectually, I understood the need to sell it, but my soul didn’t. For generations, that had been the Family Place. Family from across the country would pass through. It was our place—our crossroads. No matter where I traveled, there was that taproot leading back to the funky town on the shore of Lake Dora. Now, I was uprooted and rootless at the same time.
It was hard finding a full-time gig. I didn’t expect the economy to be worse in Florida and found myself doing freelance work. The upside was I had a lot of free time and I got serious about the writing. Surprisingly, it wasn’t sci-fi or fantasy my muse was throwing at me. I yearned to tell stories set in Florida—the Florida I missed. The Florida my relatives would tell stories about. I wanted that Florida to be real again in the here and now—so in the end, I guess the Stories from Bennett Bay are fantasy after all.
I needed a place that was all of Florida concentrated into one town—or county. The Mount Dora of my youth, Palm Bay where I grew up a block from Turkey Creek, catching blue crabs and catfish off the dock at the Yacht Club, the Spanish Colonial aspect of Saint Augustine, and the magic of Key West. I realized world-building wasn’t just for sci-fi and fantasy. Thus, Bennett Bay and Big Cypress County were born. Trivia: my grandfather’s name was Bennett.
My writing is strongly influenced by Southern Gothic literature—I know surprising, right? As such, I always knew there’d be ghosts. Ghosts are amazing metaphors and belong in a good Southern story. History is a type of ghost and we have a rich and ambiguous relationship with our past. The first three short stories I wrote (The Demise of Bobby & Clyde, The Broken Heart, and The Envelope) are about ghosts. You can find them in Beach Reads, a collection of short stories set in Bennett Bay.
What I didn’t expect was the dragons. And then there are the faeries—I mean, they were totally-to-the-max unexpected. Yeah, I ended up writing a bit of fantasy after all.
I hope this essay lends a bit of depth and context to the series. It will be included in each of the revised anniversary editions, along with brief notes about the individual book.
Thank you for visiting the wacky world of Bennett Bay and Big Cypress County. Like most of Florida, our community depends on tourism. Please invite others to visit and come back again.
Stephen del Mar, November 2023