After slugging it out through rugged Northern Florida Woods, Harry Everhart like his European ancestors before him searched for and discovered the Fountain of Youth in Florida. It took a year of chainsawing, stump grinding, clearing brush, chipping, and shredding - but you can finally promenade from the house to the lake. The land was covered with thick mixed groves of pine, live oak, palm, magnolia, and camphor trees. The worst part was the thick underbrush and invasive exotic plants - the ground was laced with roots and vines. There is still a lot of work to do - grading - planting - cultivating - landscaping.
DeSoto may have drawn water out of our lake. During the winter of 1539 - DeSoto made his winter encampment about one half mile up Seminole Drive in DeSoto Park. Isn't it funny that he found a campground in a park that had the same name as he did. It is sort of like Nancy "the FSU Seminole" finding her dream house on Seminole Drive with some of her friends living just down the street. One can just imagine DeSoto saying, "Let's plant some of these bushes with the little red berries on them to give Harry fits when he tries to clear this area out."
Leon County - the home of Tallahassee is named after Ponce de Leon. Many explorers of America passed through this area searching for the Far East. If they would have just looked a little harder - they would have found a great Thai restaurant less than a mile west of here on Monroe Street.
Life is stranger than fiction. Ponce de Leon was the name of the first police officer that was killed in action in Tallahassee. He was killed on the day that we moved into Tallahassee in 1988 when Nancy started her doctoral studies here. There were over 200 police cars in that funeral from all over the state.
We have plans to put a workshop behind our home to take advantage of our new view of the lake. Will our posterity realize all the sweat and suffering that occurred here so that they could paddle boat on the lake - listen to the owls in trees - and see the turtles line up on the logs - and watch "Norman listening to the loons on Golden Pond?"
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