By Wil Bosbyshell
I needed to leave on time to get to my 3rd grade class, which was 10 minutes away on my bike. Just like every day, I cautiously peeked out of our side door and looked across the porch. Nothing there. I was looking down as I crept, silently across the screened porch and opened the door to the side yard. The monkey howled just like in Tarzan movies, showing me his four big fangs as he shook the tree right next to the door! He got me again! This was a game we played every day, his game, and he always won. I was startled and truly frightened.
I jumped back inside. “Mama the monkey won't let me leave the house,” I whined. “He won't hurt you, and don't be late for school,” my mom said from the kitchen. No sympathy there; she knew the monkey was playing with me. I stared at the monkey. He stared back smiling a scary monkey grin and showing me his fangs again, In case I had missed them a few seconds ago, which I hadn’t. I took a big breath, ran onto the yard past the monkey and jumped on my bike.
In 1969, I was eight years old and lived in Newberry Florida. Newberry was a very small town then, one traffic light and the main road leading to Gainesville home of the University of Florida. Steve Spurrier won the Heisman trophy three years earlier as the college’s quarterback. My father was studying for his Ph.D. in psychology. We lived in a house that was originally built in 1890 for open pit phosphate mining company. Phosphate was discovered in 1883 in Alachua County in a town just a few miles away from Newberry. The mining was done with wheelbarrows, picks and shovels, then mule-drawn scrapers and finally steam shovels around 1905.
The mine office later became an episcopal church. The mine manager’s house, now the church rectory, had two porches: the front porch and a large wrap around porch that looked out to the back and side yards. Round wooden pegs served as nails and unpainted; cedar shingles seven feet long covered the outside. The mine closed in the early twentieth century and now it was the home of the Episcopal Minister and his family. The small church sat in the front yard of the house surrounded by 10 acres of woods.
On my bike, I rode down the dirt country road, farms and woods on each side. At Mrs. Hunt's house I pedaled furiously. Her dogs barked and gave chase. They never caught me that day or any other day. I thought it was because of my speed. Now I realized they just loved the chase.
Arriving home after school, I wasn’t going to let the monkey surprise me again. I quietly lowered by biked to the ground and peeked around the fence gate on my hands and knees. Where was the monkey? I looked in all the trees in our wooded yard. Nope. My sister was sitting at the picnic table in our yard reading. Ah ha! There he was sitting next to my sister Frances. He had his own book in front of him on the picnic table, turning pages in unison with her. He wasn’t a baboon, but looked like one. He stood 3 feet tall when he walked on all fours but stood close to five feet tall when standing on his two back legs. He sat taller than my sister.
I ran inside to my room. The house was big and dark, my room was the original foyer with double doors that had windows leading into the rest of the house. I threw my books on the bed and went out the front door to the front porch that served as the “puppy” porch. My dog Cissy always had a litter of puppies. I pet each one as they jumped all over me. One of my chores was to hose off the puppy porch every day. I called each puppy by name and cleaned up after them. Finished with my chore, whistling to Cissy, she and I ran through the house and out the back porch door, hoping the monkey couldn’t see me. Cissy was named after a character on our favorite TV show: Family Affair.
We were in luck! At that point, the monkey was busy raking leaves with a rake we left leaning on a palm tree in our backyard. The monkey imitated what he saw humans do in the yard: reading, pushing doll strollers, etc.
My mom insisted Cissy accompany me in the woods to protect me from the rattlesnakes. We passed the fence and entered the woods which were full of 100 year old open mine pits left over from the phosphate mine. The edges of the pits had softened over the years and trees grew tall from the bottom and the sides of the pits. The pit walls were full of caves. Some were just indentations, others too deep and scary for me to go in. Cissy ran around me to scare away the rattlesnakes.
My father and the other men on our street shot at least one six foot rattlesnake every week. My mom saw to it that we had lots of puppies and kittens to distract the snakes from me and my two sisters. My mother is deathly afraid of snakes to this day!
My sister Frances, my friends and I had created paths all through the woods. My mission today was to check each cage set out to recapture the monkey. We had learned he liked to eat oranges, not bananas. Our favorite TV show to watch while we got dressed for school each morning was Ranger Rick. He and his monkey lived in the Okefenokee Swamp and the monkey ate bananas like all normal monkeys were supposed to. We were afraid of our monkey, but we didn't want the research scientists from the University of Florida to catch him.
Continuing on my day’s journey, I stayed clear of the sinkhole pit where the edge could cave in and drag me down to a certain death. I thought about cutting across the cow pasture, but the bull was out in the field. He would surely chase me if he saw me. Again, certain death. I also stayed away from the electric fence that surrounded our neighbor’s hogs. I didn’t stop to swing on any of the tire swings or dig in the Boy Scout fort. After all, I was on a mission and it involved a monkey.
Each trap had been reset by the research scientist that day with fresh oranges. I used a stick and sprung the mechanisms, BANG the doors slammed down. I laughed. Cissy smiled like a dog and panted happy to be in the woods with her boy. Co-conspirators.
A man was standing in the yard talking to my father when I returned home. It was the scientist trying to catch the monkey that had escaped his lab a year ago. The men stood next to the church in our front yard. My father was the minister of three episcopal churches in the area. I stood next to him and listened to the conversation. The scientist was saying that all the traps kept being sprung mysteriously. My sister Frances came up and stood beside Papa on the other side. I looked at her. The scientist glared at the two of us. If adults were talking we were not to speak unless addressed directly. We knew not to make a sound. Papa assured him that we would not interfere with the traps. Papa didn't look down at me and Frances. The man looked hard at my father, with priest collar around his neck, deciding whether or not to accuse the preacher’s kids of tampering with University property.
Just then Mama called out the back door, “Dinner is ready.” Frances and I ran in the house. We escape, the “dinner bell” was just in time.
Our mother put food out for the cats and the dogs before we ate. The cats had a perch so their food was off the ground out of reach of the dogs and snakes.
The dining room had a big window facing the woods. Outside the window was a bird feeder so we could always count on birds to watch while we ate. It was not uncommon to see other animals: possums, raccoons, neighborhood dogs, deer, armadillos and one night even a herd of cows strolling through the yard at dinner time.
Frances and I had convinced our parents we needed to have “backwards” dinner that night. This was a scheme we had hatched so that we could have dessert first before the main course. I can't remember how we cooked up that scheme. As Mama served dessert of chocolate cake before dinner, our younger sister Mary Helen screamed and cried. We were breaking our routine and she was a baby just two years old and just couldn't handle the change. After dessert we had dinner: spaghetti and white sauce with spam cut into ribbons. The very best! In 1969, ministers got a house to live in rent free and free admission to Silver Springs, but the pay was pretty modest. As a boy I didn’t notice.
Frances and I were schemers, and at this point we instituted part two of our plan. “Mama, can we switch back to regular dinner?” we asked. “And have dessert a second time?” my mother inquired. She was not fooled a bit. I looked at Frances and gave her the ‘we tried’ look. “Sounds like a good idea to me” said Papa. We all laughed at how silly we were being. Mary Helen burst into tears again and knocked over her milk glass. She spilled her milk every meal and we were all tired of the spilling. Mama had had enough. She picked up the pitcher of the Carnation instant powdered milk and poured it all over the baby's head. Mary Helen was shocked, the milk ran down her face and onto the floor then she screamed even louder. Mama took her to the bathtub to get cleaned up while Papa, Frances, and I had second dessert of chocolate cake with chocolate icing.
“We like the monkey Papa” I said. “So do I” he said.
After dinner I got a jar and went to the edge of the yard where it met the dark, thick north Florida woods. There was a wall of light made by thousands of fireflies, which made catching them very easy. I put the jar next to my bed full fireflies, donned my pajamas and joined Mama, Papa and Frances in front of the TV. The whole family was excited to watch the first moon landing. We had a black and white TV with “V” shaped rabbit ear antenna on top. The screen was fuzzy with static on the one and only channel. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, but I missed it. I had fallen asleep on the floor in front of the TV, next to my sister. My parents watched the rest of the moon landing after they carried us to bed.
“Bill, you know I saw the monkey walking down the street this afternoon. He looked back at me, turned around and just kept walking,” my mom commented to my father. She continued, “I don't think we will ever see that monkey again.”
Wil, Frances and Mary Helen in 1969.
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