On Sunday morning I am on the road again, starting a drive of 5 1/2 hours to Alachua, Florida. Alachua is a small community near Gainesville, which is home to the largest campus of the University of Florida.
I am going to visit a friend who was in Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity with me at Rollins College. Like me, he grew up living in suburbs. Unlike me, he now lives in the country. Fortunately, he gave me good directions to his house. It’s not exactly a place one tends to locate by using the street address.
This is the road on which he lives.
Although it’s too small to detect in this photograph, on the right edge of the road a turkey buzzard in pecking at the remains of a dead armadillo. Despite the opportunity to become a wildlife photographer, I drove on.
This is the driveway to his house, which sits on five acres.
Here is his house, where he lives with his wife and two dogs, one of which appears at his side in the below photograph.
Their view of their backyard.
They also have five or six chickens. I don’t know whether they consider them to be pets or produce. I think he said they are Rhode Island reds, which sounds to me like the name of a minor league baseball team.
Here we are, relaxing before piling into the truck to drive into town for dinner. We’re the two in the back row.
We discovered that there are few places to dine in Alachua on Sunday night. As a result, I got to visit High Springs, which has an estimated population of 4,000. We enjoyed a fine meal at the Great Outdoors Restaurant.
After returning home we had enjoyable telephone conversations with Al and Beth, who have been our friends since college. They live in St. Louis and returned today from a vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Bob,
Thank you for your so naturally and graciously sharing your continuing odyssey with all of us and for being the catalyst for connecting with cherished friends and memories.
It’s OK, even encouraged, to tell that I’m Freddie the Fox Schert, a nickname achieved by studiously accomplishing fulminating nerdity and self righteousness at Rollins, which condition, now chronic, I am still, with the help of my faithful and supportive wife of 32 years, Vicki, attempting to overcome.
Alas. The harder I try, the nerdier I become.
It is my suspicion that you, Bob, intentionally left some room for elaboration on our Alachua habitat.
The turkey buzzards are still enjoying armadillo. It is a big armadillo.
Vicki and I live at 11626 NW 199th Avenue, Zip 32615, which would be called Old Bellamy Road had it not been widened to provide a flight path for turkey buzzards and to increase the death rate of armadillos which are cute but replicate at unimaginably high rates in these parts. Each litter is of 4 identical twins. If you accidentally run over 1, there are 3 more armadillos carrying the exact genetic code in order to perpetuate the race. This “accident” of nature is a comforting thought, I think, at least to turkey buzzards who read conservationist literature which abounds in these parts. (Google John Schert, my beloved brother and executive director of the Hinkley Center for Solid and Hazerdous Waste Management at U F.).
Home is 3 miles north of the town of Alachua ( original county seat of Alachua County, Seminole Indian word for sinkhole), in the rolling hills of North Central, FL. If you Google Map our address, NW 113th Way is shown twice. Our drive is the miss labeled 133th Way on the left. The true 113th Way leads into a Hari Crishna community. They do not have wild, loud parties as would potential neighbors had we lived in the vicinity of U of F in Gainesville 20 minutes south. The wild driving, stop and go, no blinker, erratic lane changing, cell phone to right ear coed / courteous, red neck, Ford F 150 pick up truck driver ratio increases steadily diving south from Alachua on either US 441 or I 75.
Our neighbor to our west, is a bachelor, soon to retire, 30 year horticulturist with the U F who implements experiments imagined by multicultural professors in the food and horticultural institute at the U for whom English is not a first language.
Our neighbor to the west is a PhD large animal genetics 30 year professor at the U who keeps us informed of seasonal events such as why the chicks lay fewer eggs in the fall (shorter days, not too much table food as we had suspected). He has good seats in the Swamp and invites us to view Gator games with him ~ twice per year. Though we did not consider ourselves hard core Gator fans when we moved to Alachua, I am reminded that I was a product of the U of F general surgery program in Jacksonville and that daughters Mary and Bethany are U F grads. Emily is a Vanderbilt grad. That makes us an SEC family.
We love our rollicking church of 1 1/2 years, Servants of Christ, in Gainesville, through the announcements of which Bob located me in advance of the 50th TKE anniversary celebrated at the Rollins reunion earlier this year. Bob and I shared a wonderful dinner at the Citrus Restaurant (not Club) on N Orange avenue with Dr. Erich Blossey with whom I was honored to renew a friendly relationship.
TKE has drinking songs now that I hadn’t nerd before.
Servants has a lot to do with my recovery from major depressive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder induced by working 80 – 90 hour weeks as a GP/general surgeon in Jacksonville in a toxic, self destructing medical system. I now examine disabled U S military veterans in an Archer Road off campus office of the very high quality V A Medical Center, Gainesville, staffed in part by U F medical faculty.
The chickens are two Rhode Island Reds remaining from the original six we inherited from former owners six years ago, a Gold Laced Wyandott, ( top left ) and three Red Sex Links, (one bottom right), the product of a White Leghorn daddy and a Rhode Island Red mommy. (Google hendersons chicken breed chart)
Our friends at our feet on the front porch picture of what is termed a Cracker house in these parts are, from left to right, Buster, the most listed name on the A K C Boxer registry, and Bingo, our Clay County pound dog saved from certain stray doggy death by Vicki on her way back from prayer group in Orange Park, FL where we had resided for 20 years and reared Emily (appleorangeblossom.blogspot.com), Mary (marypaulhenry.blogspot.com) and Bethany (Facebook).
(For an interesting argument for why we are breeding and neutering the wrong dogs, read “What the Dog Did.”)
Staying with us during Bob’s visit were Bradley, age 10, and Christian, age 8, whose mom, Pam, Vicki’s next youngest sister, was married to Phil the day the before aboard a cruise ship moored in Port Everglades. Pam and Phil sailed into the sunset to love happily ever after Saturday evening while the four of us, driving through Ft. Lauderdale, Bob’s home, on our way to I 95 and the Sunshine State Parkway, spoke with Bob in Hotlanta, GA about his arrival in Alachua the following day. Irony of ironies. Odyssey is that way.
Some editorials printed in the Gainesville Sun and other sundry items as well on info on German Fred cousins can be viewed by Googling yours truly.
Brother John’s Google results are much more interesting.
Googling John Michael Schert produces interesting information on my Valdosta, GA, brother, Dan’s youngest son.
Googling H. Daniel Schert produces information on Dan’s eldest son, the first Schert to successfully perpetuate the family name with wife Heather in the person of Evan, Dan’s one year old grandson.
Dan’s daughter, Kristen Claire, U of GA ‘09 is shown with her cousins on the blogspots.
Sister Kathie Sherman lives in San Antonio, TX. Her husband, Russ, is an Episcopal priest and hospice chaplain.
Thank you again, Bob, for making sharing possible.
This tome was written in stages.
Bob, I hope that I am not taking advantage of your generosity. But then, what are good old college friends for?
Bob, come visit us in Alachua again soon. I’ll tell all our animal friends, domesticated and otherwise, that you will return.
While visiting, Bob and I successfully Googled Rheua Stakely, formely of Gator Country now turned Yankee.
Stakes, we are waiting for your second measured reply.
Bill Howard, still haven’t heard from you, Big Brother.
Blessings, Fred
Congratulations, Fred! You win the gold medal and the blue ribbon for most comments.
A good “Armadillo” story is found on today’s, 08/17/2009, Wall Street Journal front page.