Saturday, October 21, 2017
Frank Was Drunk And Disorderly...Again
By: Donovan Baldwin
When I was a boy in Florida, there was a family three houses from ours. They had three kids at home, and one grown and on his own. N
Nice enough people, except Frank M., one of Mrs. M's older sons. He could be nice too, but, he had this bad habit of getting drunk and disorderly...often.
My father, interested in radios and electronics, bought a police scanner so he could monitor the calls and maybe get some "news before it was news".
One of the first nights he had it on, there was a series of calls between Escambia County sheriff's deputies about something going on at the end of our street, Cary's Lane, in Warrington, Florida. Warrington was not part of Pensacola at the time.
That Summer night, with the windows open, we heard the sirens of multiple police cruisers converging. Flashing lights were bouncing red in the darkness (before blue lights).
We were glued to the exciting story unfolding before our ears, you might say.
Suddenly, a deputy came on the air, "It's okay. It's just Frank M. again. We're taking him home."
The lights went out, the night became still, the radio was silent, and the room suddenly lost the excitement it had held.
We heard knocking on Mrs. M's door as the deputies delivered Frank...again.
Simpler days.
Today, he would be thrown in the lockup, go to trial, cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars, and have to pay a few hundred in fines...which he would get from his mother.
But, we were a smaller world back then, and, perhaps, neighbors more comfortable with each other's sins.
Nice enough people, except Frank M., one of Mrs. M's older sons. He could be nice too, but, he had this bad habit of getting drunk and disorderly...often.
My father, interested in radios and electronics, bought a police scanner so he could monitor the calls and maybe get some "news before it was news".
One of the first nights he had it on, there was a series of calls between Escambia County sheriff's deputies about something going on at the end of our street, Cary's Lane, in Warrington, Florida. Warrington was not part of Pensacola at the time.
That Summer night, with the windows open, we heard the sirens of multiple police cruisers converging. Flashing lights were bouncing red in the darkness (before blue lights).
We were glued to the exciting story unfolding before our ears, you might say.
Suddenly, a deputy came on the air, "It's okay. It's just Frank M. again. We're taking him home."
The lights went out, the night became still, the radio was silent, and the room suddenly lost the excitement it had held.
We heard knocking on Mrs. M's door as the deputies delivered Frank...again.
Simpler days.
Today, he would be thrown in the lockup, go to trial, cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars, and have to pay a few hundred in fines...which he would get from his mother.
But, we were a smaller world back then, and, perhaps, neighbors more comfortable with each other's sins.
Labels: donovan baldwin, drunk, drunk and disorderly, Escambia County, Florida, Pensacola, police scanner, Warrington
Monday, October 09, 2017
Growing Up As Part Of A Neighborhood...
By: Donovan Baldwin
In 1945, at the end of World War II, my dad started work at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, while I was busy being born in Atlanta, Georgia.
He found a home for us, Mom, my sister, and me, and brought us down to Florida six weeks later in a 1939 Ford, I believe.
We lived in an area called Warrington, which lay between Pensacola, and the Naval Air Station.
Warrington had a grocery, a drugstore, a hardware store, shoe repair, a barber, a gas station, and other amenities.
Dad drove to work through the shopping area daily for the next 30 years.
We moved three times over the next four years, but, in 1949, my parents bought the house I lived in for the next 20+ years. I went to school in Warrington. We shopped there. All my friends, until high school, lived there.
People in the drug store, the grocery, the gas station, knew me as "Mr. Baldwin's boy". I had identity and community.
I think that is one of the finest gifts I was given, with health, and a good education...that feeling of being known and identified as part of a neighborhood, a community, for all the years of my childhood and youth.
So many kids today don't get to know that.
Always sure of myself as "Mr. Baldwin's boy", I also got to be Tom Sawyer, running off with Huck Finn on the Mississippi, or sometimes Jim Hawkins, aboard the Hispañola, at sea in search of treasure, with adventurers and pirates.
I did try to build a raft. I climbed trees and sat in them staring out at the bay, dreaming of Treasure Island, and listening to the waves, and, for the voice of Long John Silver.
I got to be a boy, living among friends before "growing up"...or did I ever really grow up? Sometimes I wonder.
He found a home for us, Mom, my sister, and me, and brought us down to Florida six weeks later in a 1939 Ford, I believe.
We lived in an area called Warrington, which lay between Pensacola, and the Naval Air Station.
Warrington had a grocery, a drugstore, a hardware store, shoe repair, a barber, a gas station, and other amenities.
Dad drove to work through the shopping area daily for the next 30 years.
We moved three times over the next four years, but, in 1949, my parents bought the house I lived in for the next 20+ years. I went to school in Warrington. We shopped there. All my friends, until high school, lived there.
People in the drug store, the grocery, the gas station, knew me as "Mr. Baldwin's boy". I had identity and community.
I think that is one of the finest gifts I was given, with health, and a good education...that feeling of being known and identified as part of a neighborhood, a community, for all the years of my childhood and youth.
So many kids today don't get to know that.
Always sure of myself as "Mr. Baldwin's boy", I also got to be Tom Sawyer, running off with Huck Finn on the Mississippi, or sometimes Jim Hawkins, aboard the Hispañola, at sea in search of treasure, with adventurers and pirates.
I did try to build a raft. I climbed trees and sat in them staring out at the bay, dreaming of Treasure Island, and listening to the waves, and, for the voice of Long John Silver.
I got to be a boy, living among friends before "growing up"...or did I ever really grow up? Sometimes I wonder.
Labels: donovan baldwin, Florida, growing up, Long John Silver, Pensacola, Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Warrington
