Our Move to Mount Dora

I realize I've got some work to do if I have 41 years to catch up on here.  :-) 
So, in 1973, my family decided it was time to leave the big city and move to Mount Dora. Jill had gone off to college, Doug was married and my niece Carmen was soon to arrive.  It was just Jody and me still at home.
Our move to Mount Dora was yet, another blessed turning point in my life.   We found acreage where we could build a house.  My dad built it all with his own hands.  It took many trips to make the move but as we made our final trip with the last of our things, something very startling occurred.  It was dark on a Saturday night as we made the last trek.  We came into downtown Sorrento and as we made the turn at the intersection of 46 and 437 (probably no traffic light then), off in an open field was a group of people burning the Cross!!!!  Yes, you read that right!!  Although I didn't understand at that age what the meaning of it was, I remember the horror in my parent's voice at what they had just witnessed.  I know they wondered where in the world they had just moved their family to.  I don't think we ever went into downtown Sorrento at night again.
I was in my glory in our new location.  I remember telling my parents that I loved it there and never wanted to leave.  I'm sure that scared my parents to death.  lol .  I got my very own pony and we got a couple of horses.  My grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin Preston would come out on the weekends.  The house was always in progress and Preston and I would have a ball playing make-believe games.....we played "Julie and Maria" and ran in the cornfield.
It was also in that era that was the simple life.  People lived within their means----we didn't run the A/C everyday....maybe just when company would company (we begged for company), there was a black and white tv (which was only a bummer when Miss America came on---noone wanted to watch Miss America in black and white), and the funniest thing of all that STILL blows my mind was we had a party line.  You had to get on a waiting list for a private line.  We shared a phone line with 3 other families so if you picked up the phone and another family was on the phone, you had to hang up until they were done.  Now, that really makes me think of Harriett Olsen working the switchboard on Little House on the Prairie.  Could we afford many of the above frills? Sure, we could. But if was a different era and you often chose not to and to save your money.  In closing this entry, I must say that I often miss these days of simplicity.  We try to keep our lives as simple and carefree as possible but the world is different.  In those days, the Welcome Wagon came to your house and we always stopped to help people on the side of the road who had broken down.  That's just the way it was then.