Lately it seems as though a lot of the people who have found my website did so because they were searching for sites about Yankeetown, Florida. There aren't that many sites about Yankeetown, for that matter; there aren't that many people who have even heard of the small town at the end of Hwy 40.

I moved to Yankeetown when I was 10 years old. I'll be honest, to a pre-teen, it was like entering the gates of hell. There were no movie theaters, no shopping malls, and anytime you walked outside, small insects called sand gnats attacked you. It never seemed like there were a lot of kids around, but somehow the K-8th grade Yankeetown school was full of them. There were only about 650 people living in the entire town.

We lived on 62nd Street. Our yard was considerably lower than the surrounding area, and if it rained too hard, we'd always have a small pond in the back yard. At night, the sound of the frogs croaking would drown out the TV. Speaking of TV, we were lucky if we could pick up 4 channels and that was only when the weather was just right. The tall pine trees in my yard seemed to touch the sky. If you looked up long enough you got dizzy as the clouds rolled by.

My dad worked at the Izaac Walton Lodge as a cook for a while and then he and my mother started crabbing. I can remember him making the crab traps in the garage and painting the numbers on the buoys. Sometimes in the summer, my sister and I would go out on the boat with them. One of the nice things about it is that we always had fresh seafood. They'd catch blue crabs and stone crabs when they were in season. Being out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico was a unique experience. There were little islands scattered here and there. I never could figure out how my dad knew where all of his crab traps were. To me, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Living in Yankeetown was quite an adjustment from city life. I can remember one afternoon my sister and I thought it would be fun to ride our bikes to the end of the road. That's where Hwy 40 ends into the Gulf. About half way there, we looked over to our left and on the other side of Hwy 40, there was a wild boar running along the side of the road. At this point, my sister was wondering how she was going to explain to our parents that her little sister had been eaten by a wild boar. Luckily, the animal found something more interesting in the palmetto bushes and went off into the woods. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was quite a while before we rode our bikes anywhere.

There was a little beach at the end of the road. The city had trucked the sand in to create it. There were some picnic tables there too, so you could just sit and watch the sun set. The beach was nice to get a tan, but swimming wasn't much of an option. Depending on the tide, the ground below could be quite a thick, goopy mud. There was also a path and a small beach on the other side of road on the Withlacoochee River. We used to go fishing on the bank of the river. If you looked at the power lines above, you could see the remains of fishing lines and bobbers that got away from some fisherman long ago. In the distance on the river side, you could see the Crystal River nuclear power plant, and every time you passed one of the large yellow horns, you realized just how close it was.

I went to Yankeetown School, just like every other kid from Yankeetown, Inglis, and the surrounding area. It's always scary starting in a new school. My 5th grade teacher was Mr. Pulford. To this day, whenever I see a ukulele, I still think of him. I can remember the 8th grade nature walks in Mr. Watts class and the little white Karmann Ghia that Mr. Newton drove. Many of these kids had been in the same classes together since kindergarten. Most went to Dunnellon High School after 8th grade, some went to Crystal River High.

I can remember riding my bike down Riverside Drive. Past the Coast Guard station down to the library or on down past the water tower. The roads weren't smooth in Yankeetown, they were made of rocks and made for a bumpy bicycle ride. We used to catch guppies from the duck pond. There was the annual Halloween carnival at Yankeetown School. Kids would dress up in costumes, play games, try to win a cake at the cake walk in the auditorium, or go on hay rides. Every year there was also a Seafood Festival on Riverside Drive. It was just down the street from my house and I can remember walking along looking at all of the arts and crafts. It seemed like a lot of people were suddenly invading our little town. On most days, it was odd just to see a car drive by our house.

I had been away from the area for several years, but when I returned for a visit, I found that very little had changed. There were signs renaming Hwy 40 as the "Follow That Dream" highway in reference to an Elvis Presley movie that had been filmed there in 1961. I received a letter from one of my high school teachers recently and he had this to say about the filming of the movie,

"I don't know if I told you before, but I lived in Yankeetown the whole time I attended high school at Dunnellon. The summer before my senior year my twin brother and I worked on the set building beaches in the Elvis Presley movie made there. They would pick us up in a white limousine every morning to go to work shoveling dirt. That is so funny to me now. We were also in the movie until the editor cut us out. We were fishing from the bridge. Elvis was the only one with a real fish. The rest of us were pulling in rubber fish. They looked real. I was next to Ann Helm, the co-star, then there was Elvis and my brother was on the other side of Elvis. I was more interested in Ann than Elvis at the time. Elvis had five guys that he played with when they were not filming. They were just there for his enjoyment. Elvis, in those days, was a really down to earth person, and fun to be around, just a regular person. He would only change characters when the general public was present. I guess he felt that was what he was supposed to do. We didn't feel like it was a big deal to be around him."

Very little else had changed in Yankeetown though. Yankeetown School had a few more buildings and the Rock Store in Inglis was closed. But, for the most part, when you crossed the town limits sign, it was like driving into another place and time. As an adult, I now saw this area in a totally different light. I currently live in Wichita, Kansas, a city of 350,000 people. Time really seems to have stood still in Yankeetown. You hear so few cars or artificial sounds. The air was just so clean and you could smell pine and cedar and salt water. I was so aware of the sounds of nature. Crickets, birds, frogs, even the sounds of the wind in the trees or the water against the shore. There was just such a peaceful silence that surrounded me and engulfed me and brought me back to a time long forgotten.

I gazed at the moss hanging down from the trees in this sleepy little town. The canopy of trees above just made it seem so cool and cozy. Everyone waved as I drove by. The Withlacoochee River flowed lazily down to the Gulf. I drove down Riverside Drive, remembering where old friends lived. I watched the birds and squirrels and realized just how beautiful nature can be. And then I drove to the end of the road and watched the sun set over the Gulf.

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Izaak Walton Lodge