Lutz News

You think that I don’t even mean
A single word I say
It’s only words, and words are all I have
To take your heart away 

-Bee Gees, “Words”

As a child growing up in Lutz in the ‘60s, I was no stranger to corporal punishment. Children are children and there must be certain disciplinary actions taken by their parents to correct some behaviors and set the child on the correct course for life.  

I’m not talking beatings or cruel physical abuse, but rather a smack on the bum when needed and maybe to reinforce the behavior modification, have the child choose the switch from the tree to make a mental bookmark that will last longer than the actual spanking. 

At my house we had plenty of Australian pine trees that produced the perfect (in my parents’ minds) size switch for the job. We also had a store-bought “fanny whacker” that hung from a hook in the kitchen as a silent reminder to us kids of the cost/benefit analysis involved in not listening to our parents and behaving. 

Of course, as a child grows up into puberty and beyond, spankings seem to have a smaller return on investment and other punishments must be used to accomplish the overall goal — which is not the infliction of pain, but rather education, behavior modification and raising a child who can thrive and succeed in the world they will be released into. 

My parents used all of the standard tried and true methods, such as grounding, loss of privileges and having me write “I will not play with matches” 100 times. There was no internet or cellphones for them to take away in those days, so they had to make do and improvise when necessary. And they were good at that.  

One particular punishment they devised was very effective and continues to benefit me to this day. 

It was when I was in seventh grade at Buchanan Jr. High School. My ninth-grade neighbor and his class were sharing the classroom with my class for an educational A/V presentation and, of course, I thought he was Joe Cool. He whispered a crass comment about a girl in my class and I, being the impressionable little fool that I was, wrote it out in a note and passed it to the girl. 

Bad idea! She, of course, gave it to the teacher who gave it to the principal, which resulted in a trip to the dean’s office for me. My parents were called to come pick me up and it was their job to craft the appropriate punishment. 

I was grounded for awhile, but the long-term actions to correct my behavioral issue were yet to be decided. Finally my parents sat me down and told me that apparently my vocabulary needed some refinement and they were going to make that happen. 

Every week my father would go through the dictionary and select 20 words from each letter, starting at “A,” then “B,” then “C” and so on. My job was to write out each of the words, learn the correct spelling and pronunciation and be able to recite the definition to them at the end of each week. 

It was a lot of work but, looking back on it, I think I may have enjoyed it. I learned words that many people don’t know as adults, and became acquainted with the roots of words and how languages developed and intertwined with one another. 

I developed a love of language and in college, after I finished my business core classes, I took some “fun” classes, like Vocabulary and English Literature. 

My punishment was never completed though. It was a lot of work for me, but apparently it was a lot of work for my dad, too. Either he felt I had learned my lesson, or he just got tired of it, because he stopped the routine at “M.”

So I am really good with words starting with the letters A through M. Not so good with the second half of the alphabet. 

Of course the advice I got from the Dean of Boys was also instrumental in my rehabilitation. He told me “Never put anything in writing that you would not want to see on a billboard.” Words to live by! 

Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. . Copyright 2024 RCG

Published May 29, 2024

It ain’t me, it ain’t me 

I ain’t no millionaire’s son, no, no 

It ain’t me, it ain’t me 

I ain’t no fortunate one. 

-”Fortunate Son,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival 

That girl could spot the lip of a 7 Up bottle peeking out from the sand in the orange grove at 100 feet. While riding by on a bicycle.  

Cheryl and I were next-door neighbors since birth and best childhood friends growing up and that’s how she and I made money to go to the State Fair and ride rides and eat fair food — combing the groves and pastures that are now subdivisions and shopping centers collecting pop bottles for deposit returns.  

At first the deposit was 2 cents for regular sized bottles and maybe a nickel for the larger ones.  We felt rich when the price went up to 3 cents. That doesn’t seem like much now, but remember, this was in the sixties. Gas was 25 cents a gallon. 

By the time they went up to 5 and 15 cents for the bottles, the Fair prices had also kept pace and we started getting our first lessons in reality and inflation. We needed a new gig. 

Now mind you, collecting pop bottles was not our only entrepreneurial endeavor. We used to spend the summers on the lake swimming and fishing. Every year the old cypress fishing boat my parents had purchased from a fish camp on Lake Rosalie had to be bailed out and pulled out from beneath the rising waters as the summer rainy season helped the lake claim her for its own. 

We were free-range kids. Our parents basically set us outside every day with instructions to be home for dinner. We would paddle that old boat all around Lake Hobbs catching bream, shellcracker and bluegill in the dredge holes and around the cypress knees. 

They were so abundant that we decided we could make some money doing a fried fish dinner for the neighbors. After catching and cleaning a freezer full of the little buggers, we prepared tickets to sell for the big event. 

In those days there was no Xerox machine, much less a copy and paste function on the old Royal upright typewriter my Mom had gotten from the welfare office that she worked at before my birth. I had to type and space and do dashes between and X’s down the middle of each sheet of tickets. (I think I did two sheets.) Then we canvassed the neighborhood and raked in the big bucks.  

Each dinner was priced at 35 cents and we served fried fish, baked beans and, I think, grits. We provided the fish but the fixins and side dishes were compliments of our parents’ pantry. We each cleared a couple of bucks but it probably cost our parents that much or more in groceries.

35 cents must have been a magic number for us because in spring time, one of our parents would ride us out to Plant City during the strawberry U-Pick season and we would come home with several flats of berries. After setting up a little stand on the side of U.S. 41 in front of my Mom’s real estate office under the big old oak tree just north of Carson Drive, we sold those berries for 35 cents a pint. 

While we didn’t grow rich, we did grow older, and as we progressed from elementary school to junior high (we didn’t have middle school), our friends and interests diverged, expanded and matured. 

I moved onto mowing lawns and selling forbidden gum and candies at school for pocket money while my parents kept me busy with chores in the pasture, garden and yard. 

We were next-door neighbors and had been best friends throughout our formative years, but even as we still lived right next to each other, we did grow apart.  

But those early years taught us both the value of a dollar, or maybe a nickel, and those lessons stuck with us both. Fiscal responsibility and the willingness to work for your money was ingrained in all of us growing up in that manner.  

Perhaps I am a fortunate son. 

Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. . Copyright 2024 RCG.

Published May 15, 2024