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Memories of early days: Plenty of nothing

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published April 29, 2007

SPRING HILL - Talk to the pioneers, ask them about the early days out here on the west side of Hernando County, and they don't take long to get to talking about ...

Nothing.

"There was nothing, " said Clayton Eccard, who moved here in 1971.

"There was nothing, " said Drew Thomas, who moved here in '74.

And in '84, when Vince Vanni moved here? "There was nothing, " he said.

"No streetlights, " said Mimi Hirsch, who came from Connecticut in '78.

"None, " said Nick Morana, who bought his lot in '68. "Zero."

"Just absolutely zero, " said Billy Brown, the top boss at the Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative.

"Nothing but sand, " said Chuck Stallings, one of the first salesmen for the Mackle brothers' home-building company, the Deltona Corp.

"No traffic lights, " said Sandy D'Amato, who's been cutting hair here since '82. "No Wal-Marts. No Bealls. No Sears. No anything like that."

"No Publix, " said James Yant, who came in '76.

"No movie theater, " said Michael White, who graduated from Springstead High School in '83.

"No Little League, " said Carol Thomas, Drew Thomas' mother.

"Nothing in the way of entertainment, " said Dave Russell Sr., the father of current county Commissioner Dave Russell Jr.

"There was nothing on 19, " Drew Thomas said. "No McDonald's. No Burger King. No hospital. Nothing.

"When I tell you there was nothing, man, " he said, "there was nothing."

"I mean nothing, " said Pat Fleck, one of the early Realtors.

Well, there wasn't nothing - there just wasn't anything of the sort that's here today. Not the kind of stuff. Certainly not the volume of stuff.

Here's what was here in what is now Spring Hill: blacksnakes, rattlesnakes, possums, wild turkey, raccoons, squirrels and armadillos, gopher tortoises, jackrabbits and blackjack oaks. The occasional bobcat. The occasional bear. Some old-timers' Cracker cattle.

And trees.

And sand.

"There was a lot of yellow sand, " said Ernie Holzhauer of the Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative, who in the early days of Spring Hill helped put poles into the ground. "It was bright yellow. It was like being on the beach. The sun would reflect off the yellow sand."

Holzhauer's supervisor back then was a man named Roy Sibley. He still works for the company, has for 45 years, and he grew up in Hudson.

When he was a boy, he said, he crossed the county line to catch soft-shell turtles and to fish for bass, bream and speckled perch in Hunters Lake in his homemade wooden johnboat.

He also came up with his granddad to pick up the hard pieces of heart of pine that are called "lighter knots."

"My folks, we heated with wood, " he said. "We gathered those to build fire."

Even after the building started, and even a decade and more into the development of Spring Hill, Carla King, Springstead Class of '81, could ride her bike down Spring Hill Drive.

Brian Donnelly could throw a football in the middle of Mariner Boulevard down by Spring Hill Drive when he opened his deli there in '81.

Nick Morana, a past president of Spring Hill's community association, could make it from his home to the mall in Port Richey in 18 minutes.

"Not anymore, " he said. "Not unless you have a helicopter."

"When I moved there, " Drew Thomas said, "you could probably have taken a 15-minute nap in the middle of Deltona Boulevard and not gotten run over."

"Nothing but trees and nothing, " said Ed Davis, who graduated from Springstead in '81 and moved to Clearwater all of three days later.

"We thought we were out in the country, " said Gloria Nadeau, the manager of the Spring Hill Garden Club's nursery. "Now we're right in the middle of everything."

That started with the Chevron station at the corner of Kenlake Avenue and Spring Hill Drive in 1969. Then came the 7-Eleven that's now a Hungry Howie's, then Westside Elementary, then Winn-Dixie. And when that Winn-Dixie opened, there was singing, there was dancing, and there were pony rides.

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified April 28, 2007, 19:12:52]