Down to just an acre
Years ago, a young Bill Gunn roamed through his great-grandfather's groves. Today, as development rises around, he's left with his tiny parcel.
By HELEN ANNE TRAVIS, Times Staff Writer
Published November 16, 2007
By HELEN ANNE TRAVIS Times Staff Writer
VALRICO - Bill Gunn doesn't remember his great-grandfather's name. He was just Grandpa.
Grandpa bought land in eastern Hillsborough County near a dirt strip that's now Lumsden Road in Valrico. Grandpa cleared out the oak scrub with his ax, dug the holes by hand, and planted 40 acres of orange trees.
Grandpa's children came to live with him in the two-story home with the wraparound porch at the edge of the groves. Only a few families lived nearby. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren helped tend the orange trees. Little Bill Gunn shot rabbits for the family's dinner.
Grandpa died. Bill went off to fight in World War II. When the grove bloomed, the air was sweet and heady.
In 1946, Bill retired from the Navy and the orange grove recovered from a freeze that destroyed most of the trees.
Bill bought a jewelry shop in Plant City. Local high school students bought their class rings at Bill's store. He was the only shopkeeper in town who gave them credit. The male students returned years later to buy wedding rings.
Evelyn Wilson was the store's first clerk. She walked in the door well-dressed and well-groomed, and Bill thought he could fall in love with her.
But they were both married, so they settled for friendship, the kind of friendship where families blur together and the children act like cousins or siblings.
Evelyn eventually left the jewelry shop, but she and Bill stayed in touch, reuniting at the hardware store or the drive-in.
In 1952, 39 acres of the groves were sold to Lou Prosser, a Plant City Kiwanis member with orange trees stretching all the way to Arcadia. Bill's family had only 1 acre left.
Prosser didn't build a fence, and the family still descended from the wraparound porch to play in the groves and hunt for dinner. They had Lou's blessing.
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In 1970, Bill attended a meeting. The orange grove's fate had been decided.
County commissioners presented charts with their vision for eastern Hillsborough. Most of his family's old groves would be zoned for residential property by 2002. Bill didn't care.
By 2002, he figured, he would be living in north Georgia with his family.
Bill's wife passed away. He left the jewelry store.
For more than 40 years he had worried about taxes and robberies and competition. He made a decision when he left the store for the last time that he would no longer worry about things he couldn't change.
Bill invited Evelyn, then a widow, to his 1987 family reunion in Georgia. On the way they stopped at the Ringo, Ga., courthouse.
"I planned on us getting married," Bill told Evelyn.
They drove her car to Georgia. If she said no, he might have to walk home.
Bill's family looked up in surprise when Mendelssohn's Wedding March suddenly played in the middle of the reunion. Bill and Evelyn exchanged vows in front of a sea of gaping Gunns.
The couple moved to what remained of his family's property in Valrico, that 1 acre surrounded by his great-grandfather's trees. They took walks through the orange trees to Miller Road. The couple saw quail and rabbits and, sometimes, coyote tracks through the groves.
The years passed. They never spoke about the 1970 meeting. He couldn't change the commissioners' plans. He wouldn't worry.
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In the late 1980s, Lumsden Road was paved. Developers bought the 39 acres from Prosser's grandson. Big bulldozers uprooted the groves.
The trees still had fruit on them when they were put in piles and set ablaze.
Twenty years after the Plant City meeting and Bill hadn't made it to north Georgia.
He and Evelyn watched the trees burn from a window.
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It's 2007 and Bill Gunn, now 84, stands in what remains of the original 1909 groves. He wears blue-and-white-striped overalls, a blue denim shirt underneath. The pointed tops of neighboring pool enclosures tower over him.
The two-story house with the wraparound porch is gone now, the victim of age and termites. Gunn lives in a modest one-story house that he had moved from Tampa. The neighborhood kids playing kick-the-can in the street are gone too, replaced by strangers wearing little white earbuds.
Sometimes it feels like only a few days pass between the Saturday night reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show.
"As you get old, time speeds up and you slow down and pretty much it all runs over you," says Gunn, his voice barely rising over the traffic from Lumsden Road.
"When we go, what happens to it?" he asks, looking at the few remaining orange trees.
"It will be a restaurant or a convenience store. It won't be an orange grove. It won't be a piece of land that matters."
What's left of his great-grandfather's trees are slowly dying; their leaves are crisp and dark and no longer produce fruit. Bill will not worry about them. He will dig them up and move on.
Helen Anne Travis can be reached at htravis@sptimes.com.