Skip to main content
Forebears
As, like a drunken sailor, the contract for sale of my house wobbles unsteadily toward closing or termination and I have second and third thoughts and umpteenth grief about parting with this century old family treasure, friends Mike and Pat McKenzie handed me the original Warranty Deed by which my grandparents last let this house leave the family, August 24, 1923.
Yesterday morning with Mike and Pat, and Mike’s sister Pat and her husband David, Linda and I stood at the old Thompson plot in Greenwood Cemetery and laid to rest Pat McKenzie’s mother Jean Thompson. Standing there quietly, I had a sense of old Bay County, St. Andrews, Panama City pioneer families quietly closing ancient history together. In this blog last year, thanks to Mike who found the newspaper report, was recorded a “Delightful Gulf Party” of a century ago — again --
++++++++++++++++
St. Andrews Bay Times
St. Andrews, Florida, June 22, 1916
Delightful Gulf Party
Monday evening a party of young people with large baskets well filled boarded a launch and sped across the bay to the Gulf where several hours were spent very pleasantly bathing, emptying those baskets and otherwise enjoying themselves only as young people can.
Those constituting the party were Misses Gaynor, Eva and Laura Thompson, Dorothy and Grace Ware, Gladys Wilcox, Lydia and Ruth Smith, Elsie Jordan and Mrs. C. Gideon, accompanied by "Rosy" Nelson, Earl Thompson, "Rube" Williams, George and Harley Combs, A. R. Folks, F. A. Reynolds, Alfred Weller and a Mr. Treadway.
They returned to St. Andrews in the wee small hours of the night, feeling that time had passed only too soon.
++++++++++++
Earl Thompson was Pat McKenzie’s forebear and lived on prominently into Panama City history. My uncle Alfred Weller was sixteen at the time. A year and a half after that Delightful Gulf Party, Alf was lost in the Old Pass, in the wreck of the Annie & Jennie and my own history was made possible. Mike and his family owned and lived in the Old Place for a while in the 1940s, and together we consider it "ours." Mike found the Warranty Deed in his old file about the house.
This morning, hoping that we have honored those who went before us and made our lives possible, I also have a feeling that time has passed only too soon.
T in +Time
As, like a drunken sailor, the contract for sale of my house wobbles unsteadily toward closing or termination and I have second and third thoughts and umpteenth grief about parting with this century old family treasure, friends Mike and Pat McKenzie handed me the original Warranty Deed by which my grandparents last let this house leave the family, August 24, 1923.