Before the Mouse		

The city had that weather,
sixties and seventies in the winter,
hot as Helen Foster's hat in the summer,

but that is why my parents decided to retire there
in 1952 after living in Maine where
my Coast Guard father had spent years

on a small ship lurching through the North Atlantic
searching out ice bergs and predicting storms
in the days before weather satellites.

Originally called Jernigan, named after a wealthy settler, 
located in Mosquito County; for some reason the county 
was renamed Orange County and the town renamed

Orlando, either after the first name of a soldier killed 
in the Seminole Wars or after the character in
Shakespeare's "As You Like It".  

It was a place to go through on your way south 
to Miami or west to Tampa - no one ever stayed,
except to plant orange trees or mobile homes.

The only industry in town was Martin-Marietta,
builder of Titan II missiles, where I worked
while going to college in the early sixties.

My father found work as a cabinet maker; my mother
decided to go back to work as a legal secretary
whose boss was busy buying up land north

of town near Kissimmee (rhymes with Miss Jimmy)
where Mom worked in a trailer in the middle of a swamp,
her desk next to an empty desk used by a stranger

who often visited but whom she was not allowed to name,
not even to her family. Eventually I found out about 
Roy Disney - I think you can guess his game.



(First published in Florida Bards - 2026)