The Lane Brothers of Boca Grande, circa 1943.
January/February 2020 GASPARILLA MAGAZINE 5
Coleman gasoline stove, set it up on the dock
and cook supper. Just camp out on the dock. The
railroad had too much money invested to let it
go up in fl ames so they just stopped everyone
from going on the dock.
A Billy Langford story
Sitting in the dining room listening to my two
boys arguing about who would wash the dishes,
for some reason it brought Billy Langford to my
memory. A completely unrelated event to washing
dishes.
Billy, my brother Dave and I decided to camp
out one summer day. After about two hours of
begging my mother fi nally relented and said, “Yes,
if you’ll just shut up.”
(Any of you that had boys know how 13
and 14 year old boys can argue, fuss, complain,
reverse the argument until you are at your wits
end).
Of course, that only works with Mom.
Then came the big decision of where we were
going to camp. Some one suggested The Narrows.
Billy and I both said no. Then Dave said,
“Well, I’m going home then.”
Well, we certainly didn’t want him to leave
because he had the cigarettes.
We fi nally decided to camp at The Gasparilla
Inn Golf Course. A good place because we could
go to hidden lake, which wasn’t hidden at the
golf course, and get fi ddler crabs and go fi shing at
East Dock the next day. Fiddler crabs were about
the best bait for sheepshead … sand fl eas from
the beach were good, too.
So off we went to the golf course. We had a
tent and some camping gear that we borrowed
from the Boy Scout hut. We never did put up
the tent, it was just too darn hot to sleep in a
tent. There was a pretty good east wind blowing
which kept the mosquitoes away, so far everything
was going good. We opened the cans of
Beany Weenies and we had some hot dogs and
Coca Cola, which was hot and fi zzed real good
when opened. What a great time with good
friends, good food, and we had cigarettes.
Billy got tired of sitting around, he gathered up
a bunch of cabbage palm fronds, lit one, and ran
down the beach. Wow, that got us all started.
What fun. There was a couple of others whom
I have forgotten. The camp out started with Billy,
Dave and me. The torch running petered out as
we used up all the available dead palm fronds.
Along about 1 a.m. we were all hungry again.
Billy said we could go to his house and fi nd
something. Oh, I forgot, Billy had a can of okra
which he opened and ate every bit of. I’ve never
again seen anyone eat okra out of the can.