Goin' Out To Cally – Part 60, Escaping Into The Wildwood

I don’t really remember much of the drive from Illinois to Florida. The only thing I can recall is, during one of the two remaining gas stops, calling my brother Paul and telling him to meet me in Wildwood so he could pick me up and take me home.

“Why?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you later. But you HAVE to pick me up, okay?” I asked.

“Okay,” he replied.

I knew that, after we were to drop off Sunday in Gainesville that the next stop was to be in Brooksville where Tim would bring Beth home. Knowing Tim and having experienced this trip I knew that we wouldn’t just drop Beth off, we would spend hours there recounting the entire trip… the same trip Beth had just described to her parents for over two hours on the phone in Illinois.

If I had to sit there and listen and wait and not be home I think I would have gone postal. I would have ended up in Starkey Prison near Gainesville with a roommate named Axel who fancied my shapely tush. My only escape, my only salvation, was my brother Paul.

Paul and I lived together my first year in Gainesville. He was entering as a junior and I was entering as a freshman. We stayed in a dark little mobile home in a darker little place called Shady Nook. It was a two bedroom mobile home that did not have cable television and in which we could only get two channels, the local PBS channel from the university and the local ABC affiliate. We would watch these two channels on a micro-black and white television while sitting on some of the most ill-conceived, badly implemented travesties masquerading as furniture one could ever imagine.

Paul was, at the time, engaged to Jean and during our first year, missed her terribly. He was often depressed and that only added a little more darkness to our first year’s experience at the University of Florida.

The only thing that got us through a depressing week at school was traveling home on the weekend. Paul would get to see Jean and I would get to see family and Tim and my other high school friends. They were my anchors that kept me grounded. I had not yet developed any significant friendships at school so these trips home were critical to our mental health.

Even though Paul and I had spent our entire lives together, we never really got to know each other until that year, until those numerous drives to and from Gainesville. He would teach me about chemistry and I would teach him about acting. I learned that he was far more creative than I ever knew. Growing up Paul was always a bookworm and I was, well, lazy and haphazardly approached school.

Paul found enjoyment in education, I found fun in fart jokes. We were so very different, yet we found commonality during those drives. Not only did we bond through shared experiences that first year, but we found common ground between us, between our interests, that we never knew had existed. I look back on those drives and they make me smile.

Paul and Jean would end up being my greatest fans. They were the only ones in my family to attend every single one of my performances while in college. Trust me, that’s love. Some of those things were downright painful to watch. But they loved me and supported me and they gave me strength to continue to pursue my dreams.

When I finally got into the Fine Arts College Paul and Jean threw a small party and took their limited resources and bought me a small Super 8 movie camera. This was a financial sacrifice for them and I was so touched. Paul, the bartender in that awful black and white video ten years earlier, knew of my passion for film and they bought me a tool to help make that dream come true. Later we would use that camera to shoot a very funny short film called The Term Paper.

Since our time in college Paul and I continue to talk about movies and chemistry. As we’ve gotten older we continue to participate in those areas of each other's lives. Paul reads all of my screenplays and continues to give me excellent feedback. He helped fund the shooting of our first feature film called The Box and he continues to be a source of inspiration to me. Through my day-job experiences, I’m able to share in his challenges as a doctor of analytical chemistry in the oil industry. Funny thing about business, no matter what you build or what you service, the problems and challenges are all the same.

And all of our history together was founded by those two hour drives from Gainesville to St. Petersburg and back, the mid-point of which was a small town called Wildwood.

And that is where Paul had agreed to pick me up and allow me to finally escape this nightmare that was our trip to Cally.