You know I have to give a shout out or maybe a little tribute to my good friends Johnny Frye & Bobby Evans both Coconut Circleler's. They both passed away at an early age & I shared a ton of laughs with both of them. Johnny Frye hands down had the worse jokes I've ever heard in my entire life. The funny part was he could tell them non stop walking all the way into town from East Naples you had no choice but to walk, sweat & listen. His jokes usually turned out to be more fun than the trip itself. His delivery & laugh at his own jokes made them pee in your pants funny...Large building in photo is East Naples Middle School.
Map link.
http://tinyurl.com/nawygd
Photo taken September 17th 1968
Courtesy of the Les Whitaker Jr. family.
There weren't any "Candy Asses" at that school...lol
ReplyDeleteI lived in Brookside as a kid near BH when East Naples Middle School opened in late '69'
We had to go to Gulview middle school split session the first half of the year until ENMS was completed, I was in 6th grade.
We had those funky open pod type classrooms and you could never tell where the spitballs were coming from....hence, perfect attack strategy. We also had the Planetarium too, the perfect place to hide when making-out with your favorite little 6th grade HOTD.
The fights in the courtyard were always entertaining also....let's not forget this was East (Mootispaw,Batson,Walker,Gentry,Brown,Wheeler,Engle Morgan,Saddler,etc)Naples circa 1969.
The good ol' days!
Circle3Ranch
:)~
The greatest fighter at East Naples Middle School in itgs first three years was Stanley Barrs, undefeated against all the races the Collier County School Board tried to isolate on Estey Avenue. He would take unlimited violence to get to your balls, and then it was all over. He was so unforgettable that I tried to get a bridge named for him... in Louisiana. The plot of land to the right of the school belongs to St. Paul's Episcopal Church. The rectory is on Estey, and the church is at the back of the tract with an entrance at Davis Blvd. You'll have to look this up because it sounds so unbelievable: The Episcopal priest at St. Pauls when I was an alterboy was named Father Smellie.
ReplyDelete1055 Guava Drive R.I.P. Johnny Ray
ReplyDeleteSH
Bobby Evans was a great kid from an awesome family. His sister, Glenda, was cool too. My wife's family lived in Coconut Circle from the late sixties, until about three years ago. They lived in the NE corner. Their house didn't make this picture. It was just missed by the photographer.
ReplyDeleteStanley Bars was quite the scrapper, but so was Jamie Wheeler. My first fight in Naples was with Herbie Baughman on Francis Avenue, in his front yard. That was before he grew into a mountain of man. We became good friends immediately after that fight.
Bob Fultz
Correction:
ReplyDeleteIt was Don Evans.
Herbie Baughman was a nice kid. I first met him on the Naples Millwork baseball team, which was part of the Naples Minor League for kids not good enough for the regular Little League. The games were played at Cambier Park. I think Herbie's dad was a Millwork coach. But I would still bet on Stanley Barrs against anybody who ever lived in East Naples. Jim Lawrence, a science teacher at East Naples Middle School, a big mother, got racked up in the balls real bad when he tried to break up a fight between Stanley and some poor bastard Stanley had attacked for the the thrill of it. Lawrence limped around school for a week. Stanley had a brother, Alan, who couldn't fight at all. Since it was impossible to get revenge on Stanley himself, Alan got beat up a lot by proxy.
ReplyDeleteNaples Minor League Baseball. Whoa, mostly East Naples greazers, and the worst played baseball in the USA. "Chill" Williams, the surfer Mike Williams' dad, was the manager of Naples Millwork. Yellow t-shirt with white lettering was the whole uniform.
ReplyDelete