University of Central Florida STARS Text Materials of Central Florida Central Florida Memory 2-20-2002 The Time of My Life, autobiography of Donald J. Mikler 2002 Donald J. Mickler Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cfm-texts University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Central Florida Memory at STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Text Materials of Central Florida by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Mickler, Donald J., "The Time of My Life, autobiography of Donald J. Mikler 2002" (2002). Text Materials of Central Florida. 60. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cfm-texts/60 The Time of My Life By: Donald John Mikler I was born “ in the country near Oviedo, Florida”, 27 December 1931. My father was Michael Mikler who was born in Cleveland, Ohio 23 July 1906. Grandfather Joseph Mikler had immigrated to the Unitrd States in 1904 and settled in Cleveland. He got a job in a barrel factory, earning $1.25 a day. Six months later he sent for his wife in Czechslovakia. They bought a house in Cleveland and Grandmother Mikler ("Bobka", Slovak slang for grandmother) had two more children, Joseph and Katherine. In 1912 they joined a group of Slovaks who had bought land in Florida, sold their house in Cleveland, and moved to Florida. My mother was Mathilda Lamos who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia 24 February 1908. Her parents had immigrated to the USA in about 1912 and settled in Chicago, then tried farming in Wisconsin, then moved back to Chicago. Mother and Dad were married in Chicago 11 June 1929. After they married, they traveled to Slavia, Florida where dad’s family lived. Slavia, a Slovak community of farmers, is located about four miles south of Oviedo. Oviedo is located about 15 miles northeast of Orlando. My mother’s sister, Marie, accompanied the wedding party for the car trip back to Florida. Grandfather Mikler had a big Studebaker sedan. Must have been tight since grandfather, grandmother, dad, mom, dad’s best man and brother Joe, and Marie, and probably “Big Joe”, dad’s cousin, rode in the car. The road was two-lane blacktop, in the 1920’s, several decades before interstate highways. My mothers sister, Marie, said that mom and dad lived in grandfather Miklers’ house for a while. That must have been interesting in that the house was small and crowded with a growing family. As of this writing, the house still stands on Mikler Road at the edge of Slavia. One of my cousins restored the house in the 90s. By 1929, dad had five younger brothers and four sisters living in the same house. After a short stay with the parents, dad rented a house in a sparsely populated subdivision in Goldenrod, about half-way between Orlando and Oviedo. In about 1934 dad and his brothers built a "temporary" house in Slavia. It was situated about 150 feet from the state road that ran between Orlando and Oviedo. Our nearest neighbor was Stanko's Store, in Slavia, about a mile north of the house. Slavia was a "wide spot in the road" with maybe 50 residents and a church..My parents are buried in a cemetery adjacent to the Lutheran church there. A mile to the south was Jamestown, where only colored people lived in shacks. Mikler Road joins the state road at Jamestown. The Mikler's and another Slovak family, the Duda's settled and farmed on properties on Mikler Road. As of this writing, the roads are still in place but the farms have been over-run with housing developments. The house was an ordinary wood frame rectangle and rather small with one bedroom, a living room, and kitchen. The inside walls were unfinished. The floors were ordinary wood planks/lumber and there was no carpet. There was no electricity and we had a hand operated pump for water in the kitchen. We bathed in a large wash-tub in the middle of the kitchen and the water was heated on the wood-burning kitchen stove. Of course there was no air-conditioning. An outhouse was close by behind the house. I don't remember the year, but before dad died electricity was installed in the house.. One of the earliest memories of my dad was of me riding on a large board, which he dragged around with a rope in order to level and smooth the ground around the house where he put in a large, plush lawn. The front yard went clear out to the two-lane blacktop road about 150 feet from the house. There were a couple of nice sized cedar-like shrubs at each end of the front porch that we kids used to jump into for kicks. There was a chinaberry tree in the backyard that we played and climbed in. It also had a swing. By 1937 there were five of us children. Ruth was my older sister. Then it was me, Michael, Elaine, and Mathilda who was nick-named “Tilka”. Dad liked to hunt and fish and he had a pen for several bird-dogs. My brother Mike and I had the job of keeping the pen clean. This little job snuffed out any love of dogs for me for a long, long time. We had no near-by neighbors. The terrain around the house was lightly wooded with tall yellow pines, scrub oak, palmetto and assorted brush, weeds, nettles, and sand-spurs. In the fall dad used to let me accompany him when he hunted and shot quail in the brush around and within a short distance of the house. It seemed like a long trek to me, a six or seven-year-old, but we probably didn't hike more than a mile on these hunting adventures. Dad always used his dogs on these excursions and when he came out of the house with his shotgun and shucked it a couple of times in front of them, they'd go bananas and start yelping with excitement. That was fun. Mother would cook the quail he shot and serve them with dumplings and gravy, like paprika , and we loved it. When we were not in school or going to church we all ran around barefooted and shirtless. In the summertime, that is. After a while one’s feet became tough and you could run through a bunch of sand-spurs without them bothering you. We all had good tans and were as brown as a berry. One time I was playing in the brush near the house and stepped on a snake when I was bare-footed. I think it was a harmless chicken-snake which looks like a rattle-snake, to a little kid. Since there were plenty of rattle-snakes around, and I assumed it was a rattler, I jumped about three feet into the air and I think I came down about five feet away. That was the last time a snake has ever touched my body and I can’t stand them to this day. Dad had a 1920s era Graham sedan. On occasion he drove us to Oviedo on Sunday afternoons and bought ice cream to take home. I was always worried that it would melt before we got home. He would, at times, swerve back and forth on the sparsely traveled two-lane road to make us laugh. Oviedo was a small town, probably three blocks long, with diagonal parking spaces. The few businesses and a post- office were located in one and two story buildings. One of them was a 1920-1930’s style drugstore with marble counter and soda fountain. All kinds of goodies, and a place of wonder to a little kid. Dad also built up a "Skeeter" that he drove and used at work as a pick-up truck on grandfather Mikler’s farm. "Skeeter" was a local term. It was a little work-truck made up from an old Model T or Model A Ford. He built then up himself. The body from the firewall aft would be removed and a flatbed built of lumber would be installed; the front edge of the flatbed served as a seat. There was no backrest. Then the front end was painted black and it made for a nice little truck that would go ANYWHERE. The only time I ever heard dad raise his voice was when mother started it one morning and was grinding the gears in order to get it into reverse and he told her in no uncertain terms to cease and desist. Some months before dad died, he bought a 1936 Plymouth sedan which mother drove until 1945 when it exhausted itself and mother couldn't afford the repair costs and it disappeared to I don't know where. During the 1930s America was suffering from an economic depression and things were tough all over the country. However, as I recall, I never heard the word "depression" mentioned or knew what it meant for that matter. To a little kid, things seemed pretty normal. We were well clothed, kept clean, had plenty to eat and any other necessities, and were happy as a family in Slavia. I attended school in Oviedo and we rode a yellow school bus to and from. The school was a large red brick building and grades one through twelve were taught there. I don't remember much about school.