Kate V. Scott: Life & Times, 1922 – 1979
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Life & Times, 1922 – 1979 Kate V. Scott Edited by Carli Scott Book 1 Life & Times, 1922 – 1979 Kate V. Scott, mid 1940’s Cover photo: Letter from Kate with envelope for a letter she wrote to her Uncle Frank in 1956 Book 1 Life & Times, 1922 – 1979 Kate V. Scott Edited by Carli Scott Copyright © 2021 by Carli Scott. All rights reserved, including right of reproduced in whole or part in any form, except for the use of brief quotations. First printing: 2020 <www.tcracs.org/kvswp> The four books in this series are dedicated to the people of Belize, who received the Scotts with a warm welcome and lasting friendships, and who accepted our family as an integral part of the community in which we made our new home. vii Contents Forward . xi Saginaw to Atlanta . 1 Family . 3 Childhood Memories . 7 New York . 15 Starting a New Family . 19 Kentucky Accident . 25 Sarasota . 27 Move to Siesta Key . 29 Screen Cage . 39 Life by the Water . 41 Ed the Pelican . 45 First Stay in Belize . 49 To British Honduras . 51 Getting Acquainted . 59 Bucher Goes to Work . 63 Alex Goes to School . 65 Life at the Fort George . 67 Exploring the Country . 71 Easter in Belize . 81 Parades . 85 Home of Our Own . 89 Mealtime Challenges . 95 Lucky Win . 103 U.S. Independence Day . 105 Rainy Season . 107 Dog Days . 109 Battle of St. George’s Caye Day . 113 Storm Warning . 119 Happy Children . 121 Thanksgiving . 125 Christmas Trip . 127 viii Kate V. Scott Book 1. Life & Times, 1922 – 1979 Flying, Part 1 . .131 St. George’s Caye . .133 Christmas in Belize . .137 Minuet . .141 Life in Belize. 143 First Impressions . .145 School Days . .149 Adjusting . .155 Cubbo . .169 Grabbity . .173 Swing Bridge . .175 Baron Bliss Day . .177 Miami . 179 Return to the States . .181 Life in the Big City . .185 Christmas Plans . .187 Siesta Key Beach House . 189 At the Beach Again . .191 Alex’s Job . .199 Christmas in the Beach House . .201 Easter Surprise . .205 Summer Plans . .209 Lake X . .211 Beach-House Life . .215 Alex, Salesman . .219 Belize Before Hattie . 221 Back to Belize . .223 Getting Settled . .231 Home Improvement . .233 Friends and Neighbors . .235 Packing and Shipping . .239 Birthday News . .243 Summer Recap . .249 Marooned . .253 Contents ix Living Through Hattie . 261 Hurricane Hattie . 263 Surveying the Damage . 269 Looting . 273 News of Friends . 279 Cleaning Up, Helping Out . 283 Life Amid the Debris . 289 Path Back to Normal . 293 Belize After Hattie . 301 Reporting for UPI . 303 Bookkeeping . 307 Thanksgiving Activities . 309 By Sea to Guatemala . 311 Relaxing Times . 315 Flying, Part 2 . 319 Christmas Is Coming . 325 Busy Year . 329 Exercise Bay Rum . 331 Buccaneer Lodge . 341 Hurricane Edith . 345 Westkust Stranding . 349 Back-to-Back Hurricanes . 355 Our House . 365 Farewell, My Love . 367 Acknowledgments . 373 Editor’s Notes. 379 x Kate V. Scott Book 1. Life & Times, 1922 – 1979 xi Forward Back when people relied on letters sent through the world’s postal systems to keep each other informed, my mother, Kate V. Scott, was a prolific correspondent. For decades, her delightfully written, newsy letters and reports enchanted and entertained family and friends. Following her death, and with the help of family and friends, I collected as much of Kate’s writing as I could find. This is the first in a series of four books that I assembled from the collection: 1. Life & Times, 1922 – 1979 2. Life & Times, 1980 – 2014 3. Travels, 1961 – 1994 4. Travels, 1995 – 2007 Books 1 and 2 consist of letters of general interest and other descriptions of incidents in Kate’s life; Book 1 also includes a draft memoir and essays describing her first few years living in Belize, British Honduras. I’ve organized this material into chapters that I present in roughly chronological order to tell Kate’s life story in her own words. Books 3 and 4 consist of Kate’s reports of her various trips, mostly vacations but some including business as well; again, the reports are ordered chronologically. For additional information about the source material that I worked with, see page 373. If some of Kate’s descriptions are not historically accurate, they are true reflections (perhaps embellished for literary effect) of how she experienced places and events or how she remembered them years later. Her draft memoir includes the following note: This is an account of an untraveled Midwestern young woman’s moving with her family to an obscure little Central American country, the British Crown Colony of British Honduras, in the 1950’s. It mirrors an unfamiliar world through her eyes. It is not a sociological study of life in British Honduras at that time. xii Kate V. Scott Book 1. Life & Times, 1922 – 1979 When a narrative in this book refers to a trip that is described in one of the Travels books, a footnote gives a reference to the trip report in that book. I have maintained Kate’s usage and spelling and have modified her original text only where necessary for clarity or to remove redundancy when combining related material from different sources. On the first occurrence of any acronym or foreign word that may not be familiar to all readers, any word whose use in Belize is different from its use in standard U.S. English, or any word or name whose pronunciation may differ from what some readers expect, I have added a footnote to “translate” Kate’s meaning or to indicate how the spoken word or name sounds. I have not “corrected” descriptions that differ from my own memories. My occasional comments on Kate’s narrative or her wording can be found in separate editor’s notes (page 379). When the Scotts moved to Central America, the country where we settled was British Honduras (or B.H. for short) and the city was Belize. The country’s name was officially changed to Belize in 1973, in anticipation of independence. To avoid confusion, the city thereafter was called Belize City (though, when the context is clear, it sometimes still is called simply Belize). Throughout most of this book, Kate uses Belize to mean the city, not the country. However, in the essays written after 1973 and in chapters describing later years, she uses Belize to mean the country and refers to the city as Belize City. — Carli Scott 1 Saginaw to Atlanta 1922 – 1952 Family. 3 Childhood Memories . 7 New York . 15 Starting a New Family . 19 Kentucky Accident. 25 2 Kate V. Scott Book 1. Life & Times, 1922 – 1979 Kate, early 1930’s 3 Family My father, Jackson “Jack” Willard Van Brunt, was.