WAY BACK WHEN: Ray Gillard

When Ray Gillard was 13, he had saved up enough money — $40 — to buy his own car, a Model T Ford he called “Shake Rattle and Roll” because that’s what it did. He was too young to have a license, so when it came inspection time for vehicles, he knew all of Winter Garden’s back roads and was easily able to skirt around the inspection spot at Highway 50 and County Road 535.

It was during the height of World War II, and food, materials — everything — was rationed. Drivers could get six gallons of gas per week. That was OK, because Gillard didn’t need to go far in his small town of Winter Garden.

Gillard, who just turned 96, was born at home Aug. 22, 1928, the fifth of eight children. Home was “an old shack of a house,” he said, where Roper Road intersects with Vineland Road.

“There was a dirt trail that led from 535 from the huge Black Lake swamp to (County Road) 545,” he said. “It was never more than a mule and wagon trail.”

When Ray was born, he joined his siblings, Irma Dollar, Artie Moran, Jerry Roscoe (who was known as Bud) and Bessie Reynolds. Following Ray were James (known as Chick), Hubert and Kathy Parkhill. Ray and Kathy are the only two still living today.

He, his three brothers, four sisters and their parents, Roscoe and Carrie, lived in the board-and-batten cracker house with two bedrooms and a tin roof. The girls had a makeshift bedroom in the front room.

There was no electricity, but there was running water, Gillard said.

“That’s when you pumped water and ran with it,” he said, laughing.

Water for the household came from a pump on the back porch and a pump in the yard. In the winter, the family chopped wood to keep the stove burning.

The family later moved to an old wooden house in a block of citrus groves, also on 535. After living in several homes in the groves, the family settled on Gillard Road — named for the family — east of Beulah Road.

Money was tight, but the Gillards knew how to grow lush gardens that produced an abundance of food for the family to eat and sell.

“We were a self-sufficient family in that we raised all our own vegetables and our own cows and our own hogs, and we slaughtered them and cured the meats,” Gillard said. “On Saturdays, I would bundle up the onions and radish and get a box tied around my younger brother’s neck,” he said. “He could go to downtown Winter Garden and bring money back.”

Years later, Gillard built his mother a house on Donald Street north of downtown. She lived to be 94 and tended her own garden until she was 90.

ABOUT TOWN

One of Gillard’s earliest memories of downtown Winter Garden is going with his older sister, Artie, into a store operated on South Main Street by A.B. Newton.

Plant Street was a busy place to be Gillard said. A police telephone was mounted to an oak tree that stood where the gazebo was built, he said. Police Chief Mark Bailey was known for having his sidekick police dog, a German shepherd.

“If that phone rang and no one was around, that dog would run around town until he found a cop to let him know about it,” Gillard said.

Another regular downtown occurrence was an old guy by the name of Ed who parked his wheelchair at the southeast corner of Main and Plant Streets.

“He was always in Army-type woolen clothes, and he had a whistle, and if anybody didn’t stop at that intersection, he blew the whistle to let them know,” he said.

Downtown had several dime stores, clothing stores, and a bar and pool room owned by John Harrell when Gillard was growing up. There were three grocery stores to choose from — one on Plant Street owned by the Ficquette brothers, another near Boyd Street owned by the Capplemans, and a third on South Main Street owned by Shorty Reddick.

“On Saturday night, everyone from the country came to Winter Garden and parked their cars next to Plant Street,” he said. “Prior to the supermarkets, you didn’t pick anything up. You told the clerk what you wanted on a piece of paper, and he would go get it. (Groceries) came in bulk, tied up in twine and put on the counter.”

Gillard said his father worked in the orange grove until noon on Saturdays and then cut meat at Reddick’s Grocery. He sometimes helped Elmer Merritt, who ran Reddick’s Oakland store. Gillard worked there too, and his first customer was a little boy about 3 or 4 years old. He wanted five cents’ worth of candy and handed Gillard a button as payment. Merritt said to accept the button; the boy’s mother kept a tab at the store.

Saturdays were special if you could come up with a quarter and go to the downtown movie theater.

“For nine cents you could get in, five cents for a bag of popcorn, you could take a penny next door to (theater owner Collie) Biggers’ sister’s candy store and buy a Tootsie Roll or peppermint stick,” Gillard said. “You still had a dime left. Coca-Cola was five cents a bottle, and ice cream was 10 cents.”

Further west on Plant Street was the ice plant, which produced 300-pound ice blocks to keep vegetables and fruits cool when shipping them via railroad cars to other parts of the country. The plant had a platform for vehicles, and residents could drive up and pick up 10- or 25-pound blocks of ice to take home for their ice box. Trucks also delivered ice to homes.

MAKING A LIVING

After school and on Saturdays, Gillard worked for Lawrence Iserman, who owned a blacksmith shop, where Florida Metalcraft now operates, on Dillard Street. He assisted other welders in moving metal and cleaned up the shop, including the machine that created acetylene gas.

“He paid me more than I was worth; I know he gave me $40 one week,” Gillard said. “That was good pay.

Another job, when he was 12, had him working after school and Saturdays for Ezzard Farm, located on West Colonial Drive where Stage Stop Campground is now. The retired attorney-turned-farmer paid 10 cents per hour.

“Mr. Ezzard always liked that natural fertilizer from Howard’s Dairy next door,” Gillard said. “He would let us drive his tractor and get that cow manure.

“We raised cabbage, escarole, lettuce, sometime peppers, sometimes corn, and we would raise it from seed to shipping,” he said. “We would harvest it, send it to P.H. Britt, a vegetable packing house, at Ocoee Winter Garden Road on the railroad track.”

Gillard’s mother, in addition to raising eight children, held a job at the Tilden packing house, washing, grading and packaging fruit.

His father was a manager for J.N. Joiner, who was known as the citrus guru of Central Florida, Gillard said. When Joiner died, Gillard’s father became the overseer of the J.N. Joiner Estate.

Gillard said his father had a workforce of eight — his children — and he put them to work at various Joiner plots. They grew sweet peas at Newton Park (long before it was named that), four acres of tomatoes near their home in the citrus grove and sweet potatoes near Walker Field (before it had a name). They could sell the sweet potatoes by the pound for 1.5 cents each.

Gillard attended Tildenville Elementary School from first through sixth grades and Lakeview High School until ninth grade, when he dropped out of school at the age of 15.

By then, 1943, he was making a good wage as an assistant forest ranger. His primary job was to fight forest fires, but in the summer months, when everything was green, the employees repaired equipment and replowed fire lanes from Winter Garden to the area later known as Walt Disney World.

When Gillard’s boss died, he became forest ranger.

In a career change around 1950, when Winter Garden Citrus Products Cooperative added a machine to evaporate water out of orange juice, Gillard and his buddy, Harold Bekemeyer, helped the engineers install the machine. The two became the operators, taking turns running the machine in 12-hour shifts seven days a week.

During the Korean War, Gillard received his draft notice and went to the U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland for basic training, followed by five months of guided missiles training in Huntsville, Alabama. After a transfer to Las Cruces, New Mexico, Gillard was assigned to the systems test division and tested missiles for the rest of his two-year career in the Army.

When he returned to Winter Garden, he attended vocational school in Orlando to learn about auto mechanics. In 1955, he used those skills with Glen Joiner & Son. By 1960, he was promoted to service manager. Not one to remain long in one place, he left that job and went to work for Orange Buick as sales and service manager.

He also taught auto mechanics to juniors and seniors at Boone High School; four years later, he left to teach engine rebuilding and auto machine shop at Mid-Florida Technical College on Oak Ridge Road. He enjoyed a 12-year career before retiring.

LIFE AFTER RETIREMENT

Upon retirement in 1979, Gillard has become a builder, gardener, birdwatcher and traveler. He bought four acres of land in Highlands, North Carolina, cleared it and built a cabin. He frequently spent summers there. His baby sister is currently there enjoying the cooler temperatures.

Not one to sit still for very long, Gillard bought 100 acres of land, $225 an acre, in Taylor County, Georgia, around 1985. He harvested timber out of the big pine trees and built a hunting cabin.

He has owned several types of campers and motorhomes and has traveled as far south as Key West and as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska. He has made stops at many national parks along the way.

Gillard moved to Montverde five years ago to the southwest shore of Lake Apopka. He keeps his bird feeders full of seed for the cardinals and painted buntings; he likes to sit on his small dock and throw bread for the fish; and he constantly checks his gardens and trees for ripe grapes, peppers, bananas, sweet potatoes, coconuts and other homegrown fruits and vegetables.