The screen door clanged shut on our icy house and I lifted my cheeks for New Smyrna Beach’s kiss of warmth. I rubbed my biceps through my bulky sweater and headed toward Riverside Drive, careful to keep to the sun-heated stretches of pavement. Last night I could see...
The smallest bridge in New Smyrna Beach, rising less than six feet from Washington Street, might as well have been the Sunshine Skyway over Tampa Bay. My shoulders bunched with tension and my knuckles whitened on the stick shift as I eyed the first “hill” in my...
David Lossing stood in a circle of light at Disney World Fort Wilderness Campground. He jutted his chin toward the furthest tent in our M.A.S.H.-like village stuffed with more than fifty members of New Smyrna Beach High School’s Spanish Club. “I’m headed to the party...
I scrunched into the shade cast by Jackie Herold’s brown boat of a car—her stepfather’s Chevrolet Impala—and let New Smyrna Beach’s sugar-fine sand sieve through my fingers. We’d driven down the Flagler Street ramp onto the beach and parked near The Islander Beach...
On Tuesday, April 22, 1975, my creative writing class of eleven students clambered into our teacher’s van in front of New Smyrna Beach High School. Florida morning steamed sweat across our foreheads and the backs of our necks. Fish and salt and the herbal scent of...
