Ruskin -- May 6 - 1910
Dear Lucy,
I know you are looking for a letter from us by this time. Alice sent me a letter she had from you since we left there. So we heard from you. Did Blanche get a letter I directed to her before we left Texas? We made this end of our journey with safty. Not so much worn as with our trip from Minn to Texeas. Traveling is made so easy. If there was any walking to be done a wheelchair was ready with a darkey to wheel it. I liked Texas very well with the northers excepted. I think it is most as warm there as here. They have the lovliest wildflowers there I ever seen anywhere. So many kinds, each variety by it self. Phlox and verbenias just as pretty as our cultivated ones. Such a display of roses in the dooryard, in the towns we passed, I never saw before. I havent seen but few flowers here. There may be some in some place. Mr Harrington passed here yesterday with a large boquet of Spanish needles flower. They are quite pretty.
The land here is coverd with the palmetto and scattering long leaf pine, soil grey sands of course will have to be fertilized. We are stoping in our tents. The house is not completed yet. The large tent is quite comfortable, double bed in the back end and trunks and chairs & stand on the sides. A homeade table one the end by the door, the legs setting in cans of water. Our cupboard is craker boxes tiered up. We have a small cook room and Clarence has a small house for his apartments.
It will seem good when we can get into the house. The tent has a floor and frame for the cloth. Is boarded up 3 ft from the ground and we can open up the cloth on all side, so plenty of air. There is a nice coast breeze nearly every day. I think we will like here. I have met a few of the ladies. I like their appearence well. I was envited out yestoday afternoon to a gathering of the ladies. Of course I couldent go. My walking is very much restricted. I believe the rheumatism is improving slowly. We are in hopes it will leave me as it did in Selma.
It has been pretty warm for a few days, 94. It begins to cool off the middle of the afternoon. With the coast breeze, one dont feel it as they do in the north.
Clarence has to do the cooking and washing. I get what I can ready the night before and C. does the cooking early in the morning. We have only one warm meal a day.
I miss the milk and butter of home, not much butter made here. Mostly eastern butter 40 cts lb, milk 10 ct qt.
We get some condensed milk. It is in liquid state for almost like cream. The salt water fish is fine, plenty of oysters, a few aligators. C. saw one in the inlet about four feet long. There was one captured and killed that measured 8 ft long.
I would like to step in and have a visit with you. It is'ent easy for me to write now and I make so many mistakes. The folks are well. Hoping to hear from you son. Yours with love to you and all the rest.