The adventures of a Florida boy (part 12)

In the 1960s, kids ran as far and wild as their imaginations would take them

ONE OF AN OCCASIONAL SERIES: My boyhood was spent in Florida in the 1960s on an island called Coquina Key. My parents’ waterfront home overlooked a large expanse of Tampa Bay. Back then, parts of the island were undeveloped, which left plenty of room for climbing trees, digging forts in the sand, and swimming in shark-infested waters (though we didn’t give the latter much thought).

This is part 12 of a random and mostly lighthearted series that I might eventually combine into a memoir. I’m telling these stories to the best of my recollection and changing names and physical descriptions just because it seems like the right thing to do.

The spider monkey on my mom’s shoulder

One of my best friend’s older sisters owned a pet spider monkey. He lived in a cage on my friend’s screened porch. I can’t remember the monkey’s name, but I do remember a lot about him.

Being boys, it was a severe test of our mettle to not tease the monkey. He could get quite excited and leap around and screech if we banged on the cage or made monkey sounds. But we rarely did this. Not because we were good boys but because my friend’s mom had threatened us with death if we were ever caught doing it.

And it was not an idle threat.

Teasing aside, the monkey was a lot of fun. When he was let out of his cage, he would race around the entire house, leaping from couches to chairs to cabinets with the speed and dexterity of Tarzan on his best day. He would also sit on our shoulders and pick something or other out of our hair. I hope whatever he found wasn’t alive.

I remember a day in November 1969. It was a cool evening by Florida standards with temperatures in the high 60s (rare) and low humidity (rarer). These kinds of nights were a treat and drew people from their homes as if to witness a rare phenomenon of nature. A group of at least thirty adults and kids gathered in my front yard. My mom was there, and she seemed in an especially good mood. My friend’s sister was there too, and she had brought her spider monkey, which was strapped into a small harness attached to a leash.

My mom had heard me tell numerous stories about the monkey, but this was the first time she had seen him in real life. And she was clearly charmed. The monkey also took a liking to her, leaping onto her shoulder and remaining there as if they had known each other their entire lives.

This went on for probably an hour or more, until it reached the point that my mom half-forgot the monkey was even there. She stood next to some thick bushes in the front of our house and carried on a conversation with the neighbors like it was perfectly normal to do so with a monkey next to her ear.

I was keeping a close watch, though, because boys my age have an inner sense of when something funny might happen, and they don’t want to miss it. As if on cue, the monkey sprang off my mom’s shoulder into the bushes, scrambled around a bit, and then leaped back onto her shoulder. In one of his tiny hands, he held a huge lizard by anole standards, easily six inches long. My mom turned her head to look. The monkey held the lizard close enough to her face to graze her eyebrows. And he chomped off the lizard’s head.

The scream that erupted from my mom’s mouth was so piercing and intense, the entire neighborhood stopped in its tracks. The monkey leaped high into the air and took off running. It took a bunch of us at least a half-hour to find and catch him.

But I wasn’t much help because I was rolling around on the ground laughing hard enough to pass out.

More than five decades later, this memory still makes me laugh out loud.

The adventures of a Florida boy — past episodes

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11

Cover reveal!

Book 2 of my teen adventure fantasy series Dark Circles will debut Oct. 30 but will be available via discounted preorder for subscribers of Jim Melvin’s Realms of Fantasy on Oct. 23-29. Here is the cover reveal for Do You Believe in Monsters?. I’d love to hear what you think of it!

Do You Believe in Magic? is book 1. It debuted on May 25.

Book 3 will be titled Do You Believe in Miracles? and will debut in February 2024.