In the summer of 1964, my parents brought me kicking and screaming from Battle Creek, Michigan to a little town in Florida called her Nando. Her Nando, Florida, approximately five miles north of Envarnus, Florida. It is there where I met a bunch of interesting characters. One of them was Lawrence Earl Baker Miley.
He was the town council. We're going to talk about a lesson that he taught me. Hi, I'm Michael Gross. This is the Daily Grateful and Living in the little town of Fernando, Florida.
In the summer of 1964 was Culture Shock to me because I came from Battle Creek, Michigan. One of the things that I did in Battle Creek, Michigan was go to school with people who were not white. Yeah, they were African Americans and I went to school with it. It was very common.
When we moved to the little town of Fernando, the African Americans had their own school and the white people had their school. And the other interesting thing is that all the businesses had white men's bathrooms, white women's bathrooms, and then they had another bathroom out back usually. And it was labeled colored. Anyway, one of the first people that we met in that little town because my parents bought a restaurant in that little town and they were going to start a family business with a restaurant.
What a bad idea. They made money. But still, what a terrible idea. Was Baker Miley?
About three doors down, he had a gas station and he was the elected town council. He was the law. Now, Baker was a very large man with a very large tummy. He had a gas station there and upstairs from the gas station, there was an apartment that he stayed in during the week or he stayed in during the day.
He lived there with his girlfriend. All right, let's just say it like it was. He lived there with his girlfriend. Now down the road a little bit, just on the near the outskirts of town was his house.
That's where his wife was. And he was there. He was half-time with his wife, half-time with his girlfriend. And Baker liked drinking pepsi's.
And he would sit there and drink pepsi's all day wearing a white beater t-shirt, very hot summertime in Central Florida. And he just sit around and pontificate knowledge. And I was all upset about living in her nando. I missed my friends in Michigan.
I was really not happy. He had a couple of sons, by the way. He had a son named Freddie and another son named Mansey. Mansey's real name I think was James.
But you know, Freddie and Mansey, Miley, those were the kids. They were close to my age. Well, let's see. I think Fred was a year older than me and Mansey was two years younger than me.
But you know, those were the kids. And I was complaining to the kids and there was Baker sitting there drinking pepsi. And he looked over at me. And by the way, I thought Baker was like really old.
Of course, I was really young. I was 13. I thought he was old. He wasn't old at all.
He was not old at all. He looked old. Okay. He looked very old and he looked at me and he said, son, I said, yeah, I'm going to tell you something and you're going to remember it for the rest of your life.
I said, what's that? He goes, let the rough edges drag. They'll soon wear smooth. I said, what the hell does that mean?
He goes, I'm going to say it again. But I'm not going to say it a third time. Let the rough edges drag. They'll soon wear smooth.
I said, okay, I'm going to thought about that. And I went and told my sister what he told me. And she said, you know, sounds strange, but it makes a lot of sense. But she said, but you know, my sister was one of my guardian angels and she was a good andary angel.
We'll talk about that sometime too, the good andary angel. Things are hard sometimes. Things are difficult. But if you are, let's say you've got a bunch of jagged rocks and you hook them up to ropes and you drag them down the road, they're going to wear smooth and they're going to get nicer and your feelings about moving here to this god for a second place from Battle Creek, Michigan, it's really jagged.
It's hard. But the more you do this, the more you get into this, the smoother it's going to get and the easier it's going to get. I said, yeah, that makes sense. The interesting thing about Baker Miley is that I never saw him again after we moved away from the little town of Fernando.
We stayed in Fernando for I think 13 months and then we moved down to where I live now in the beautiful Tampa Bay area. And I love it here. Never saw Baker again. Never saw Mansey again.
Never saw Freddie again. They're all dead now. And here's the thing. I thought Baker was so old.
I just looked it up. He died in 1986 and he was only 61. He died in 2005. That was young.
And Freddie died in 2013. I'm very grateful to have met Baker Miley. We'll see you tomorrow.