JANIE GOULD

When some cabins were vacated in Holopaw — that’s a dot on the map north of Yeehaw Junction in Osceola County — a man named Claude Beatty bought them for his new tourist camp in Vero Beach. That was in the 1920s, and he named the place Camp Gordon. Laura Beatty, his daughter-in-law, has heard stories about the original cottages.

“Well, he and my husband would go over and tear them apart and bring them home and reassemble them. He kept on building and building until he had about 60 cottages. Camp Gordon was well known  from Jacksonville to Miami. The same people would come down every year and they would want the same cottages ever year, and before they would go home every winter we’d always have a big ham supper. My husband always said they’d come and bring $20 and two shirts and go home and never change either one of them!

Q: “How long would they stay?”

A: “From one to four or five months every year.”

Q: “What did they do while they were here? Were they golfers, fishermen?  Did they just hang out on the porch?”

A: “They were mostly fishermen.”

Q: “How much did they have to pay for a room, for a night, or a week?’

A: “Oh, I don’t think they’d get more than $10 or $25 for a week.”

Q: “You moved here in 1946 and married into the family and lived in one of those cottages…”

A: “We lived in three or four different ones.”

Q: “What was it like living right there on the property?”

A: “We never did go anywhere. It took all our time to run it. Later we opened a restaurant. I ran the restaurant and my husband ran the motel.”

Camp Gordon, later called the Gordon Motel, was along U.S. 1 on the north side of Vero Beach. The Citrus Motel, which is now on the site, is still in the family. The little neighborhood used to be known by the Beatty name.

“Long years ago it was called Beattyville. The Greyhound buses would come by and they would stop and ask if anybody wanted to get on or off at Beattyville. It was well known as Beattyville.”

Q: “Really?  I guess it was actually almost on a map. At least on Greyhound’s map!”

Laura Beatty’s sister, Gertrude Emlet, was also in the restaurant business.  She and her late husband, Bud, operated a small restaurant in the Beattyville area and then opened a larger restaurant, Emlet’s, on  Miracle Mile in Vero Beach. Gertrude did all the baking and also worked as the hostess.

“We got down there at 5:30 in the morning and I started baking.”

Q: “How many pies did you make in a day?”

A: “Oh my, well, just on a normal day probably 45, something like that. But on Thanksgiving – I guess that was the biggest day – I guess I would bake 100, sometimes 125 pies: pecan, pumpkin, chocolate, peach, apricot. We made our own meringue.”

Q: “How much was dinner, let’s say a fried chicken dinner?”

A: “Oh, we served fried chicken and two vegetables and coffee or tea and dessert for 85 cents back then.  I think it probably went to a dollar and a half, maybe, for a whole dinner.”

Q: “Did people tip?”

A: “Yeah, they tipped, but nothing like they do now. If we had a party of four and got a dollar we were really lucky!”

Q: “I bet you had the same customers for years and years.”

A: “Yes. We closed every year for a month or two in the summer time. People said, oh, you won’t have any business when you come back; you close like this, nobody’s going to come back to you!  We were full the night we closed and we were full the day we opened. It didn’t make any difference at all.”

The Emlets’ first restaurant included a bedroom where they lived. Gertrude suffered from hay fever so a doctor advised the couple to get air-conditioning for the room.

“I believe it was probably ’47 or maybe ’49, somewhere along in there. Bud Holman had to special order it for us.”

Q: “It was the first air-conditioner in town?”

A: “That’s what Bud Holman said.”

Q: “He owned the Cadillac dealership. Did he also sell air-conditioners ?”

A: “No. He just did it as a favor for us.”

Q: “How did you like it? Did it help your hay fever?”

A: “Yes. It helped a lot. It was life saving for me. I still like air-conditioning!”

Laura Beatty and Gertrude Emlet still live in Vero Beach and cook noonday dinners for family members every day.

This story was first heard as part of Janie Gould’s award-winning Floridays series on WQCS radio/88.9 FM.  To hear other shows in the series, go to wqcs.org and click on News and then on Floridays.