![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/John_Toddler_with_Parents_t850.jpeg\" "\\"A")
<\/p>\nEditor\u2019s note: Way Back When is an ongoing feature that records and preserves the stories and memories of lifelong West Orange and Southwest Orange residents.<\/p>\n
John Mills Nabers, now 88, remembers Windermere as a lonely town when he arrived here as a 5-year-old. He and his parents moved to Oakdale Street following his father\u2019s retirement from the United States Department of the Treasury \u2014 years after helping agent Eliot Ness of the Untouchables take down notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone.<\/p>\n
Nabers\u2019 loneliness was compounded at the age of 12 when his father died; then it was just him and his mother. He recalled going fishing regularly to put supper on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cWindermere was a natural paradise then,\u201d Nabers said. \u201cAs a child, we spent the days fishing, swimming, boating, hunting. \u2026 We made our own poles from local bamboo for catching shiners and brim. \u2026 When we fished, it was serious because we would clean them and eat them the same day for supper. We ate fish several times a week, which was encouraged by our mothers, due to the much harder times economically during World War II.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The war affected everyone in America.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a child of World War II, and people today don\u2019t realize how the culture was just completely dominated by the war,\u201d Nabers said. \u201cEverybody either had a family member fighting the war or a friend. \u2026 There was nobody who wasn\u2019t extremely patriotic.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then you had ration stamps,\u201d he said. \u201cButter wasn\u2019t available \u2014 it all went to the military. The average person could not go to the store and buy butter. That\u2019s how margarine came about. It came in a long plastic bag, and it was snow white, but there was a little capsule the size of a marble, concentrated red dye or dark orange, and you would squeeze that till it punctured in the bag and you kneaded it from the outside so it was of uniform color and the color was yellow like butter. It was totally cosmetic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everything used by soldiers was rationed, he said. Ration stamps were handed out for commodities such as coffee, flour, gasoline, cigarettes, rubber tires and nylon stockings.<\/p>\n
\u201cTransportation was difficult due to rationing of gas,\u201d he said. \u201cMost families had only one car, if any, and we had no bus service, so Windermere was pretty much our own world, except for the weekly trip to Orlando for items you could not buy at Parramore or Grice\u2019s stores.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A young John Nabers was photographed with his parents, Albert and Lou Nabers, prior to their move to Windermere.<\/p>\n
A CHILDHOOD OF IMAGINATION
As a child, Nabers and his friends often made trips to the town\u2019s small dump at the end of West Seventh Avenue near Lake Butler where Fernwood Park now is.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cExploring items from the dump was a fun adventure,\u201d he said. \u201cI would occasionally bring items home to Mother as a great gift, and she would thank me before storing it in neverland. I remember (finding) antique irons. \u2026 We used them as doorstops.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is where folks got rid of unwanted items that couldn\u2019t be burned in the backyard burn pit \u2014 anything from old furniture to fireplaces and other metal pieces.<\/p>\n
Everyone had an area for burning trash in their backyards, Nabers said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople would dig them 6 or 7 feet deep, and you would burn everything until eventually there was nothing left but tin cans,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen it filled up, you filled it up with dirt and dug another one. \u2026 Everybody had wells \u2026 the septic tank was homemade \u2026 out of concrete \u2026 and it was about 20, 25 feet from our well. It was crazy, but nobody got sick. It was a shallow well, and you could see the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lake Butler was a popular destination when Nabers was growing up.<\/p>\n
\u201cBird Island was always teeming with birds,\u201d he said. \u201cDuring the nesting season when we explored the island, we literally had to step over the (bird) nests. The trees were so full they had to nest on the ground. Snakes, gators, turtles, muskrats, raccoons and other animals (were) frequently seen on the island.\u201d<\/p>\n
Growing up in a rural area made several items invaluable to a child \u2014 a pocketknife and a BB gun.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the time a boy was 5 or 6 years old, he was given a pocketknife,\u201d Nabers said. \u201cWe spent our time fishing, and you would need a knife to cut the fishing line or whittle a piece of wood to build a sling shot. \u2026 One of my prized possessions is a green handled Boy Scout knife.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/John_Scouts_Far_Left_t850.png\" "\\"John")
<\/p>\n
John Nabers, far left, and his friends were members of Windermere\u2019s Boy Scout troop.<\/p>\n
WILD WINDERMERE
Because there were fewer than 300 residents \u2014 mostly snowbirds \u2014 inhabiting the town, it was common to see and hear wild animals in the vicinity, Nabers said. His father once told him he could hear panthers screaming in the wooded areas south of Windermere.<\/p>\n
He called his childhood a Tom Sawyer-like existence but also remembers the solitude. There weren\u2019t many children his age in the area. Windermere Elementary School, then at Main Street and Sixth Avenue, had two classrooms for all six grades, and some grades only had four or five students.<\/p>\n
When it was time to continue his schooling, Nabers said, his mother thought he would get a better education in Orlando so he attended Memorial Junior High and Boone High schools. He graduated from Edgewater High School.<\/p>\n
Children had to be creative with their activities; there were no organized programs such as Little League.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had to be self-reliant and creative,\u201d Nabers said.<\/p>\n
Television had yet to be invented, but listening to radio shows was a popular pastime.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAdventure programs like \u2018Sky King\u2019 and \u2018The Lone Ranger\u2019 were sponsored by cereal companies, and on Saturday mornings, we would all gather around the radio to hear three or four of these programs in sequence,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of our favorites was \u2018Sky King\u2019 \u2026 who used his airplane to fight evil,\u201d he said. \u201cYou could mail in some pocket change and the box top of the cereal and get special prizes. The most memorable was this ring that glowed in the dark, and I remember spending half the night with my good friend, Ray Duncan, talking about this amazing ring. It had a secret compartment and a miniature ball-point pen; it would recharge itself in the light and then glowed for about an hour. \u2026 It also had an embossed recess you could press on hot wax and \u2026 press the logo of Sky King.\u201d<\/p>\n
Free time also was spent swimming in Lake Bessie, riding bicycles, shooting BB guns and collecting comic books.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents gave me a subscription to Disney Comics and Marvel Comics,\u201d Nabers said. \u201cThey would come once a month, and you would go to the post office and ask, \u2018Did my comic books come in?\u2019 You would go home and start reading them. And of course, you saved them. If other kids had different ones, you could trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
One source of entertainment that included all the townsfolk was the weekly potluck supper held at Windermere Town Hall. They always ended with a cake walk, and the winner left with a cake baked by one of the Civic Club members.<\/p>\n
Other times, traveling entertainers made a stop in the town to put on a show or residents would show movies. Nabers\u2019 mother enjoyed showing fishing pictures as well as cartoons sponsored by Castle Films.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese sessions were well attended,\u201d Nabers said. \u201cThere was nothing else to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/John_with_Wife_Kids_t850.jpeg\" "\\"John")
<\/p>\n
John and Patricia Nabers raised their children, Kerry and Cade, in Windermere.<\/p>\n
HOME SWEET HOME
Nabers still owns his family\u2019s first Windermere home, and his granddaughter lives there today \u2014 about six blocks from his current home on Lake Bessie. The original was built around 1916 and probably is the third or fourth oldest house in Windermere, he said.<\/p>\n
It was a small home, just big enough for Nabers and his parents, Albert and Lou. After his father died, his maternal grandmother moved from Georgia and occupied one of the bedrooms that had been added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t have central heat,\u201d Nabers said. \u201cWe had a central fireplace and kerosene space heaters. It wasn\u2019t insulated very well \u2026 and we didn\u2019t have exterminators, so we\u2019d throw DDT (insecticide) in the closets to kill the roaches. \u2026 Nobody ever died or got sick that I knew of.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family also kept a vegetable garden and a poultry coop, and everyone enjoyed fresh harvests, eggs and chicken. His grandmother taught him how to ring a chicken\u2019s neck and pluck the feathers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best part of this was sitting down at the dinner table and enjoying the delicious fried chicken and biscuits and whatever vegetables were growing in the yard,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For other food, families shopped at the two retail businesses on Main Street in Windermere, The Parramore Store, at Sixth Avenue, and Grice\u2019s Store, at Fifth Avenue. Both sold groceries and gasoline, and Grice\u2019s had a cold storage room to keep meat.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother would send me to Parramore with a gallon jug to get kerosene for our lamps,\u201d Nabers said. \u201cI would stick my head in the store and say, \u2018Hey, Eunice, I have a gallon of kerosene; put it on our bill.\u2019 (Mother) would send me down there for food. I was about 6 or 7. I would walk there barefoot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Surrounding their house were a few neighbors, John Luff and Loren Robertson (L.R.) \u201cAndy\u201d Williams; vacant lots; and multiple orange groves and wooded areas.<\/p>\n
Nabers remained in Windermere until he attended the University of Florida, preparing for a career in banking and joining the Air Force Reserves. He worked for such companies as Florida National Bank, SunBank and SunTrust and retired at age 55 as SunTrust\u2019s senior vice president and senior credit officer.<\/p>\n
John Nabers and Patricia Cade Nabers made Windermere their home after marriage. They enjoyed 59 years of married life until her death in 2022. They had two children, Kerry Nabers Sharpe and the late Cade Nabers, and two grandchildren \u2014 and all attended Windermere Elementary School.<\/p>\n
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