PHOTO EDITING | ExerciseFOUR (Summary: Choose four images for the cover story layout and justify your choices)

1. Download the file “johnsroad” from the server [radnieck > PE-1 > johnsroad] (The folder contains the story, 11 images and a caption sheet.)

2. Open the story “Passing time on Johns Road,” Read it. This is mandatory. A picture editor cannot

make good editing decisions without reading the story or if the story has not been written, at least having

a working knowledge of what the story is about).

3. Open the document “Johns BrothersCaptions.doc” and read the caption for each image.

4. Assume this LAYOUT is for the Sunday paper. The story starts on the cover and will run for six

more pages (you are responsible for selecting the cover images only).

5. Due to the nature of the Section A cover, there is room only for four images for this story.

6. Decide which of the four images (from the 11 you have) you want to run on the cover.

7. Indicate which of the four images is your dominant (or lead) picture in terms of size. Then select a

second, third, and fourth image keeping in mind that each image must run smaller than the one before it.

8. Place the four images on a Word OR InDesign document. Lay the images out in order of descending

size as shown below. Identify each picture by its slugline.

slugline slugline slugline slugline

7. In writing, justify your choice of images and why you chose the images for dominant, secondary, etc.

To complete the assignment successfully, your justification must be (grammatically) well written; be

at least 200 words (succinctly written, not wordy or redundant) and be thoughtful, organized and

double space.

8. Print out your document (do not print it in color)

9. Write you name at the top of the page(s) and be prepared to discuss your choices in class.

Passing time on Johns Road SportsPark Buster Johns walks to the press box at the Florida Sports Park before the races in October. Buster, whose son Randy is on the Board of the Swamp Buggy Races, was called to the park to try to remove a hive of bees that settled into a wall of the press box.

Bee business Buster processes honey with his brother Seth, who both used to work as beekeepers maintaining hundreds of hives in the area The two now only process honey a few times a year for a friend. Back problems, aggravated by lifting the heavy honey boxes, have caused Buster get out of the honey processing business. InCourtAgain Buster Johns waits for his turn for first appearance in misdemeanor court at the Collier County Courthouse. Buster, who was burning the remnants of an old shed, was ticketed for burning without a permit. He used to know the judges and was able to burn without permits. He was given a fine, probation and community service. He said next time he would get a barrel, some hot dogs and marshmallows before burning wood on his property.

SwampBuggyRace.jpg Seth and Buster, along with other family members, cheer on Buster’s oldest son, who’s leading the final lap of a swamp buggy race. CypressBridge.jpg The old Cyrpress bridge to Johns Road BusterJohns Buster Johns talks about the old Johns Sawmill, which had recently been moved off his property to Northern Florida and is now run by his nephew Bud Ford. Brothers Buster Johns, right, and his brother Seth Johns have a cup of coffee in the doorway of the honey barn on Buster’s property along County Road 951 after running a batch of honey. Buster’sMOM Buster helps his mother Marguerite Johns to her wheelchair outside her home. This was Marguerite’s homecoming after spending several months in the hospital with an infected leg. The family has lived in the area almost for Buster’s entire life, more than 70 years. Everyone calls her “mother.” Even if she’s not your mother, she still wants to be called “mother.”

Slideshow.jpg While watching a slideshow of photographs of Seth's life at a memorial service for his brother, Buster and his daughters Joanne Baker and June DeBlanc, reminisce and share a family laugh. “He was a good brother,” Buster said of the man who had lived and worked with him for most of their lives. SethCancer.jpg Seth went downhill fast after the cancer he was fighting spread to his brain. He wanted to die at home, where Buster sat bedside to visit with him, but the day before he died Seth was moved to a hospital. RelativesOnJohnsRoad.jpg Buster tries to coax his grandson Ryan to sit on the porch swing with him. Buster often passes the time relaxing with a cup of coffee on his porch swing. Buster’s family is so large it could fill a high school auditorium.

Photographs by David Ahntholz.

Passing time on Johns Road By DIANNA SMITH

Sunday, July 3, 2005

There’s a difference between a Yankee and a damn Yankee. A Yankee is someone up North who comes to the South for a brief spell, packs his bags and heads back home. A damn Yankee is someone from the North who comes to the South one day and never bothers to leave. Both kinds annoy Buster. Allen “Buster” Johns was born and raised in Florida. He’s a countryman who grew up living in, playing in and loving the woods. He knew Collier County back when, and tells stories like he’s sittin’ cross-legged around a campfire. His Southern accent is as thick as the coffee he drinks, and he says words like July “J-o-o-ly.” He labels cowboy hats like women label shoes. He’s got his day hat, his workin’ hat and his Sunday hat. Buster is a perfect picture of old Florida. But that picture is starting to fade, just like the land around Buster’s house. The mess of trees that once was Buster’s stompin’ grounds is now home to shopping centers and fancy houses. Buster made his living sweating under the Florida sun, chopping and sawing trees for lumber in a sawmill by his house. Development, back then, was what kept him in business. Now it’s liable to push him out. Buster’s house sits east of the boulevard. He built it in the 1960s because he wanted to bunk in the woods, near the crickets and the swamps and the lakes famous for ‘gator huntin.’ But, nowadays, the law keeps him from cutting trees and from riding his airboat in the swamps. One of the lakes is dried up. When he’s on his front porch swing and sits real still, he can hear the cars humming from Collier Boulevard. It’s the new Naples. The one that riles up people like Buster. The tips of his toes rock that swing back and forth. Empty cans of chewing tobacco fill a trash can by his feet. Oak and cypress trees crowd his almost 4 acres, like lampposts in a parking lot. They’re old and sturdy and made it through the hurricanes, he says proudly, spittin’ tobacco from the left side of his mouth, aiming for no particular spot. A breeze passes, rustling the leaves and tapping the wind chimes dangling from his porch. They clank together, like empty glass bottles in a garbage bag. It’s peaceful in this neck of the woods. That is, until a fire truck drives by. “Those damn sirens, all day long,” he says as another spurt of tobacco juice shoots from his mouth. Buster knew Collier County back when it had a two-room

jailhouse, a population of about 500 and woods men would disappear in to search for the perfect Christmas tree. Collier, he says, just ain’t what it used to be. “I’m beginning to hate this place more and more every day,” Buster, 72, mumbles. His jagged fingernails painted in dirt tap a metal cup of dark coffee. “It seems like the story of my life. As soon as I find something I like, some Yankee takes it.” WELCOME TO JOHNS ROAD

The road is named after Buster and his family. It made sense to name it Johns Road because most everyone who lives along the gravel trail is somehow related to Buster. His family is large enough to fill a high school auditorium.

He and his wife of 49 years, Flora Mae, have 12 children, three who were adopted, and so many grandchildren that neither he nor Flora can count’em. He has three sons-in-law named Steve, some relatives he’d rather not be related to and then there are those who live on the road that aren’t kin to Buster, but call him Uncle Buster anyway.

One of Buster’s daughters lives on the next lot back with her family. Before she moved there, it was home to his in-laws. Next to his daughter lives Buster’s sister-in-law, her children and his youngest brother. Just on down a piece is where his mother lives with one of his sisters. One of Buster’s sons lives next door to the ladies.

Johns Road is on the other side of a rickety bridge missing its railing. The bridge doesn’t look like it could hold a car let alone a truck of lumber, but Buster swears by it. He says it’s strong enough to carry an ambulance or a fire truck, both which have been across it this year. It sits atop a canal where Buster used to fish for bass and where his children learned to jump off a diving board.

The canal is so polluted now; he won’t even let his grandchildren near it.

Buster’s house is a little less than a mile south of Collier Boulevard and Rattlesnake Hammock Road. It’s on a winding road lined with pinwheels that twirl in the wind. When someone’s driving down this road, dust swirls and gravel crunches beneath the tires, letting Buster know someone’s a comin.’ There’s an unwritten rule that if a man drives in these parts, stranger or not, he’s gotta give a nod to the neighbors.

Even if that man is a Yankee.

A chicken pen sits in Buster’s yard, where roosters crow and chickens peck the ground. Also inside are four peacocks with tails long like a train on a wedding gown and feathers the colors of deep blue, teal, purple and black. Long high-pitch noises pour from their beaks, like desperate meows from a hurt cat.

Buster bought the peacocks when Flora decided a few years back that she wanted pets. She picked peacocks because when they fan their tails, the tails look like open umbrellas splattered with finger-paint. For Flora, it’s like being able to see a rainbow every day, right in her very own yard.

Since the peacocks came to live, Flora developed severe breathing problems, which keep her inside most days. Instead of watching them from the front porch swing with Buster, she now peeks through the curtains and stares out the kitchen window, hoping to see those “purty” tails.

The Johnses have had lots of pets. Horses, goats, cows. Buster even had a cat. It followed Buster wherever he went, but Flora didn’t like it, so one day Buster grabbed a gun from his kitchen and shot it. He liked the cat, but says he couldn’t take Flora’s complaining no more.

The kitchen and dining room is filled with things like a ceramic statue of a rooster, rows of unused tea pots, Indian figurines the size of a 4-year-old and more than a dozen wind chimes that match the ones hanging from the porch. There’s always enough food on the shelves to feed a small army. When his grandchildren visit, they say their quick hellos and then head straight to the refrigerator, where they know they’ll find chocolate and peanut butter candies stuffed in an inside drawer.

The dining room table, which Buster made of cypress wood, has a bench on one side long enough to fit 12 children during family meals. A handful of colorful pinwheels substitute for roses in glass vases. They sit by the phone on the kitchen counter and only spin if someone flicks them.

The living room alone has 11 clocks, including one that plays Christmas music year-round and two that chirp once the clock strikes an hour. Everywhere you look there’s something to stare at — a gum ball machine, a harp, dancing stuffed animals, dolls that talk and signs with sayings like, “clean up your own mess.” On most days, Buster is out in his shop and Flora sits at her corner of the couch in a dress and slippers. Her long grayish-black hair is sometimes braided and rests over her left shoulder as she flips the remote control from one game show to the next.

Flora, 66, is quiet. But those who meet her shouldn’t let the silence fool them. Flora used to drive stock cars and crashed a time or two. She stopped racing when she became pregnant with her first child. She spoke enough when raising her classroom of children, so now it’s time to relax. She lets Buster do the talking and patiently listens as he tells stories over and over again.

When Buster tells stories, he talks fast, like an auctioneer. He clasps his hands and flicks his thumbnails like they’re instruments. The palms of his hands are chafed and stained with the earth, just as a country man’s should be.

Buster normally hides his light brown eyes and scraggly eyebrows beneath a pair of silver-rimmed glasses. Random pieces of short, white hair line the top of his nose, his brow and his ears. The back of his neck is tanned like leather, dyed by the sun during his long days working at the sawmill. He normally wears cowboy hats so the sun can’t tattoo his balding head. Each wrinkle on his cheek, each line around his lips and each crease beneath his eyes was put there by hard workin’, hard drinkin’,

heavy smokin’ and being a father and a husband.

Buster begins to tell a story. Click, click, click goes his nails. All the while, his wedding band still shines.

THE INVADERS

Johns Road no longer fits in here.

Nearby Collier Boulevard, between Rattlesnake Hammock Road and U.S. 41 East, is fancier and busier than Johns Road will ever be. There are classy homes and expensive golf courses. There’s even a Super Wal-Mart just a few miles north of Buster’s house. Plans to build a $75 million hospital are in the works, as well as an 80,000-square-foot medical office building. Construction is expected to start this year.

They want to put the hospital just up the road, near the southeast intersection of Collier Boulevard and Rattlesnake Hammock Road - a hop, skip and a jump away from where Buster lives. The same goes for Rock Edge, low-income housing planned for Amity Road that would cater to hospital employees.

Next door to Buster is a campground that’s been there since the 1970s. Owner Fritz Christinat says though the property isn’t on the market, it’s common for brokers to stop by and offer to buy the land. He says he might develop it himself one day.

And, if he does, he says he’ll be respectful of neighbors like Buster.

“They were here first,” Christinat says. “We are the invaders.” Brent King lives on Amity Road, within walking distance of Buster’s house. Though he’s not blood-related to the Johnses, he still calls him “Uncle Buster” and treats the Johnses like they’re his family, too.

“We’re going to get boxed in, and we can’t get out,” Brent says one afternoon, walking to check on his horse in the barn next to his house. “I can holler and complain, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” Brent calls Texas his first home and as soon as you step into his house, you know he’s a real cowboy. Cowboy figurines and paintings decorate his hallway like women display pictures of their children. A license plate that reads “Enjoy More Beef” hangs on his office wall. He wears Wrangler blue jeans and a tan cowboy hat and says in a disappointed Southern twang that he knows once Rock Edge opens, traffic will flow past his now secluded house.

Brent shrugs his shoulders and says he knows the progress will be hard to fight. It’s a shame, he says, because Johns and Amity roads are two of the few areas left in Collier that managed to stay the same, despite the development that runs rampant across the county.

Destroying country neighborhoods like this one doesn’t make a lick of sense to Brent.

“There’s not a lot of history or tradition in Southwest Florida,” Brent says, shuffling paperwork he’s collected on Rock Edge. “This is the only history I know in Collier County, in these little

square blocks. I hate to see it go.

SAWDUST HILL

Buster is the father whose grown children excuse him for being too blunt. He’s brash and comical and likes to mix the two when he gets the chance. He’s an honest man who wears dirt like women wear makeup, and dark tobacco stains sometimes mark the corners of his mouth like Kool-Aid on a kid. The folks who live on Johns and Amity roads nicknamed Buster the mayor of these parts. Whether it’s giving a neighbor a cup of sugar or fixing a broken car, Buster is always taking care of someone.

His yard is his playground, where everything you could think of — old car parts, tools, airboats, car seats, toilet seats, lawn mowers — sprout like weeds.

The yard is where Buster spends most of his time. The yard is where his sawmill was.

At one time many years ago, Johns Sawmill was the sawmill in Collier County. Everyone knew where it was, what it was and who owned it. Customers were known to stop by what family and friends called Sawdust Hill any hour of the day to buy lumber for homes, boats and crawfish traps. He’d wake up before dawn and work until the sun set. Flora had a dinner bell she’d ring if she needed him for something. She still uses it on occasion when Buster is missing in his mess of madness he calls his yard.

Buster made his living from the mill for more than 30 years.

Before the sawmill came along, Buster was a commercial fisherman, just like his daddy. It was when a family friend announced he wanted to sell a sawmill that fishing became a pastime.

Buster’s dad agreed to take the mill in the late 1950s, but only if Buster promised to help. They traded two house boats and fishing gear for a sawmill they didn’t even know how to use. Neither knew how to cut a piece of wood.

“I walked around the corner kicking my rear end,” Buster says grinning, a gap where a front tooth used to be. It was knocked out during a fight he had with one of his sons.

“I didn’t even know how to cut a tree with a chain saw,” he says.

Buster eventually learned. The Johnses cleared woods to make way for Naples Manor, which offered cheap housing in East Naples. They cut cypress wood and sold it to cattle companies and local builders. Although there was never any official sign posted, the business was referred to as Johns Sawmill, because that’s exactly what it was.

“Everybody knows Johns Sawmill,” Buster says. “Back then, the town was a lot smaller. Everybody knew everybody. Now, you don’t know anybody.” Buster’s cypress put together six of the nine homes on Johns Road. His business was steady until environmentalists started coming round.

It was in the 1970s when Buster learned he had to stop chopping cypress. It had something to do with the wetlands and the ecosystem. All the environmental hogwash didn’t matter much to Buster. All he heard that day, and all he remembers, was that he couldn’t cut no more trees.

They say they’re preserving the Everglades, Buster says.

He blames that on the Yankees, too.

So Buster stopped working the mill in the early ‘70s. He paid $78,000 for a semi-truck and spent four years hauling meat across the United States. He also started a honey business, drove a dump truck for Collier County and had other odd jobs here and there, but he always returned to the mill.

He stole cypress wood and was able to fill a few more orders before he shut the mill down for good. The years caught up with him in his early 50s.

“I can’t pull logs like I used to. I wasn’t man enough,” he says during his lunch of barbecue ribs, green beans and peach cobbler. “I can’t make an honest day’s work now.” Although his children tried to talk him into keeping the mill so it could be a sort of landmark, Buster decided in the spring of 2004 to move it to Fort White in North Florida, 30 minutes outside Gainesville. It has a population of 409 people and resembles what Buster says Collier County used to be. He passed the mill on to his nephew, Bud Wood. Bud uses it mostly for personal reasons, but fills an order of lumber every now and then. Buster recently bought 15 acres near the mill so he could be closer to it. Some of his grown children are searching for property there, too. They say they don’t like what Collier County has become, either.

Buster says the mill was the oldest one in the county, so maybe it’s the oldest one in Fort White. He’d move there if Flora would follow, but she says no. She’s not leaving her home, even if the times are changing and things aren’t like they used to be.

Though she knows if Buster had his way, he’d leave in a split second.

“With him, all the people he knew have died away, the people he called friends, anyway. But the only friends he’s got up there is kin people. Oh, Lord. I dunno. My doctor’s here. All the kids have been born here.” She sighs.

“This,” Flora says, huddled in her corner of the couch, “is where I’m gonna die.”

A FAMILY TRADITION

He taps his worn shoes to the twang of country music and picks salted peanuts out of a paper bag. Buster sits on the first row of bleachers. His left arm brushes the railing. On the other side is a garbage can, where he plans to spit the tobacco now hidden in his left shirt pocket.

An Alan Jackson song blares from the speakers and people in the stands mouth the words. Except for Buster.

It’s all right to be a redneck. It’s all right to ride around in a dirty old truck. Catch a bunch of fish and shoot a bunch of duk. It’s all right to be a redneck.

Buster is at the Florida Sports Park, takin’ in the Collier County swampy buggy races, a tradition for many who brag that Florida is the only place in the entire world to host such a unique motor sport.

The races have remained a tradition after all these years. Perhaps that’s why people celebrate it so. Collier once was a haven for fishermen and country folks whose lives were spent living along two-lane roads, celebrating things like swamp buggy races. Now those lanes have grown to six and developers are building classy condominiums and upscale banks in those fields.

It’s becoming Yankee territory.

The buggy races arrive every year like a holiday and some even treat it as one. There’s a parade and traditional meals, like fresh lemonade and turkey legs on sticks. It’s a time when families gather to cheer on sweaty men and women racing in mud-caked swamp buggies while onlookers nibble on alligator nuggets and sip cold beer. Confederate flags flap in the wind from the back of pickup trucks and people proudly wear T-shirts displaying the stars and bars with the words “if this insults you, take a history lesson.”

They block their eyes from the sun as they watch buggies zoom around the track and disappear into a billow of water and exhaust. The crowd gasps in anticipation; some even hoping to see a buggy glide around the corner with two wheels propped in the air. It’s like NASCAR on water.

The scent of fresh french fries still dripping with oil lingers through the bleachers, as does gasoline fumes from the buggies and a foul, fishy odor, like the inside of an old tackle box.

The scents remind the Johnses of the good ol’ days.

It’s all right to be a redneck. It’s all right to work hard in the sun all day Drink a couple beers after balin’ hay It’s good to be a redneck

The constant roar of engines lingers most of the day. The louder one sounds, the louder another one gets. They sound like giant, angry bees arguing over honey.

The buggy races are definitely a family affair for Buster and his kin. Members travel from Georgia to be part of it. On this day, Randy Johns, the eldest of Buster’s clan, just finished racing his buggy, Top Gun. Randy owns Phoenix Associates construction and, during the buggy races, he raced his son and his wife.

The family huddles in the bleachers like a cheerleading squad, screaming and waving their arms. Coolers sit at their feet, American flags are in their hands, the names of the buggies they’re rooting for are on their T-shirts and Buster sits right in front, keeping a watchful eye on his grandchildren catching toad

frogs beneath the stands.

He’s been sitting in that spot for four hours next to his brother, Seth Johns. Together, they watch the buggy races and analyze them like they’re watching the Daytona 500. The turns, the dips, the sound of the engine. They notice everything.

Including how even the races aren’t what they used to be.

To Buster, even the swamp buggies are changing. Before, it used to be how far they race in the mud. Now, he says, it’s how fast they can go.

The only time Buster leaves the stands is to see Randy, who places runner-up in the Budweiser Fall Classic competition. That makes Buster proud. He adjusts his cowboy hat and pushes his way through the crowd. People cram against a fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of the winner throwing the Swamp Buggy queen into the mud bath, another buggy tradition.

But Buster doesn’t care to see a teen-ager get dunked in muck. He wants to see Randy accept his trophy. Afterward, Randy walks toward his dad and leans over the fence for a congratulatory hug.

The rest of his family is still in the stands, cheering.

“He had a good race,” Buster says, walking back to his car with Seth. “He done good.”

‘SQUEEZING US OUT’

The Florida Sports Park is just down the street from Buster, close to where the new hospital will be.

Like many other old-time Collier residents, he’s spent many a day in those bleachers watching swamp buggies race in a “Mile-O-Mud.” The races have been a tradition in Collier since 1949, back when the entire town would shut down to celebrate the races.

But those buggies may race right out of Collier County.

The owners, Swamp Buggy Inc., announced last year they would sell the property to Mike Taylor, founder and CEO of Vision and Faith Inc., but only if Taylor could find another place for the sports park.

Taylor wants to develop the land, which is considered a hot commodity off of Collier Boulevard and Rattlesnake Hammock Road. He entered into a contract to buy 50 acres off Immokalee Road, where Busy Bee Nursery sits, figuring the sports park could move there because the nursery’s owner says he was considering moving anyway.

But residents in that area don’t want the park there, so they plan to fight it. They live in an area developers have just recently discovered, which will eventually put them in the same shoes as Buster.

The sports park has been in its current location since 1986. Before that, it was off Radio Road where Tom Cannon, president of Swamp Buggy Inc., says development pushed it out. Cannon says if the park moves again, it probably would be the last move before it’s pushed out of Collier County for good.

“Land is getting to be a premium. It’s being bought up and developed,” Cannon says. “The development is just squeezing us out.” Those damn Yankees.

A COLORFUL LIFE

Her name is Margarette Johns, but everyone calls her “mother.” Even if she’s not your mother, she still wants to be called mother, just as an older woman expects to be called Mrs. or ma’am.

She lifts the sleeves of her floral-printed dress and shows her wrinkled, discolored skin drooping from her arms. Her left foot throbs from bed sores, but she manages to ignore it long enough to use a walker when she has to.

She’ll tell you that she didn’t used to look like this. She once had fiery red hair with a temper to match, hands so tiny she could fit one into a mason jar and more freckles than God has pennies.

Before she started losing feeling in her fingers five years ago, she was known for her quilting. She made quilts of baby clothes for the girls and rebel flags for the boys.

She speaks loudly, as if everyone else is hard of hearing, and when she tells stories, one always leads to another. Just like her son, Buster.

Her hearing is faint and her memory comes and goes, but she can still recall certain memories as if they had just happened yesterday. Though some may argue ages and dates she’s convinced are correct, other details of her life are rarely challenged.

No one else can tell her what it was like to live with a man who drank too much and spent many a day locked up in a jail cell. The first time, he was busted for making moonshine. The second was because he shot a man, but didn’t kill him.

Mother, who turns 95 today, had six children to look after. She gathered and sold oysters and washed clothes for the wealthy so she could afford what she called poor folks’ food — rice, beans, mullet.

When her husband was away, she protected the family, with the shotgun hidden in the kitchen, just in case she needed it. And Buster, the oldest, had to care for his brothers and sisters. He used to take the baby to school with him, but the crying got to be too much so the teacher made him leave. That was when Buster was in the sixth grade.

He never went back to school. Instead, he stayed home to help his mother.

“I tell ya, I’ve lived a life. It was a colorful life,” Mother says. “But I don’t want to go through it again.” Framed photographs cover her living room walls like wallpaper. They’re squeezed together as if they’re puzzle pieces, filling virtually every empty space.

Mother is typically found in her brown La-Z-Boy, which sits in front of the television set. On this day, a bright pink ribbon labeled “World’s Greatest Grandma” is pinned to the front left side of the chair. Her brittle, blondish hair brushes it as she rests her head.

She came to Florida from Michigan when she was 9 years old. Her father, “Barefoot” Williams, decided to move the family south where there would be more opportunity to make money. Barefoot got his nickname because he walked without shoes when he sold oysters door-to-door and nowadays has a road named after him in East Naples.

Mother eventually met her future husband Allen Johns. She was set to marry another man at the time and even kept the wedding date, but decided to marry Allen instead.

On the day they married, they bought a pack of gum and went to the movies. Her sister ended up marrying the man Mother was originally engaged to.

The couple lived in Wauchula, in central Florida, and also in Fort Myers, before settling in Collier County. She liked it then.

She doesn’t like it now.

She says there are too many buildings, too many people and not enough kindness. Not like back then, back when sand flies kept people from building homes along the beach and when bonfires accompanied picnics and night swims.

“This isn’t like the Naples we come to,” mother says almost angry, raisin’ her raspy voice. “It was home to people. Everybody helped each other. It was like a big family. Not no more. Not no more.” She recalls the time she was in the hospital and made it home for Christmas, but not in time to buy presents for her children. Her husband was in jail then, so she had to tell the children that Santa Claus wasn’t coming.

The next morning, they awoke to a living room filled with a decorated tree and so many presents it took them most of the day to unwrap.

Turns out friends had pitched in to surprise the family. Those were the days people could leave front doors unlocked, mother says. Things were brought to you, not taken from you.

“My table was so full of food, you couldn’t put nothin’ else there,” she says fondly. “I’ll never forget it.”

TROUBLE WITH THE LAW

Buster can’t recall the number of times he’s been in a courtroom or jail cell, but he can remember just how different being in trouble was back then, compared to now.

He’s in court this morning because he was slapped with a ticket for burning debris. His crime? Demolishing a shack that looked like it would collapse if someone accidentally bumped into it. He burned the debris not far from his house.

It was a small fire, he mumbles beneath his breath, annoyed he has to spend his morning hours on this nonsense. He purposely made the fire small because he didn’t want to frighten the neighbors in the campground next door. But apparently the smoke bothered someone because the Collier County Sheriff’s Office showed up with the local fire department.

“I’m aggravated,” Buster says. “I wanted to get rid of that stuff. It wasn’t like no big box fire. It just ain’t right.” Buster knows the rules. He knows a county permit is required to burn anything, but he also knows the county probably wouldn’t have given him one because he burns too close to homes. In his defense, he says, he’s been burning garbage his whole life, including the scraps of lumber from his sawmill. Back in the day, Buster says the local fire department would bring its younger guys to Buster’s place when he was burning cypress slabs as part of their training.

For Buster, their visits are no longer friendly.

Buster stands in his Wrangler jeans, white shirt and his workin’ hat, waiting for the courtroom doors to open, wondering how long this is going to take. He looks like the oldest one in line and figures he’s the only one there cited for burning something.

The thought makes him chuckle.

More than 10 years ago, he was cited for the same thing. He remembers walking inside the courthouse and shaking hands with the deputies, talking to the judge and leaving a happy man. Nowadays, he says, the people there stick their noses up in the air.

It’s Yankee justice.

He sat in many a jail cell back in his 30s and 40s because he’d get in trouble for fighting. That was when the courthouse was in Everglades City and the only jail in Naples was a two-room shack called the Paw-Paw patch. Bail then was $25, and the mosquitoes were so bad it was worth paying the money versus serving the time.

The men and women around Buster look annoyed, like parents do at amusement parks when their children are in the two-hour line for a two-minute roller coaster ride. The deputies finally arrive and everyone flocks to the door to get inside the room. It’s time to get this over with, Buster says.

“We’re like a bunch of cows trying to break through,” he whispers.

The deputies tell him to remove his cowboy hat.

Four hours later, Buster walks out of the courthouse $400 poorer and just plain irritated. It took too long, cost too much and, to top it all off, he has to work 80 hours of community service.

Eighty hours, he repeats.

The court typically doesn’t assign community service work to the elderly, but the judge figured though Buster is 72, he must have the energy of a 40-year-old if he was able to demolish a shed. In an odd sort of way, it made Buster proud.

“At least I ain’t in jail,” he says, holding his keys.

Buster walks toward his car, trying to remember the errands he has to run for Flora before heading home. Today isn’t his day. Besides the court hearing, he’s got to argue with a pharmacist about a lost prescription that Flora needs to stop her coughing. Then he’s got to clean up around the house before he tries to put a smile on his mother’s weary face.

Because tonight, they have to say goodbye to his younger brother, Seth Johns.

ONE SWEATY STETSON

A Stetson cowboy hat is on top of the closed casket, right next to a framed picture of Seth and Buster; two brothers typically spotted outside in plastic chairs, drinking cups of dark coffee in 90-degree weather, laughing about some old memory they shared. People say they looked like the two men in the Bartles and James commercial.

In the corner of the room is a large, rusted saw covered in pictures of Seth. There was young Seth, when his belly wasn’t so round and his face was thin, dressed in overalls for the swamp buggy parade. There was father Seth, with his six grown children and wife, Joyce, and then there was workin’ Seth, shovin’ lumber through the blade so quickly the men on the other end couldn’t catch up with him.

Beneath the blade sit two stumps of wood, with an ax and chain saw on top, both Seth’s tools. A bee box with Seth’s name engraved on it is also in this tribute corner in Dignity Funeral Home. Seth and Buster both worked as beekeepers until the fall of 2004.

Heads turn to the front door when Buster walks in with his mother. She’s dressed in black, leaning on Buster’s left arm like it’s her cane. A Jesus pin sparkles over her heart.

In this room, no one tells Buster to remove his Sunday hat, but he does it anyway. He’s still wearing his Wrangler jeans and white dress shirt.

Above the heads of those mourning are speakers where music softly spills out, the beat of this particular song catching the attention of some. It’s “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” a fast song, the kind not especially suited for a funeral, perhaps more for a bar featuring country line dancing and fiddle-playing on Saturday nights.

The kind of song, his family says, that Seth would have wanted at his funeral.

If it hadn’t been for Cotton-Eye JoeI’d been married long time

ago Where did you come from, where did you go Where did you come from Cotton-Eye Joe

Men hold cowboy hats against their stomachs as they walk to the casket to pay their last respects. Women hug, amazed, they say, that it’s been so long since they last spoke. Children chase one another around rows of chairs, too young to understand why the family is together on a weeknight. There are cousins who don’t recognize other cousins and people who at one time or another were related to the Johnses in some way. This funeral, like many others among large families, quickly turned into a family reunion.

And talk of how things used to be.

Seth Clifford Johns, 67, died March 20 of a rare cancer that spread quickly and invaded his tired body. He spent his final days in his home behind Buster’s house, confined to a bed by a window so he could stare outside. Buster stopped by every day. He talked to Seth like he wasn’t sick, like they were sittin’ in those plastic chairs drinkin’ coffee. Buster brought him things like bendable straws so Seth could sip juice without raising his head so high.

A few days before Seth died, Buster sat on his porch swing. It squeaked as he pushed it back and forth. He was a good brother, Buster mumbled, as if Seth were already gone. A good brother.

And a good husband.

Paul, one of Seth’s sons, pushes Joyce in the wheelchair she’s been confined to because of poor circulation in her legs.

Paul is wearing jeans, a red shirt and a red, white and blue ball cap with the word “rebel” stitched on the back. It looks like he’s got a wad of chew sittin’ idle in his lip.

Paul moves Joyce to the front of the room, where she can stare at pictures of her husband when he was healthy and happy. Her eyes tear up as she recalls moments she’s likely relived in her mind. Things were so different back then, she says.

And so much better.

Back when they were younger, the families gathered after the sun went down and made their own music with a banjo, fiddle and guitar. They played knee slappin’, yee-hawin’ country music while dancin’ with moonshine in their blood.

Seth and Buster had so much energy back then. When the sun was shining, the brothers worked at the mill or in the honey barn or on a broken swamp buggy. During their breaks, they’d talk on a CB that Buster had in the shop. Seth’s nickname was Woodcutter and Buster’s was Sawdust. Together, they talked to truckers all over America.

Seth’s nephew, the Rev. Wayne Wood, gave a short eulogy, which was simple, but meaningful, just like Seth’s life.

“Under one old sweaty Stetson, Uncle Seth lived through a

changing era,” Wayne says.

“He saw commercial fishing come to an end, the rise and fall of the sawmill dynasty.” And, as Buster sees it, he and Seth saw the rise and fall of Collier County.

Seth was buried the next day in Wauchula, right next to his daddy.

Buster didn’t go to the burial. Says he didn’t need to. He said his goodbyes to Seth way before Seth actually died.

He’ll always remember Seth as the good, hard workin’ brother that he was.

He remembers that while rockin’ on that porch swing.

That swing is for thinking. It’s like a throne for thought in the middle of Johns’ woods.

Buster continues to rock on that swing. He moves it slowly with the tips of his toes, while spewin’ tobacco on the ground. The breezes keep comin’ and those leaves keep rustlin.’ And Flora’s peacocks keep showin’ those “purty” tails.

Yep, Buster’s gonna keep this land. This land where he raised his kin and built a home. It’s where he and Seth cut wood and fixed buggies and drank dark coffee in heat thicker than molasses, swappin’ stories like they hadn’t heard ‘em before.

Come hell or high water, Buster will keep this land.

Cuz he ain’t sellin’ it to no damn Yankee.

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