Building a Home, One Kid (and Camper) at a Time

More Kids in the House
~ By Boyd Hamilton – Key West, Florida, July 1996

Five kids, a wife, and a campground office are just too much to cram into a house trailer—no matter how big it is. Although I wasn’t quite ready for it, financially or otherwise, I knew we had to build a proper house. We got it finished in time to move in by 1969.

The office was in the living room, and Elsie and I still had to sleep with our clothes on so we could handle night calls. We put up a fence around the back of the house, and though it was full of wild trees, it made a wonderful spot for the kids to play. It was shady and close by, and they could swing through the trees like Tarzan.

Even though we worked hard—really hard—we had some great times too. Elsie and I were always around to share in the kids’ ups and downs. It was a good place to raise a family. And we had five.

Our bedroom in the new house faced Maloney Avenue, and as I later realized, it lined up directly with the end of 5th Street. One night, I woke up to the sound of screeching tires. I truly thought a car was going to come right through our bedroom wall. It scared the daylights out of us.

The next morning, we measured the skid marks—125 feet long. A few days later, I bought a couple of big telephone poles and set them in the ground as a barricade between the house and the street. No one’s ever hit them, but for the next nineteen years, we slept a lot more peacefully knowing they were there.

Because I had riparian rights, I could buy the bay bottom in front of my property. At first, I hesitated—it was just open water. But Mr. Bernstein advised me to buy it while I still could. On May 5, 1966, I purchased 3.1 acres of bay bottom for $1,317.50 from the Internal Improvement Board, a state agency.

Of course, then came the question of filling it. Again, Mr. Bernstein told me there would come a day when I wouldn’t be allowed to. So I filled it. That was no small project—it took $60,000 just to fill the area from the trees out to the point the first time. Over the years, we added more fill along the edges, on top as it settled, and created a circular area at the end for a saltwater swimming pool. I lost track of the total cost, but I figure we put in well over $80,000 worth of fill.

Once we filled the triangular area of our bay bottom, we smoothed off the point and covered it with coral screenings (crushed coral). It made a very respectable beach, and guests loved it. There was enough sand for the kids to dig and play, and everyone could lay out in the sun if they wanted to.

Things were going great until the movie Jaws came out. After that, people were suddenly terrified that a shark might swim right up to our beach. You’d hear women screaming at their kids, “Don’t go in the water!” We knew we had to do something.

So we had Toppino’s haul in more fill and shape it into a big circle around the beach. We installed a pipe at each end so the water would rise and fall with the tide. I used to joke with guests that we changed the water in our pool twice a day. With that in place, guests could swim comfortably again.

That setup worked for a while, until 1990, when we built a big freshwater pool with a spacious deck and a thatched hut. After that, nobody used the saltwater beach anymore, and we eventually got permits to fill that area for waterfront campsites.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I bought a golf cart to get around the campground. Elsie and the kids painted it and wrote “Welcome Wagon” on the side. From that point on, we couldn’t imagine running the campground without a golf cart—or two or three.

Eventually, it became a tradition: Elsie and I started dressing up as Mr. and Mrs. Claus on Christmas Eve, riding around the park in the golf cart and handing out candy to all the kids. I did my best ho-ho-ho-ing, and it always brought plenty of smiles. People loved it—they still take lots of pictures of us when we do it.