A love letter to 9021 Yearling Drive

L to R: Doug Ripley, Erica the Amazon, Megan, Forest, Zoey, Hailey, Norman, Casey, Ashley, Kim, Chris & Alex in front of the tree house

Whenever someone asks where I’m from, I usually answer “Florida.” To be more precise – and simultaneously more vague – I should simply say, “the South.” That’s because I grew up in seven different houses in six different towns across three different states. Despite all the moves my comically nomadic family made, one homestead remained constant throughout much of my childhood: a modest house in Lake Worth, Florida, a home I never actually lived in. Until today, that home belonged to my aunt and uncle, Tami and Christopher Storey.

Tami & Chris on "Sea Storey"

Today, Tam and Chris closed on the sale of 9021 Yearling Drive and moved onto their 48-foot sailboat, “Sea Storey,” a double-masted Cheoy Lee once owned by Jimmy Buffett and featured on the cover of his “A Pirate’s Treasure” album. In the coming year, Tami and Chris plan to embark on a round-the-world sailing adventure, a retirement dream they’ve shared for decades. Like so many who know and love my aunt and uncle, I am incredibly happy for them. But we’re also nostalgic about the end of an era.

“Without the slightest doubt, some of my best childhood memories were in that house,” says Hailey, my sister.

Chris and Tami purchased 9021 Yearling Drive on the very last day of 1992. The house, built in 1978, was a CBS structure situated on 1.25 acres in “Palm Beach Ranchettes,” a suburban Palm Beach County neighborhood located just west of Florida’s Turnpike. “The Land of the Storeys,” as Chris came to call it, would become the childhood home of my cousins, Casey, 5; Zoey, 3; and Forest, newly hatched that October.

For the Winslows, the main attraction of “The Land of the Storeys” was always the people who lived there, but features like the property’s lush vegetation, tree house guest quarters and hot tub-sized fire pit certainly contributed to the magic. Tami, my mom’s soft-spoken sister, filled the yard with butterfly bushes and herbs she grew just for the resident caterpillars. She hung orchids from the pines and nurtured Giant Staghorn Ferns she nestled within the forks of oak trees. In addition to the tree house, my uncle, a yacht carpenter, constructed a backyard boardwalk, enclosed a cement slab drive to fashion a porch and, most impressively, helped add two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living/dining room. My cousins made their mark as adolescents generally do, filling the house with friends, laughter and homemade art projects.

L to R: Casey, Megan, Zoey, Forest, Kim, Hailey, Tami & Peggy

My family spent most holidays in Lake Worth, driving from Tampa or Atlanta or Gainesville to celebrate Christmas or, more commonly, Thanksgiving, with the Storeys. As a child, I came to regard the Lake Worth Turnpike Plaza as the miraculous beacon announcing our imminent arrival. By the time our suburban began bouncing up and down on the pot-holed, unpaved streets of the Ranchettes, Hailey and I had shed our seatbelts and were perched to spring from the moving vehicle and into a pack of leaping, barking dogs, the official Storey welcoming committee.

The Land of the Storeys was where I graduated from the kids’ table and forced my way into adult conversations, always colorful exchanges in which liberal Chris, the “Knothead,” sparred good-naturedly with my conservative dad, “Professor Poppycock.” It was my launching spot for an infamous golf cart ride that nearly ended in the canal. It’s where we danced and pranced with lampshades on our heads and waged barefoot, Storey vs. Winslow soccer matches and badminton competitions in the backyard. Once Chris enclosed the porch, the gang began gravitating toward epic, hours-long ping-pong tournaments inside.

The Land of the Storeys is also the environment I typically associate with my grandmother, the late family matriarch we liked to call “Grandmonster.” 

Grandmonster & Tami, June 1995

One of Hailey’s favorite memories is howling verses to 4 Non Blonde’s song, “What’s Going On?” from the top bunk of what eventually became known as “The Cat Room” as Grandmonster shouted back verses from the kitchen.

“I remember her sitting at the kitchen table, always smiling no matter what, looking gorgeous, always,” Hailey recalls. “She had a glow that just lit up her face and that attracted everyone to her.”

My aunt and uncle are exceedingly generous people, and they welcomed any and everyone to the never-ending party -- the more eccentric, the better. Over the years, the cast included fiery Donna, Tami’s college roommate; Erica, the 6-foot, Amazon mail mistress; bearded, bald Art who always seemed old but never seemed to age; Tiffany, the bejeweled divorcee; and Betsey, an ex-hippie from Canada who married Gorm from Denmark in the Storey’s backyard. For as long as I can remember, Betsey’s wheel-less van sat sinking in the grass behind the Storey’s shed.

I was about 14 when Doug, my parents’ “adopted” 30-year-old son, first visited the Storey house. He brought his kids, Ashley and Alex, to one memorable Thanksgiving celebration in which the menfolk rendered the turkey into an inedible jerky; Caught up in a backyard soccer game with us kids, they neglected the turkey fryer.

L to R: Kim, Hailey, Chris, Zoey, Casey & Megan

The Land of the Storeys served as setting for the start of my family’s long-time friendship with Norman Gitzen, full-time artist and highly skilled but accidental beekeeper. Norman, a Ranchettes neighbor originally from upstate New York, lives in a castle-shaped fortress he built by hand. Chris and Tami met him in the early 1990’s during one of their evening power walks, a nightly affair in which Chris strolled sans shoes and the Storey dogs raced around sans leash, igniting indignant howls from fenced-in neighborhood mutts in their wake. Like Doug, long-haired, cut-off short shorts-wearing Norman was a fixture of my childhood, a companion who readily joined in when we kids played flashlight tag or, on one occasion, placated him with beer so we could apply a blue mud mask to his aquiline face.

Though I never lived inside the Storey house, I once resided in the backyard; Mom parked her prized travel trailer in front of the bougainvillea bush so I could live inside while interning at “The Stuart News,” 45 miles north of Lake Worth. That was in 2005, and the Storeys were vacationing in upstate New York for most of the summer. The house felt so empty, so strange, without them.

Feats of strength, June 1995

In 2006, when Matt relocated from Kansas City to live with me in Jupiter, I delighted in introducing him to The Land of the Storeys. I wanted him to personally experience Tami’s wholesome salad dressings and to dance like a sprite before a raging bonfire Chris had assembled with wood scavenged from the property’s vegetation island. Together, we attended Storey family dinners and a handful of Halloween pumpkin carving parties. When Matt and I decided to marry, we wanted Chris, a natural showman, to perform the honors. One evening in 2011, we showed up at the Storey household with a six-pack of beer, “fuel” to get through the online Florida Notary test with Chris. In spite of the drinks, we passed, and Chris married us on Jupiter Beach the following spring.

Like me, “Sea Storey” also once resided in the Storey backyard. Chris wanted easy access to the sailboat so he could renovate it in his spare time. A massive forklift delivered the vessel and placed it on supports in front of the backyard oak, tree house-less by then thanks to an angry hurricane. For years, the cockpit of that boat hosted cocktail hour; Laden with cheese, crackers and wine, we’d scale a 10-foot ladder to sit among the branches of the oak and gaze down at the yard and the neighbors’ horses next door. This vantage point always reminded me of Admiral Boom and Mr. Binnacle, the retired navymen of “Mary Poppins” who live in a ship on the roof of a house and fire wall-rattling cannonballs.

Casey & her boyfriend, Brandon

My last visit to the Land of the Storeys took place this September. I was road-tripping across Florida with my parents, and we stopped at the Storeys’ for a two-night visit. With the sale of the house impending, the furniture was sparse and decades’ worth of knickknacks bestowed upon the family by Chris’ wealthy yacht clients filled the ping-pong room, future site of a garage sale. I noticed that the underwater mural, a community masterpiece we had painted across an entire exterior wall of the house, had been hidden by a coat of respectable tan paint. The “Rogue’s Gallery,” a haphazard collection of favorite family photos affixed to a hallway wall with tape, and Chris’ homemade sign, “F.A.R.T.” (“Fathers Against Radical Teenagers” -- it's clearly visible in the Zillow pictures advertising the house) still occupied their usual spots, but it was only a matter of time before they too were removed. I realize now, with a tinge of panic, that I failed to inspect whether the kitchen doorframe, site of 21 years worth of charted heights --including my own -- still remained.

L to R: Casey, Matt, Zoey & friends watch Norman light his "Icarus" statue

Dinner that last night was Tami’s delectable seafood gumbo, and, as is custom, we sang and swayed and clapped to the “Amen” song (“Amen, Aaaaaa-men. Amen, Amen, Amen. Hallelujah!”) as my mom rolled her eyes. Then Chris cranked up the satellite radio and dimmed the lights until we couldn’t see our plates. Norman was there, and my cousins and their friends and significant others joined us once their work shifts ended. The Storey dogs, Zorro, Riley and Piglet, were in place under the hightop table, strategically situated so as to pounce upon any stray morsels.  Before long, everyone had donned a funny hat from Chris’ impressive “funny hat” collection: a straw eagle, a fedora, a dunce cap, a keffiyeh, a garlic bulb and, my uncle’s signature headgear, a pith helmet. The conversation turned silly, covering everything from government conspiracy theories to whose head happened to be the largest.

Back when "Sea Storey" lived in the yard

Sleeping at the Land of the Storeys was always an adventure, and the last night of my visit was no different. I was slated to crash in the “Cat Room,” sanctuary for the Storeys’ five felines once Riley arrived on the scene (Riley, let the record show, was responsible for scaring away long-time resident, Tilly. Zoey, who happened to find the lost and ailing tabby months later while jogging in Okeeheelee Park, brought Tilly home and the cat seemed to regain some health once returned to the bosom of her family. It was only during a vet visit that the Storeys realized “she” was actually a “he” and not Tilly at all. The real “Tilly” resurfaced a few months later, not long after “Fake Tilly” passed away). But Junior, that cantankerous queen of the roost, seemed set on sleeping on my head, and I joined my parents in Forest’s childhood bedroom before long. Mom and Dad occupied a double air mattress, and I settled onto a second, misleadingly robust-looking object inflated with the assistance of a deafening wet vac. I blame Junior for the hidden puncture wound that eventually rendered my bed into a giant burrito, my body serving as the filling.

L to R: Norman, Megan, Kim, Tami & Chris in September

Groggy the next morning and hurried along by Professor Poppycock, I neglected to fully absorb my surroundings. I knew full well it would likely be my last time inside those hallowed walls; future visits would be clandestinely conducted from the far side of the King Kong-proof front gate. From that distance, we wouldn’t be able to spot the spindly “fruit cocktail” tree my cousins bought Tami for her birthday or pay respects to the humble plot where countless Storey pets, including Scruffy the dog, Tripsy the surprisingly vocal cat and that semi-crazed canine monster, Stripes (he had a penchant for biting moving bicycle and car tires), are buried.

Matt and I keep pieces of “The Land of the Storeys” in our San Francisco Bay Area home: the Haitian drum that once belonged to my grandfather, an ancestor’s antique letter box and, Matt’s favorite, fancy square plates re-gifted from a yacht. I treasure all these mementos because they remind me of my childhood, a childhood spent among the loveable characters who considered 9021 Yearling Drive home --- or at least a place to hang their pith helmet.

L to R: Norman, Doug, Donna, Megan, Peggy, Kim, Erica, Chris & Tami in the kitchen