Crusin’ Down The River

Preparing and taking another boat trip will occupy my time for the next week I’m sure.....
My brother, Dockie, has written a first novel entitled...
“Land Of Milk and Honey” by James R.(Dockie)Baxter...
It is a fictional story based on actual times, places, and many people who lived in the State of Florida from 1884 thru 1997.

The story starts in 1997 when a middle 40’s couple, living in Jacksonville, decide to chuck it all and retire on a boat. They go to Kissimmee and down the chain of lakes to Basinger . The story then reverts back to 1884 with a family in the Okefenokee swamp in Georgia ‘chucking their life’ there for the offer of homesteading in Florida for free land. They build a raft and with their three children start a water adventure which is life changing....
.
This week we are doing this same trip by boat which Dockie wrote about in his book. In fact, we have been traveling these same waterways over and over...as you have been reading on my previous pages.
The first half of “The Calhoun’s” raft journey begins on the Suwannee River. They then go inland to Kissimmee for the last half of their journey by raft on the chain of lakes, which we have been moving big boats on for weeks now. There are smaller creeks and tributaries that can only be accessed by small boats, or in our case our dingy, or airboats.
Our cousins, Ray and Betty Fortner, from Pensacola had expressed a desire to do this run.....hence this weeks trip was planned.
Old Florida waterways and history of early settlements along these rivers and lake beds.... Is a specialty of Dockie and Ann’s research and living this book. A modern day Huckleberry Finn is this brother of mine.
Boating with him is....NEVER BORING!
Ask Charlie, Kurt, Sam, Kenneth, Walker, Buddy and countless others who get caught up in his nautical antics.
Dockie is one who always provides.....unforgettable experiences!
Any of you family and friends that are interested in his book can contact him at...JDOCKIE@aol.com . Price $12.95
He is self-published with a limited amount printed at any given time.
You see, he does not have time for anything so trivial as....’notoriety’!

I will write, again, IF I’M ALIVE, after returning from this ‘by-the-book’ adventure.......I can hear Dockie exclaiming....”All aboard, that’s going aboard....we’re out of here!”
See ya, mates....