Chattahoochee Dreaming

What’s a book you think deserves a sequel?

One of my older brother Doug’s least favorite monikers was Uncle Gus. Gus was my Mom’s cousin, not really our uncle, but that’s what everybody called him; and from what I knew of him, I understood Doug’s resentment. Still, it wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

Uncle Gus had a reputation for being smooth tongued and shrewd, and sometimes playing fast and loose with the facts if needed. So as I watched Doug pack his stuff for his upcoming road trip with his best friend Kirk, I reflected on his latest Gus-like handling of our parents.

He had finished two years of community college and was now pondering which of Florida’s seven or eight state universities to attend. In general, the further away from home, the better; but the campus appeal, the football team, and…most important…the ratio of female:male students were his top criteria.

He had calmly and reasonably laid out his visitation plans the prior week at dinner. Mom and Pop were immediately suspicious, but he had done his homework and as John Chancellor and the NBC News droned on in the background, he put on a masterful show. His self-styled fact finding trip would evaluate student resources and graduate school opportunities. He’d check out housing. He dropped a few professors’ names.

I thought he’d overplayed his hand when he started talking about regional costs of living and even the availability of used textbooks, but by now the Gus magic was working and I could see the subtle impressed looks being exchanged by Mom and Pop. 

He finished, folded his napkin, and looked at John Chancellor with interest; yep, I really want to hear the latest about inflation.

After two weeks of carefree fact finding with Kirk, he settled on FSU. It was 500 miles away from Boca; the Seminoles had a good football team; and best of all, there were three girls to every guy. 

Within a month, we bid him farewell as he set sail on this newest chapter in his life. He took seriously Mark Twain’s admonitions to Cast Off Bowlines and Explore, Dream, Discover. 

An arm came out of the window far away at the end of the street; then he turned and headed out of sight towards the Florida Turnpike. Uncle Gus was leaving the safety of the family harbor and venturing into the unpredictable seas of adulthood.

It had been his final lesson to me.

If I had to chronicle my early years with him, I’d frame the narrative as controlled torment. Being 4 1/2 years older, he had the advantage physically, psychologically and emotionally. When he babysat me, I usually ended up with a few scrapes or bruises, a busted model or toy, or a cracked voice from screaming. 

Even in front of Mom and Pop, he pushed my buttons and my outbursts at the table after he innocently said something and reached for a roll left them perplexed. Good grief was sometimes the unspoken message between them.

But as we grew, the differences in the age gap lessened. He taught me much. We rode dirt bikes together, went snorkeling, explored the woods, talked about life. We grew close.

The sequel…of our later years…would be framed more as lessons learned from my brother-mentor.

But every now and then, Uncle Gus would shape-shift back into the Mr Hyde brother.

After my midterms at Christmas in my junior year of high school, he called me and asked if I’d be interested in coming up for a visit with his girlfriend Paula. They were going to spend a few days in Tallahassee and then go camping. We’d all take a road trip home to Boca afterwards for the holidays.

“It’s Three Rivers State Park,” he said. In the background I heard Southern Man. “I’ve been there a few times and it’s pretty cool. Paula’s never been, so it’ll be a first for both of you.”

A few days later, we loaded the last of our stuff into his VW station wagon and headed west on Florida state road 10.

“So, how did midterms go?” he asked. The Florida panhandle in early December was beautiful; fields of gold and rust, old barns, pastures and creeks.

“Not bad. AP chem was a little tough, and so was calculus. But I think Pop will be happy.” We made eye contact in the rear view mirror and I saw him nod.

“I’m finishing up in Spring,” he said. “Then comes grad school.”  He paused. “I had some interesting classes this quarter.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Criminal Justice and Abnormal Psych.”

I thought about this. Our grandfather on my mother’s side was a true crime buff. He pored over his True Detective magazines; the grainy black-and-white crime scene pictures, even though redacted, were grisly. So if Doug found this kind of thing interesting, it made sense.

“Those classes were wild,” he said. He wove an interesting tale: Labs and guest lecturers from the FBI and Florida Law Enforcement; case studies of truly brutal crimes; and the fiendish workings of the unhinged mind. Paula, sitting up front next to him, half turned a few times and looked at me. Geez.

We passed through the little town of Chattahoochee and I saw a road sign: Three Rivers State Park, 10 miles.

As Chattahoochee disappeared around the bend behind us, he continued. He evidently enjoyed the classes, because his recollection of gruesome details was impressive. But hearing all this in the middle of nowhere was somehow unnerving.

“We almost got to visit Florida State Hospital. It used to be called the Chattahoochee Institute for the Criminally Insane.” He looked at me in the mirror, then Paula. “It’s where they put the worst of the worst.” I shuddered.

He pointed. “Oh, look. There it is.”

We looked and he was not kidding. We passed a large complex of tired-looking low white buildings spread out under live oaks. There was a guardhouse at the entrance, and a chained-link fence all around; but to house the people who I’d been hearing about for the last 20 minutes, I was expecting towers, barbed-wire, roving guards.

I was just beginning to process this when he slowed down and put on his turn signal. Across the road, no more than a few miles from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane, was the entrance for Three Rivers State Park.

Oh, great.

If Doug had any concerns, he masked them well. As the campfire popped and embers drifted overhead, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. But he sipped his beer contentedly and gazed into the fire with a look of deep satisfaction.

Across the fire, Paula and I exchanged a few looks. I could see she shared my thoughts. Every far-off crack of a stick, every trill or hoot, triggered a look around.

The time came for bed, and we put out the fire and climbed into his three-person tent. He laid on one side, Paula was in the middle, and I was on the other side.

We were near the bathrooms and the yellowish light from the floodlight illuminated my side of the tent. Shadows of trees and Spanish moss swaying in the wind were eerily silhouetted against the thin nylon. Not much protection at all if the shadow of a axe-wielding madman suddenly reared up.

A sonorous breathing from my left soon followed as Doug fell asleep. The steady inhaling and exhaling noises made the whole thing creepier somehow.

Paula and I both read by flashlight as the hours wore on. I hadn’t brought anything, so she loaned me one of her Harlequin Romance books. Not exactly my style, but it didn’t really matter because I found myself reading the same paragraph several times. As the December temperatures dropped, the sounds of the woods grew fainter and finally stopped altogether. The absolute silence was creepiest yet.

Around midnight, we gave up and settled into a hushed conversation interspersed with shhh and listening. We got talking about Doug, FSU, his classes, his tendency to embellish.

We wondered about the criminal justice and abnormal psyche classes; they had nothing to do with his major. We wondered about his uncanny recollection of disturbing serial killer crime detail. We pondered how nicely things had fallen into sequence as we drove along; the mention of his classes, the horror stories, the mention of insane asylum.

We marveled at how we passed it at just the exact right moment, him helpfully pointing it out—and then turning almost immediately into the campground. Our whispering grew louder as we considered all this extraordinary coincidence. Could he have… did he… no.

Paula was whispering when I heard something: shhh. We listened. From Paula’s other side came an odd muffled sound. It wasn’t from outside, but it wasn’t his breathing, either. It was intermittent, irregular. We noticed movement and could see his sleeping bag gently convulsing in the creepy yellow light.

Paula and I looked at each other in disgust; there was no doubt.

Uncle Gus was laughing.

© My little corner of the world 2026 | All rights reserved

Images from the public domain