AUBURNDALE - There's a good reason why so many show up at Carl Allen's Cafe for Old Timers' Day.
It's fun.
It's fun to get caught up in the smooches and squeezes of old friends and distant relatives milling about and repeating delightful encounters.
It's fun to see the faces and hear the stories of the '20s, when many of Auburndale's "new" settlers first came.
It's fun to see the politicians mix in and talk down-home about the last time they ate armadillo.
This year was no exception. Old Timers' Day was Sunday, and the visitors came from miles around. Allen was at his best, plugging his bluegrass bands, telling stories of his own boyhood in Auburndale and glowing in the bosom of his artifact collection considered antiques by Florida standards.
Free dinners are distributed from Allen's turtle-soup and-the-like menu to all those 75 and over and to the members of the press willing to accept them.
Among the honored guests were Sheldon "Sam" Newbern, daddy of Auburndale's street superintendent, who came in 1937 and whose brothers and sons also settled here. Newbern said he is a third generation era and his wife Gussie a second generation Florida native.
In 1959 he retired as a Seaboard Coast Line Railroad station agent.
"Send that off to Carl Jones, 311 Magnolia Ave.," called out Jones after a photographer flashed him sitting with a lady.
At 87, Jones said he "got off the train here the 7th of November, 1911," from Athens, Ala.
Why did he leave?
"I got tired of picking that cotton."
Was picking oranges any better?
"Not a bit." He let out a big chuckle from under his sun visor and called to another of the ladies.
Dot Mims, Lucille Exum Carlisle and Floy Martin Murphy were trading hugs and words of welcome all having come to Auburndale in 1923 and 1924 and working together in citrus.
Along came the Valentine sisters, who had moved to Auburndale in 1925. Lavonia Braddock claimed that was when she was "too little to remember," and Ruth Gregory was absent for several years, having moved to Georgia and returned here several years ago from Ormond Beach.
Vallie Ryals, back from Haines City, talked about how he was born on Lake Ariana and had his own tree with a nail in it to hang his clothes while he went skinny dipping. A citrusman man himself, he said there used to be "cattle roaming all through here" in the vicinity of what is now the four-laned Magnolia Avenue.
Nat Glover, born southwest of town in 1897, said his mother, Evelina Brewer Glover, was born here too. Her birthplace was northwest of town, on land that is "mined out now."
He came to town to go to school in 1903, Glover said, when J.B. Walker was the teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. When he was in the second grade, a church building was purchased to create a two-room school.
"I've got a lot of cousins around here, all the Kings and Thornhills and I can't name them all," he said with a smile.
It was Glover's brother who was famed as the security guard who shot Auburndale's only armed bank robber back when.
Sheriff Louie Mims, who found staunch campaign support from Allen back when he needed it, looked, more like the old, relaxed "Trooper Louie" in his long white apron.
Mims was waiting tables, and complained he earned "not the first nickel" in tips.
"This is the first good meal you've earned in two years," quipped Allen.
Old Timers' Day was about a month later this year than last, and the heat kept some at home, such as Dot Mims' 92 year-old mother.
But this year there may be more sharing. Allen had a paid photographer on board.
Allen will be the first one to tell you the event is for the young as well as those who helped form Auburndale's heritage. He is right.