Long before PBS or Nova or the Nature Series, there were reports of bands of bipedal primates roaming the cottage-y territories of the otherwise peaceful inhabitants in North Jacksonville. The reports were true. More shocking was the fact that these orgies included mulberry mashes, persimmon plucking and even fig orgies in the Holiday’s back yard.

Long before PBS or Nova or the Nature Series, in fact at the dawning of the commercial television age when a small television broadcasting what was called a “test pattern,” was a featured attraction in the display window of Jacksonville’s largest department store – Cohen Brothers – there were reports of bands of bipedal primates roaming the cottage-y territories of the otherwise peaceful inhabitants.

These reports described activities that when analyzed through the anthropological lenses of subsequent history would surely be seen as hunting and gathering the indigenous food resources that can be found in this neighborhood called North Shore, presumably because it was located north of the St. Johns River that bisects the city of Jacksonville.

These reports were true.

There were small bands of bipedal primates roaming through North Shore streets (mostly unpaved), yards (in those days if you were about 10 years of age or younger, you could trespass virtually it will as you transited from one “playground” to another), and nature preserves (“the Ditch” that ran for about a mile and a half from central North Shore north to the Trout River).

I was one of those bipedal primates, along with my brother and many of my boyhood friends from that era.

Recently, a nature special focused on saving orangutans by returning them to the wild, highlighted the ability of that species to know their territory so well as to be able to return to food sources at the right time to enjoy the ripened fruits or nuts.

Heck! Was I supposed to be impressed? We were doing that a long time ago. Big deal!

© Tracy D. Connors 2015 All Rights Reserved