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Watcher
Posts: 1
Joined: Sep 2006
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September 25, 2006 11:42 PM
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Brian Pessaro, I don't even know if you will read this, since you posted your piece over three months ago, but I couldn't resist responding.
In 1980 I left Tallahassee with my new wife, Ronda. I didn't have a job offer, though. We just left, with some money we had received for a wedding present. We had lived our whole young lives in Florida, I in Orlando and my wife in St. Petersburg. We met in Tallahassee in the left/Hippie culture that floated on the fringes of FSU in the 1970's. At a time when the people we knew were splitting up, coming out, leaving to join new-age collectives on the land, we got married and became Episcopalians.
Our old life was over, so we headed West, also in a Toyota Corolla. By the end of 1982, after stops in Mendocino, Albuquerque and New Orleans, we were in Austin, Texas, both of us working retail, I in a bookstore and she in an outdoor shop, (climbing, hiking, canoeing and so on).
Austin was a very cool place to be in the '80's There was a great club and music scene. Tech firms like 3M were beginning to locate there. We found a welcoming church, St. Marks Episcopal, and became active as lay ministers.
As with you, it had all been my bright idea. Ronda had gone along with me very generously. But as the '80's wound down, we grew tired of retail. I tried teaching. Ronda began to push for a return to Florida. Our families were there. After 5 years, we weren't sure we really wanted to be Texans. We were unhappy with the Episcopal church. I was looking at Eastern Orthodoxy, and she was leaning toward the Catholicism of her upbringing. Things were going sour.
After a very lean year, in 1987 we packed up and headed back to Tallahassee, determined to get government jobs.
In the end, I overcame my Protestant scruples, determined to save my marriage, and we entered the RCIA program at Blessed Sacrament. We were received into the Church on Pentecost of 1989. Ronda found a job that she loves with the Florida House of Representatives, and I went to work at the public library, where I am now a librarian in Adult Services.
When we first came back, Tallahassee seemed like such a backwater, like they rolled up the sidewalks at night. But I was now in my late '30's, and I observed that I didn't much care for the club life anymore anyway. As a Catholic, my faith really began to put down roots and to order my life towards the good. Cool didn't matter anymore.
I will admit that those who are destined for greatness will likely not stay here. We still enjoy big city life. We vacation in NYC every October. But it is in Tallahassee that God gave me a new life. And I'll take my house and yard over an apartment in NYC any day.
If you come to the library, stop in and say hello. My name is Brett Castleberry, and I work in Adult Services on the second floor of the main library at 200 West Park Avenue.
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