November 7, 1993

Charlie Cerny Defied Malaria And Bermont's Buzzards

With thanks to Jane Cerny

When Charlie Cerny saw buzzards "wrangling" outside his isolated homestead cabin at Bermont, he knew he had to get up from his sick bed and summon help. "You won't get me," he muttered!

He had a severe case of malaria, high fever and was too weak to prepare a meal --- not that he felt like eating. He had not taken food for two days.

Painfully he struggled to the door, pulling along the sheet from his bed. He waved the sheet weakly at the buzzards. They squawked and retreated to nearby tree limbs to keep close watch. Charlie reached a pine sapling he had skinned for a flag pole a year earlier. He tied the sheet to the halyard and slowly hoisted a signal of distress.

Charlie didn't remember how he made it back to the house. He was just thankful he didn't pass out in the yard circled by beady-eyed buzzards. As he slipped into unconsciousness he hoped some one would find him before it was too late. Nearest neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Vanselow, a mile and a half away across the desolate prairie.

As Mrs. Vanselow hung out her wash that day, she noticed a flutter of white in the distance. There it was again. She watched carefully. Yes, it was a signal for help. She called her son Oswald who agreed he should check on his best friend right away.

Oswald brought back Charlie in an ox cart, the only reliable means of transportation in the rough and wet countryside. Mrs. Vanselow nursed Charlie back to health.

Frequent bouts of malaria, spread by ever-present clouds of mosquitoes, were not the only hardships endured by settlers 20 miles east of Punta Gorda. The area was opened to homesteading in 1905 --- the last to be offered because it was poorly drained and dotted with scattered swamps.

Local folks would not take up 160-acre claims offered. The area would have remained a "wet and dry" prairie if it had not been for an energetic promoter at Chicago. He advertised that for $200 he would move a family to Florida and guarantee a homestead claim.

About 80 percent of settlers ultimately taking up land were city folks from Illinois yearning for an independent life in tropical paradise.

Unfortunately they did not realize the difficulties of farming Florida wet land. They lived in tents until a portable saw mill was brought in and cut timber for cabins. Bermont and the neighboring community of Sparkman (named for the surveyor who laid out the section lines) peaked in 1915 at approximately 250 families. Today, a blinking traffic light at the intersection of State Roads 74 and 31 is the only marker of the once thriving community of Bermont.

In their heyday, each village had a school, church, general store, post office and baseball team. Then, young men went off to the First World War. Many of their parents drifted back to Chicago where the war-time economy provided good pay.

In Chicago at this time was the family of Frank and Anna Cerny. He was an immigrant from Bohemia, skilled as a coppersmith. She was a native of Prague. They had four children born in the United States, Frank, Bertha, Charles and Jerome.

Frank became an attorney for the Illinois Central Railroad, Jerome an architect, and Bertha married well.

Charles, born in 1899, apprenticed as a machinist, spent the war turning out armaments. He worked the next four years in the railroad machine shop, but sought greener fields --- literally as well as figuratively.

Thus it was that in 1922 he and another railroad machinist, Jerry Leiner, quit their jobs and went to Florida to visit their old Chicago buddy, Oswald "Van" Vanselow. The latter's parents had taken up a homestead at Bermont and were still there.

Charlie and Jerry stayed with the Vanselows three months while they looked for jobs as machinists. Southwest Florida then was still a sparsely settled country of ranchers, fishermen and farmers. There were no jobs for young machinists. Reluctantly they decided to return to Chicago.

Oswald was not enamored of the hard life of a hard-scrabble farmer so he joined his friends. The trio set out in Oswald's 1917 Chevrolet.

They stopped at the village of Gainesville to pick up some travel money by doing odd jobs.

Gainesville was the main office of the United States homestead agent. The Florida Land Boom was just getting underway, and Oswald said free homestead land would be worth a lot of money in the near future. He urged his friends to file a claim which cost only $13.

Jerry wasn't interested, but Charlie invested his last bit of cash on the last homestead available at Bermont --- a tract adjacent to the Vanselow place. He reasoned he might be able to sell the claim before the five-year proving-out period expired.

The young men drove on to Jacksonville hoping to find work in the railroad yards. However, none was available. Oswald was disillusioned about job prospects. Inasmuch as he had enough money for gas to get back to Bermont, he gave up and returned.

The railroad roundhouse men arranged for the stranded Charlie and Jerry to deadhead by rail to Chicago. In addition, they took up a collection which was enough for two "pie cards" good for six meals each at railroad restaurants along the way. Such cards, bought in advance at a discount, had a series of numbers along the edges which were punched out as used.

Charlie went back to work at the Illinois Central shop and to live with his parents. Yet, he could not get the Florida sand out of his shoes. Shortly before his homestead claim was due to expire he left once more, this time to try farming.

Oswald Vanselow, with his ox cart, met Charlie at Arcadia. The 20-mile trip to Bermont in the rain took 12 hours. Charlie was dismayed to see his land ankle deep in water. He had to stay with the Vanselows until he could build an 8-by-10-foot corrugated-iron shack that barely met the homestead requirement of a habitable dwelling.

Charlie also invested in a yoke of oxen, plow, axe, cross-cut saw, and gun. He cleared three acres --- the minimum required --- and planted oats. The grain had barely germinated when a severe rain storm washed away the seedlings. He did get in a little vegetable garden for personal food.

The only meat was that Charlie could obtain by hunting --- mostly rabbits. In later years, when he jumped in his sleep, his wife joked it must be because he had eaten so many rabbits.

He once said he would have starved if he hadn't occasionally fixed someone's' farm equipment and been paid in foodstuff. What little cash he earned came from pulling cars stuck in the sandy trails that ran to Arcadia, Punta Gorda and Fort Myers.

The latter, called Telegraph Road because of the line it served, ran through one corner of Charlie's property. Every five weeks, Charlie and Oswald hitched up an ox cart and went to Arcadia for supplies. The rate of travel was just two miles per hour, so the men camped at Arcadia overnight and returned the next day.

As a young bachelor, surviving alone for three years, Charlie had to learn to cook for himself. His guide was a recipe book which came free with a sack of flour. His first attempt at baking bread was a dismal failure.

"The scrawny loaf was hard as a rock," he related later. "I threw it out in the yard for the wild hogs and birds, but they wouldn't eat it either. It took a month before it went to pieces.

"I kept on trying and finally was able to make myself a couple of birthday cakes with sugar-water icing, and wild tomatoes instead of cherries for decoration. I invited the Vanselows and a couple of other friends in for a party. Everyone said my cakes were delicious."

Partying was what Charlie and Oswald liked best. Charlie played the saxophone, and Oswald the fiddle. They were in constant demand for dances and church suppers where food was plentiful. Rev. George Gatewood --- earliest Methodist preacher, store owner and a fiddle player also --- joined in.

When things got lonely out on the prairie, Charlie would sit on his door step and play his saxophone. "Cattle gathered around my fence to hear my music," he said. "Reckon they didn't know what kind of an animal made sounds like that." Sometimes a week would go by without him seeing another person.

It was an event when an adventurous motorist came by. There were no bridges and so cars got bogged down often. The usual method of fording creeks was to cover the car's radiator with a blanket and make a running charge at the crossing. Hopefully, the car's momentum would carry it through before the motor stalled. When they didn't make it, Charlie pulled them out with his oxen and be rewarded with a dollar or two. One grateful man gave him $6 for rescuing him --- the most Charlie ever got for the friendly service.

During the rainy season, Charlie would hear bawling cattle stuck in the swamps. He pulled them out also. Once he noticed buzzards circling and went out to investigate. He found a new-born calf by its dead mother. He took the calf home and raised it by hand feeding until it was old enough to forage for itself.

Cash money was hard to come by. However, with his mechanical and musical ability, Charlie was well prepared to take advantage of every opportunity.

One time he was hired by Lee Evans, who operated a turpentine still, to make a coffin for a leased convict who had died. "I not only made the coffin, I buried the man," declared Charlie years later. "Evans told me he would pay $10 for the job. Now Evans is dead, and I never got my $10."

During the five months each year that homesteaders could leave their claims, Charlie hired out as machinist on a dredge at Useppa Island. Advertising and hotel magnate Barron Collier was building a resort hotel there.

After three years, Charlie wrote the land office saying he was ready to prove up. The inspector first questioned neighbors about Charlie and noted that he had let his claim expire. He arrived tired, hungry, and dubious at Charlie's little tin cabin late in the day.

His doubts disappeared when Charlie served him fried rabbit, dumplings and fresh-ground coffee. Charlie didn't have much of a farm, but he had learned to cook. This, and favorable reports by his neighbors, earned homestead approval easily.

When Charlie received his deed patent, he went to Punta Gorda to work as engineer at Collier's Hotel Charlotte Harbor. There in 1925, Charlie met the lovely Margaret Goetz on a work vacation from New York. She and other girls had arrived by steamship around the Keys to Punta Gorda.

Charlie was smitten and lost no time in dating Margaret. They were frequent dance patrons at the fashionable Log Cabin. Before she left for home, they were engaged. Miss Goetz' parents insisted that Charlie find "more suitable employment," so he took a job in Collier's offices at New York City.

The couple was married in 1928, honeymooned at Niagara Falls, and kept on going to Punta Gorda. There Charlie and Oswald bought the Hewitt Hardware and Garage next door to today's post office. Vanselow was a "mechanical genius," but a recluse who never married. When the shop burned, Van retired to the old home place. Charlie built the Cerny Garage and Machine Shop, now a marine repair shop at Tamiami Trail and Henry Street.

The Cerny's bought a home at Solana and had three children --- John, Robert and Elizabeth Ann. When the Great Depression hit in the early 30s, Cerny lost his old homestead. However, he was able to buy it back later under the Murphy Bill permitting defaulted mortgages to be redeemed.

Upon Charlie's retirement in 1968, he built a beautiful home on Alligator Creek and turned over the business to Son Robert and the latter's wife, the former Miss Jane Raybuck. Both men are now deceased, but Jane is active in community affairs --- unconcerned about the buzzards of Bermont.

Cutlines

Photos courtesy Charlotte Harbor Area Historical Society

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Charlie Cerny (white shirt) and Oswald "Van" Vanselow set out on a trip to Arcadia for supplies.

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Bermont's most eligible bachelor, Charlie Cerny (third from left), proudly displays the two birthday cakes he made for himelf. Oswald Vanselow, his buddy, is next. Couple at left are Mr. and Mrs. Vanselow. Couple at right are unknown. Group stands in front of Cerny's corrugated-iron homestead cabin.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers