Move to Siesta Key

After six years in Atlanta, Bucher decided that he could not live out of sight of blue water. So he sold his business in Atlanta and we moved to Sarasota, Florida in 1952. Alex was 3 and Carli, just a few months old.

We bought a lot on a “sand spit” pumped up island on Siesta Key in Sarasota Bay. We first stayed in a cottage on the Gulf of Mexico. Then Bucher bought an old live-aboard boat, moored it to our property, and proceeded to act as his own contractor building the house we intended to live in for the rest of our lives.

It was an imaginatively designed home, which we dubbed The Screen Cage. House and gardens were to be enclosed within a massive cage of screening which excluded bugs, enclosed children, and filtered sunshine.

The building crew consisted of workers from Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, idled for the winter season. They were a fascinating lot. The tales they told, true or not, paid us back in entertainment more than we ever could have paid them in wages.