Trail Stops

6 Bayberry Ct, Ormond Beach, FL 32176 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/SV6GNAoAf9BTqY8L6 

    For this trail stop, I have pinpointed on Google Maps the Milton Pepper Park. Smaller than a half acre, this mini-park sits in the middle of the entryway and exitway for the neighborhood that was once Ellinor Village in Ormond Beach, just north of Daytona Beach. Its developers, Byron and Merrill Ellinor, constructed for its grand opening 660 residences of different sizes. Its 1956 brochure claimed Ellinor Village was “the world’s largest family resort.” It was here in 1956 that the Petty and Darnell families went on vacation together. A home movie was made of this joint-family trip, which I have seen.

    Sadie and Norma Darnell, Tom Petty’s first cousins, shared memories of this trip with me during a November 2025 interview. The Darnells, twin sisters whose mother was Lottie, sister of Tom’s mother, Kitty, lived next door to the Pettys on NE 6th Terrace. The Petty and Darnell families spent a great deal of time together, therefore creating a tight familial bond. Among other things, they celebrated Christmas together, attended each other’s birthday parties, fed ducks in the Duckpond neighborhood together, and went on family vacations together, including this one to Elllinor village on Ormond Beach in 1956.

    The Darnells told me that along for the trip were their parents, Lottie and Jimmy, Tommy Petty and his parents, Kitty and Earl, and their grandmother, Grandma Troas (Avery), mother to Kitty and Lottie. 

    The two families drove in two cars from Gainesville to Ormond Beach, and back home. Norma and Sadie remember being amused by Tommy’s practical joke in the back seat of the Petty car, which was to put his face up against the window and pretend to scream “help me!” to cars passing by. 

    “He was just hysterical,” said Sadie, who watched from the Darnell car that followed.

    At Ellinor Village, the two families had rented two cottages that were a block and a half from the resort’s wide white sandy beach on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Despite the short walk, the Petty and Darnell parents drove their cars out onto the hard-packed sand where they parked alongside one another. In between the two cars, the Petty and Darnell children made “a tent” by securing a sheet between rolled-up windows, where they spent parts of days there in the shade.

    Keith Harben, a close neighborhood friend of Tom Petty and the Darnell twins, showed me the Petty-Darnell home movie, a copy of which was given to him by Sadie and Norma. In the color video, you can see 1950s-era cars parked on the wide sandy beach that is sandwiched between hotels and the ocean. On this Ellinor Village beach you see Tom Petty playing in the water and on the sand with Sadie and Norma, as well as the Petty and Darnell parents. In one scene, Tom’s father, Earl, is running around with the children, much to their and his amusement.    

    The home movie combines color footage from various Petty-Darnell family get-togethers while its soundtrack is the songs of Tom Petty, namely “Wildflowers” and “Southern Accents.” Shot in the mid-to-late 1950s or very early 1960s, it shows the Darnell and Petty children celebrating a birthday on a front lawn, pushing one another in a motorless go-cart along a street, and enjoying a day at the Ellinor Village beach. We also see children hunting for Easter eggs, including a slightly older-looking Tom, who has his hair spiked like Elvis Presley, with whom he became obsessed after meeting him on a film set in the summer of 1961, an introduction made possible by his uncle, Earl Jernigan, husband to Evelyne, or Aunt Ellen, who was a sister to Kitty and Lottie. 

    The home movie is edited in a way so that we see spiky-haired Tom, while on his quest for Easter eggs, standing aside his mother, Kitty, who is seated, while we hear the heart-wrenching “Southern Accents” lyric in which the song’s narrator describes a vision of seeing his deceased mother, standing with him “for just a minute”:

“There’s a dream I keep having

Where my mama comes to me

And kneels down over by the window and says a prayer for me”

    I found the Petty-Darnell home movie to be even more moving because I recalled having read a 2005 article in The Gainesville Sun about when the Darnell sisters showed it to Tom and Dana Petty while visiting their home in Malibu, Calif., in 2003, and how that nostalgic experience was so emotional for them.

  “Upon seeing the scene, the room fell still, Sadie Darnell said,” according to the report in the Sun. “The rock star in the Malibu mansion was genuinely overwhelmed. ‘It was just a really warm moment,’ she recalled. ‘It just felt right.’”

  To read this account from the Sun, go here:

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/2000s/2005-10-30-gainesvillesun 

   When I met with Sadie and Norma Darnell, I asked them about this video. They informed me that it was quickly made by Al Williamson, a family member in Gainesville who knew how to do such things, in advance of their trip to Malibu in 2003. Tom, Dana, Sadie and Norma, along with the Petty home caregiver, watched the VHS tape in the Petty bedroom, where they had a new plasma TV, then considered state-of-the-art, despite the wonky display at certain angles. They sat on the bed to watch it together.

   Williamson had edited it in a way that we see young Tom with his beloved mother Kitty while the verse from “Southern Accents” is heard: 

“For just a minute there I was dreaming

For just a minute it was all so real

For just a minute she was standing there, with me”

   Sadie told me that Tom watched this scene very closely. While he was quiet, it was clear that it was an emotional experience for him.

   “He was very touched by it,” Sadie told me.

    Also in this collection of Petty-Darnell home movies, you can see 1950s-era cars parked along the tree-lined street in the Duckpond neighborhood of Gainesville where the children gleefully feed the ducks in the duck pond. 

   In the 2005 Sun article, Tom Petty expresses to the reporter his nostalgia for his Gainesville hometown.

  “I remember a lot about Gainesville, such a lovely place to grow up. Just incredible growing up there.” Petty is quoted as saying. “It was really special there. It was so great. Sometimes I have this fantasy of buying one of those houses by the Duck Pond and moving there. I loved it there. I really did.”

    Ellinor Village in Ormond Beach was Florida’s largest family resort from its 1949 opening through the 1950s. It had its own shopping center, playgrounds, amusement park, tennis courts, swimming pool, and golf course (today’s Oceanside Country Club, 75 N. Halifax Drive), which was nearby The Casements, John D. Rockefeller’s winter residence starting in 1918. He died here in 1937. Today the city owns the former mansion and property (25 Riverside Drive). 

    Developer Milton Pepper purchased Ellinor Village in the late 1950s. In the late 1970s, Pepper sold Ellinor Village, which was turned into a residential neighborhood. Many of the original structures have been expanded, or leveled, so that today there are more luxurious residences – although some original structures, or portions of them, remain.

    To learn more about Ellinor Village, and to see its 1956 brochure, go to this Ormond Beach Historical Society website:

https://www.ormondhistory.org/ellinor-village

Map from the 1956 brochure for Ellinor Village, courtesy of the Ormond Beach Historical Society

203 E Silver Springs Blvd, Ocala, FL 34470

https://maps.app.goo.gl/WPZ77vJkgrQGzMKT7

     Ten-year-old Tom Petty met Elvis Presley in the summer 1961 during the filming of "Follow That Dream," shot on location throughout Florida, including downtown Ocala at the then-named Commercial Bank & Trust Co. The introduction was facilitated by Tom's Aunt Evelyne, his mother Kitty's older sister. As luck would have it, Evelyne's husband, Earl Jernigan, owned and operated Jernigan Motion Picture Service ( 3019 NE 20th Way in Gainesville), which helped film companies scout locations -- including for this movie. Uncle Jernigan invited Tom to go here to watch filming and to meet Elvis. When he introduced Tom to him, Elvis briefly nodded and shook his little hand. Tom stood still, stunned and speechless, yet smiling. 

     Afterward, back home in Gainesville, Tom traded his slingshot for Elvis 45s with a friend from the neighborhood, Keith Harben. 

     “Elvis became a symbol of a place Tom Petty wanted to go,” wrote Warren Zanes in Petty: The Biography, published in 2015. 

     Petty himself told Zanes: "I caught the fever that day, and I never got rid of it. That's what kicked off my love of music. And I never thought much about rock 'n' roll until that moment." 

     To learn more about this transformative moment for Tom Petty, read this article from the Gainesville Sun: https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/2007/08/16/young-tom-pettys-life-changed-when-he-met-elvis/31538810007/ 

     To hear Tom talk about what that meant to him at the time, listen to this interview, courtesy of Always Elvis:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9fppHg7E6s 

     And to watch part of the movie's bank scene, filmed inside, go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c0wvNDF6C4

Photo by Shawn Murphy

4901 E Silver Springs Blvd, Ocala, FL 34470

https://maps.app.goo.gl/5U4Amq86b8Xo8RrJ6 

    While Tom Petty and his close neighborhood friend Keith Harben would most often go to Warren’s Cave on the northern outskirts of Gainesville (11101 Millhopper Road) while skipping out on a day’s classes, Six Gun Territory in Ocala is where Tom and Keith went when they first skipped school, Harben told me.

    Both still too young to drive, Tom and Keith got a ride with a friend who was old enough to drive and had a car. The three teens combined their visit to Six Gun Territory with a stop at a cave near Reddick, Fla., because, as Harben told me, “I liked caves.”

    Six Gun Territory was located in northeast Ocala, close to Silver Springs. It was situated just off Silver Springs Boulevard, which is State Road 40. Coincidently, just under five miles southwest of Six Gun Territory on the same road in downtown Ocala was the then-named Commercial Bank & Trust Co. (203 E Silver Springs Blvd.), where 10-year-old Tom Petty met Elvis Presley in the summer 1961 during the filming of “Follow That Dream,” which sparked his imagination of what it would be like to be a rock and roll star – leading to the trade of Petty’s slingshot for Harben’s sister’s stack of Elvis 45s.

    As children, Tom Petty and Keith Harben would choose from a long list of childhood games that they would play on any given day. Among them was  “Cowboys and Indians,” as Keith told me. And during this childplay, Tom got fairly adept at gunslinging. Keith recalled for me how one time while playing in the front yard at the Petty family house (1715 NE 6th Terrace) Tom, adorned with a holster for his cap gun, worked on his quick-draw, perfecting the ability to spin the pistol rapidly around, before stopping it and pulling the trigger. This skill would later be showcased while on the set for the 1982 video for “You Got Lucky”; and if one watches the Cameron Crowe-directed MTV “Heartbreakers Beach Party” documentary, which was rereleased in 2024, Tom’s knack for pistol-spinning is on full display.

    To watch the “You Got Lucky” video, directed by Jim Lenahan, a Gainesvillian who was in a later version of the Epics and an early version of Mudcrutch with Tom Petty, go here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtLpZWNyM0I 

    Years before there was Walt Disney World, which opened in 1971, and all the other amusement parks that would spring up over time in the Orlando area, there was Six Gun Territory in Ocala. 

    The Florida Department of State’s Division of Historical Resources (DHR) informs us on its website that “in 1962, R. B. Coburn of Western Heritage U.S.A. Corporation announced the opening” of the new theme park. 

    The 200-acre western-themed park, designed by Russell Pearson, would hold its grand opening on Feb. 2, 1963, according to Florida Memory, a website maintained by the State Library and Archives of Florida. “Visitors arrived at the visitor center, a replica Southern Railway station, and rode a wood-burning narrow gauge engine to a mock Western town,” the website notes. On the way, visitors “passed by staged confrontations between cowboys and Indians.” 

    The DHR site provides an overview of the park: “Once guests entered the park, they encountered a variety of Western and frontier-themed buildings and attractions.” 

    The site notes that among the park’s many buildings there was a general store, a Native American trading post, a church, a schoolhouse, a fort, a Native American village, a hotel, a jail and sheriff’s office, a bank, a blacksmith, a saloon, and a recreation of the OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz. 

    “Some of the most popular attractions were the Palace Saloon and Theatre, which featured live cancan dance shows, the staged shoot-outs and robberies, and a replica Mexican Border Town, complete with a casino, market, cantina, and village houses,” the DHR site states. “In the late 1960s, Six Gun Territory was so popular that local restaurants, motels, and businesses replicated western motifs to increase sales through association. However, in the 1970s, Coburn sold Six Gun Territory, along with its sister parks (Ghost Town in the Sky in Maggie Valley, NC and Frontier Land in Cherokee, NC). After poor management of the park under various owners, the park officially shut down in 1984.”

    In 1985 Six Gun Territory was leveled and the land developed with commercial businesses, which is what you will find here today. It is called Six Gun Plaza.

    To watch a mini-documentary about Six Gun Territory, go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHfEUGQx06k

    Despite the demise of  Six Gun Territory, at Kirby Family Farm in Ocala each February, a Six Gun Territory Wild West Weekend and Reunion is held.

    To watch a travelogue about the annual Six Gun Territory Wild West Weekend and Reunion, go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfK4-8aoh60

Photo of Six Gun Territory sign sourced from Facebook 

2701 NE 14th St, Ocala, FL 34470

https://maps.app.goo.gl/G1xPJEtcMSdbHt76A 

    Tom Petty’s cousin, Rod Guynn, was a fellow musician who knew his one-year-younger cousin was musically talented as he tracked him through his first three bands, the Sundowners, the Epics, and Mudcrutch, all of which he got to see play live. Following Petty’s death in 2017, he recalled for Gainesville Sun reporter Andrew Caplan the time when Mudcrutch played in 1972 at the Skylark Drive-in Theater in Ocala, Fla. Guynn helped organize and promote that show, which included other regional acts. But that night after heavy rains, it was canceled. Yet, Petty told Guynn that he still wanted to play.

    In 2022, Guynn expanded this story when he appeared at Tom Petty Weekend as part of the Story Tellers segment. There he talked for a half-hour about some memories of growing up with Tom Petty as his cousin. At the end of his talk, he tells the story about this Mudcrutch show.

    Guynn explains that while his fellow concert promoters were keen on the idea of getting Mudcrutch to come from Gainesville to Ocala to perform at the drive-in, they thought the band, who already had become a big name in the region, would be cost prohibitive to hire. But Guynn noted that Petty was his cousin, so he called him up and made the pitch. “Absolutely,” Petty told Guynn. Mudcrutch asked for $85 to perform that night.

    On the bill that Saturday night at the Skylark Drive-in Theater was Mudcrutch as the headliner, with a three-man band from Leesburg, Fla., named Skunk Junction that was hired to open for them.

    Once the decision was made to cancel the show, Petty and the rest of the band agreed to return the following week to play for those who had already assembled for the rained-out concert, telling them to keep their tickets. Yet that night Petty still wanted to perform, so he asked Guynn: “Isn’t there any place we can play? We want to play.” Guynn told Petty that his band had some musical equipment inside Skylark’s screening room, which doubled as an apartment, so they went there and played a private show – with Guynn on the couch taking it all in. 

    “Can you imagine sitting on the couch with Mike Campbell in 1972?” Guynn questioned. “And they were absolutely tearing it up.”

    You can watch the recording of this Guynn talk, posted on Facebook by Brien Norton, here: 

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17QyjBetuc/

    The 300-car Skylark Drive-In in Ocala opened in 1952 with Janet Leigh in “Just This Once,” according to Cinema Treasures website. That night it enticed patrons with a free autographed photo by Rex Allen, a Western entertainer popular at the time.

    The drive-in is long gone. In its footprint today are various retail businesses, among them an auto parts store and a dollar store.

Close-up aerial photo of Skylark Drive-in footprint courtesy of Google Maps

1210 S Monroe St, Tallahassee, FL 32301

https://maps.app.goo.gl/34Z9YrU4pmru5UWTA 

     In 1972, Mudcrutch had developed a following in Gainesville for being an exceptional live band, yet outside of town they were mostly unknown. One of the first places the band was embraced was in Tallahassee, home to Florida State University – and at a bar called Katie O’Malley’s (1210 S. Monroe St.). In Mike Campbell’s 2025 co-written autobiography, Heartbreaker, he devotes two pages to it. He makes note of the arrangement, which was to play numerous sets in the downstairs bar late into the night, then sleep away much of the next day in a filthy crash pad upstairs. And he makes note of the cultural clash that occurred when a band of long-haired hippies playing for an audience of long-haired hippies rankled the new clientele when Katie O’Malley’s owner transformed the bar from a peaceful hippie haven to a violent biker bar.

    “We played Katie O’Malley’s Good Time Place in Tallahassee so much that we had a little bit of a following there, a gaggle of long-hair kids who would always come to see us. But then it became a biker bar.” Campbell wrote. “We’d be sitting at a table talking to girls and these greaser thugs would sit down and tell us to get lost. The girls would be baffled, and the bikers would glare at us, reaching into their leather jackets for who knows what, and we would have to get up and walk away.

    “The bikers had a rule. If you got too drunk to stand in their bar, they would drag you into the parking lot and beat you halfway to death. Sometimes more than halfway. Playing for them was a drag. The threat of violence hummed through the place like neon. Everybody was uptight, and our crowd stopped coming. We had to stay in the flop house upstairs that the bar owner ran, and would wake up with crabs from the mattresses and bed bug bites all over our arms and legs. It was awful...

    “One night when we were playing there, Tom went outside for a cigarette. When he finished and turned to go back in to start the next set, the biker on the door – one of the bikers who had sat down at our table with the girls that day – told him he wasn’t getting back in. The biker told Tom that there was something about him he didn't like, and to get lost while he could. Tom nodded and said okay, he didn’t want any trouble, and then went around the side and climbed in through a window. 

    “We went inside, near the side of the stage, and Tom was telling us what had just happened, when the biker from the door walked in and spotted Tom from the other side of the room. He clenched his fists and stormed over, parting the crowd, cursing at Tom, screaming, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ 

    “We froze. There was no way we couldn’t jump in on that. We couldn’t just stand there and watch Tom get torn apart. And then the bikers would have had to jump in. It was their code. The whole band might get killed.

    “The biker crossed the room and cocked his fist back as he reached Tom. And just before he could throw it, the leader of the bikers stepped between them. The biker on the door told him what had happened. The president shook his head. He said, ‘Nope, I like how he sings.’ 

    “A few nights later, some girls said they had an empty trailer we could use at a park nearby, so that we wouldn’t have to sleep upstairs. We played all night and dragged ourselves back to the trailer. We were asleep for an hour or so when we woke up to the lights coming on and a bunch of those same bikers screaming at us. We had gone to the wrong trailer.”

    Campbell wraps up his Katie O’Malley’s story by noting this was the norm with Tom Petty, whose long blond hair seemed to always attract the attention of some bully.

    “There were a lot of times like that,” Campbell wrote. “Hanging with Tom meant lots of close calls. Tom was like a magnet, with positive and negative charges. And though the summer of 1972 was stoned and sun-drenched and sweet, all communal and groovy together on the banks of Lake Santa Fe, the limits and realities of our lives in Gainesville were never as far away as we pretended.” (pgs. 97-98)

    Note that the two-story cabin on Lake Santa Fe in Earleton (9519 County Road 1469) that served as a home base for the band after getting evicted from Mudcrutch Farm is another trail stop along the Tom Petty Trail, also found in the Buried Treasure section of the website here: 

https://tompettytrail.com/buried-treasure 

Jean Sullivan (later Porter) was at the time the girlfriend of Randall Marsh, who had lived at what became known as Mudcrutch Farm (2203 NW 45th Ave, Gainesville) before the eviction and Lake Santa Fe relocation. She shared with me her memories of traveling to Tallahassee with Mudcrutch to see the band at Katie’s O’Malley’s, which she referred to as both “a raggedy hall” and “a dive bar, just spacious.” 

    “I went and stayed a few times,” she noted. “They played there many weeks … They had rooms to sleep in behind the stage, as I recall, up some stairs.”

    Jean recalled that the bikers were there during the week, “but it was a mix on Saturday nights” where there was “a lot of dancing.”

    “It was fun at night,” she said, “not so much during the day, when the lights were on.”

    Katie O’Malley’s no longer exists. Its address is today occupied by the Center Point Church.

    Thank you to Library West at the University of Florida Libraries, where a team of reference librarians were able to nail down its location by unearthing a 1971 Leon County tax lien for Katie O’Malley’s and its owner, Dewey Wayne Roberts. 

Photo of Center Point Church from its website 

9519 County Road 1469, Earleton, FL 32631

https://maps.app.goo.gl/eDnSFmZhKwFy7zLa8 

     Mudcrutch resided near here after being evicted from Mudcrutch Farm in 1971. About 18 miles east of Gainesville, on the western shore of Lake Santa Fe in Earleton, Fla., the band members once resided in a two-story cottage that was on the lakeshore. The cottage appears to have been razed long ago for something newer and bigger, but I have mapped it at this particular location because it is in the vicinity of where a key source said it was

Jean Sullivan (later Porter) was at the time the girlfriend of Randall Marsh, who had lived at what became known as Mudcrutch Farm (2203 NW 45th Ave, Gainesville) along with Mike Campbell and Red Slater. Jean told me that Mudcrutch band members relocated to the two-story cottage on Lake Santa Fe some time after they were evicted. She described for me in detail the place. 

    “It was a beautiful two-story cabin type dwelling in a small town called Earleton,” she explained. “It was down a small hill that placed the cabin right on the lake. It had a screened back porch that was the length of the house. It had a dock on the lake. Up the stairs were three tiny bedrooms and a bathroom. The walls were all cypress wood. The living room was small but it held all their equipment for practice. Randall and I had a room, Mike had a room and TP (Tommy Petty) had a room. Tom L. (Leadon) came back and forth from town (Gainesville). Jane (Benyo, Petty’s girlfriend) came out a lot too. Her and I spent a lot of time sunbathing on the dock. I believe it was the spring of 1970 or ’71.”

     In giving me directions to where it would have been, she told me the following, which I retraced with the help of Google Maps:

    “Head out State Road 26 towards Melrose, cross highway 301 in Orange Heights, turn left on CR 1469.” This is the north-to-south road that runs along the western side of the lake. Today to the right along this road are various driveways, some paved and some gravel, that lead to unseen lakeside properties, going slightly downhill from the road to the lake. Jean recalled that the Mudcrutch cottage was north of Shores Place, a named road that heads toward the lake, and south of the Earleton Post Office, which is a half-mile to the north on the west side of CR 1469. In between these two locations are a handful of driveways that head toward the lake. While it can’t be confirmed which one was for the Mudcrutch cottage, Jean recalled that “it’s either the first, second or third road” past Shores Place. Where I have mapped it is very close to where Jean describes.

    Jean said it was here at Mudcrutch cottage that “TP wrote ‘Up in Mississippi’ and ‘Cause Is Understood,’ the flip side on their first 45.” This record would be later recorded and pressed at Criteria Studios in North Miami (1755 NE 149th St.). It was released in 1973 on Pepper Records, the band’s own label. 500 copies of the 45 were pressed.

    But how did Mudcrutch end up here on the lake? In short, during the years of 1970 and 1971, three Mudcrutch Farm Festivals were held at the property at the end of NW 45 Ave., then a long dirt road, in what was then the rural northern limits of Gainesville. As word got out about the first one-day festival that attracted hundreds, and a concert promoter and a community support network helped organize the second and third multi-day events, thousands of people came to hear the bands with the hippie audience. When the property landlords paid a surprise visit the morning after a festival, when the band members had not yet had the time to clean up the property of the litter, it left an impression about the renters, so they were eventually evicted.

    Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Tom Leadon all recalled the eviction at Mudcrutch Farm and the subsequent move to Mudcrutch cottage.

    Tom Petty told Paul Zollo for the 2005 Conversations with Tom Petty book about the festivals and eviction. About the festivals, he referred to them as “our ace in the hole.”

    “It was one of those things you just blundered into,” Petty told Zollo. “There was a huge field behind the shack. And someone got the idea that we could set up in the back field and put posters around, and have people come, and play.” 

    He recalled that for the first festival they got one other band, the Weston Prim Revue, and played, attracting an audience of hundreds – although with no foresight or planning. 

    “There wasn’t even a Porta-John. There was nothing. This was how innocent it was,” Petty said.

    “After that happened, some cats from the college that were real promoters came out and said, ‘Hey, let’s do another one and we’ll help you with it.’ And then, for the next one, we had a lot of bands. I can’t remember who they were, exactly. But I remember some came from Atlanta. And just a massive amount of people came. Thousands of people. It really upset the neighborhood. You wouldn’t think of trying to do something like that with no organization today,” Petty said. “And so the cops came in, and they said, ‘We can’t shut it down because there are thousands of people here, and there will be a lot of trouble if we shut it down.’ Then the people who owned the property evicted Randall and Mike. They said, ‘You’re out of here, you can’t do this.’ So then we figured, well, if they’re throwing us out of here, we’ll do one more. What can they do? So, by the time we did three, and it really mushroomed into a big deal, that was the key to our success. We became really famous around town, and when we played a lot of people came. Before that, we used to play at Dub’s.”

    In Mike Campbell’s 2025 autobiography, Heartbreaker, he talked extensively about the evolution from being a covers-only band at Dub’s to playing originals at Mudcrutch Farm Festivals and subsequent shows that came as their reputation grew. And he talked about the eviction and new base at Lake Santa Fe. It is interesting to compare the memories of Petty and Campbell.

    The band had grown tired of playing only covers at Dub’s for six straight weeks, six nights a week, five sets a night. Seven hours a night of playing jukebox hits grew dull. While they would occasionally sneak in an original Mudcrutch song with Tom introducing it as “the latest hit by Santana” or some other popular band, Dub wasn’t someone to mess with, which was clear on the weekly payday when one member of the band would go into his office to collect beer-soaked cash while a revolver sat nearby on the desk and a burly bouncer stood aside Dub.

    “That night, as we sat around the farm griping about Dub’s, I had an idea,” Mike wrote. “We should just play here. We could put a stage out front and call it a festival” (pgs. 91-92). “It was a shut-in’s stroke of genius, if I do say so myself, and it changed everything for us. But not how we expected.

    “We worked with people at the Rose Community Center, and we asked our friends’ bands to come play too. The Hare Krishnas at the Hogtown Food Co-Op offered to serve free food. We made flyers announcing the show, with a drawing of a little map to get there , and put them up all over campus and downtown. That’s how it came to be known as Mudcrutch Farm – from the signs we put up.”

    Mike then shares the text from a 1970 festival. Although he doesn’t note this, I know the hand-written poster and map was done by Jean Sullivan (now Porter, Randall Marsh’s girlfriend at the time).

    “Sunday, Dec. 13th, Afternoon, Mudcrutch Farm, 2203 N.W. 45th Avenue, Turn left about 1 block before Dubs. Everyone invited. Come enjoy yourself!” 

    “It was a cool, sunny day without a cloud in the sky, and the kids started showing up early, flooding our front lawn. Our friends Mark and Tom and a kid who went to junior high with Tom Leadon named Dana, who now went to Space Ghost, were in a band called Hogtown Creek. They played first, and by the end of their set, there were hundreds of people out front. Next up was the incredible Weston Prim and Blacklash – a super tight, Sly and the Family Stone soul funk band, with dance moves and everything. Our friend Charlie played saxophone, and before they went on, he asked if he could come inside to change into his afro wig and sunglasses. He was the only white guy in the band, but he was olive-skinned enough to pass onstage in disguise, which he had to wear so they could play the chitlin circuit of southern Black nightclubs.

    “By the time we played, late in the afternoon, there must have been six hundred kids there. Which is a lot of people to have on your front yard, but it was a festival in name only. … Our event was more like a big party than a real festival. Especially when the cops showed up. We were lucky enough though – the first police were from the county sheriff, who were a lot scarier than the Gainesville cops. The Gainesville police were used to dealing with stoned hippie kids, like Randall (Marsh), who was out front arguing with the county police when they showed up. Randall was probably three seconds from getting brained with a billy club when the Gainesville police arrived and told the sheriffs that they were standing on the last street in Gainesville, outside their jurisdiction. So we didn’t get shut down, but the show was already over, and when the cops showed up, all the kids scurried off anyway. We woke the next morning to a thick blanket of trash all over the property. Thankfully, when they saw the cops pull up, the kids all dropped the bags of weeds before they ran.

    “We threw another one and it was even bigger. People came from out of state. Cars were lined up on the side of the road for nearly a mile, stretching way past Dub’s. It was fun. It was cool. But it was just a party. It didn’t elevate the band to some new level or anything.

    “Something significant did come from it though.

    “We got evicted.”

    Campbell wrote about how they initially were all homeless as a band, before they got the lake cottage where they lived (pg. 93):

    “Without the farm, we all felt loose and drifting. We still had the Dub’s gig, but we had nowhere to go after we played. I slept in a friend’s garage. Randall went to stay with his girlfriend, Jean. Tom Leadon was still living back at home. Tom Petty was too, and he was desperate to get out of there. We needed a place of our own, where we could play all day like we had at the farm. Somewhere isolated. Where it would just be us.”

    Campbell said that once they got the lake cottage, they were able to start focusing on writing and practising original songs and trying to get gigs where they could play them. According to Campbell’s memory, the timeline was that they moved to the cottage in 1972, although Tom Leadon remembers it being 1971.

     “We found a house a half hour east of the farm, in Earleton, right on Lake Santa Fe,” Campbell wrote (pg. 98). “It was beautiful. We all moved in together – me, Tom Leadon, Randall and Jean, and Tom and Jane. Tom Leadon brought a little canoe, and every afternoon, Tom Petty and Randall, and Bubba and Tiny of course (a back-and-forth improv verbal exchange that they had in thick Southern accents that poked fun of rednecks, as Mike describes fully on pgs. 80-81), would row out into the middle of the lake and crack each other up for hours and somehow manage to not catch a single fish. Tom Leadon and I would sit on the shore and play guitar.”

    Campbell described the time at the lake cottage as “stoned and sun-drenched and sweet, all communal and groovy together on the banks of Lake Santa Fe” (pg. 88).

    In an interview that Marty Jourard did with Tom Leadon for his 2016 book, Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town, Leadon said “we spent the spring and summer of 1971 in Earleton,” a timeline different than what Campbell remembered – should the precise year or season matter looking back.

    Jourard writes that at the end of 1970 and early 1971 there were three Mudcrutch Farm Festivals (pgs. 95-96).

    “They were home-grown events that attracted large crowds, with several bands and free food by the Hogtown Food Co-Op, an organization created by a group of community activists and hippie entrepreneurs recently arrived from Cleveland, who called themselves the Candle People. Among them was Jeffrey Meldon, an attorney who became an effective conduit between the mainstream business community, local government, and a growing hippie population of Gainesville. Meldon approached several businesses for donations.” 

    Scaffolding was borrowed from a plumbing company to build the stage, food was donated, and empty ice cream buckets from a commercial company were donated to place at the entrance for donations. There was no charge for the festival attendees.

    Meldon told Jourard: “People put enough money in the buckets, so we said, ‘Next time let’s do a weekend event where people can put out sleeping bags and tents and just hang out.’”

    Leadon told Jourard: “Subsequent festivals with more bands and promotion attracted huge crowds – and an unexpected visit from the landlady. We did the second one, and we did the third one about a month later, and the next day the landlady and her husband showed up and looked around the place, and we hadn’t had time to clean up the wine bottles and trash and everything that was all around the property, so they evicted us, and we moved out to Earleton, on the west side of Lake Santa Fe, the four of us right on the lake. That was a good period of growth for us musically because we played all the time.”

    Should you go here, remember that the lakeside homes on Lake Santa Fe are located on private land with private driveways, so there is likely not anything that you will be able to see other than get a sense of the area. Never trespass on private property! The only view of the lake that you might be able to see if down the road across CR 1469 from the post office where there is a boathouse, although that too is on private property.

Aerial color photo of Lake Santa Fe by Google Maps. I have marked the southern and northern boundaries of the half-mile stretch where the cottage would have been

15096 NW Hwy 225, Reddick, FL 32686

https://maps.app.goo.gl/9Qwk7BuLdCxWLsF78

    Behind the Fairfield Presbyterian Church on NW Highway 225 in Reddick, Fla., is the Fairfield Community Cemetery. In the deepest part of the cemetery in the far right corner, the northwest corner, is located the gravesite of William Kyler Petty, paternal grandfather of Tom Petty.

    The Find a Grave entry for William K. Petty, who died in December 1956 at age 73, can be found here:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/30493277/william_kyler_petty 

    William Petty and his wife, Sallie L. (Henderson) Petty, lived outside of Reddick in a rustic house. Tom Petty recalled visiting his grandparents while a child to Warren Zanes for the 2015 book Petty: The Biography.

     “I’d never seen an outhouse until I saw theirs,” Petty told Zanes (pg. 12). “They had a little cornfield next to a tar paper kind of house, up on bricks. I remember newspaper patches on the walls, which struck me as funny, you know? There was a big iron pump that brought water into the kitchen.” 

    Tom Petty’s father, Earl, grew up in that house.

    “I don’t have any memory of a conversation with my grandfather, just that he wore a hat and sat out on the porch with other men,” Tom Petty told Zanes (pg. 12). “But he wasn’t inviting. Nice enough, I guess, but you didn’t walk over to him or anything.”

    Zanes sketches an early bio of William Petty, starting back in the 1910s when he was living in Georgia, working at a lumber mill. He earned the nickname “Pulpwood” for his knack for turning trash into gold – grinding up low-quality trees into pulpwood that could be used for paper production. He met and married Sallie, a Cherokee, who was a cook at a mill camp. Details are few, but the story handed down is that when Sallie faced discrimination, William fought in her honor, resulting in bloodshed, so they fled Georgia for Florida where they became migrant farmers. After years of working and saving, they eventually had enough money to get William back into the pulpwood business, buy land and build their modest house in Reddick, “back in the woods and away from town,” Zanes wrote (pg. 12). They grew vegetables, hunted and fished for meat.

    William’s wife, Sallie L. Petty, is buried, according to the Find a Grate website, in the graveyard for the Fairfield Baptist Church. While the Baptist church is 1/3rd of a mile south of the Presbyterian church on NW Highway 225, there is no cemetery adjacent to the church. It took me three trips to Reddick and sourcing various people to finally discover where the cemetery is located. The church and cemetery, which are separated by a large field southeast of the church, are now interrupted by private property. Therefore, to get to the Fairfield Baptist Church Cemetery across the field at the top of the hill in the woods, you have to drive a half mile. 

    Go south on NW Highway 225, turn left onto W Highway 329, then left onto a gravel driveway for the Highway 329 addresses of Nos. 7559 and 7563. You will see a “Private Property, No Trespassing” sign at the entrance so that you know not to stop at one of the two houses that are to the right of the long gravel driveway that dead-ends at the cemetery in the woods at the top of the hill.

    Coincidently, when I pulled up to the cemetery, I found Kay Yongue Shiver out walking with her cat. Kay, I learned, lived in one of the houses that I had just passed. And she remembered “Mr. and Mrs. Petty,” William and Sallie, from her childhood. Plus she had known Pearl, twin sister to Earl. When I told her that Sallie Petty was reportedly buried here, she seemed intrigued, so we walked around together looking for her gravestone. Yet we couldn’t find one in the compact cemetery of approximately 50 graves. We exchanged contact information and have since been in touch, each of us interested in one day solving the mystery: Where is Sallie L. (Henderson) Petty’s grave?

    If you are to visit either of these cemeteries, be sure to show reverence. And never, ever desecrate a gravesite!

Photo by Shawn Murphy

14855 NW Hwy 225, Reddick, FL 32686

https://maps.app.goo.gl/9ogo7NgpkM93BAMt5

   Fairfield Baptist Church Cemetery in Reddick is reportedly where you can find the gravesite of Sallie L. (Henderson) Petty, paternal grandmother of Tom Petty, according to the Find a Grave website. However, after three trips to Reddick in 2024 and 2025, I could not find one.

    Yet, I did finally learn that there is a Baptist church cemetery. And I figured out how to navigate to it. The confusion arises in the fact that there is no cemetery adjacent to the church. And that the church and cemetery are approximately a quarter-mile apart from one another, as the crow flies, interrupted by private land. 

    Here is the Find a Grave entry for Sallie Petty, including a photograph of the grave marker that shows she died in April 1967 at age 73:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/30494935/sallie_l_petty 

    When I contacted the person who said he took the photo, he said it was nearly two decades ago and he couldn’t remember precisely where it was located.

    To navigate to the Fairfield Baptist Church Cemetery, which from the church is across a field of private property at the top of the hill in the woods, you have to drive a half mile. Leaving the church at 14855 NW Hwy 225, go south on NW Highway 225, turn left onto W Highway 329, then left onto a gravel driveway for the Highway 329 addresses of Nos. 7559 and 7563. You will see a “Private Property, No Trespassing” sign at the entrance so that you know not to stop at one of the two houses that are to the right of the long gravel driveway that dead-ends at the cemetery in the woods at the top of the hill.

    You will successfully navigate to the Fairfield Baptist Church Cemetery using Google Maps if you use this address as a navigational point: 7563 W Hwy 329, Reddick, FL 32686, which effectively is the entrance to cemetery

    Coincidently, when I pulled up to the cemetery in November 2025, I found Kay Yongue

Shiver out walking with her cat. Kay, I learned, lived in one of the houses that I had just passed. And she remembered “Mr. and Mrs. Petty,” William and Sallie, from her childhood. Plus she had known Pearl, twin sister to Earl. When I told her that Sallie Petty was reportedly buried here, she seemed intrigued, so we walked around together looking for her gravestone. Yet we couldn’t find one in the compact cemetery of approximately 50 graves. We exchanged contact information and have since been in touch, each of us interested in one day solving the mystery: Where is Sallie L. Petty’s grave?

    Sallie L. (Henderson) Petty, along with her husband,  William K. Petty, lived outside of Reddick in a rustic house. Tom Petty recalled visiting his grandparents while a child to Warren Zanes for the 2015 book Petty: The Biography.

“I’d never seen an outhouse until I saw theirs,” Petty told Zanes (pg. 12). “They had a little cornfield next to a tar paper kind of house, up on bricks. I remember newspaper patches on the walls, which struck me as funny, you know? There was a big iron pump that brought water into the kitchen.” 

    Tom Petty’s father, Earl, grew up in that house.

    “I don’t have any memory of a conversation with my grandfather, just that he wore a hat and sat out on the porch with other men,” Tom Petty told Zanes (pg. 12). “But he wasn’t inviting. Nice enough, I guess, but you didn’t walk over to him or anything.”

    Zanes sketches an early bio of William Petty, starting back in the 1910s when he was living in Georgia, working at a lumber mill. He earned the nickname “Pulpwood” for his knack for turning trash into gold – grinding up low-quality trees into pulpwood that could be used for paper production. He met and married Sallie, a Cherokee, who was a cook at a mill camp. Details are few, but the story handed down is that when Sallie faced discrimination, William fought in her honor, resulting in bloodshed, so they fled Georgia for Florida where they became migrant farmers. After years of working and saving, they eventually had enough money to get William back into the pulpwood business, buy land and build their modest house in Reddick, “back in the woods and away from town,” Zanes wrote (pg. 12). They grew vegetables, hunted and fished for meat.

   Sallie Petty’s husband, William Kyler Petty, is buried, according to the Find a Grate website, in the graveyard for Fairfield Presbyterian Church, which is 1/3rd of a mile north of the Baptist church on NW Highway 225. While I found the cemetery behind the church after my first visit to Reddick, I was unable to locate a gravesite until my third visit to this cemetery in November 2025, In the deepest part of the cemetery in the far right corner, the northwest corner, is located his gravesite. 

   If you are to visit either of these cemeteries, be sure to show reverence. And never, ever desecrate a gravesite!

Photo by Shawn Murphy

143 NW Centurion Ct, Lake City, FL 32055

https://maps.app.goo.gl/1bfMnnsEk9VBjdXe8  

     In the approximate footprint under a Circle K convenience store on a thoroughfare that is today called NW Centurion Court was once located Lake City’s Holiday Inn, at the intersection of U.S. Route 90 and Interstate 75. It was here where Mudcrutch – lead by Tom Petty – once had a residency in its lounge. The lounge owner pressured the band to play Top-40 hits rather than originals, which was done through phone calls to Mudcrutch’s lawyer and booking agent, Jeffrey Meldon.

     Meldon, who today owns Meldon Law, which represents clients across the state, was a rookie lawyer at the time. After passing the bar in fall 1971, he then offered to represent Tom Petty and Mudcrutch, with whom he had helped organize Mudcrutch Farm festivals in 1970 and 1971.

     “At that point Mudcrutch was still trying to get dates, play places, so I started working with Mudcrutch in my law office. They’d come in every week or so, and we’d talk about where they could play,” Meldon told Marty Jourard, author of the 2016 book Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town.

     During a March 2025 interview with me, Meldon said that all the band members in Mudcrutch at the time would go to his office, then located at 607 NE 1st St. in Gainesville, for advice. Meldon also assisted with lining up some of the band’s shows, most notably this week-long residency at the Lake City Holiday Inn, circa 1971-1972. Meldon tried to line up many more shows, in Miami and elsewhere, yet hit a snag in the form of “the roster rule” in which booking agents and venues – and sometimes record labels – worked in cahoots to book and promote only the bands that were on their “roster.”

    In my interview with Jeffrey Meldon, he told me the “funny story” about the Lake City Holiday Inn gig. During the first night’s show by Mudcrutch, they performed mostly their own songs, with a few covers, rather than get locked into being a jukebox and playing only the hits of the day, which was the bar-circuit norm back then. The bar manager at the Holiday Inn lounge phoned Meldon to say the band was good, but he wanted them to play more Top-40 songs. In turn, Meldon called Petty to let him know about the complaint. 

    “Don’t worry, I got this,” Petty reportedly said to Meldon. 

    Meldon said that the next night on stage, Petty introduced a Mudcrutch original with, “and here’s another top-40 hit” – a bluff that seemed to work since the bar manager didn’t follow up with any further complaints about Mudcrutch’s playlist of originals.

Photo of Lake City Holiday Inn postcard, circa 1960s-1970s, courtesy of eBay 

4400 W US Hwy 90, Lake City, FL 32055

https://maps.app.goo.gl/G3dZPVM8Dyv1no6x7 

    Mudcrutch, with future Heartbreakers Tom Petty and Mike Campbell, performed at a Lake City, Fla., liquor store lounge in 1971. The band – named as “The Mud Crutch” in a newspaper advertisement for the lounge – was promoted as showcasing an “exciting new sound.” 

    Along U.S. Highway 90 West in Lake City was the United West Lounge, which was attached to a liquor store, United Liquors. One of the bands it hired to entertain lounge patrons was Mudcrutch, who played for four nights, Wednesday through Saturday, June 9-12, 1971, as advertised in a June 7, 1971 half-page advertisement for the booze and beer sales in The Lake City Reporter newspaper.   

    As for where precisely the United West Lounge was located on U.S. Highway 90 West in Lake City, I could not definitively nail down a street address. This is despite the additional clue that the United West Lounge was formerly the Apollo Lounge, as noted in the newspaper ad. In the interest of transparency, I show you the work that journalists like myself put into their reporting, without knowing in the beginning whether their research is going to answer their driving question. My question was: What is the address of this lounge in Lake City where Mudcrutch played in 1971? 

    For months I tried to acquire a street address that could be pinpointed on Google Maps, which is the norm on the Tom Petty Trail. During these months, I queried members of various Lake City Facebook groups, reached out to the state Department of Transportation, contacted the Columbia County Board of County Commissioners, and worked with the always helpful reference librarians at the Library West at the University of Florida Libraries. 

    Of the possible locations suggested, I was told the following from various people:

• 134 SW Florida Gateway Dr, Lake City, FL 32024, where there is a liquor store, The Package Store, located. 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/cQ7NKVi94W7mLKtn7

Patty Holloway Nail from “Lake City News and Information,” a Facebook group, wrote: “I believe the property you are referring to is now called The Package Store … It is on one side of Hwy 90 W and Circle K gas station is on the other.” When I asked about her level of certainty, she said that she went there once, visiting from out of town, and was told that it was the Apollo Lounge. She said her visit would have been in 1974 or 1975. However, the newspaper ad tells us that in 1971 this bar was called the United West Lounge and that it was formerly called the Apollo. So, perhaps this is where it is located, but we don’t know for sure.

• 2260 W US Hwy 90, Lake City, FL 32055, where a Mexican restaurant, the Fiesta, is located. 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/QdeuDJkgQtQhqvYy7

Rob Mixon, also from Lake City News and Information, said, “The Apollo Lounge was in this building,” meaning the Fiesta restaurant. When I asked him about his level of certainty, and whether he had gone there, he wrote: “Yes I did go there numerous times back then. My mother worked there for a time when I was young.” While this sounded more promising because he and his mother had been here more than once, I could not corroborate the lounge location with additional sources. So, it could be the place in question, but it might not be.

• 1077 US-90, Lake City, FL 32055, where there is currently a strip shopping center. 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/QozsDuVsorr1DkF66

Ellen Snyder from the Columbia County Board of County Commissioners wrote: “If my memory is correct this business was located at the east end of this shopping plaza. The current address is between 971 and 1077 US Highway 90. Hope this helps.” When I explained the purpose of my query and questioned her certainty, she wrote: “I cannot confirm that this is correct information, sorry I can not be or any further help.” While she seemed to come from a position of authority (my contact at the state DOT recommended I contact the county), she was relying on memory. I was unable to find other sources with the same memory.

• 4400 W US Hwy 90, Lake City, FL 32055, where Google Maps will show us undeveloped land with a whole bunch of trees. 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/dVhRGghpJ3VDgxmw7

My contact at Library West at the University of Florida Libraries said the directory for Lake City for 1971 listed the address as 4400 US Hwy 90 W, which seemed like a slam dunk. Yet, I question that a liquor store and lounge was once located where the address is given in the 1971 city directory. This is possibly due to a change over time in the numbering system along Highway 90 West.

    To be transparent and demonstrate the effort that librarians – unsung heroes, as far as I’m concerned – put into their work, I share the following timeline of the efforts made by Library West researchers in their attempt to find credible information for me. 

• Librarians were able to unearth a legal notice in the newspaper showing when United Liquors changed hands, although no precise street address was given in the notice. 
• They were then able to locate a story published when the Apollo Lounge opened. The story said it was located “east of Branford Road,” which presumably is SR247 that runs southwest from U.S. Highway 90 West in Lake City to Branford, where the road ends. However, no precise address was given.
• And librarians were also able to track down a newspaper police blotter story about a traffic accident in which the Apollo Lounge is mentioned as being on the south side of 90-W, so librarians speculated that United Liquors and its lounge might have been located near where the Walgreens or Aldi grocery store are currently located. However, no street addresses can be ascertained for speculation.
• Furthermore, librarians were able to find an April 1969 photo and cutline from a newspaper about the planned grand opening of the “newly remodeled Apollo Lounge on West U.S. 90” – yet no street address was given. The photo provided a clue, though. It shows its co-owners, Eddie Kalinoski and R.G. Gardner, standing in front of the lounge. We can see the words Apollo Lounge written on the front of the building. Over Gardner’s shoulder, we see a vertical sign with the letters A-B-C. So, it appears, sometime between April 1969 and June 1971 when the Mudcrutch concert was held, United West Liquors purchased the ABC Liquor store along with its Apollo Lounge, then renamed the lounge after the store. However, researching further with that clue was also a dead end: no street address could be found. 
• Lastly, librarians acquired the 1971 Polk Directory for Lake City, which listed the address for the Apollo Lounge/United Liquors as “4400 US Hwy 90 W” – finally a precise address! However, if one looks at the aerial view on Google Maps, it’s hard to believe that a liquor store and lounge would have been located that far out in the country, leaving me thinking that the numbering system changed over time. Despite this, I have pinpointed this as the address given in a city directory, even though I have my doubts.

    While I am thankful for the help provided, especially from the university research librarians, in the end I could not say with 100% certainty where the United West Lounge was located on U.S. Highway 90 West.

    If someone reading this knows definitively where the liquor store and lounge was located, please contact me at tompettytrail@gmail.com .

   For those interested, you can find the digitized edition of the Monday, June 7, 1971 issue of the Lake City Reporter at the following link. And you can see on page 12 the half-page liquor store/lounge ad, complete with the promo for “The Mud Crutch” shows. And of course I have to thank the Library West crew for their help in finding this advertisement.

https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028308/06152/citation

Photo from the grand opening of the Apollo Lounge, which became United West Lounge, from the Lake City Reporter newspaper, courtesy of Florida Digital Newspapers Library, with assistance from Library West at the University of Florida Libraries 

17594 High Springs Main St, High Springs, FL 32643

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ruDP7xKFAwwzNrj56 

    The High Springs Tobacco Festival was held here on Friday and Saturday, July 14-15, 1972. Topping the bill both nights was Mudcrutch, which included future Heartbreakers Tom Petty and Mike Campbell. The band headlined both nights in what was promoted as a “dance” on the poster.

    On Saturday, the day kicked off in the morning with a baby contest, followed by a parade, a fish fry, and a Tobacco Queen contest. As if this entertainment couldn’t be topped, Mudcrutch capped off the night by playing for the dance until 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

     The multi-colored poster for the two-day event notes that it was held in the Tobacco Warehouse, yet didn’t give any more specificity about location. However, the event’s program specifies it was held at the Big Dollar Warehouse on U.S. 41 in High Springs. Unfortunately, no street address was noted. 

    Greg Gillman, a member of Gainesville Rock History (GRH), a Facebook group administered by Marty Jourard, shared the festival’s program in a discussion thread. And Sandy Stringfellow shared the poster.

    “Found this little pamphlet while going through some old stuff,” Gillman wrote. “High Springs had a festival every year at the tobacco warehouses on the south end of town. Half of the large warehouses would still have sacks full of dried tobacco that had either been auctioned off or was waiting to be auctioned!”

    When I asked Gillman to help me pinpoint where these Big Dollar tobacco warehouses were located, he provided me with an address of roughly where he remembers them being. In that spot today are modern storage units.

    After months of research by me and a team of librarians at Library West at the University of Florida, it seemed that a dead end was reached – until one of the librarians unearthed some clues. Having told the librarians approximately where Gillman remembers the festival being held, they were able to locate a newspaper article that referred to “Warehouse #1” and “Warehouse #2” just southwest of where the storage units are located today. I had previously told my librarian contact that someone in a GRH discussion thread had said he went to this event and saw Mudcrutch, who “played the dance in Warehouse #2.” The librarian also located an article that talked about tobacco warehouses closing throughout northcentral Florida, with the notation that “the only warehouse that withstood all the problems was the Big Dollar Warehouse.”

    But the biggest clue came when my point-person librarian examined closely the businesses that are currently in this area. On the website for one of the businesses, ThemeWorks Inc., it states that they are located in “an old tobacco auction warehouse.” So, out of the blue, I emailed the company president, Scott Gill, to ask if, by chance, he knew whether the tobacco warehouse that previously occupied the 54,000-foot building was a Big Dollar warehouse, where Tom Petty’s Mudcrutch played in 1972. Two days later I got an email response.

    “That’s pretty interesting. I had heard a rumor that Mudcrutch played in our building, but never confirmed it,” Gill wrote.  There were around 3,000 tobacco baskets when we moved in here in 1996, all marked ‘Big Dollar,’ and we still have a few of them. I’ve heard that there were several warehouses in a row here, so not sure which one he would have played in.  There was certainly one to our north, as there’s an area in the asphalt that was where the tobacco scale was located.”

    On a recent research trip to Gainesville, I met with Gill, who was kind enough to give me the time and the grand tour. He showed me the remnants of this tobacco scale in the lot to the northeast of ThemeWorks, where another of the Big Dollar warehouses would have been. And he showed me the inside of the warehouse that ThemeWorks now occupies, contrasting it with old pictures he took when he first bought the dilapidated building. Most significantly, though, he showed me a numbered tobacco basket branded with the words “BIG DOLLAR WH” that was manufactured in Sparta, Tenn. He noted that he had sold off the thousands of other tobacco baskets to antique collectors. 

    As an interesting small-world side note, Gill told me that his father in law attended one of the three Mudcrutch Farm festivals. He carried a tambourine with him that he played in the assembled crowd. And the ThemeWorks’ finance director’s mother also attended one of the festivals. In a well-circulated color photograph by Red Slater of the festival audience, she can be seen sitting on the ground looking up at the stage, as Gill pointed out to me.

    After our interview, Gill gifted to me one of the remaining baskets. He said he wanted someone to own it who had an appreciation of its connection to Mudcrutch, so he gave it to me. I graciously accepted it. While I managed to squeeze it into the back of a large SUV with seats folded down, I knew that the roughly five-foot-wide square basket would not transport easily to my home. Most importantly, I knew that this needed to be in the hands of Gainesville’s musical ambassadors, the torch bearers for the history of music there. Later that day, I gave it to Mike Boulware. When I did, Danny Roberts, who was in Mudcrutch from 1973 to 1975, happened to be there. I told them that this relic needed to stay in Gainesville, that they were to be its keepers until a more suitable home is found – ideally in a local music history museum, which has long been the dream of Jeff Goldstein and others with the Gainesville Music History Foundation Inc.

    As for the July 1972 festival, Gill said it must have been blazing hot inside the building when people danced to Mudcrutch. He told me how hot the building was when his business moved into the space, before it was modernized, insulated and air-conditioned.

    “I know that when we moved in, temps could reach up to around 120 degrees, so besides the musicians tearing it up, that would have been one HOT concert,” Gill wrote me in an email prior to our interview.

    Gregg Gillman, who was there for one of the 1972 Mudcrutch shows, recalls how hot it was inside the building on a mid-July Florida night – and the smell that permeated the air.

    “They actually played inside one of the warehouses, which had no AC, only big circulating fans. It was hot as blazes,” Gillman wrote in the GRH thread. “There were bundles of tobacco in a corner that were ready to be shipped to suppliers. God awful smell, especially with the heat and humidity.”

    Five months before his death, Tom Leadon, who was in Mudcrutch when it played the 1972 High Springs Tobacco Festival, recalled playing here in a GRH discussion thread started by Gillman.

    “I booked the gig and remember it well,” Leadon wrote in October 2022. “A big deal in HS, had a beauty Queen and other things, like maybe a parade? They were nice and paid well, so we played it. But it was all those things you remember and the worst acoustics you can imagine, but we were able to pay our bills.”

    Gilman responded to Leadon: “I grew up over there – several of the Queen contestants I went to high school with. It WAS a big deal, the town practically shut down. There were NO acoustics in those tin buildings lol, and it was hot as hell. I was a year out of high school and not about to miss a chance to be totally cool in a redneck town - I made sure I saw Mudcrutch!!!”

    As a footnote, it is worth noting how remarkable Scott Gill’s company, ThemeWorks Inc., is. In its studio in High Springs, Fla., in a space where previously tobacco, old cars, and furniture were housed at different points in the building’s history, it conceptualizes and creates themed creations. Its studio employs artists, engineers, woodworkers, metalworkers, composites fabricators, sculptors, painters, modelmakers, and others. In a start to finish operation, it has created a number of award-winning installments at locations such as Universal Studios, Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and the Shanghai Disney Resort. ThemeWorks created the entryway signs for the College Football Hall of Fame, various environments at zoos across the country, exhibits at SeaWorld in Orlando and for Ripley’s Aquariums, and atmospheric pieces for Cabela’s. It has created Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventures, the entryway at the Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not in Times Square, a 40-foot tall boy at a South Carolina children’s museum, and the lost city of Atlantis at SeaWorld in San Diego. And it has created numerous exhibits at numerous museums, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. To learn more about ThemeWorks, and to see videos and photos of its creations, go to its website: https://themeworks.com/   

Photo by Shawn Murphy

4202 E Fowler Ave, Tampa, FL 33620

https://maps.app.goo.gl/SFsrJupdGFZ3yru1A 

      William “Red” Slater is a 1981 graduate of the University of South Florida College of Engineering. But in the early 1970s he found himself living on a 10-acre rural parcel of land in northwest Gainesville in a run-down house with no hot water. His bedroom was the pantry off the kitchen where he managed to squeeze in a single bed and darkroom equipment. This eventually became known as Mudcrutch Farm (2203 NW 45th Ave., Gainesville). His two roommates were Randall Marsh and Mike Campbell, both of whom became members of the band Mudcrutch, which included future Heartbreakers Campbell, Benmont Tench and Tom Petty. 

    Slater, who was keen on photography and had the cameras and darkroom gear, documented this era on the then-rural farm. As interest in Tom Petty grew over time, Slater’s photos were rediscovered, especially when Mudcrutch reformed, recorded and toured in the 2000s. His photos have been published in magazines such as Rolling Stone and in album compilations, as well as used in documentaries. Among many other iconic black and white images, he captured a photo of Campbell and Petty meeting for the first time at the farm, when the younger Campbell demonstrated his talent to Petty – and earned a spot in Mudcrutch – by playing Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” on a Japanese guitar.

    Interviewed by The Gainesville Sun in 2008, Slater reminisced about living at the farm when the three festivals were held in 1970 and 1971 and the band had a standing gig at the venue at the end of NW 45th Avenue, then a dirt road, called Dub’s Steer Room, or simply Dub’s (4562 NW 13th St.). He recalled the band arriving home in the wee hours to jam until dawn. Periodically, the amps would blow a fuse in the electric panel.

    “I’d reset it once or twice but then after that, it was like ‘No, I gotta go to sleep, I gotta work in the morning,’ so I would just not answer the door,” Slater was quoted as saying.

     The Tampa Tribune interviewed Slater in 2008 about his amateur photographs of Mudcrutch from 1970 to 1974. Asked whether he thought this band would someday have members in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Slater said he did not.

    “But when I look back on that time, I think it’s because Tom (Pety) was focused,” Slater is quoted as saying to the reporter. “He had a direction.” 

    To learn more about Red Slater, read this University of South Florida alumni office story: https://www.usf.edu/engineering/envision/dec-2017-red-slater.aspx  

Photo by Red Slater, courtesy of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Facebook page

SEE PHOTO GALLERY SECTION ON THIS WEBSITE WHERE YOU WILL FIND A DISPLAY OF SLATER'S PHOTOS:

https://tompettytrail.com/photo-gallery

1755 NE 149th St., Miami, FL 33181

https://maps.app.goo.gl/W92fs5z5uMoHd69U6

    Criteria Studios in North Miami is where Mudcrutch recorded the 45 record with "Up in Mississippi" and "Cause Is Understood." It was released in 1971 on Pepper Records, the band's own label. 500 records were pressed.

    To hear that recording, go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB-Nb9j1gDc

    To learn about the storied history of this recording studio, check out its website:

https://www.criteriastudios.com/home

    And check out the Wikipedia site for a list of musicians who have recorded here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criteria_Studios 

Photo by Shawn Murphy, courtesy of Marty McKnew
 

3400 Gulf Blvd, St Pete Beach, FL 33706

https://maps.app.goo.gl/z3De5hagbecDbrkH7

     Shortly after noon on April 21, 1985, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed a 40-minute concert on the rooftop of the Don CeSar Hotel, a pink-colored luxury resort on the white-sand beach in St. Petersburgh, for an audience of MTV documentary producers and cameramen. The publicity stunt for the band's latest album at the time, "Southern Accents," proved too loud for the hotel's security guards who stopped it short.

     To read more about this staged event, see photos and watch a clip from this concert, read this article from The Catalyst:

https://stpetecatalyst.com/a-little-more-don-history-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers/

Photo by John Siebenthaler
 

2025 9th St So., St. Petersburg, FL 33705

https://maps.app.goo.gl/YJyfBpkp9YUtMpT78

    Now a vacant lot, this is where was once located the C. James Mathews Funeral Home, which also ran an ambulance service. Tom Petty lived and worked here in the summer of 1968. 

    Note that the address of the funeral home at the time was 2025 9th St. South. Because it is an address that no longer exists, I have mapped this as 2019 9th St. South -- an adjacent vacant lot just feet away, in the same block of the street that today is named Dr. M.L.K. St. South.

    After graduating from Gainesville High School, Petty enrolled in an art school in Tampa. But after not attending a single class and on the verge of flunking out, he got a job working the lunch shift at a Tampa barbecue restaurant where he cleaned greasy dishes and swept or mopped the dirty kitchen floors. He lasted nearly two weeks. Petty’s girlfriend at the time, Jan Mathews, who he met at a Dunnellon concert while still in the Epics, managed to get him a job at her father’s funeral home. Despite Mr. Mathews’ dislike of the long-haired hippie from Gainesville, he gave Petty a break – with a little coaxing by Joyce, Jan’s mom. 

   Petty was allowed to live behind the funeral home, above the hearse garage, rooming with some older employees. Petty’s job involved cleaning the limos and hearses, coordinating floral arrangements for ceremonies, and taking photographs of the flowers for a scrap book given to a grieving family. 

     The job, like most, had a certain amount of tedium, so Tom pulled pranks to help make the time pass more quickly. One of the pranks his first cousins, Norma and Sadie Darnell, who lived next door to the Petty home in Gainesville, told me about when I interviewed them in November 2025. The prank involved Tom hiding in a casket and waiting for people to come into the room at night, when he would knock from inside the casket to frighten them, which the Darnells found amusing when Tom later told them about having done it.

     One time, the job included helping to retrieve a corpse to bring back to the funeral home for embalming. This job, along with its living arrangement, would not last long, for one night Petty walked a few miles to the Mathews’ home, snuck into the house and made his way into his girlfriend’s bed. 

   “I was caught sneaking into their house for a little midnight love,” Petty told Warren Zanes for the 2015 book Petty: The Biography. “I’d walked all the way there, not that it was unusual for a guy my age looking for that kind of thing. But I was busted there in her bed. And it scared me so bad, I ran out the front door, jumped in the old man’s Lincoln Continental, and drove off. Her father’s car, for Christ’s sake. It had the keys in it, for whatever reason” (pgs. 43-45).

    Petty would soon return to Gainesville and, along with his Epics bandmate Tom Leadon, begin playing with Mudcrutch.

     At some point in late 1973 or early 1974, when Danny Roberts was in Mudcrutch and before the band departed for LA, Petty was picked up here for a Mudcrutch show at a Daytona Beach biker bar. Roberts told me in November 2025 that he remembers being in a vehicle with other band members when they picked him up at the Petty family home (1715 NE 6th Terrace, Gainesville) to drive to the venue. Roberts recalls Petty was dressed in a green suit and donning a hat, standing out by the road. On closer inspection once inside the vehicle, Roberts noticed that the green outfit from the C. James Mathews Funeral Home. Roberts was amused to be shown the embalming fluid receipts that Petty had in his pocket.  

Photo of a pack of matches cover advertising the Mathews ambulance service, courtesy of Ebay
 

1010 N Macinnes Pl, Tampa, FL 33602

https://maps.app.goo.gl/WoUYtpuPJDSTvsM98 

    Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers made its Florida debut Nov. 24-25, 1976, in a downtown Tampa venue that was once located here, the Performing Arts Centre, according to Setlist. The band’s first album had been released just two weeks before, on Nov. 9. When the band held this concert, they were mostly unknown. After the first three months of the album’s release, it had sold only 6,500 copies and the first single, “Breakdown”, did not chart.    

    The Performing Arts Centre was replaced with what is today known as the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, which opened in 1987.       

    To see the cities and dates of the early concerts, go here: 

https://www.setlist.fm/search?artist=6bd6e20a&page=2&query=tom+petty&year=1976 

Photo of album cover courtesy of Wikipedia
 

6395 N Atlantic Ave, Cape Canaveral, FL 32920

https://maps.app.goo.gl/XKzTNA4S9wrg8NdJ9

   Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was in its infancy when it played here for two nights, on Dec. 2 and 3, in 1976, at what was then Galaxy Lounge, according to Setlist:

https://www.setlist.fm/search?artist=6bd6e20a&query=tom+petty&year=1976

   Galaxie Lounge, as it was spelled by the proprietor, was in Cape Canaveral, not Cocoa Beach as it is noted in the Setlist entry (Cocoa Beach is just south of Cape Canaveral). Due to its location near the Kennedy Space Center, the nightclub featured a space theme, which included a ceiling with embedded stars, a rocket-shaped phone booth, and bar stools with seat belts. Galaxie Lounge was located inside George’s Steak House. Today there is a dollar store in its footprint.

   The following week the band would play Paul’s Mall in Boston for six shows over three days, Dec. 10-12, serving as the opener for Al Kooper. The Dec. 12 Heartbreakers performances were recorded for a one-sided promotional album by Shelter Records in 1977 titled “Official Live ’Leg”. It was remastered and released in 2009 as part of the deluxe vinyl box set of “The Live Anthology”. The learn more about the official bootleg album, go here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Live_%27Leg

Photo by Joe Doyle, administrator of Cocoa Beach Coastal Community, a Facebook group
 

5372 Atlantic View, St. Augustine, FL 32080

https://maps.app.goo.gl/iXVih3w3VguhfR3H6     

     Once the Crescent Beach vacation home for Tom Petty and his family. In 1991, Tom told a reporter that the beach home was where he would unwind and relax, perhaps listen to the waves crash on the beach, and do "as little as possible, to sit on the beach and clear my head," as reported in the article "Flying Lessons: Tom Petty takes his bearings," from L.A. Style, October 1991. 

     This article can be found at the blog of the reporter, Robert Lloyd:

https://www.houseofhere.com/petty.html   

     In this profile, 40-year-old Tom Petty talks about his career, his family, and how much he enjoyed being here along St. Augustine Beach. The reporter walks with Petty down the street by the beach houses surrounding his property. He talks about his neighbors, noting where they work and what their work schedule is. He points out the house of a neighbor who the day before had introduced herself to him, bringing him a large homemade cookie. And he talks about how his youngest daughter, Kim, benefits from “a terrific sense of independence” she gets from riding her bicycle along the sidewalk-less street.    

     Petty noted that school field trips initially brought him to historic downtown St. Augustine, then as a teen he’d make the trip to surf off the beach. In the 1991 profile, centered around this beach house, he’s fishing or riding a Little Honda 50 scooter, which he notes was “not very macho at all,” along the beach at low tide – “probably never (exceeding) twenty-five miles an hour.”    

     About St. Augustine, he told the reporter: It’s kind of charming. It hasn’t been ruined like Orlando yet. Last night I was in a restaurant and I told the waitress, ‘I want French fries with this.’ She goes, ‘Well, you know, it’ll be another twenty-five cents if you order it that way – but you could do it this way and save the twenty-five cents.’"    

     The restaurant being discussed was the Seaview Cafe, one of his frequented spots. The reporter describes it as “a regulation beach-strip shrimp house, with a low-ceilinged dining room approached through a low-ceilinged bar.”     

      The reporter talks about how Petty, and the locals, deal with his fame while here.    

      “A few of the few heads present turn Petty’s way,” he wrote. “Even in this familiar, out-of-the-way place, he seems painfully conscious of wearing a famous face. ‘It can be an awfully long walk through that bar,’ he sighs.”    

     Petty talks about observing the shrimpers stopping by at night after docking their boats.    

     “It gets pretty colorful,” Petty told the reporter. “I always enjoy that as long as I don’t have to get drawn into the middle of it.”      

     A fellow Gainesville musician who to me referred to himself as “a close friend of Tommy’s,” which I can confirm he was, vacationed in a beach house about a mile to the south of here. He fondly remembered hanging out with Petty here in the early 1990s.    

     “In the early-nineties one summer, my vacation at our beach house coincided with his being at his beach house about a mile north,” he told me. “He looked like any other local guy, with a beard, cutoffs and flip flops; shades and a tee shirt with a baseball cap – truly anonymous, but also because nobody was looking around for him in St. Augustine Beach. We rode small mopeds he had, and ate at a local seafood shack run by an older woman who had no idea who he was. It was a cool time.”    

     This friend elaborated on the need for privacy while being famous, and how this was important to Tom Petty. And he recalled relaxed conversations he had with his friend.    

     “The reason I am so protective about TP is that he was an extremely private person off-stage and off-tour, and I don’t want any part in presenting his non-professional life events. I also understand the public’s craving for that”, this friend explained in an email to me. “Because he really was that guy, on stage and off, not a pose. He was also funny as hell, with an indescribably dry sense of humor. It wasn’t so much the content but the delivery style that made it so funny – often portraying a guy who is dumb but thinks he’s funny. And the funny part is that the guy thinks he’s funny, and that makes you laugh. And...and...well, ya see what I mean?”   

     Despite Tom Petty’s wish to be anonymous while off the concert stage, he was seen – as was the case here along Crescent Beach. There are numerous reports of sightings along this stretch of beach, yet most people who recognized him seem to have respected his privacy and respectfully let him be. In a Facebook discussion thread for the St. Augustine News from 2021, many claimed to have seen him in the 1980s and 1990s. Didi Bowman was one, as reportedly was her sister.    

     “I worked at Dominos and I delivered to him many times,” Bowman wrote. “He actually requested me frequently because I pretended to not know who he was. My little sister worked at the Publix on the island and once he walked in and was mobbed by fans so he turned around and ran out. He was very private but very kind and funny and a great tipper, of course!”    

     There is also a report of a Pizza Hut delivery. Natasha Casad-Best said she worked at a downtown franchise, while her husband worked at one along Rt. 312.    

     “When my husband and I were working for Pizza Hut, we each ended up delivering to Tom Petty,” she wrote. “I delivered first to his beach house and didn’t realize who I had delivered to. My husband delivered to him the next week at his friend’s house. My husband told me later that Tom Petty had been the one to give me my awesome tip I’d gotten the previous week. They had a good laugh together before my husband had to leave.”    

     Patti Olsen reported that she saw Petty in 1994 at a retail store that was on San Marco Street in downtown St. Augustine.    “Sold him T-shirts and funky hats at Insanitee’s,” she wrote. “Told him I saw him a few years prior in Atlanta. His reply, ‘It’s all a blur.’”    Brandy Grohowski Baker’s father and grandfather owned Tom’s Fruit and Gifts, a gift shop at 1812 Rt. A1A South in St. Augustine, which was open from 1970 until its 2022 closing. She reported that Petty would often stop by there.    

     “He used to go into my dad and grandpa’s shop all the time back in the day and buy the best fresh squeezed OJ you’ve ever had,” she wrote.    

     Mimi Hollister and Kim Hartwick both reported seeing Petty driving in a sports car around St. Augustine Beach. Hollister said she saw him at a red light at the intersections of Routes AIA and 312, while Hartwick said she saw him near her home on Medoras Avenue.    

     Alison Lee reported that Petty “quietly paid for my gas once at the Handy Way in Crescent Beach when I was 16,” adding, “He was gone in a flash. Never got to say thank you.”    

     Missy Playford reported that she saw Petty while working at a restaurant near his beach house.    

     “He used to frequent Seaside Restaurant on A1A, just a few blocks from his home, in the early ’90s. I worked there,” she wrote. “He was always polite, but I always respected his privacy. The place since has changed ownership and is something else.”    

     Sean Richardson reported: “Met him in front of his house right as he was getting off his tour bus. Very nice guy.”    

     Frank Sladish, Jr., who lived six houses from the Petty beach house, regularly saw him in the middle-to-late 1980s.    

     “We would run into him often and were able to enjoy hanging out with him from time to time when he was in town,” he wrote. “Really nice, down to earth guy.”    

     Rebecca Hill reported that her children “ran into him on the beach one day,” leaving them “pretty stoked.”    

     Chris Muskett said he was walking the beach one day and heard Petty playing guitar at his beach house.    

     “I grew up just down A1A and I would ride my bike down the beach,” he wrote. “One day I heard this guitar, looked up and this dude with long hippie hair was just jamming out on his deck. Me being the extrovert that I am, walked up the boardwalk. He finished his song, I introduced myself. He let me listen to a few more songs and then very politely told me to go. It was getting dusk and I was only 12. One and only time I ever heard him out there.”    

     Chris Wooten reported that his neighbor a couple miles south of Petty’s beach house, who was Petty’s sound engineer, had “a photo album with over 400 pics of Tom on Crescent Beach,” although “he is pretty private with what he shares.”    

     Jeanna King reported that her friends, who lived in Marineland, a town not far south of Crescent Beach that is home to a dolphin adventures business, saw Tom and Jane Benyo Petty “frequent there back in the ’80s.”    

     Sue Harris reported “seeing him riding back and forth” down Route A1A on a scooter.    

     Robin Bokur-Lambert, a neighbor, often saw him riding a scooter down the street.    

     “I lived across the street from him on the beach and he always rode the scooter up and down Atlantic View with his youngest daughter,” she wrote. “He was always super nice.”    

     Daniel Bordeaux reported that he recalls Petty riding a scooter to a Jiffy convenience store along Crescent Beach to purchase lottery tickets.    

     Diane Smith reported that her husband ran into Petty at the Crescent Beach Jiffy and that he was a “very low-key, humble guy.”    “He held the door open for him at that Jiffy with that smile of his,” she wrote. “When my husband did a double take – he realized it was Tom Petty – (and) he was gone.”    

     Some years later, the Smiths ended up buying one of the scooters owned by the Pettys. They purchased a red 1992 Honda Elite Scooter, adorned with a peace sign sticker, through a  next door neighbor who rented his house to exchange students. When the two exchange students finished up their studies at Flagler College in St. Augustine to return home to Denmark, the Smiths bought it from the students for $150. It came with original ownership records, a title and registration, noting that it had once belonged to Tom Petty and Jane Benyo Petty, whose permanent address was noted to be in California.    

     In October 2021, a website for an online auction house called Gotta Have Rock and Roll put this scooter up for auction. The minimum bid required was $5,000; it was noted to be valued at between $15,000 and $20,000. Two bids were made before the auction closed. To see this, go here: https://gottahaverockandroll.com/Tom_Petty_Owned___Heavily_Used_1992_Honda_Elite_Sc-LOT39878.aspx    

     Evidently, the Smiths retained ownership of the scooter following that auction. In June 2023, Diane Smith went on an AXS-TV program called Rock My Collection, which appraises and auctions memorabilia. An appraiser on the program valued it in the $12,000 to $15,000 range. Part of that episode can be watched here:

https://www.facebook.com/100064541090501/videos/286311583857308/?__so__=watchlist&__rv__=video_home_www_playlist_video_list    

     In March 2025, Diane Smith informed me that the Smiths still owned this scooter.    

     As a footnote about this scooter, I share the following report from the Facebook discussion thread for the St. Augustine News from 2021, which centered around this scooter.    

     “That’s the scooter he got stuck on the beach and my dad had to go dig it out for him,” Rhyannon Erskine wrote. “My dad did the work on his beach house, built all the custom closets too. Tom was pretty awesome.”    

     To read the noted Facebook discussion thread, go here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ABkr4QCDz/     

     There is a widely circulated photo of Tom Petty wearing a t-shirt from the St. Augustine Alligator Farm, located at 999 Anastasia Blvd., a long-running attraction dating back to 1893, which he undoubtedly bought while visiting during one of his vacations here. This photo was taken atop the Don CeSar resort on St. Petersburg Beach, likely in 1985 when the Heartbreakers performed live atop the beachfront hotel for an MTV documentary. In this photo he looks directly at the camera, and offers a warm smile that makes him looks completely at peace.     

     This Zillow listing for the Crescent Beach house showed that as of February 2025 this house was on the market, billed as "Tom Petty’s Former Oceanfront Retreat":  https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5372-Atlantic-Vw-Saint-Augustine-FL-32080/47771611_zpid/       

     Should you go here, remember that this private home, located in a residential neighborhood, so must be treated with respect for the property owner and neighbors. This includes never trespassing onto private property!

Photo courtesy of Zillow
 

1720 US Hwy 1 S. Saint Augustine, FL 32084

https://maps.app.goo.gl/DV9zeLJmThLfxFkA8 

    From Tom Petty’s beach house on Crescent Beach in St. Augustine, which served as his anonymous retreat from fame, he could drive to the nearest Sonny’s BBQ franchise in 13 minutes where he could satisfy his craving for BBQ beans and ribs from the restaurant that originated in his hometown of Gainesville.

    A fellow Gainesville musician who referred to himself to me as “a close friend of Tommy’s,” which I can confirm he was, vacationed in a beach house about a mile to the south of Petty’s beach house. He talked about how Petty enjoyed eating comfort food while seeking comfort off the treadmill of constantly being recognized by the public.

    “When at his beach house Tommy also ate at the St. Augustine location (of Sonny’s BBQ),” Petty’s close friend told me. “I went there in the mid-nineties, and they had an autographed order receipt pinned to the bulletin board next to the cashier. It was eventually stolen – duhh – but I clearly remember it.”

    Petty’s close friend recalled an earlier visit to their respective St. Augustine beach houses.

    “In the early-nineties one summer, my vacation at our beach house coincided with his being at his beach house about a mile north,” he told me. “He looked like any other local guy, with a beard, cutoffs and flip flops; shades and a tee shirt with a baseball cap – truly anonymous, but also because nobody was looking around for him in St. Augustine Beach. We rode small mopeds he had, and ate at a local seafood shack run by an older woman who had no idea who he was. It was a cool time.”

    Note that this St. Augustine location of Sonny’s BBQ is now a vacant lot. It was still open as late as 2018, as there was this news coverage of founder Sonny Tillman visiting it:

https://www.staugustine.com/story/lifestyle/2018/05/30/barbecue-master-visits-st-augustine-location/12107322007/

    But by 2023 the building and lot had sold for $2 million. Here is the real estate listing for that property:

https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/fl/saint-augustine/1720-us-hwy-1-s/pid_53035888/ 

    By 2025, the building was razed, as one can see in Google Maps. It was located at 1720 U.S. Highway 1 South in St. Augustine. 

Photo by Masen Sharpe

3701 Winton Dr, Jacksonville, FL 32208

https://maps.app.goo.gl/A23o76scDKa3BiAt9

    Mike Campbell, a guitarist in both Mudcrutch and the Heartbreakers with Tom Petty, attended Jean Ribault High School in northwest Jacksonville, Fla. Michael W. Campbell started ninth grade here in the fall of 1965.

    “I was the quiet kid in the back,” Campbell wrote in his 2025 autobiography, Heartbreaker. “I knew the answers but I never raised my hand. I would do my homework in the library after school, studying to kill time, then catch the bus back to whatever dump we happened to be living in that month, with my books in one hand my little radio in the other” (pg. 13).

    Campbell lived in what he described as “a run-down neighborhood called Sherwood Forest” on the north side of the city, which “was full of trailers and vacant lots and grimy white houses with chainlink fences” (pg. 7). 

    After his parents divorced, Campbell’s mother, Helen, was left fending for herself while the military career of Campbell’s father, Malcolm, continued in Okinawa, Japan. To pay the rent and to feed three children, Helen held two jobs. She worked in a Sav-a-Stop grocery store warehouse where she packed boxes to be shipped out, and she waited on hungry customers at a soda fountain. Yet, she somehow managed to save up enough money to buy Mike Campbell his first guitar when he turned 16 on Feb. 1, 1966. 

    “It was a beat-up little Harmony acoustic,” Campbell wrote (pg. 13). “She had even stuck a little red bow on the headstock.” Thrilled, Campbell would practice guitar continuously while home after school taking care of his younger brother and sister while his mom worked. 

    “So I played guitar. All the time. It was all I wanted to do anyway,” Campbell wrote (pg. 15). “When the strings cut my fingertips open, I rinsed the blood off and kept playing. I didn’t care if it hurt. When the strings cut through the callouses, I played until they calloused again.”

    Back at school, Campbell became friends with a guitar-playing classmate, Michael Bell, who sat next to him in homeroom. One day after school, Campbell said he went to Bell’s house where they listened to Bob Dylan’s 1962 self-titled album. They focused on “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down,” which Bell played along with Dylan. Afterward, Bell taught Campbell how to play it. Back home, Campbell, who became obsessed with the song, practiced it for weeks, “trying to wring every last drop of music out of it” (pg. 18).

    When a senior, Campbell was called to a meeting with Melba Collier, a guidance counselor, to discuss plans after graduation. Miss Collier, as Campbell refers to her in the book, was impressed by Campbell’s straight-A grades in all of his classes in all of his years there. Asked what his plans were, Campbell informed her that his father wanted him to join the military. Collier encouraged him to go to college.

    “Don’t throw all that hard work away,” Campbell recalls her saying. “You need to go to college” (pg. 29).

    Campbell explained that there was no money in the family to pay for college. But Collier informed him about financial aid opportunities, adding, “I can help you. I will help you.” From a filing cabinet, Collier located an application for the University of Florida and handed it to Campbell, saying, “Let’s get you to Gainesville” (pg. 29). Later, Collier mailed Campbell’s application – and paid for the application fee herself. Plus she phoned the UF admissions staff to put a plug in for him. 

    Accepted into UF, Campbell was shocked and thrilled. He went to school to tell Miss Collier the good news and to thank her. Campbell’s telling of this scene is powerful:

     “I don’t know how to thank you, Miss Collier.”

    “You just go to Gainesville. Follow your dreams from there.”

    My eyes burned and my throat got tight. 

    “Yes, ma’am.”

    “Have an incredible life, Michael. Do wonderful, amazing things with your gifts. See the world. Make your mark. Thank me that way.”

    “Yes, ma’am” (pg. 30).

    Mike Campbell graduated from Jean Ribault High School in 1968. At summer’s end, he took a Greyhound bus to Gainesville. With him he carried a small suitcase of personal belongings and a case containing a Guyatone LG-130T, a Japanese electric guitar, that he had received in the mail from his father.

    In Gainesville, Campbell soaked up the “oasis of hippie counterculture” (pg. 34) and the music scene around campus and in town. He would find his way to Lipham’s Music (1010 N Main St.) where on a corkboard he would spot an index card that read: “Drummer looking for a band. Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Cream,” along with a telephone number and a first name, “Randall” (pg. 36).

    Campbell would call Randall Marsh and end up forming with him a band, Dead or Alive, that played concerts for free during the day on the Plaza of the Americas on the UF campus. When it disbanded, Marsh and Campbell, living in a run-down house on a then-rural part of Gainesville (Mudcrutch Farm, 2200 NW 45th Ave.) would try out for Mudcrutch, which was fronted by Tom Petty. Campbell won a spot in Mudcrutch by playing Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” on his Japanese electric guitar. By year’s end, Campbell would drop out of college to pursue a career in music.

Photo of Jean Ribault High School’s sign from video footage courtesy of WJXT television 

Sherwood Forest, Jacksonville, FL 32208

https://maps.app.goo.gl/XCZf6Swbd2Zz2Qes5

    Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire boasts a forest with Europe’s densest concentration of ancient trees, not to mention the legend of Robin Hood. Yet England’s Sherwood Forest seems to have little in common with the neighborhood in Jacksonville, Fla., where Mike Campbell spent some his teenage years, aside from some place names. While the neighborhood streets donned names associated with Robin Hood tales – such as Castle, Devonshire, Foxboro, Donnybrook, Locksley and Norfolk – Campbell found it to be a dreadful place when he lived there. To Campbell, Sherwood Forest was “a run-down north side neighborhood” that “was full of trailers and vacant lots and grimy white houses with chainlink fences,” he wrote in his 2025 autobiography, Heartbreaker (pg. 7).

    “The white smoke of the paper mills along the Trout River made the air sour as sulfur,” he wrote. “They called it the smell of money. Everything stunk (pg. 7). 

    It was here that Mike Campbell, his mother, Helen, and his two younger siblings, Cliff and Kathy, lived, starting in 1965. Raised as a military brat, Mike Campbell moved around a bit. He had lived in Merced, Calif.; Okinawa, Japan; and Orlando, where he was happy living in a nice house and having friends with whom he could play pickup games of baseball or listen to records. But when his parents divorced, Helen moved with the three children to North Jacksonville where she had grown up and still had relatives living there – and where each of her children were suddenly “the new kid” on the street and in the school. Short on cash, Helen initially bounced around between homes of family members who had room for the four of them. From working in a Sav-a-Stop grocery store warehouse packing boxes, Helen was eventually able to save up enough money for a deposit and first-month’s rent so they could move into their own place, then another, then another… “I don’t know how many of those run-down duplexes we lived in,” Campbell wrote (pg. 10). 

    About the first and subsequent duplexes, Campbell wrote: “It had dirty windows and a broken stove and a warm fridge and bars on the windows. I would go on to live in dozens of them, a different one every couple of months, and they were all the same. Freezing all winter. Suffocating all summer. Brown water coughing out of the faucets and black mold creeping out of the corners. Sirens all night. Gunshots. The smell of money.”

    To read about the history of the Sherwood Forest neighborhood, go here:

https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/neighborhoods-sherwood-forest/

    After graduating from Jean Ribault High School in 1968 and getting into the University of Florida, thanks to the help offered by a guidance counselor, Melba Collier, Campbell took a Greyhound bus to Gainesville at summer’s end. With him he brought a small suitcase of personal belongings and his Guyatone LG-130T – the same Japanese electric guitar on which he would soon play Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” at Mudcrutch Farm, impressing Tom Petty and landing him a place in Mudcrutch. 

Aerial photo of Sherwood Forest neighborhood in Jacksonville, Fla., courtesy of Google Maps 

2525 College St, Jacksonville, FL 32204

https://maps.app.goo.gl/dns2cM8acQAiVMbJ6

    Mike Campbell, a guitarist in both Mudcrutch and the Heartbreakers with Tom Petty, attended part of his eighth grade year at John Gorrie Junior High School in the Riverside neighborhood in Jacksonville, Fla. 

    When his parents’ marriage got rocky, Campbell’s mother, Helen, moved her three children to Okinawa, Japan, where his father, Malcolm, was stationed in the military, working for the Strategic Air Command. It was in Japan that Campbell finished eighth grade – and his father made it known that he would not return to the States with the family because he was divorcing his mother.

    Having to start over, Helen Campbell then moved with three children back to where she had grown up, North Jacksonville. After living with various relatives for awhile, Helen saved up enough money working in a Sav-a-Stop grocery store warehouse packing boxes to plunk down a deposit and first-month’s rent on their own place in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood on the north side of the city – a place Campbell describes in his 2025 autobiography, Heartbreaker, as “a run-down north side neighborhood” that “was full of trailers and vacant lots and grimy white houses with chainlink fences” (pg. 7). While living in one of many duplexes in this neighborhood, Mike Campbell would attend Jean Ribault High School (3701 Winton Drive), graduating in the class of 1968.

    John Gorrie Junior High School opened in 1923 and closed in 1997. After sitting vacant for more than a decade, the 3.8-acre property with its two buildings was purchased in 2007 for $500,000 by the then-owners of the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL football team, the Weavers, who lived nearby and regularly walked through the historic neighborhood. Wayne and Dolores Weaver put $13 million into refurbishing the old school into a new condominium complex with 68 units, which were assembled from the spaces for the academic, administrative and recreational rooms in the school’s two buildings. In 2009, The John Gorrie condominium opened.

    To learn more about the school-to-condo transformation, read this 2011 article from the Florida Times-Union:

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/business/2011/07/01/john-gorrie-condominiums-preserve-elements-closed-jacksonville-school/15898353007/

     According to the University of North Florida Digital Commons, John Gorrie Junior High School – and now the The John Gorrie condominium – was designed in the Mediterranean Revival Style by the building’s architects, Roy A. Benjamin and Mellen C. Greeley. It is now listed as an Historic Landmark by the Jacksonville Historic Landmarks Commission, as well as a contributing structure to the Riverside Historic District. 

Photo courtesy of Florida Times-Union

9303 Lem Turner Rd, Jacksonville, FL 32208

https://maps.app.goo.gl/v6ny67PE5hWLn3TNA 

    Milligan’s Beefy Burgers was once a fast food restaurant chain with multiple locations in Jacksonville, Fla., and across the state. Mike Campbell, who became a guitarist for two of Tom Petty’s bands, Mudcrutch and the Heartbreakers, worked here in the northside location – the closest one to his home in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood while on summer break from Jean Ribault High School.

    “In the summer of 1967, I got a job at Milligan’s burger joint,” Campbell wrote in his 2025 autobiography, Heartbreaker. “I would mop the floors, clean the toilets, wash the windows, wipe down the tabletops, and haul the heavy bags of wet trash out to the dumpster in the back. I made sixty cents an hour” (pg. 23).

    Listening to music after hours made the tedium of the job more bearable.

    “One night at the burger joint, after we closed, I turned the Big APE up loud behind the counter and pushed the yellow bucket of gray water to the front,” Campbell wrote. “Just as I slopped the wet rag mop onto the brown tiled floor, a sharp crack of snare rang out and ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ blared out of the speakers. I had heard it before, of course. It was a big hit in 1965” (pg. 24). (Note that the "Big APE" Campbell references was Jacksonville's 50,00-watt radio station, then on the AM band.)

    This time, though, he saw himself in the song lyrics, just as he had recently done while listening to Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” when he saw himself as the unknown country boy who impressed everyone with his guitar prowess. Now it was Bob Dylan’s lyrics that spoke to him.

    “And again, I thought, that’s me,” he wrote. “On my own. A complete unknown. With no way out and nowhere to go. I turned the chairs upside down on the tables. I pushed the mop across the floor as the song played. I thought, it feels bad. That’s how it feels” (pg. 24).

    The job gave Campbell some welcomed spending money.

    “The first few paychecks were cool, and I spent them on records and guitar books, copies of Downbeat magazine, and skimpy nickels of shaky, seedy weed.”

    Milligan’s Beefy Burgers was founded in 1942 by Elmer and Dorothy Milligan in Starke, Fla. In 1948 they began opening their drive-thru restaurants in Jacksonville. The first two were Milligan’s Grill in the Springfield neighborhood (18 East 8th St.) and Milligan’s Hamburger Hut downtown (207 West Forsyth Ave.). The Milligan family relocated their residence to Jacksonville along the Cedar River, then continued expanding the number of their restaurants. 

    In 1962, Milligan’s opened on the city’s northside (9303 Lem Turner Road), the same location where Mike Campbell got a job five years later. In 1966, the hamburger chain bought the surrounding property and developed the Milligan’s Center shopping plaza around the corner restaurant.

    The chain had 16 locations statewide in 1964, at its peak, but by the mid-1970s, none remained. Today the building on Lem Turner Road is Jack’s Sandwich Shop, which it has been for a couple decades. The distinctive red “M,” for Milligan’s, still appears atop this building.

    To read more about Milligan’s history, read this 2020 article by Ennis Davis in The Jaxson:

https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/the-story-of-milligans-beefy-burgers/

400 1st St S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701

https://maps.app.goo.gl/FeQBu2WK3gK35gua7 

    When Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers toured in 1981 to promote the “Hard Promises” album, it was slated to return to Gainesville for what was widely seen as a homecoming for the band members who had previously lived here. In this much-anticipated triumphant return to Gainesville, Petty was given a key to the city in a packed ballroom at the Gainesville Hilton (2900 SW 13th St.), which was followed that night by a concert at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center on the University of Florida campus that included special guest Stevie Nicks. 

    Tom Petty, Benmont Tench, Mike Campbell, Stan Lynch and Ron Blair returned to Gainesville as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for their first time as a band, much to the excitement of the large crowd of journalists, fans, and friends who greeted them at the Gainesville Regional Airport (3880 NE 39th Ave A), many of whom returned to see them off.

    But two days before the Oct. 8 concert in Gainesville, Tom Petty expressed nervousness about this pending show before a concert here on Oct. 6 at the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg. And Petty did so to a college student.

    Chris Qualmann was in 1981 a UF student who held the position of chairman of student government productions (SGP), a position he held for three years, from late 1979 to January 1983. In this position, he oversaw the first homecoming of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I met Qualmann for the first time in November 2025 at Tom Petty Weekend, where he served as a logistics coordinator for the staggered shows on the inside and outside stages. He took a short break to tell me about the 1981 Gainesville concert, for which he oversaw the contract process to book the band. He told me that he didn’t get to meet Tom Petty until he traveled here to the Bayfront Center for the concert. Given a backstage pass, Qualmann met Petty there. Qualmann told me that he had two initial impressions of Tom Petty. One is that he was struck by how small in stature – short and thin – he was compared to himself, standing about 6’3” with a fairly beefy physique. And the second impression was how nervous Petty said he was about the band’s upcoming show in Gainesville. Qualmann said he assured Petty that he would do just fine. And by all accounts from those who attended the Gainesville concert that night, Petty and the band did just fine. 

    The band performed four concerts in Florida during the 1981 tour, from Oct. 2 through 8. They played in Lakeland, Jacksonville, St. Petersburg and Gainesville. Stevie Nicks joined the Heartbreakers on stage for all the Florida shows other than Lakeland, according to the Setlist website.

    To see the setlist for the Bayfront Center concert, go here:

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/tom-petty-and-the-heartbreakers/1981/bayfront-center-st-petersburg-fl-bdf9d92.html

    To read a review of the Bayfront Center concert in 1981, read the St. Petersburg Independent here at The Petty Archives:

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/1980s/1981-10-07-stpetersburgindependent 

    Built in 1965 as a multi-purpose arena that could pack in as many as 8,600 people, the Bayfront Center hosted concerts, sporting events, expositions, high school graduations, and political rallies. It adjoined the Mahaffey Theater, a 2,000-seat venue with more intimate and high-brow entertainment. The Bayfront Center was leveled in 2004; the refurbished Mahaffey Theater still stands. The new Dalí Museum was built nearby in 2011 to pay tribute to Salvador Dali’s artwork. A large parking lot for these two entertainment venues is where the Bayfront Center once stood.

Photo of Bayfront Center postcard from the late 1960s by the Sun News Co., accessed via Wikipedia

706 N Main St, Bushnell, FL 33513

https://maps.app.goo.gl/YF9CXo8qb2TpC21B8 

    Bushnell, Fla., is the hometown of Randall Marsh. And South Sumter High School was where he attended and played drums in the school marching band. 

    “But the band teacher would say to me, ‘This is not a rock band, Mr. Marsh,’” Marsh reminisced for reporter Sondra Murphy in a story published in the Ojai Valley News in 2008 while he was living in this small town northeast of Los Angeles.

    To read this article, go here on The Petty Archives website: https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/2000s/2008-10-10-ojaivalleynews 

     South Sumter High School in Bushnell is also where racists hunted Randall Marsh at a football game in 1968 for being friendly with Black people – then threatened his life.

    “Randall came from Bushnell, seventy-five swampy gator-infested miles, due and Deep South (from Gainesville), in the heart of rural central Florida,” wrote Mike Campbell in his 2025 autobiography, Heartbreaker.

    Campbell devotes considerable space in the book to Randall Marsh, who was an early friend in Gainesville and with whom he would play in Mudcrutch and the Blue Stingrays. Campbell sets the scene for Marsh’s high school days in Bushnell (pgs. 37-39).

    “Brown v. Board of Education was passed in 1954, ruling that segregation in schools was unconstitutional,” Campbell wrote. “But in 1968, in Bushnell, Florida, population two thousand, schools were still segregated. Randall, whose father was an elected official, a clerk of the circuit court, grew up meeting all sorts of people as the family campaigned with him.”

    Randall’s father was C. Burton Marsh, clerk of the circuit court from 1949 to 1980, according to the Sumter County compilation of clerks from 1853 to the present. He stands today as the county’s longest-serving clerk.

    Campbell continued: “Randall liked to talk to people, all kinds of people, and he loved music. He was playing drums at fourteen, crazy for Ringo (Starr, from the Beatles), and then he flipped for Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and started growing his hair out. A dear family friend who had known Randall since he was a baby ran into him and said, coldly, ‘Well, I see you’ve joined the enemy.’ It was not a joke. Things were very tense there then.

    “A month after Martin Luther King was assassinated, the Black high school in Bushnell issued an open invitation for the kids from the white high school to attend their prom, in the spirit and memory of Dr. King. It was a thoughtful gesture. But nobody thought anyone would actually take them up on it. Randall took them up on it.

    “Randall rallied a group of his friends to go with him.

    “‘Let’s go there and show we’re not with this racist shit.’

    “They all thought he was crazy. But he talked them into it.

    “The night of the Black high school prom, Randall and four of his friends drove over to the small hotel where it was being held. None of their girlfriends would come with them. So they sat in the parking lot, with the windows rolled down, sweltering in rental tuxedos, and took nips off a pint of whiskey to steel their nerves.

    “They got out of the car and walked across the parking lot. As they got close to the entrance, about eight Black kids, also in tuxedos, who had been watching them from inside, wondering what they were going to do, came out to stop any trouble before it started. Randall and his friends froze.

    “Randall stepped forward.

   “He told them, swear to God, they weren’t there to cause trouble. That they were there because they were sick of how things were. They wanted things to be cool, and they wanted to tell the kids there themselves, and that they meant it. Things had to change.

    “One of the toughest-looking kids spoke up.

    “‘You think things gotta change?’

    “The kid was holding a bottle of beer. He tipped it to his lips and took a long sip. He walked right up to Randall and held out the bottle.

    “Everybody knew what the kid meant. It was quiet for a moment.

    “Randall took the bottle, put it to his lips, and took a long pull from it. Then he handed it to one of his friends, who drank from it too and passed it until they had all sipped from it. Randall finished it and stood there holding the empty bottle.

    “The kid who handed Randall the beer shook his head and smiled.

    “‘Well, shit, come on in then.’

    “Randall and his friends went inside and danced all night. They had so much fun.”

     Campbell then talks about the racist retribution Marsh received for his humanity and kindness; in doing so, Campbell writes the n-word (seen below) because this is what was reportedly said about Randall Marsh in 1968 Bushnell. 

    “Two nights later, at a football game, a car filled with four older white men in sunglasses pulled up to a group of kids in the parking lot. The man in the passenger seat leaned out the window,” Campbell wrote.

    “‘We’re looking for that little nigger lover Randall Marsh.’

    “A few days after that, Randall’s dad got a visit from a neighbor. People shared telephone lines back then. The neighbor had been on the shared line. He overheard two men get into an argument about killing Randall. The fight wasn’t about whether to do it, but when. One said they should do it right away. The other said they needed to get permission and it would be another week or two.

    “The neighbor told Randall’s dad, they’re serious. They’re gonna do it. 

    “Randall was seventeen and he had been targeted for murder. For dancing. He came home from school that day and his dad was waiting for him. His dad said, don’t go anywhere but school and home, and don’t go anywhere alone, son. Randall only had three weeks of high school left.

    “The day after he graduated, he caught a ride with his sister and her boyfriend all the way to Cape Cod (in Massachusetts). He worked in a seafood restaurant until the summer ended and it got dark and desolate and cold. He was homesick but he couldn’t go home. He drifted down to Tampa and tried community college. He hated both. Then he talked to some friends who told him what was happening in Gainesville. They said it was a lot cooler there. They said he would like it; he should check it out. Randall said yeah, maybe he would.

    “If he hadn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this book right now.”

    The friendship of Campbell and Marsh began when Mike was a freshman at the University of Florida in the fall of 1968. Campbell and Hume Hall (2129 Museum Road, Gainesville) roommate Hal Maull were interested in forming a band, but they needed a drummer. One day while Campbell browsed the guitars hanging from the walls of Lipham Music (1010 N Main St.), he spotted an index card on a corkboard that read: “Drummer looking for a band. Beatles Stones Hendrix Cream.” Along with a phone number, there was a first name given: “Randall.” 

      Campbell handed off the card to Maull, who made the call to Randall Marsh. Soon they were practicing. They called themselves Dead or Alive. During their short existence, Dead or Alive played a handful of campus venues, mostly notably Plaza of the Americas where many other bands played, including eventually Mudcrutch (with Mike Campbell, Randall Marsh and Tom Petty) and Road Turkey (with Stan Lynch).

   But when Dead or Alive debuted their psychedelic jams with a concert in Bushnell, Marsh’s home town 70 miles south of Gainesville, in a rented hall, attendance was sparse.

    Dead or Alive disbanded at the end of the academic year, in the spring of 1969, when Maull decided to drop out of college and sail to Hawaii. By this time Campbell and Marsh were living in a rustic farmhouse on the outskirts of Gainesville that would soon be called Mudcrutch Farm (2203 NW 45th Ave.) when Mudcrutch formed. That band formation came about when Marsh noticed an advertisement for a drummer on the corkboard at Lipham Music (1010 N Main St.). Marsh responded to the ad and invited the ad-poster – the early Mudcrutch lineup of Tom Petty, Tom Leadon and Jim Lenahan – to come out to their then-rural place for tryouts. After Marsh had earned a spot in the band, Campbell and his Japanese guitar managed to get an impromptu tryout, which he nailed with his rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”

Photo of South Sumter High School in Bushnell, Fla., by Shawn Murphy, taken November 2025

212 E Noble Ave, Bushnell, FL 33513

https://maps.app.goo.gl/zTJCcbgtT637DrnQA 

    C. Burton Marsh once owned this house in Bushnell, Fla., according to public records. His son is Randall Marsh, the Mudcrutch drummer. The house was later used in a video for Randall’s song “Tiny Town,” an homage of sorts to his hometown.

    In 2011, a YouTube account listed as “randallmarshmusic” uploaded the following video on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH1rAB0cTkg 

    In it, Randall Marsh is shown sitting on the front porch and in the yard of this house, as well as across the street from it. And he’s shown walking around Bushnell while he kicks a tin can down the sidewalk.

    Feedback given by viewers, including some who reported to know him, includes that Randall Marsh is “a great musician and human being” and “a gem.” One person wrote: “Love this. Please thank Red Slater for me.”

    A notation given about the high-resolution video reads: “Shot in and around Bushnell, Florida by Randall Marsh and original Mudcrutch (Tom Petty) photographer William ‘Red’ Slater, with deep swamp magic and true life small town bittersweetness. Edited by Dean Chamberlain.”

    Red Slater shot the iconic photographs of the band in the early 1970s. At the time, he found himself living on the 10-acre rural parcel of land in northwest Gainesville in a run-down house with no hot water. His bedroom was the pantry off the kitchen where he managed to squeeze in a single bed and darkroom equipment. This eventually became known as Mudcrutch Farm (2203 NW 45th Ave.). His two roommates were Randall Marsh and Mike Campbell, both of whom became members of Mudcrutch, which included future Heartbreakers Campbell, Benmont Tench and Tom Petty. Slater, who was keen on photography and had the cameras and darkroom gear, documented this era on the then-rural farm. 

    Randall Marsh was a 1968 graduate of South Sumter High School, which is less than a mile northwest of here. At the school, he played drums in its marching band. 

    “But the band teacher would say to me, ‘This is not a rock band, Mr. Marsh,’” Marsh reminisced for a reporter in a newspaper story published in 2008 while he was living in another tiny town, Ojai, northeast of Los Angeles.

    South Sumter High School is also where, at the end of Marsh’ senior year, he faced death threats by racists after he attended a dance at the Black high school, which his friend and bandmate in Mudcrutch and the Blue Stingrays Mike Campbell wrote about in his 2025 autobiography, Heartbreaker (pgs. 37-39).

    “Randall was seventeen and he had been targeted for murder. For dancing,” Campbell wrote. “He came home from school that day and his dad was waiting for him. His dad said, don’t go anywhere but school and home, and don’t go anywhere alone, son. Randall only had three weeks of high school left.”

    Randall’s father was C. Burton Marsh, clerk of the circuit court from 1949 to 1980. He stands today as the county’s longest-serving clerk – 31 years. 

    Marsh managed to maneuver those final weeks of high school and get out of Bushnell intact. He fled to New England, where he worked through the summer. When he returned to Florida, returning to Bushnell wasn’t then an option.

    “The day after he graduated, he caught a ride with his sister and her boyfriend all the way to Cape Cod (in Massachusetts),” Campbell wrote. “He worked in a seafood restaurant until the summer ended and it got dark and desolate and cold. He was homesick but he couldn’t go home. He drifted down to Tampa and tried community college. He hated both. Then he talked to some friends who told him what was happening in Gainesville. They said it was a lot cooler there. They said he would like it; he should check it out. Randall said yeah, maybe he would.”

    He did. There in Gainesville Marsh would meet Campbell, a UF freshman, through a handwritten band-wanted ad he pinned to the wall of Lipham Music (1010 N Main St.). One day while Campbell browsed the guitars hanging from the walls at Lipham’s, he spotted an index card on a corkboard that read: “Drummer looking for a band. Beatles Stones Hendrix Cream.” Along with a phone number, there was a first name given: “Randall.” 

    Hume Hall (2129 Museum Road) roommates Mike Campbell and Hal Maull were interested in forming a band, but they needed a drummer. Campbell handed off the card to Maull, who made the call to Randall Marsh. Soon they were practicing. They called themselves Dead or Alive. During their short existence, Dead or Alive played a handful of campus venues, most notably Plaza of the Americas where many other bands played, including eventually Mudcrutch (with Mike Campbell, Randall Marsh and Tom Petty) and Road Turkey (with Stan Lynch).

     Marsh returned to Bushnell with his band, Dead or Alive. This was Campbell’s first time in Bushnell.

    Campbell would refer to Bushnell in his book as being “seventy-five swampy gator-infested miles, due and Deep South (of Gainesville), in the heart of rural central Florida” (pg. 37).

    While in Bushnell, Dead or Alive played their psychedelic jams in a rented hall, but attendance was sparse.

    Dead or Alive disbanded at the end of the academic year, in the spring of 1969, when Maull decided to drop out of college and sail to Hawaii. By this time Campbell and Marsh were living in a rustic farmhouse on the outskirts of Gainesville that would soon be called Mudcrutch Farm (2203 NW 45th Ave.) when Mudcrutch formed. That band formation came about when Marsh noticed an advertisement for a drummer on the corkboard at Lipham Music. Marsh responded to the ad and invited the ad-poster – the early Mudcrutch lineup of Tom Petty, Tom Leadon and Jim Lenahan – to come out to their then-rural place for tryouts. After Marsh had earned a spot in the band, Campbell and his Japanese guitar managed to get an impromptu tryout, which he nailed with his rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”

    Campbell nicknamed his friend Randall Marsh “The Marsh Rabbit,” which he wrote in his book “suited him” because “ he was small and wiry with big, kind eyes,” and because “he bounced when he walked” (pg. 37).

    The state’s Division of Corporations website, Sunbiz, shows that C. Burton Marsh was the registered agent for a corporation called An-Bur Ranch, Inc., which had a registered address of 212 E. Noble Ave. in Bushnell. The corporation paperwork was filed in 1979. Voluntary dissolution paperwork was filed in 1987. To see this listing, go here:

https://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail?inquirytype=OfficerRegisteredAgentName&directionType=Initial&searchNameOrder=MARSHCBURTON%206485012&aggregateId=domp-648501-032ca8ca-5d6a-4ac1-b827-071f39651947&searchTerm=Marsh%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20Carol%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20J&listNameOrder=MARSHCAROLJ%20L090001139512

Photo by Shawn Murphy, taken November 2025

Seneca Park, Cassadaga, FL 32706

https://maps.app.goo.gl/iHcetkEWprGr19nJ6 

     You will find the "Still Runnin' Down a Dream" park bench in Cassadaga in the northeast section of Seneca Park alongside a man-made stone waterfall constructed in 2023. It is across Marion Street from Colby Memorial Temple.

   Cassadaga is a spiritualist community dating back to 1874, that today is called by some the "Psychic Capital of the World." The Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp is still located here. And around the quaint town you will find many psychic mediums for hire. The town became the basis for the Heartbreakers song "Casa Dega," although spelled differently. Here is part of that lyric:

"That she said to me as she holds my hand

And reads the lines of a stranger

Yeah and she knows my name

yeah she knows my plan

In the past in the present and for the future

Oh honey now I think I'm starting to believe the things that I've heard

Cause tonight in Casa Dega I hang on every word"

   Here you can watch a video of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performing it on New Year's Eve 1978 in Santa Monica, Calif.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcdFjuV4bNc

   To read a 2023 CNN profile of Cassadaga, go here:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/cassadaga-florida-spiritualist-camp-mediums

   While in town, be sure to walk around Horseshoe Park, where is located the Cassadaga Labyrinth, and the adjacent Fairy Trail.

Photo by Shawn Murphy, taken November 2025