Annie of Houseboat Chinquapin

Synopsis ANNIE OF HOUSEBOAT CHINQUAPIN Jacksonville, located on the St Johns River, is a major city, shipping and fishing center in 1935. Along the west side of the river, Riverside Avenue runs south from the city. Dora Street, a street of dirt and rubble, connects to it and runs down a short distance to the river's edge to a wooden dock that extends out about 150 feet over the water. Six houseboats are connected to the dock by walkways. In one, Houseboat Chinquapin, Annie, a young family woman, lives with her son, Curtis, daughter, Denise, and husband, Robert. Annie now is 26 years old. Robert, much older, is 43, and Curtis and Denise, respectively are 9 and 7. Curtis is a problem son. Denise is a sweet daughter. Robert works long hard hours in the railroad shop and at the end of each workday comes home tired. Annie is a dutiful wife. Her family is her life. She is also young, comely, shapely, and buxom. She yearns yet for some spark in life. The Depression is on. Times are tough. Money is tight and the family budget, a constant squabble. The houseboat has no electricity. Light is by kerosene lamps, cooking is by a wood-burning stove, perishables are kept in an icebox, clothes are washed by scrub-board in a tub, and the big box radio plays by battery. Annie, instilled with passion, wants to venture out, be wooed, wined, and bedded. But Robert, aging and tired at the end of the day, wants only to eat dinner, read the paper, and at night pour himself a jigger of whiskey, listen to the radio, then go to bed. Annie on certain nights nudges, entices him amorously in her scant nightie, but so, he being unresponsive, she each time is left emotionally and physically unsatisfied. Houseboat life on the St Johns River has its advantages. Swimming is good, as is fishing, crabbing, shrimping, and scavenging driftwood along the shore. Occasionally one snares floating in the river a stalk of bananas, it being lost overboard from a banana boat. But