Lots Of Memories Shared As 'Uncle Tom's' Building Comes Down

    Decades of colorful Umatilla history were being remembered this week, as the historic 'Uncle Tom's' building was razed. Heavy equipment on Monday made quick work of demolishing the former location of North Lake County's most famous watering hole, needing just two hours to level the structure.
   The event closes the book on a location that has been closed since 2017, when Hurricane Irma's winds blew a metal roof over off the building. At that time, the building housed the Umatilla Inn restaurant. The storm's damage exposed the structure's original roof, and several leaks, which along with other needs proved to be an expensive proposition. The work was never undertaken, and the building was sold at auction.
   While the restaurant was the building's final use, decades of locals knew the site as Uncle Tom's, home to the iconic 'Whiskey' neon sign that served as both business locater and general directional landmark. From its founding shortly after World War II, Uncle Tom's over the years was home to dog pens, pet bears, Nehi sodas, and fishing tackle sold alongside liquor. There was a drive-through, first cut throughout the middle of the building and later relocated to the northern wall. There was an apartment cut into a corner for the establishment's caretaker, and there were countless confabs featuring people of all social levels. Judges, politicians, citrus magnates, working folks, and families were all part of the Uncle Tom's bar lore.
   "Men and their wives, even their kids, would go in for peanuts, a grape Nehi, all sorts of stuff," recalled David Adams on Monday. Adams' grandfather, Lamar, founded Uncle Tom's in 1946 after the building's short life as an auto service station.
   “Everybody liked it, except for the pastors,” Adams says.
   As a child growing up around the business, Adams remembers Uncle Tom’s joining with other privateer stores in the area in a bulk buying program, to allow for a better price and ability to compete with Big C, the dominant retailer of the time that was located in a still-standing concrete building in front of the Advancing the Kingdom church on North Bay Street in Eustis.
   “You had to have a sticker in the window of the car you transported liquor that the government gave you,” Adams says. “So they had a truck that they all used.”
   Adams recalls a local woman losing her home to a fire, with the community through the unofficial Uncle Tom’s problem-solving discussion chamber fixing the problem.
   “Grandpa along with people like Spence Rynearson, Forrest Carpenter, Mr. Atkinson… they got with Howard Henry, who was a builder. They built her a new house.”
   Stories abound from those early years of lawyers and judges talking about the issues of the day over drinks at Uncle Tom's, years before Adams sold it, in 1973. Over time, and through other owners, including John and Nancy Geddes of Umatilla, Deborah and Gilbert Cummins, and others before Hugh Johnson arrived to create Umatilla Inn, Uncle Tom's was known as the main drinking hole of Umatilla and the surrounding area.
   It was even part of the lives of non-drinkers, as the neon Whiskey sign that adorned the building’s roof was a well-known landmark in its own right. It wasn’t uncommon for people needing directions around Umatilla to be told to ‘turn after the Whiskey sign’ or ‘if you pass the Whiskey sign, you’ve gone too far.’ To some, Uncle Tom’s was simply known as ‘Whiskey’ due to the sign’s prominence. While the sign itself remained at the building until the end, the neons that spelled the iconic word were relocated to the Umatilla Historical Museum when Johnson took over the location and created the restaurant.
   Perhaps Uncle Tom’s most famous piece of history involves two bears that lived at the location around 1950. Adams retells the story:
   "They had gone hunting in the forest, and the dogs treed a bear. They shot the bear before they realized it was a female with cubs. They couldn't leave the cubs there to die, so they brought them back and made them pets."
   Hard as it is to imagine by today’s standards, the bears apparently lived quite happily in a cage along the north side of the building, right next to cages that housed hunting dogs. The bears, just 12 pounds each when they were brought ‘home’, became the mascots of the bar, even learning to love soda just like the other patrons. In 1951, the female of the duo was donated to the Sanford Zoo.
   “They were smart,” Adams says. “One learned how to get the key and get the cooler open.”
   Indeed, a newspaper story from the period contains the following text: “Adams, who operates a tavern, gives his keys to the bear and tells him to go open the cooler. Bruin takes the keys, selects the right one, opens the door, goes to the drink box, opens the lids and of all the drinks he selects the only one he will drink, an orange drink. He will take the bottle, put it in the opener and remove the cap with all ease, then drink the contents.”
   Adams' wife Kaye, a Umatilla native in her own right, remembers Lamar Adams and the bear going for rides in Lamar's vehicle.
   “Lamar would ride around in his Jeep, and the bear would just sit beside him.”
   David Adams says the bear was injured on the fourth of July one year, when someone threw firecrackers into his cage. Sometime later, he was donated to the zoo.
   The fine art of pranking has a rich history in Umatilla, with stories from long ago including friends blocking up another friend's entrance to his store, or the time someone put an outhouse on top of the bank at its old downtown location. Uncle Tom's wasn't immune.
   "Dad had a Hillman, I think it was a Minx," Adams recalls. "I was in high school when they put the drive-through in the middle of the building. Dad had left the car there, and while he was gone some of the guys had lifted the car up and carried it into the middle and put it in there sideways. It was tough getting it out."
   The spot was a popular watering hole for members of the Florida Elks, whose state headquarters was located behind the bar in the former Rowe hotel. That building was demolished and replaced by what today is the Recovery Village.
   "They would pack the place when they were here for their meetings," Adams recalls. "They would be six deep at the bar, passing drinks back and passing money forward."
   Living in a small town meant word of any hijinks would quickly make it home. Adams graduated high school in 1969, but before then, he learned on more than one occasion that cell phones weren’t needed to communicate.
   “Any time I did anything, they would go straight to the bar and tell on me.”
   The Adams family sold the business in 1973, clearing the way for a succession of other owners.
   Watering holes have a rich history as places to gather and discuss the matters of the day. Small towns all over the country have been home to an 'everybody goes there' place for social time and a chance to unwind. In Umatilla, Uncle Tom's for decades was that place, and for long-time, generational residents, Monday represented the final chapter of a colorful history. Uncle Tom's is gone, officially. But not soon forgotten.
   “It was just a friendly place,” Adams says, offering a succinct description of the bar’s most historic time.