Community Sunday Favorites: Life Under the Banyan Tree

Seventeen-year-old Willis Underwood and 11-year-old James Anderson hold up their prized catch.

TERRA CEIA – Some folks aren’t outwardly spiritual, but they manage to find the divine in mundane places. Willis Rhodes Underwood was never a religious person, but one day while sitting on his porch and shooting the breeze with good friends, the light seemed to hit his prized garden just right and he admitted the scene was ”just a little piece of heaven.“

There is nowhere quite like Underwood’s home on Terra Ceia Island. A banyan tree almost as deep-rooted as the island culture overtook the 117-year-old house years ago. Legend has it one of Eben Dole’s children planted it near the house, and it morphed into the island version of Jack and the Beanstalk. When the roof in the living room started to sag under the weight of the branches, Underwood’s son Thomas cut down two cedars growing along the driveway, varnished the trunks and propped them up inside to support the burden. 

The home, originally owned by Dole, was constructed of yellow pine, which is impervious to termites. Underwood worked off the down payment by doing repairs for the Dole family and was finally able to purchase the house in the 1970s.

Underwood’s impressive stories and the colossal banyan attracted both friends and strangers to the 8.5-acre homestead. He always welcomed guests into his screened-in porch and after exchanging pleasantries, he divulged island folktale, his southern drawl pacifying his visitors as they rocked peacefully in rocking chairs and enjoyed the breeze of a ceiling fan. 

Underwood perfected the art of smoking the best mullet around. His secret weapon was an old Tropicana refrigerator that he converted to a smoker.

Because of the size of the tree, the house always seemed cool, even without air-conditioning. Although the banyan is in the backyard, it’s limbs shade the front. Roots from the limbs have implanted into ground and grown into new trunks. One day, the house will be completely enclosed by the tree.

Underwood was originally born in Dodge County Ga. in Jan. 19, 1913; he had the same birthday as Robert E. Lee. He claimed his father was a gypsy, moving the family from one place to another during his childhood. Realistically, his father, mother and 11 siblings were a family of migrant workers following the harvest season wherever it would take them. Underwood remembers making 35 cents for every hundred pounds of cotton he picked in Georgia. In the 1920s, they migrated to Plant City, preferring to gather strawberries instead of cotton. 

When his family moved to Terra Ceia in 1929, Underwood was 16 years old. He was walking down the street barefoot one day when a prominent farmer by the name of John Anderson pulled up beside him.

”You need a job, Boy?“ Anderson asked.

”As long as it’s not picking cotton,“ Underwood replied. 

The young man became a sharecropper on Anderson’s farm, which didn’t pan out as well as he’d expected. At the end of the second season, Anderson informed Underwood that he actually owed his employer $900.

”I had to keep working for him or I’d starve to death,“ Underwood said in a 2010 interview with the Bradenton Times. ”Course, I never heard of nobody ever starving to death, but I was afraid I would.“

Underwood turned to living off the land for his provisions and caught mullet to survive.

One day Underwood saw a man throw a net and pull in several good size fish – it was E.B. Dole. After explaining the technique, Dole allowed Willis to wade with him over the mangrove flats and carry a potato sack holding the mullet carcasses after he’d broken their necks. Dole adopted Willis as his net crafting protŽgŽ and taught him to weave them by hand. From then on, Underwood turned to living off the land for his provisions and caught mullet to survive. 

As a carefree teenager, Underwood would often play hooky from work and go fishing with one of farmer Anderson’s sons. On one occasion, he and James Anderson caught a giant tarpon from a rowboat. They took turns reeling in the massive fish for hours – they finally landed it! Proudly, they hung the tarpon from a tree to show it off to all the neighbors, but one person wasn’t impressed – Underwood’s employer, John Anderson.

Nevertheless, Underwood worked for the Andersons for nearly 14 years, helping as a handyman, as well as painting and farming. After that, he drove a semi for Miller Trailers. During World War II, Underwood even spent some time in the Army, but his Newfoundland base didn’t agree with his thin, warm-weathered blood. 

Today friends and relatives are sure he’s up there somewhere ”hoeing around“ in his perfectly tended vegetable garden where the  light consistently shines  ”just right.“

Commercial fishing became his primary means of employment. His first wife, Madelyn, died at age 30 of tuberculosis and left him a single dad of four. Underwood’s tall frame and suave southern drawl soon attracted the attention of Shirley David, a Snead-Island native who mended the nets set out to dry on the spreads at the Cut-off. They married, had two more children and David would often come visit Underwood in the Keys bringing along their youngest child, Tom.

Because it was his primary means of nourishment, in the early days and a favorite among locals, Underwood perfected the art of smoking the best mullet around. His secret weapon was an old Tropicana refrigerator that he converted to a smoker. He was such a mullet connoisseur, residents requested that he serve as a judge at the annual Terra Ceia Mullet Smoke-Off for a number of years.

As an older man who was twice widowed, Underwood rarely left his home. He had no reason to. Donning overalls and carrying a hoe over his shoulder, he kept a vegetable garden in his front yard and chickens provided him with eggs and fresh poultry. If any varmint bothered the chickens, he’d tiptoe outside with his 20-gauge shotgun hoping to catch them in the act. He always like to give his lady visitors a gift from his garden and he jokingly used to say, he greatly enjoyed ”hoeing around,“ but not in the connotation one might imagine. 

Underwood passed away on March 2, 2012 at age 99,  leaving a lifelong legacy behind. Willis was buried in Palmetto Cemetery on March 8, 2012. Today friends and relatives are sure he’s up there somewhere ”hoeing around“ in his perfectly tended vegetable garden where the light consistently shines  ”just right.“