W.D Childers recommends Zenith Chromacolor

You see the ad for Jack Motley Karate? He was the real deal..
I think the name of the TV shop on W and Cervantes was the Thompsons. They used to have a TV in the window with a outside speaker. People used to go sit outside and watch TV. LOL
I can not think of the name of the TV shop across from Muldon Ford on Wright street. (Just thought of it. Bob Prell) right? He was the last of those type of places to close.

Good Post Thanks Bob.

Wait a minute!!. Isn't that what WD did? Had a TV/appliance place?

Born in Wright, Florida (then known as Crackers Neck),[4] Wyon Dale Childers attended the Bay County High School and went on to Florida State University, where he met Ruth Adell Johnson. They were married on 21 December 1953. Childers graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in education in 1955. He became a math teacher and supplemented his salary with roofing work and door-to-door sales. He capitalized on the sale of trendy items – hula hoops in the 50s, color televisions in the 60s – and also practiced real estate.[5]

hallmarkgrad wrote:Wait a minute!!. Isn't that what WD did? Had a TV/appliance place?

Born in Wright, Florida (then known as Crackers Neck),[4] Wyon Dale Childers attended the Bay County High School and went on to Florida State University, where he met Ruth Adell Johnson. They were married on 21 December 1953. Childers graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in education in 1955. He became a math teacher and supplemented his salary with roofing work and door-to-door sales. He capitalized on the sale of trendy items – hula hoops in the 50s, color televisions in the 60s – and also practiced real estate.[5]

All I ever knew was he sold appliances at A&E. I didn't know he worked as a teacher.

Bob wrote:

hallmarkgrad wrote:Wait a minute!!. Isn't that what WD did? Had a TV/appliance place?

Born in Wright, Florida (then known as Crackers Neck),[4] Wyon Dale Childers attended the Bay County High School and went on to Florida State University, where he met Ruth Adell Johnson. They were married on 21 December 1953. Childers graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in education in 1955. He became a math teacher and supplemented his salary with roofing work and door-to-door sales. He capitalized on the sale of trendy items – hula hoops in the 50s, color televisions in the 60s – and also practiced real estate.[5]

All I ever knew was he sold appliances at A&E. I didn't know he worked as a teacher.

Him and his wife's first house was a chicken coup that had been converted into a house...humble beginnings....

TEOTWAWKI wrote:

Him and his wife's first house was a chicken coup that had been converted into a house...humble beginnings....

I shudder to think what it must be like to grow up in a place called "Cracker's Neck".

Wright is just a tad north of FWB Almost a suburb ...

Wright was the right place for the Gibsons to settle
By LEE FORST Daily News Staff Writer
WRIGHT _ A real estate advertisement touting Florida caught Silas Gibson's eye one day. Considering he was living in Alberta, Canada, at the time, it probably didn't take much to persuade him to move south.
Soon, Gibson was on a boat traveling the Santa Rosa Sound searching for suitable land near Point Washington while his wife and children stayed behind at the Hotel San Carlos in Pensacola.
The vessel made its usual stop at old Camp Walton. There he met Will Brooks, who convinced him he had traveled far enough. And so in 1916 the Gibsons joined the Wrights, Ogelsbys, Rogers and other settlers near the intersection of present-day Beal Parkway and Racetrack Road.
The strip centers, car dealerships, food marts and other businesses now strung along the northern stretch of Beal and Racetrack wouldn't appear for decades. In the early 1900s the Wright community featured only a few homesteads, a small store, a one-room school house and livestock.
``It's hard to visualize now how sparsely settled it was in the '20s and '30s,'' said Ray Gibson, Silas Gibson's son.
``Everybody knew everybody,''added George Oglesby, grandson of George W. Oglesby, one of the area's first settlers. ``You didn't know what it was to lock your house up.''
There are few records that list Wright by name. There is platted subdivision called Wright listed in Okaloosa County records, for example. The Wright post office, however, is noted on a 1929 map of the Choctawhatchee National Forest.
The community's name almost surely came from the Wright clan, although several family descendants can't say how or when that developed.
It was also called Crackers Neck, but nobody is sure why. Former Okaloosa Circuit Court Clerk Cecil Anchors' recollection seems as plausible as any: ``There was just a couple of old crackers there in that neck of the woods.''
Ray Gibson said he simply called it the ``settlement.''
George W. Oglesby came to the area after the Civil War about the same time as John Thomas Brooks, who later founded Brooks Landing. Although Oglesby farmed with Brooks one year, he was primarily a logger, as were his eldest sons, twins Allison and Ellison.
George Oglesby, Ellison's son, was born in 1902 along the East Bay River north of present-day Hurlburt Field. His schooling ended early: ``I got through the second reader.''
But that meant more time for making a living from the woods.
``I've logged, turpentined, cross-tied,'' he said. ``I've done a little bit of everything.''
He also worked for Silas Gibson on his many projects, including building a road from Niceville to Mossy Head in the mid-1920s. New roads at that time meant clay, since the early tracks were just sand.
``In the 1920s there weren't even any clay on the roads,'' Ray Gibson said.
Racetrack Road _ there was no name for it then _ was two sand ruts wide enough for only one vehicle at a time.
``If you met a car, you had to back up and get off,'' Gibson said.
Gibson and his brother Bobby Gibson remember a house located where the Upper Crust restaurant now sits on Racetrack that supposedly was haunted. Oglesby doesn't recall that one, but does remember another eerie house taken over by squatters.
``It stayed full of goats all the time,'' he said. ``Those old goats would be upstairs and come running down, and I guess it scared everybody.''
The primary north-south route generally followed present-day Beal between Camp Walton and Wright. The Holt Road continued north from Wright through the national forest to the Log Lake Bridge on the Yellow River. There simply was no easy way to travel. Tommy Wright said his family often ran errands to Niceville rather than to the south.
``It was easier to get out that way, believe it or not,'' he said.
Silas Gibson was a vegetarian who would try his hand at just about any type of agriculture; he tended a vineyard and once tried to introduce satsuma fruit trees to the area.
He had no interest in the water despite owning waterfront property along Cinco and Garnier bayous.
``He didn't like the sandy beach and water at all,'' Ray Gibson said. ``He said `you can't grow a thing on it.' ''
The Gibson's also had a dairy operation that straddled the northwest corner of Beal and Hurlburt Field Road. The L-shaped parcel fronted Beal where Little Chapel Funeral Home and Fireside Lounge are now, and on Hurlburt at the Fort Walton Racquet Club.
The only fence was around the family's yard.
``In those days you only had a fence to keep the livestock out of your property, not to keep them in,'' Gibson said.
That didn't necessarily please the neighbors, especially when the bulls would fight.
``The fear of the Gibson cows,'' is the most vivid childhood memory for Alma Wright-Ryan, Tommy Wright's sister. ``I think that was the most frightening thing in the neighborhood.''
There were several Wright families in area. Ryan's parents, J.T. and Ethel Wright, lived farther north on Beal. J.T. ran a turpentine operation and later worked for the forest service. Ethel ran the family store and post office attached to the house.
The store sold mainly groceries and feed. But it was the radio that attracted visitors.
``We had the only radio in the whole community,'' said, Bobelle Wright-Harrell, a third sibling. ``It was usually in the store because there was more room in there.''
The boom years following World War II marked the beginning of the end of old Wright. As business and residential development replaced the woods, Oglesby moved to Fort Walton Beach, where he served a short time as a police officer and later owned a taxi service.
His fondest memories are of the woods, where hunting and fishing and the forest-related tasks provided all that was needed.

that's the kind of florida history I never got at PHS. lol