Dad, Marlin Eller, starts his second business at age 18…
-Port Everglades opening provides opportunity-
After graduating from Ft. Lauderdale High School in 1934, Dad sat down with his father, Hoyt, and mother, Mattie, and confessed that he had been married since the previous summer to my mother, Lorena Horton, of Flomaton, Alabama. To put it mildly, my grandparents were not very happy.
However, after sleeping on it, they told Dad that he should go get her and bring her to Deerfield and move in with them in their large, five-bedroom house on north Dixie Highway (across the street, just west of the present-day tennis courts.) But they also told Dad that his plan to go to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech University with his best friend David Long at their expense was not going to happen. They further told him that as a married man he had to go to work to support his wife.
At first, Dad was devastated. He and David Long had long planned to attend Georgia Tech together. But being the friends and entrepreneurs that they were, they came up with an alternative plan: David would proceed to Georgia Tech and buy two books for every class, sending Dad one of them. When he took a test or did a report he would send Dad the graded test or report so Dad could follow David’s progress in college and study the subjects simultaneously with his best friend via correspondence. Thus Dad became a great engineer by correspondence, and considered himself a “rambling wreck from Georgia Tech” his whole life.
However, he still needed to make a living, and did not want to farm. He did have his own truck by that time doing the garbage business for Deerfield (described in previous Historical series no. 9). However, that was only part-time work and did not bring in enough money to support a wife or have a proper future. So, his entrepreneur genes kicked in again as he talked to Granddad Eller’s cousin, Warren Eller, who had come to Ft. Lauderdale about the same time as Granddad (1923) and had started Port Everglades. The Port needed truckers to meet the ships coming in with fertilizer, and haul the fertilizer to the large farms around Lake Okeechobee.
So Dad negotiated with Warren Eller, who agreed to give Dad a contract to haul fertilizer from Port Everglades to the big farms being established at the time around Lake Okeechobee. Therefore, at 18 years of age, with contract in hand, Dad went to buy his first large flatbed truck. But because he was still a minor, the bank required Dad to have his father officially sign the note for the truck. Granddad Eller agreed and signed the note. So Dad bought his first big truck and made all the payments. Business was good and within the year Dad bought two more big trucks. He was on his way.
To be continued….

By David Eller