Growing up in Plant City made an indelible impression on Jim Helms. Soon, anyone will be able to read all about it.
Helms wrote “Juvenile Impressions of Plant City — A Collection of Playful Stories” over the last few years and finally finished and published it this year. He spent several years researching the book, working closely with both the Plant City Photo Archives and History Center and the East Hillsborough Historical Society, and mixed in anecdotes from his own life with contributions from roughly 30 people he grew up with.
“I retired, I got bored and I decided to write,” Helms said. “One of the strange things about this writing was that about 30 years ago, I was between jobs and made some notes, sketched out phrases of stories. I found that as I was beginning to do research on the book and I forgot I’d done it. They were just on little slips of scrap paper. 25 of the 30 notes appear in the book. I’ve been working on this book in my head for 30 years.”
It’s a collection of 35 stories that take readers through Helms’ early childhood, when he attended elementary schools like Burney, Jackson and Wilson, through his years at Plant City High School and college, through a stint in the United States Coast Guard and ends with his marriage at age 21. Tales of love, rejection, friendship and other activities are in the book — some tall, some true.
Helms has since spent much time away from Plant City, climbing the corporate ladder around the country and moving to Fort Myers in his retirement, but the memories have always lived on.
“I think it means more to a read from Plant City, perhaps, but I think the book is basically about growing up in a small town,” Helms said.
Helms wrote the book with the goal of making people laugh, but there’s more to it than that. He calls it an examination of the psychological aspect of small-town life rather than a “sociological” one.
“I write as a scamp as opposed to a chronicler,” he said. “Some of the chapters include lying, cheating and sneaking. Those are three separate chapters. I did all of that.”
One thing Helms is most proud of, which appears in the book, is how his life has been impacted by the “strong-willed women” who raised and helped raise him. Longtime Plant City residents likely remember his paternal grandmother, Zula Helms, who owned and operated the Helms Dress Shop on Palmer Street for decades.
“She opened up in the early 1930s, which was a real gutsy thing to do,” Helms said. “She raised a family based on her being a shop owner.”
His maternal grandmother was, much later in his life, the one who inspired him to move beyond writing unpublished poetry for fun and try his hand at a book. Several years ago, Helms found 30 short stories his grandmother wrote about her time living in Kansas.
“Juvenile Impressions of Plant City — A Collection of Playful Stories” will soon be available on lulu.com, in the gift shop of the Plant City Photo Archives and History Center, and Helms said the book should make its way to Amazon sometime this summer.