While Tom and Mary lived in Miami with Mary’s mother and aunt, they worked at establishing themselves and explored South Florida. In high school, Tom played football and also ran track. While in Indiana, he ran a trap line for muskrat and enjoyed fishing. When he moved to Florida, he fished in the Florida Keys, the Everglades and also on the west coast – on Marco Island and in the Turner River. As a child, I remember that he had a fly rod and a number of very pretty lures. Mary worked for Marianna von Allesch, painted watercolors and was in at least one show in Coconut Grove, according to the meager historical records that I have.

Tom and Mary’s first son arrived in late 1948 and that no doubt created a space problem in their tiny garage apartment. Early in 1949, Mary became pregnant with her second son and that very likely was the spur that caused them to move out on their own. What is true now was also true then: real estate was unaffordable in Miami for couples just starting out. Thus, they looked for a place in the Homestead area, because real estate was affordable there. Tom did not need to be in an urban area, because he sold his cartoons via mail. All he needed was a post office and an office supply store. Homestead had both. When Tom, Mary and their children first moved to the Homestead area, they rented a house, owned at one time by Ernst Bitte, which was located on the east side of Krome Avenue just north of Bauer Drive. They stayed there for a short time while they were looking for a permanent place to buy. Two pictures of that house are in the gallery, “Tom and Mary Blakley”. The house was torn down in the mid-1960s and the property is now an avocado grove.

In May of 1950, they bought their tiny house – it only had 4 rooms – on 5 acres of East Glade land, located a mile east of Krome Avenue on East Palm Drive, outside of the city limits of Florida City. At the time, Palm Drive was a dirt road and electric service was provided by the Florida Keys Electric Cooperative via a line that ran north from Card Sound Road along Tennessee Road. There was no telephone service (that didn’t happen until 1957), the house had no windows – just shutters – and the refrigerator and stove ran on propane. There were no other houses closer than one mile from the property. It was more isolated than similar properties in the Redland, because no one but farmers, hunters and moonshiners ever went out into the East Glade. The house was built in late 1945 by Carl J. Wertalka, who had purchased the land in April, 1944. The “starter” house was built out of lumber that was salvaged from the wreckage of the Homestead Army Air Force Base, which had been heavily damaged by a hurricane in early September, 1945. Carl sold the property to George Anderson and his wife, Adele in January, 1946 and the Andersons then sold the property to Tom and Mary in 1950. I can’t find any evidence that George and Adele ever lived there, though they may have.

The first thing that Tom did after moving in was to add a room for his studio to the west end of the house so that he could work. That room was completed by late 1950 and it took several more years before the front, back and dining porches were added. The gallery was added in 1959, after the birth of Tom and Mary’s third son.

As time went on, more improvements were made to the house, but they were completed as Tom and Mary could afford to do so. Mary Blakley Ceramics began in the early 1960s, on the front porch of the house, with two small kilns running on 110 volts. It wasn’t fully established until 1966, when the shop, a two-car garage, was built by Bruce Batchelor. Until then, there wasn’t enough room (or electrical capacity) to establish a functional workplace.