Dear Mayor Peyton,

Sunday afternoon at 5:43 P.M., I turned off the power at my parent's...

I can't call it ''my parent's home'' anymore; that wouldn't be accurate. Ugly Houses owns my parent's home now. They take full possession next Friday. From now until then, the hookers and drug dealers that have been trying to run my parents out of their former home since Cecil Field left will get free use of it. My parent's are leaving Jacksonville to live near my brother Chris in Spartanburg, SC, and my brother Roger and I packed their truck for them.

I was three when we moved into the house at 5423 Tampico Rd. The earilest memory I have at that house is digging up the grass on the side of the house under the electric meter so I could get dirt for a sand castle. The sod at that location never recovered. Its still a dirt patch right there.

My brother Roger and I used to take our toy guns and go behind the hedges and pretend it was a fort. We had battles against imaginary enemies - Russians, Nazis, fire-breathing dragons, machine gun toting dinosaurs, the girls we knew at Oak Hill Elementary School - that would make Steven Spielburg green with envy.

Then there was the time Roger and I tied up a couple of water hoses between two pine trees in the back yard. We would cross between the trees our feet on one water hose and our hands hanging on the other about 25 feet in the air. When the hose stretched too much we would pull the hose tight again. Those 50 ft water hoses were 150 feet long when we were through with them.

Football was big in the back yard until we got Nicey. I loved that dog. The kindest disposition of any dog I've ever known. He died of a kind of canine arthritis when I was eight. There are three very good dogs buried in that huge backyard, Mr. Mayor, including my late grandmother's chihuahua, Pedro, two hamsters and the goldfish who should hold the world's record for living in unclean water.

I remember rearranging my room so I could look out the bedroom door and down the hall to watch TV after bedtime. The Red Skelton Show, Flip Wilson, SWAT, and Space 1999 (my favorite) all came on after bedtime. But I saw them all. And on Friday nights Dad would stay up late and watch the CBS Late, Late Movie, where twice a month they would play Forbidden Planet. I always managed to stay up for that movie. I think Dad knew though.

Mom bought three rosebushes from K-mart and planted them in the front yard. Only one survived the first winter, but it lived until two years ago. It was planted in 1969. And in the back yard, right where the clothesline pole was at, every Easter lillies would bloom. They were natural - no one planted them.

My parent's house was where all our friends would end up at. Walter and Joel Parker, Dale Hutchinson, Maurice Mattelski, Sean Carr, Ricky Smart, and Roger and I would load up for the day, then head out to the basketball court at the other end of the street. It didn't matter that Dale, Sean and Ricky lived at the other end of the street, or that they had to pick up Walt and Mo on the way; everyone met at our house to plan out the day.

We were an inseparable group. You never saw a closer knit group of friends. Everyday after school it was down to the basketball court. On Friday night it was a movie at the Cedar Hills movie theatre. Lots of girl's phone numbers were collected there if the movie was a good one.

And the walk home was always eventful. In America race still mattered, but here we were, 3 black guys, 3 white guys, an asian guy and a hispanic guy and we would have DIED for each other if needed. We were the good guys; we never went looking for trouble. But NO ONE messed with one without messing with us all. We lived what Dr. King only dreamt about.

Not every memory was a pleasant one. The time my Father's lungs started bleeding from years of smoking. The sight of my Father's blood hanging from the ceiling from coughing it up is one memory I would rather not have. But he survived. He has an artificial heart valve now that clicks audibly. My children love hearing their Grandfather's heart tick louder when they come over.

Came over. Past tense, Mr. Mayor.

Walter and Joel both joined the Marines. Joel was one of the Marines Clinton failed to salute in the early days of his presidency, and was left to stand at attention for a couple of hours. Walter married, divorced, then married again. I haven't seen him in... I don't want to admit how many years.

Maurice married a girl from Macclenny, then moved to Miami to work in construction. Whan I last saw Walter, he said he had spoken to Mo six months earlier, and he had asked how Roger and I were doing.

Dale was a hero; he was tied up during a robbery attempt at that supermarket on Beaver Street near the viaduct, but he escaped and flagged down the police while his hands were still tied behind his back. He made the newspaper. He, Sean and Ricky moved from their parent's house, then Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson moved as well. I ran into him and his wife and kids eight years back. He was studying to be a preacher, just like me. Sean and Ricky were doing fine.

And in each case they asked if my Mom and Dad were still living on Tampico Rd. Though we all have moved on to new lives, when we do see one another, its as if we all were 15 years old again.

Mom had a stroke a few years ago. She's recovered nicely but both her an Dad are not in the best of health.

Which brings us to you, Mr. Mayor.

All of my life I had seen planes flying overhead - P-3 Orions, F-4 Phantom II's, A-4 Skyhawks. They were simply part of growing up on the Westside within rock throwing distance of 103rd St.. I remember when 103rd St. was a two lane road. It was widened to its present size specifically for Cecil Field.

The neighborhood I grew up in was filled with Navy and retired Navy families. It was a working class neighborhood with a collective 120 I.Q.. More importantly, it was a neighborhood whose families were honor bound to live according to certain standards of behavior, because the Navy demanded they do so. That translated into a neighborhood where crime was very low, people had traditional values, and where the only threat to your children were from outsiders.

Those families moved away, Mr. Mayor. And someone had to buy or rent the houses around 103rd St..

Gangs now frequent Sweetwater (they burned a Church there), English Estates, and Westwood.

Down at the other end of Tampico Rd., there are drug dealers. They've shot out my parent's windows, because they would like to move their lucritive business up closer to 103rd St., and you can't get any closer than the first house on the street. My parent's home. Excuse me... What used to be my parent's home.

Hookers ply their trade in front of what used to be my parent's home. They take their johns into the little wooded area behind the Doctor's office across the street, and service their clients in full view of what used to be my parent's front window.

When the Base Reallignment Committee closed Cecil Field it did so for national political reasons. It wasn't the first time they did this to Cecil Field, and everyone figured the Navy would reopen it. All the talk about business parks and Six Flags or Busch Gardens was just that - talk.

Land developers - you know the ones, Mr. Mayor, the ones who convinced you to change your mind on the Navy's return - were the only ones not wanting the Navy to come back. These are the same people who built ''upscale'' houses in Argyle Forest, whose property values would have been hurt by the Navy's return. These are the same people who wanted an Equestrian Center that only people rich enough to afford owning a horse could or would want to use.

But the neighborhood around 103rd St.? What about them, Mr. Mayor?

Bringing the Navy back was more than a financial winfall for the city - you talked of millions of dollars from businesses in Cecil, but the Navy would have brought BILLIONS, both in reconstruction costs and operating dollars. But bringing the Navy would have brought Navy Families back to the neighborhood. The drug dealers and hookers would have left.

Families would raise their children in comparative safety, once again. Little boys would have big back yards to defend from those pesky gun-toting dinosaurs. And once again little white boys, little black boys, little asian boys and little hispanic boys would have ran down to the end of Tampico Rd to play basketball and talk about girls, and build friendships that would affect the kind of men they became.

And Richard and Dolores Bryant would have watched them, with fond memories of their own sons doing the same thing, until the end of their days.

And now they are moving away. Unforgivable, Mr. Mayor.

You should be ashamed.