“Would that mean you would move to the east or learn to coexist
with the west state?”
The anonymous comment awaiting moderation about The Case for Two
Floridas – Revisited blog caught my attention. I don't usually
respond to anonymous comments, you know who I am, so return the
favor and let me know who you are. I usually just delete them, but this time, however, I'll try to qualify my position and explain why it appears I parachuted behind enemy lines.
I was raised in Miami, and left what was really just a seasonal
tourist town when I joined the Air Force way back in December, 1960. You know,
off to see the world and that kind of stuff. Eight years later, –
five and a half of which were spent in Germany – recently
discharged and married, ready to raise a family, I returned to Miami
and was surprised by the city that was on the verge of International
big-time. Working in downtown Miami for thirty years, watching Miami
win a couple of Super Bowls and later become the backdrop for a
popular, modern television show that soon became the most watched
show in America, I saw Miami evolve into a unique, International city
unmatched by any other in the United States. When I retired, family,
finances, and physics dictated our reluctant relocation from Miami so
we moved through the time warp that separates the east coast from the
west coast and settled in Port Charlotte. It's on the map, trust me.
We were fooled by the north/south rhetoric that pervaded Florida's
politics. I was raised knowing the “porkchoppers” as the state
legislature was known by everyone in South Florida, treated Miamians
as foreigners way before any Cuban refugees arrived. What I got
wrong was Tallahassee, Capitol of Florida, holding pen of the
porkchoppers, isn't just in the north half, it is in the western half
as well. And that is what I missed. We had dear friends who left
Miami and relocated in Hernando County in a beautiful waterfront home
with Gulf of Mexico access. Still, within several years, they were
back on the east coast. I assumed it was because they were north of
I-4 and their visa expired, but in retrospect I now know it was
because they were west of I-75!
There are pockets of resistance in either of the two proposed new
Floridas. I know for certain there are people still stuck in the
fifties tonight in Fort Lauderdale! There is no doubt in my mind the
Villages will rise up in anger, as far up as they can at least, for
being on the wrong side of the Interstate. They won't be able to
fight after nine at night and they certainly aren't going to hire
anyone to do it for them, so they just may be stuck. But then again,
they might get a lot accomplished before tee-time. They do tend to
get up early there. They'll have a golf-cart strike and cripple the
industry if they don't get their way.
The sixteen years we have lived here in west Florida, not far from a
John Birch Retirement Center, gives me an insight to the two Floridas
many politicians don't have. Living with people who are terrified of
driving to Miami, who have never been there and who will never in
their lives drive south of Disney World except down I-4 to I-75,
gives me an analytical edge here. I don't just coexist in west
Florida, no coexist isn't the right word. I've become a guerilla
fighter. A stealth influence on the unsuspecting retirees who still
keep Lawrence Welk alive on PBS. Some of them even now listen
occasionally to Jimmy Buffet. Well, not often, but maybe every once
in a while. We have found an underground network of like-minded
people here who sweeten their own tea. And that is progress.
