The month of February has seen fit to string me over nearly the entire state of Florida (and that’s a lot of state!) in a series of weekend necessities and one day get-aways. Let me give you a personalized tour book guide on where you, too can “Get Lost” in Florida without losing your shirt, unless you really want to.
Home Base:
Ocklawaha, North Central Florida.
Allow me to introduce you to the hub of my adventures; Ocklawaha. (A town not found on most maps, much less in any guidebook) Just think of a laughing Indian and you can pronounce it (Auk-law-wa-haw). Our moss-laden, ancient oak-lined Main Street borders the southeastern end of the Ocala National Forest and the northern shores of beautiful Lake Weir. We boast two – count ‘em – two flashing stoplights, a gas station, post office and a corner grocer of sorts. Of course no community would be complete without at least 5 churches, a local diner and a bona fides police station, though I have never seen an Ocklawaha police car.
We have two claims to fame here in the heart of this sandbar. (Three, if you count me, but I don’t think they are) Neither of them is very flattering, but both have gained national recognition at one time or another. The most flamboyant is the successful man hunt, corner and shoot-out between the FBI and the notorious gangster known as Ma Barker, who had taken refuge in this obscure Central Florida town. In January, the City Hall hosts the annual reenactment of the 1935 showdown that shattered the peace of this sleepy town. A shower of some 3,000 rounds of ammunition became the longest gun battle in FBI history, lasting nearly 4 hours. The good guys won, putting an end to the bank robberies and kidnappings this gang routinely conducted, and thus began the close of the gangster era. Ocklawaha was catapulted into the national limelight. Just the kind of publicity that makes you pack up the dog, your 2.5 kids and move the family down here, isn’t it?
Then there is the Florida barge canal project. Yep, the Army Corps of Engineers with the blessing of F.D.R. wanted to cut Florida in half, allowing shipping from the Gulf to feed the Atlantic without taking a tour of Cuban waters through the Florida Straits. Good idea? Never happened. However, we have a monolithic embarrassment as evidence that it was more than a dream. The Ocklawaha bridge project employed some 3,500 men at any given time and paid them a pittance, even by the standards of the day, of $35 a month. Rumor is, they got what they paid for. Construction commenced in 1935 (does this sound hokey with the “35′s” or what?) to build the camelback bridge that soars some 40 feet (maybe that’s 35 feet?) over a river that you can flick a potato chip across. The canal was never completed, but if you like viewing the tops of trees as you cross over a river that you simply have to take on faith is there because you can’t see it, have I got a bridge for you.
It’s from these humble beginnings, I take my treks as spokes on a really deformed wagon wheel, to the sights, sounds, tastes and oddities of Florida’s lesser known places. Glad you could join me, bring some sunscreen and your flip-flops.
First leg:
February 5 and 6. Tampa and Palm Harbor, West Coast.
Being of the cyber generation, meeting people of all kinds on the Internet has become quite an adventure. A first time meeting with a new friend who lives in Tampa was my first stop of the month. Oh my god, yes – a cyber date! A rather nice one I might add, but that is not the crux of my story. As I pulled into town I spied parade floats filing down the main drag, not parading, but hurrying off to parade. Ushered and escorted by Tampa’s finest; flashy, sparkly, and grandiose (the floats, not the cops), these floats silently passed by; devoid of the waving beauty queens and grinning pirates, but a delight none the less. A free parade and no crowds to fight with for a view, what fun! This spicy combination of Pirate invasions upon the doubloon littered coast and the licentious thrills of Mardi Gras beading has come to be known as the Gasparilla of Tampa Bay. Hundreds of boats, bedecked with Pirates and gypsies, arrive in the bay at dawn; loud and playful as they portray the pillaging scoundrels of the West Coast’s pirateering history. Buccaneers and wenches, bawdy with drink, swagger in the streets as parade participants throw beads, stickers, tokens and kisses to yammering crowds. A feast for the eyes, ears and taste buds. Next year, this event will be coupled with the Super Bowl. I’m glad I’m not part of that planning committee. I’m buying stock in Anhaeuser Busch, the local brewery (and owners of half the theme parks in Florida), and letting it ride. We watched the festivities from the security of the living room teevee, safe from the marauding throngs, avoiding a kidnapping that surely would have been blamed on my Internet friend if anything had happened to me.
We supped at a great little Cuban restaurant and shared picadillo, plantains (Good Cuban food is not just in Miami anymore) and good conversation. Free entertainment included, besides several loud and beaded participants, the same floats that passed by earlier, empty again and headed home for the night.
The evening was rounded up with a sunset walk on the causeway as the cloudless blue of the sky gave way to wisps of a purpleing and golden haze on the horizon. Across the water on one side is Tampa and the other is St. Petersburg, all lit and glimmering on the water. Girls, if you want to travel cheap, get a date. Guys, if you want to travel cheap, go alone. We always seem to evoke the chivalry in you to pay for everything, though not always intentionally. Sorry, that’s just the way it works out sometimes.
My planned travel home that evening was rerouted up the coast a few miles to meet up with another friend (Yes, another Internet friend, but of longer standing) for a Sunday of junkin’ in the flea markets. You won’t find any of these in your fancy tour book, but if you want a true flavor for the area, you have to stop in and meet the natives. Passion for junkin’ is a quest to find serendipity. Perhaps it is rooted even deeper in our long lost necessity to gather and hunt for the basics of life–food, shelter, and warmth. Now that these needs are met with a stop at the corner grocer or the flip of a switch, this instinct languishes. How do we redirect our primal need to hunt and gather? Junkin’. I realize that this is a purely indulgent hobby that not everyone shares and perhaps comparing it to filling needs such as sustenance or shelter is stretching it a bit. However, if you have ever been in a room with avid collectors, you’ll witness frenzy not wholly unlike chumming for sharks.
There is nothing like digging through a box of old coins, my fingers blackened with the age of dirty money, or spying an impacted Confederate belt buckle that prevented the lead ball from completing its intended task. Maybe a lost document hidden behind a poster frame or a misunderstood and forgotten piece of fine porcelain that has seen more years than my Grandmother. These are the things that feed the hunt for junk. For less than $30.00 (again with that chivalry thing, his money not mine) we both came away with a bag of treasures that we pondered under the shade of an oak tree in a park on a most wonderfully sunny afternoon.
Life’s short and to be totally cliché, eat dessert first. We did. Two scoops of ice cream before dinner is the only way to go. When you do it that way, you also get a free lunch for next week, because you can’t eat all your dinner – how’s that for planning ahead? I finally had to leave the coast to return to my cabin in the wood, but not before taking one last deep breath of the salted air.
- Total miles: 205
- Total costs: $92.00
- $75.00 for nice but poorly located hotel.
- $0.00 for meals. That date thing works nicely; you should try it.
- $5.00 for great ice cream, 31 flavors narrowed down to two.
- $12.00 for a tank of gas, which by the time you read this will be $24.00 as gas prices rise before my eyes!
SECOND LEG:
FEBRUARY 13 AND 14. MIAMI AND FT. LAUDERDALE, EAST COAST
This trip falls under my necessity section, but I can always find a way to mix a little pleasure with my business. Owning a home is the American dream, until you have one and it turns into a nightmare. I rent out my home in Ft. Lauderdale and it requires a visit twice a year to keep tabs on it and, since it was in the middle of tenant transition, I went for inspection. One of the most bizarre feelings is to walk into your own home, empty except for the lingering push pins and the wondering “Why did they do that?” thoughts that cross my mind. My ever cost-cutting mentality slated me to spend the night camped out on the floor of my guest room for the night with naught but my pillow and blankie. I dipped my toes into my too-cool-for-swimming pool, dined in elegance on the pool deck with my #3, no cheese and a diet coke; and missed my home – sigh. Not enough however, to move back south.
The other half of this intended trip was to fight rush hour traffic on I-95 in downtown Miami. Struggling to make my way to the Diabetes Research Center where I semi annually donate my body to science in search for a preventive treatment for those at risk of developing diabetes. This also makes this trip an economical one, because I have to fast for 12 hours, no dinner, no breakfast and I get a coupon for a free lunch after my donation of blood, answering questionnaires and lots of laughs. Plus, they pay me for coming. Where else can you take a get-a-way and have them pay you for the visit? Such a deal! Unfortunately, this is not mentioned in the travel brochure. You have to provide your own research program. With all the experimental drugs being developed, like our favorite, Xenical, I’m sure you can get into one.
The best part is visiting old co-workers. What better way to rub it in that I am on a mini vacation, than to visit my buddies at work and bug them for an hour or two. I did, however, get my payback. Lingering and reminiscing too long in south Florida put me square in rush hour traffic in Orlando on my way home. Traffic control in the wonderful world of Disney is about a sucky as it gets. It rivals that of Miami, New York and Los Angeles I have no doubt. Three solid hours of stop, stop, crawl, stop, wait and creep.
Needless to say, Orlando is not included in my little February foray; I usually avoid it like the plague. Hmmm? Rats, mice, plague; could there be a connection here? Don’t get me wrong. There are tons, and I mean TONS, of great things to do in Central Florida and I don’t mean the obvious Theme Parks. Stop in any local Denny’s and pick through the 100′s of tourist brochures. Everything from dining with horses to hobnobbing with Celebes. Orlando has become the roller coaster Mecca and the night life is jumpin’. Just make sure you bring LOTS of money, lots of time and lots of patience, none of which I had.
- Total miles: 549
- Total costs: $38.00
- $0.00 for lodging. Such advantages to an empty rental property
- $10.00 for meals. Mickey D’s and B.K. Lounge on the turnpike, always a good choice. Yummy.
- $40.00 for gifts for friends I love to visit.
- $23.00 for tolls. You can go for free on I-95, but I had to spend some money.
- $40.00 for gas which is by this time up to $1.55 per gal. for regular. Am I in Jamaica by accident?
- ($75.00) for human lab rat reimbursements plus a free lunch.
FIRST ARM: (I ONLY HAVE TWO LEGS TO STAND ON)
FEBRUARY 18. MELBOURNE, EAST COAST
This little Space Coast town boasts a brand new zoo. Didn’t go. There are great beaches for relaxing and watching wonderful sunrises. Didn’t stay to see one. Some of the best seafood restaurants line US-1 along the strip. Ate at the McDonald’s from hell instead. If they gave out stars for really bad places – I give this a 10! (That’s another story all its own that I don’t want to relive, thank you very much!) Why did I venture some 140 miles away from home on a weeknight then? For a girls’ night out with a friend of mine from work. Leaving her hubby at home, we took off to see “Stomp!” Allow me to drift into my more poetic literary style, for there is no other way to describe this show. Not uniquely Florida, you can enjoy this in your town too. (How ’bout that. A multi-state tour recommendation, how novel) I highly recommend getting lost in the rhythm of this most talented troop if ever they grace your local, or not so local, performing arts center. They are worth the trip.
Urban primalism: The beat of a city, the rhythm of everyday life blended seamlessly with the souls of men; Stomp! Sounds that, as combined with the visual feast of freed spirits in dance, permeate my latent soul, bringing it to life with the thunder of the street and the tap, tap, tapping of a single finger on a matchbox. I hear the sounds of everyday all around me, but in them missed the music, until now.
Never will I see a bathroom plunger in its lowly position of a working drone, but as an instrument of humorous and lively spirit. Black rubber tubes become the falling rain of a summer storm. Softly, slowly dripping; crescendoed to a torrent of tuned and pitched hollows that, if my eyes winked shut, could not tell they were but construction fodder beat randomly upon the ground. Broom sticks flash and spin, dancing as one with the hands that pound and grip them, casting eerie shadows of tribal rituals on the theater walls. Wallowed sinks of dirty water and spilling cups, stroked with rubber gloves that tickled the ears to pure laughter in antics of after dinner dishwashing chores, made fun. Human wind chimes teeter back and forth among a junk yard of harmonious tinkers and taps that lull then scream into a passionate band of sounds no orchestra of strings could ever match. There is magic in primitive sound that rings not better than the refined, but simply touches a deeper part of me. A part that civility hides, though not successfully.
Laughter, amazement, awe, sensuality, connection and admiration are but inadequate descriptors for these incredibly talented artists who have taken out of the idle moments of life, a soul that is anything but boring. Percussion–the beat of a heart, the rasp of a winded run, the snap of a finger or the tap of the heel, toe, heel, toe of a leggy woman in her spiked shoes strolling the wooden hallway. Listen when next you hear the flick-crack of an opening newspaper or the absentminded clicking of an ink pen, in and out, in and out, click, click, click. For hidden in these work-a-day hums lies a beat, waiting to be harmonized with the ticking of your brain and the tapping of your feet.
- Total miles: 273
- Total costs: $55.00
- $5.00 for meals. Don’t make me relive this, I beg you!
- $35.00 for pretty good seats in the not quite nose bleed section.
- $15.00 for a tank of gas – it keeps climbing!
SECOND ARM:
FEBRUARY 20. LAKE CITY AND OLUSTEE, NORTH FLORIDA
Talk about getting lost! How about taking a walk with history that makes you forget you are living in a more (and I use this term very loosely) civilized time. I have found a new passion that melds my love of nature, my intrigue of history, and my longing to get back to the simpler things in life; reenacting. More specifically, Civil War reenacting. Oh, my! This northern gal is now “secesh”; what ever will my po’ Daddy say? At this time I do not yet personally participate in the encampments or battles, though it may soon be added to my list of hobbies. My friend who has introduced his “family” to me is still trying to get me into a hoop skirt, scary thought, but I am getting closer. (I promise to send pictures of that monumental occasion) The Baker County Correctional Institute, barbed wire and all, is one of the proud sponsors of the annual reenactment of the battle at Olustee. This was the crowning journey of the month; enjoy it with me.
In the eerie glow of bleeding pitch pine trees set afire to light the way on the darkened trail, 5,000 Union troops advanced westward from Jacksonville near the Georgia-Florida border, to cut off the supplies Florida was providing to the Confederacy. Here, on a battle field, essentially unchanged from that of 137 years ago, the largest battle in Florida took place, claiming forever over 1,800 Union soldiers and an additional 900 of the brave men in gray.
The early morning song and laughter of camp soon gave way to the barking commands to “form up!” as brave men and boys marched off to war and their women bid what they prayed would not be their last farewells. Scouting lines of Confederate soldiers combed the field, searching for Union blue and once found, a battle ensued for what surely seemed an eternity. In fact for some, it was. Calvary mounted, 16 cannons loaded, and thousands of foot soldiers with readied rifles advanced in waves upon each other and fought among the palmetto and pine. Defiantly, each faced the enemy lines in broad daylight upon the open field, knowing, yet not believing, that any moment could be their last. Eyes stinging and lungs choked with the sulfur of gunpowder, they pressed on as comrades fell, writhing in unseemly death. Sweat of their brows stinging the scrapes dug by the toothy palmetto and ears pounding with the thunder of the cannon and the barked orders of “fire!”. Or perhaps it is his heart beating so loudly instead. An unexplained passion of war grips a man and makes him forget what he knows is eminent, face his fears and pray he lives to tell of it. This is true, even in the reenactments. These modern day men are transported to another time where they stand among the ghosts of history and, with concentrated passion, portray what the spirits of war speak to them.
The South held fast her place that day, though 3 years of warring had taken its toll on the cause and soon it would end, for the North had far more advantages. The reenactment, though abbreviated, gives a taste of the incredible bravery that compelled these men and their deep conviction in what they believed. Unfortunately, the Civil War has been reduced to slavery issues in so many of our history books and to who ever wants to make a convenient point based on half-truths. There was so very much more to the causes of both sides. When you come to a reenactment, you can begin to understand them. This end, better education, motivates these groups of everyday accountants, artists, doctors, truck drivers and computer techs to give 100%. (Actually it’s a boys will be boys day of fun, too) What they give of time, energy, funds and commitment to make history come alive is nothing short of amazing. Next time you are in an old battlefield or standing on a bullet riddled rampart, read the plaques there, but more importantly take a moment to listen to the murmurings of the field. They have some incredible stories to tell.
- Total miles: 246
- Total cost: $23.00
- $ 12.00 for meals. Okay, I picked up the tab today.
- $0.00 for the event. Not bad for all day live (or dead) entertainment.
- $11.00 for gas. Just a tank for the day.
There you have it. Florida in a nutshell and not one beach, not one hammock, not one sun burnt tale to tell. Not one typical scene of palms swaying in the sea breezes. Florida is a lot of things the tourist board doesn’t seem to catch a glimpse of. Of course, you don’t want to visit to take care of such mundane things as I did on my treks, but it is great to know that there is more to this state than Mickey and friends, a whole lot more.
- Total miles: 1,273
- Total cost: $208.00, not bad for 4 weekends of fun.
