Esto was my first Florida town. Florida looks a lot like Alabama up there. But in Esto I saw a palm tree. I think Floridians believe they deserve palm trees somehow, whereas the Alabama folk don’t. Those big palms are native to neither state I’m told. It seems to be a matter of identity.
The towns were spread out. I headed east Noma and Grapeville (which has a sheep and goat auction every Tuesday), then Campbellton. Somewhere out there I saw a John Deere cotton picker finishing up a big field. Driving alongside it was a truck hauling a big cotton wagon.
Though the afternoon was getting away from me I stopped to watch how it all worked. I walked into the field and stood at the end of the row just to watch the action of that cotton picker. It was like a shrunken combine we use in Illinois for corn. Instead of metal snouts between the rows, it had soft-sided canvas chutes with something like spring teeth instead of snapping rollers. Where corn is crunched cotton is sort of finessed off the stalk, the stalk still standing once it is passed over by the picker. At the end of the row, the cotton picker made its turn and dumped a white fluffy load of cotton into the wagon.
After the picker went on, the driver’s side door of the truck hitched to the wagon opened and a middle-aged man stepped out. I put my palms up and waved them, trying to communicate that I didn’t need anything, but he walked towards me anyway. I met him halfway.
“I don’t mean to bother you. Don’t need anything. Just wanted to watch that picker up close. Don’t let me hold up your work.”
“You’re not bothering me,” he replied. “That work will be there when I’m done. I thought you might want somebody to talk to.”
And as a matter of fact I did.
“Dale Wilson” he said, extending his hand. (I’m making that up. Forgot his real name, most likely soon after he told it to me.) I shook it. Dale was wearing a chambray shirt with a pack of Red Man chewing tobacco in the pocket. I really wanted some but restrained myself from asking.
“Dave McClure.”
“So where you from Dave, and where are you headed?”
“Coming from Illinois, heading to Florida.”
“Well congratulations, you made it.”
“Oh, I guess I did. I’ve been saying that for days, didn’t adjust to my surroundings. Ft. Myers I’m going to in the end.”
“You down here for the winter?”
“Nah, just a week or so.”
He seemed eager to talk. I explained that I grew up on a dairy farm in Illinois that raised corn and beans and was just interested in farming. He and his brother farm 600 acres, raising both cotton and peanuts, rotating them. They also run something of a peanut buying business, a co-op of some kind, which keeps them busy.
“I always wanted to come up and see that corn harvested. We tried to grow corn a couple of years ago when the price got way up, but it just wasn’t profitable. Our ground isn’t right for it. Had to irrigate too much. Needs a lot of nitrogen too.”
“You should come up to Illinois about the first two weeks of October. I’d be glad to show you around.”
“Yeah, I’d like that. Maybe after I retire. I’d like to see your part of the country.”
“That’s the only reason I’m here, being retired.”
We continued to talk for nearly an hour. Somewhere in that hour, Dale offered me a chew which I readily accepted. I forgot how sweet and good that stringy moist tobacco tastes. I pushed it into my cheek by my back molars with my tongue and felt that nice spiciness. Within minutes saliva mixed with the strong sweet juice from the tobacco filled my mouth and required me to spit. Dale didn’t spit near as much as I, hardly at all in fact. We talked about lots of stuff, Dale and I, but started with machinery.
The cotton harvester doesn’t gin the cotton the way a combine shells corn. They still make it into bales (another truck-mounted machine in the corner of the field was there for that) and take it to a gin. I’d gone by a gin in Alabama. There was so much cotton on the roadway leading to it I thought it was snow at first.
Dale was a hell of a nice guy. I tried not to think of that same field 160 years ago, no doubt filled with slaves, picking cotton out of the bolls and putting it in long bags drug between the rows. Nor did I long ponder Dale‘s ancestors who, if they were big cotton farmers, were certainly also slave owners. “Twelve Years a Slave” went through my mind.
“Dale Wilson” he said, extending his hand. (I’m making that up. Forgot his real name, most likely soon after he told it to me.) I shook it. Dale was wearing a chambray shirt with a pack of Red Man chewing tobacco in the pocket. I really wanted some but restrained myself from asking.
“Dave McClure.”
“So where you from Dave, and where are you headed?”
“Coming from Illinois, heading to Florida.”
“Well congratulations, you made it.”
“Oh, I guess I did. I’ve been saying that for days, didn’t adjust to my surroundings. Ft. Myers I’m going to in the end.”
“You down here for the winter?”
“Nah, just a week or so.”
He seemed eager to talk. I explained that I grew up on a dairy farm in Illinois that raised corn and beans and was just interested in farming. He and his brother farm 600 acres, raising both cotton and peanuts, rotating them. They also run something of a peanut buying business, a co-op of some kind, which keeps them busy.
“I always wanted to come up and see that corn harvested. We tried to grow corn a couple of years ago when the price got way up, but it just wasn’t profitable. Our ground isn’t right for it. Had to irrigate too much. Needs a lot of nitrogen too.”
“You should come up to Illinois about the first two weeks of October. I’d be glad to show you around.”
“Yeah, I’d like that. Maybe after I retire. I’d like to see your part of the country.”
“That’s the only reason I’m here, being retired.”
We continued to talk for nearly an hour. Somewhere in that hour, Dale offered me a chew which I readily accepted. I forgot how sweet and good that stringy moist tobacco tastes. I pushed it into my cheek by my back molars with my tongue and felt that nice spiciness. Within minutes saliva mixed with the strong sweet juice from the tobacco filled my mouth and required me to spit. Dale didn’t spit near as much as I, hardly at all in fact. We talked about lots of stuff, Dale and I, but started with machinery.
The cotton harvester doesn’t gin the cotton the way a combine shells corn. They still make it into bales (another truck-mounted machine in the corner of the field was there for that) and take it to a gin. I’d gone by a gin in Alabama. There was so much cotton on the roadway leading to it I thought it was snow at first.
Dale was a hell of a nice guy. I tried not to think of that same field 160 years ago, no doubt filled with slaves, picking cotton out of the bolls and putting it in long bags drug between the rows. Nor did I long ponder Dale‘s ancestors who, if they were big cotton farmers, were certainly also slave owners. “Twelve Years a Slave” went through my mind.
I didn’t see any of that in Dale. He had nothing to do with it. He was about my age or younger, probably born in the 1950s eighty-five years after slavery ended. His concern was mostly with the future. That is energy more well placed I think.
“You take my town there, Malone, you’ll go through it once you leave here. I call it my town but it’s not. I went to school there, my family has done business in Malone for generations. It used to have five gas stations. We had a little department store for pity’s sake, two grocery stores, a lumber yard, and lots of people in business for themselves. Now poor Malone is down to almost nothing. One gas station, a branch bank, a coffee shop, a pain clinic, and a damn dollar store. I just don’t know what the future holds for rural Florida around these parts. Even for farmers. My brother and I used to be big farmers with 600 acres. Now we’re small. The future is not bright I’ll tell you that.”
If you were concerned about time, or daylight, you would have said I wasted an hour or so talking to Dale but I didn’t see it that way. For a time on a Sunday afternoon, we both enjoyed some human contact and learned some things. We discovered we agreed more than we disagreed. When you’re alone for long periods of time conversation with a thoughtful person can almost be a tonic.
We had a neighbor like that near our farm by Danvers. Worked all the time. You rarely saw him in town and if you did he hardly spoke. Wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. But on occasion, he would engage someone, often my Dad, and talk for hours. We would see his pickup truck parked by a field where Dad was working with the tractor. They would stand at a fence post and not move for the longest time. My Mom thought it was crazy. She monitored my Dad’s activity rather closely and was, you could say, a gentle critic of his productivity.
“Well Dad, you didn’t get much done this afternoon, talking to Josh Mueller as long as you did.”
“Yeah, well I guess Josh was just ready to talk.”
“What did you talk about for so long?”
“Oh, you know, this and that. Farming. I enjoyed it.”
Dad didn’t divulge a lot of things to my Mom.
My mind flashed to Dad and Josh Mueller as I stood in that cotton field shooting the breeze with Dale Wilson. Come to think of it Josh chewed Red Man too. I keep thinking of my Dad, have been the whole trip, and how he enjoyed simple pleasures. I feel close to him even now, 26 years after his death, so close he could have been sitting beside me in the passenger seat of the Buick. I’d give anything to hear his voice and see his smile again
I finally begged off my conversation with Dale Wilson, saying I had a ways to go yet and better get started. We shook hands again. I thanked Dale for the chew and the talk. You can meet nice people on the road if you give it a chance.
At Malone, Dale Wilson's town, I pointed the Buick South in the general direction of Tallahassee passing through Two Egg, Dellwood, Grand Ridge (again), and Selman. At Blountstown I headed east again towards Bristol and Hosford. By making that little jog I guaranteed I would not pass through Tallahassee. Instead, I drove south of it. I crossed the Ochlockonee river and at Bloxham entered the Apalachicola National Forest. There were no towns in there. It’s amazing they could even build a road. It was pure swamp from Sopchoppy to Spring Hill. Don’t you love the word Sopchoppy? I think I’ve felt that way before.
It was beginning to get dark. The Apalachiola National Forest is a big fishing area. Cars with out-of-state plates towing trailers were showing up. The few gas stations that existed along the road became something like oases selling fishing gear, fried chicken, catfish, ribs, hush puppies, beer, bait, gas. As I pulled into a gas station an especially obese man in blue bib overalls, Dickies I think, was celebrating a recent inside food purchase by simply putting the carry-out container on the hood of his pickup, cracking open a Bud Light, and shoving food in his mouth, starting with the French fries. Right there in the parking lot, breaking nearly all the rules of etiquette as he dined. No visible sign of napkins. Wiped his mouth on the corner of his T shirt. It’s guys like that who give bib overalls a bad image.
As I stopped to gas up and do a little route consultation with the staff inside, I texted my brother-in-law in Oldsmar near Tampa and asked him how far he was from Tallahassee. He responded that it said three and a half to four hours. I thought I was maybe an hour away. What little planning I’d done didn’t extend past Tallahassee. Turns out Florida is a pretty long state. It was getting dark.
The young woman at the cash register recalled I believe each and every turn, and what building were located on the intersections where they took place, on the route she takes when she goes from her hometown of nearby Panacea (we should name more towns after unattainable ideals) down on the coast by Piney Island, to Tampa, where she visits her grandmother. She gave the directions in way too much detail, but with such enthusiasm that I kept nodding my head as if I understood perfectly, even though I lost track very early on. All I really remembered was to follow Route 98 which becomes 19. I could take it from there on my map.
Darkness changes road trips greatly. It narrows the experience to the scope of your headlights, the streetlights if there are any, and the occasional annoying lighted billboard. I had pledged to myself not to travel in the dark but I was close enough to my relative’s home that I decided to push on and sleep in a house with people I loved. My sister-in-law texted that they would wait dinner on me and I asked her to please not, I’d get something to eat along the way.
I was in the final leg of my solo road trip and my field of vision was confined to two paved lanes and their watery North Florida ditches. I put Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde in the CD player. I sang along to all the crazy lines I remembered, then concentrated hard on track twelve - 4th Time Around. After all the obscure impossible lyrics that song is a fairly straightforward conversation between a man and a woman during a fight. Buried in there, between the spare drum line and the pretty guitar, were the words I recalled and was waiting for, written and sung by a brash clear-voiced twenty-five-year-old Bob Dylan in 1966. I used to think relationships were that simple. If only it could be like that again.
She said, Don’t forget.
Everybody must give something back
For something they get.
And you, you took me in
You loved me then
You didn’t waste time.
And I, I never took much
I never asked for your crutch
Now don’t ask for mine.
I played it over and over. I followed Route 19 down the Florida coast. Everything changes on the coast. Stores sell swimming suits and sunglasses. Signs try to grab you off the road. Drive-through windows appear in fast food restaurants. Life gets gaudy and promises to be fun. Florida becomes vacationland, and people with out-of-state plates become tourists. It got tacky.
In one of those towns, Homasassa Springs or Weeki Wachee, I pulled into Fat Boy’s Barbeque right at 9 p.m.. There was only one truck in the gravel parking lot. It was one of the few real restaurants I could find, the rest all fronts for big food corporations. They were, however, not pleased to see me.
Waitresses were mopping the floor and the chairs were upside down on the tables. A woman behind the cash register was counting bills.
“Are you open?” I asked.
“Technically,” she said, looking up at the clock. “Francine, lock that door. What can I get ya? How about a carry-out?"
“That’s all I wanted was a carryout. How about making me a sandwich out of some, any kind, of smoked meat and putting a side of coleslaw with it?”
“We can do that,” she said. “How about I just charge you $4?”
“It’s a deal.” I paid in cash, which I think she put in her pocket.
After they let me out and I sat in the Buick eating the barbeque from Fat Boy’s, which was delicious by the way, it occurred to me that it would most likely be the last meal I would eat alone for a long time.
At Tarpon Springs I headed inland for Oldsmar and turned to my IPhone for help. Either I put Pat and Dale’s address in wrong or the woman in the phone had a brain cramp but somehow, try as she might, she couldn’t find their place. Following her directions whenever I felt they were even slightly plausible I drove down one big street then another, passing trailer parks, brightly decorated entrances to gated communities, golf courses, shopping malls with the woman periodically telling me to make U turns. It was fitting that at the very end of the trip I was profoundly and utterly lost.
I called my brother-in-law Dale who, like an air traffic controller helping an airplane through dense fog, guided me in. I put numbers in a keypad by a gate which made it go up, drove under it, went slowly down a street with lots of speed bumps, and finally spotted my brother-in-law and sister-in-law standing under Christmas lights outside their condo by a carport. I pulled the Buick into a parking spot as if it was made for it and stepped out, closing the door behind me. I hugged my relatives, the first people I’d encountered in three days that knew me on sight and have for 36 years. It was very good to see them. With those familiar hugs my solo road trip ended.
My mind flashed to Dad and Josh Mueller as I stood in that cotton field shooting the breeze with Dale Wilson. Come to think of it Josh chewed Red Man too. I keep thinking of my Dad, have been the whole trip, and how he enjoyed simple pleasures. I feel close to him even now, 26 years after his death, so close he could have been sitting beside me in the passenger seat of the Buick. I’d give anything to hear his voice and see his smile again
I finally begged off my conversation with Dale Wilson, saying I had a ways to go yet and better get started. We shook hands again. I thanked Dale for the chew and the talk. You can meet nice people on the road if you give it a chance.
At Malone, Dale Wilson's town, I pointed the Buick South in the general direction of Tallahassee passing through Two Egg, Dellwood, Grand Ridge (again), and Selman. At Blountstown I headed east again towards Bristol and Hosford. By making that little jog I guaranteed I would not pass through Tallahassee. Instead, I drove south of it. I crossed the Ochlockonee river and at Bloxham entered the Apalachicola National Forest. There were no towns in there. It’s amazing they could even build a road. It was pure swamp from Sopchoppy to Spring Hill. Don’t you love the word Sopchoppy? I think I’ve felt that way before.
It was beginning to get dark. The Apalachiola National Forest is a big fishing area. Cars with out-of-state plates towing trailers were showing up. The few gas stations that existed along the road became something like oases selling fishing gear, fried chicken, catfish, ribs, hush puppies, beer, bait, gas. As I pulled into a gas station an especially obese man in blue bib overalls, Dickies I think, was celebrating a recent inside food purchase by simply putting the carry-out container on the hood of his pickup, cracking open a Bud Light, and shoving food in his mouth, starting with the French fries. Right there in the parking lot, breaking nearly all the rules of etiquette as he dined. No visible sign of napkins. Wiped his mouth on the corner of his T shirt. It’s guys like that who give bib overalls a bad image.
As I stopped to gas up and do a little route consultation with the staff inside, I texted my brother-in-law in Oldsmar near Tampa and asked him how far he was from Tallahassee. He responded that it said three and a half to four hours. I thought I was maybe an hour away. What little planning I’d done didn’t extend past Tallahassee. Turns out Florida is a pretty long state. It was getting dark.
The young woman at the cash register recalled I believe each and every turn, and what building were located on the intersections where they took place, on the route she takes when she goes from her hometown of nearby Panacea (we should name more towns after unattainable ideals) down on the coast by Piney Island, to Tampa, where she visits her grandmother. She gave the directions in way too much detail, but with such enthusiasm that I kept nodding my head as if I understood perfectly, even though I lost track very early on. All I really remembered was to follow Route 98 which becomes 19. I could take it from there on my map.
Darkness changes road trips greatly. It narrows the experience to the scope of your headlights, the streetlights if there are any, and the occasional annoying lighted billboard. I had pledged to myself not to travel in the dark but I was close enough to my relative’s home that I decided to push on and sleep in a house with people I loved. My sister-in-law texted that they would wait dinner on me and I asked her to please not, I’d get something to eat along the way.
I was in the final leg of my solo road trip and my field of vision was confined to two paved lanes and their watery North Florida ditches. I put Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde in the CD player. I sang along to all the crazy lines I remembered, then concentrated hard on track twelve - 4th Time Around. After all the obscure impossible lyrics that song is a fairly straightforward conversation between a man and a woman during a fight. Buried in there, between the spare drum line and the pretty guitar, were the words I recalled and was waiting for, written and sung by a brash clear-voiced twenty-five-year-old Bob Dylan in 1966. I used to think relationships were that simple. If only it could be like that again.
She said, Don’t forget.
Everybody must give something back
For something they get.
And you, you took me in
You loved me then
You didn’t waste time.
And I, I never took much
I never asked for your crutch
Now don’t ask for mine.
I played it over and over. I followed Route 19 down the Florida coast. Everything changes on the coast. Stores sell swimming suits and sunglasses. Signs try to grab you off the road. Drive-through windows appear in fast food restaurants. Life gets gaudy and promises to be fun. Florida becomes vacationland, and people with out-of-state plates become tourists. It got tacky.
In one of those towns, Homasassa Springs or Weeki Wachee, I pulled into Fat Boy’s Barbeque right at 9 p.m.. There was only one truck in the gravel parking lot. It was one of the few real restaurants I could find, the rest all fronts for big food corporations. They were, however, not pleased to see me.
Waitresses were mopping the floor and the chairs were upside down on the tables. A woman behind the cash register was counting bills.
“Are you open?” I asked.
“Technically,” she said, looking up at the clock. “Francine, lock that door. What can I get ya? How about a carry-out?"
“That’s all I wanted was a carryout. How about making me a sandwich out of some, any kind, of smoked meat and putting a side of coleslaw with it?”
“We can do that,” she said. “How about I just charge you $4?”
“It’s a deal.” I paid in cash, which I think she put in her pocket.
After they let me out and I sat in the Buick eating the barbeque from Fat Boy’s, which was delicious by the way, it occurred to me that it would most likely be the last meal I would eat alone for a long time.
At Tarpon Springs I headed inland for Oldsmar and turned to my IPhone for help. Either I put Pat and Dale’s address in wrong or the woman in the phone had a brain cramp but somehow, try as she might, she couldn’t find their place. Following her directions whenever I felt they were even slightly plausible I drove down one big street then another, passing trailer parks, brightly decorated entrances to gated communities, golf courses, shopping malls with the woman periodically telling me to make U turns. It was fitting that at the very end of the trip I was profoundly and utterly lost.
I called my brother-in-law Dale who, like an air traffic controller helping an airplane through dense fog, guided me in. I put numbers in a keypad by a gate which made it go up, drove under it, went slowly down a street with lots of speed bumps, and finally spotted my brother-in-law and sister-in-law standing under Christmas lights outside their condo by a carport. I pulled the Buick into a parking spot as if it was made for it and stepped out, closing the door behind me. I hugged my relatives, the first people I’d encountered in three days that knew me on sight and have for 36 years. It was very good to see them. With those familiar hugs my solo road trip ended.
Hey Dave--at least the guy with the Bud Light stuffing fries into his mouth and using the hood of the truck as a dining table had the correct car!!
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