I knew Florida when it was quirky in a different way than it is now, and before it was overrun by fake happiness and insane legislators. I knew it before “Florida man” became a ubiquitous joke followed by a hollow laugh and a don’t worry, it’s just more Florida craziness. A place where just up the street from home you sat with family and friends on wooden picnic tables inside a creaky building with window units sporting ribbons blasting away, cracking crabs with the bits flying onto the straw covered floors that were swept every night at the local Crab Shack. A place where, if you timed it right, you could watch the ships unload harvested sponges at docks, water dripping from crates packed full, and understand first-hand that these were live beings once, before they became something that was, by all appearances, simply a bathing tool. A place where the memory of cooling breezes whistling through palmetto fronds brought you to tears decades later, alone in a theatre watching a film about these precious and remarkable times. A place where you could still track falling stars at night from a clear and unpolluted sky, where you knew you had to be inside at four p.m. or you would get wet from the rain cloud that flowed west to east across the state. A place that existed before Florida became fodder for jokes and laughter, over-run with tourists and the wealthy and the destitute, and then devolving even further into yet another state bent on deconstructing civil liberties so hard fought for and won, long ago.
Oh, the memories! So many Stories. Oh, my Florida.
Ultimately this article, Who Knew Monkeys Could Swim? delightfully written by Jordan Blumetti, a contributing writer for The Bitter Southerner1, full of vintage artwork from the University of Florida2 and recent photographs by Jacob Harn, made me nostalgic and temporarily homesick for a place that no longer exists; I know this Florida is long gone. Reading it conjures up memories of what locals call "Old Florida"; of how I knew it, when I used to call it just Florida, when it was home. I went to a place highlighted in the article, Silver Springs, now a state park as of 2013, as a child when it was still a privately-owned tourist attraction, although I don't remember much except for how remarkably clear the water was, an unusual and welcome phenomena compared to other Floridian waters.
The article tells the history of this beautiful place, and begins with one of those aforementioned quirky tales, about a man from Wisconsin who did something that has forever changed the landscape of Central Florida: he thought monkeys were a good idea.
Colonel S. (first name uncertain) Tooey certainly did not. In the 1930s, Tooey brought a troop of rhesus monkeys to Silver Springs, Florida, to liven up his Jungle Cruise tourist attraction on the Silver River. Assuming they weren’t swimmers, he released them on an island mid-river. That’s when Tooey discovered that monkeys can swim — and that they procreate furiously. Ever since, Central Florida has had what it calls “the monkey problem.” 3
That this particular place ties into my current home tickles me to no end:
"Cook could only bookend the life of the Colonel. He said Tooey was from the Wisconsin Dells area, where he operated sightseeing tours amid the sandstone formations and glacier-carved gorge of the Wisconsin River."
If you are interested in Florida’s history and in learning something of the land itself and its original inhabitants, this article is a wealth of information and Silver Springs a good representation of it:
If Ocala has the flavor of its patrician, 19th century settlers, the unincorporated community of Silver Springs feels like a 1950s tourist town. Relics of the post-war leisure boom pepper the landscape — mid-century motels, neon signs, diners, drive-ins — now passé and muted from decades of sun damage.
But the springs themselves still retain the preternatural beauty and magnetism that made them Florida’s original tourist destination. They’ve been drawing visitors since the community’s founding in 1852, though the region’s history reaches back much further — long before statehood.
I was rightly warned that Silver Springs refuses summary. It is a small tract of Central Florida with more history and novelty than those in charge or anyone visiting knows what to do with.
There is so much more to Florida than strip malls, entertainment venues and trendy overcrowded clubs. So much that goes beyond the known beaches and havens of the super-rich and the horrible legacies that follow them. There is a rich and vibrant history to this state, to its land and its people.
I haven’t lived in Florida for decades, its already evident decline sending me, almost fleeing, from the state I didn’t realize I loved until long after I left. Those of you who lived, still live there, or spend a large part of your life there will appreciate this article as only someone who can claim "Floridian" can attest. I hope you catch this post and enjoy it like I have.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this article, particularly if you read the original article that prompted it. Thanks!
Credits:
The Bitter Southerner, ”The Bitter Southerner has a single aim: to uncover the American South in all its truth and complexity — and in the process to break stereotypes about the region and its people by pushing out important, difficult, uncomfortable, irreverent, witty, and addictive stories online.”
Archival Material from The Florida Ephemera Collection, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
Of COURSE it's someone from Wisco xD xD xD
I've never lived in Florida, but one of my best friends does, and he's been schooling me on all of its most amazing natural wonders (and Publix).