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FORUM : the Magazine of the Florida Humanities Florida Humanities

4-1-1993

Forum : Vol. 17, No. 01 (Spring/Summer : 1993)

Florida Humanities Council.

Harry Crews

Claudia Johnson

Catherine Puckett

Stetson Kennedy

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Recommended Citation Florida Humanities Council.; Crews, Harry; Johnson, Claudia; Puckett, Catherine; Kennedy, Stetson; O'Sullivan, Maurice; and Reed, Nathaniel P., "Forum : Vol. 17, No. 01 (Spring/Summer : 1993)" (1993). FORUM : the Magazine of the Florida Humanities. 21. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/forum_magazine/21

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Florida Humanities at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FORUM : the Magazine of the Florida Humanities by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Florida Humanities Council., Harry Crews, Claudia Johnson, Catherine Puckett, Stetson Kennedy, Maurice O'Sullivan, and Nathaniel P. Reed

This article is available at Scholar Commons: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/forum_magazine/21

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Lester Abberger Tallahassee Carl Christian Andersen FORUM Leesburg THE MAGAZINE OF THE FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL Margaret L. Bates Sarasota Samuel P. Bell Ill INSIDE Tallahassee Phyllis Bleiweis Gainesville 6 "None Prettier" Cecilia Bryant A novelist grows up beside Jacksonville W. Frank Cobbin. Jr. the Okefenokee Jacksonville By Harry Crews Myra J. Daniels Naples J. Alison DeFoor, II 8 The River of Passion Key Largo Francisco Jose de Varona The Suwannee meanders Miami into the human soul Thomas K. Equels Coral Gables By Claudia Johnson William T. Hall Jr. Niceville Lois C. Harrison 18 The Course of Time Lakeland A history of the region Thomas J. Hegarty Tampa By Catherine Puckett Mildred Hill-Lubin Gainesville Arthur H. Jaffe 22 Way Down Upon... PAGE 18 Boca Raton Observing folklife along Patsy J. Palmer Tallahassee the Suwannee Gordon M. Patterson By Stetson Kennedy Melbourne Yvonne V. Sapia Lake City 28 A Stream of Stories George ‘Harry’ Stopp, Jr. A sampling of Pensacola Frank E. Taylor Suwannee literature Key West By Maurice O’Sullivan Sally Collins Wallace St. Petersburg PAGE 22 32 "Our Responsibility STAFF ANN HENDERSON to the Earth" Executive Director A discussion of SUSAN LOCKWOOD Associate Director environmental ethics JOAN BRAGGINTON By Nathaniel P. Reed Program Director RON COOPER Resource Center Director Letters TINA HUNTER 34 Accountant PAGE 32 JANINE FARVER COVER: Invigorating suiphorous waters spill through the century-old floodwall at Suwannee Springs. When the wall was built, Membership Director Suwannee Springs was a health resort where trainloads of tourists came to take the healing waters. MARY MARGARET POSCHEL Administrative Assistant All color photography in this issue is the work of John Moran, a senior photographer with The Gainesville Sun. MYRA STONER Secretary ANN BOOKS THE FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL Administrative Consultant FHC FORUM Vol. XVII, No. 1 Spring/Summer 1993/The magazine of THE FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL Editor 1514 1/2 East Eighth Avenue, Tampa, Florida 33605-3708 Phone 813 272-3473 John W. Koenig

The Florida Humanities Council is a non-profit organization, funded b’ the National Endowment for the Humanities, the state of Design & Production Russ Kramer Florida and private contributors. FHC Forum is published twice a year and distributed free of charge to the friends of the Florida Humanities Council and interested Floridians. If you wish to be added to the mailing list, please request so in writing. Views expressed by contributors to the Forum are not necessarily those of the Florida Humanities Council. © 1993 FHC GOD S OWN THE SUWANNE E RIVER BREATH, AND THE RIVER KEEPS ME IN is a treasure little appreciated by those of us who live in TOUCH WITH THAT," SAYS STEVE Central and South Florida. Our impressions come WILLIAMS, WHO RUNS . CANOE largely from the Stephen Foster song, "Old Folks At RENTAL BUSINESS AT WHITE SPRINGS. Home", with its opening verse, Way down upon the BELOW, PHOTOG RAPHER JOHN Swanee River, or a 10-second glance as we speed across MORAN. the river on an interstate bridge. Neither presentation captures the essence of the river. One of the missions of the Florida Humanities Council is to encourage better understanding of this state’s rural regions and minority populations. R With that goal in mind, we set out recently to explore the Suwannee River basin not in a geographic sense, but from the standpoint of the Humanities. We did not seek physical landmarks, but rather culture, history and literature. U We began this journey by providing a grant to John Moran, a senior photographer with The Gainesville Sun, to assist him in his decade-long effort to document on film the Suwannee region and its people. A photographic exhibit of John’s Suwannee work now is on display at the Stephen Foster State Folk Culture Center in White Springs and soon will be touring Florida. U This issue of Forum is the second leg of our exploration. It displays dozens of John’s images, including some not seen in the exhibit, and several historic photographs that provide a sense of the region’s past. We invited a half THE SUWANNEE RIVER WEAVES dozen talented writers and scholars to develop articles THROUGH NORTH and essays exploring various aspects of the Suwannee. FLORIDA’S PINE FORESTS AND U The issue opens with Gainesville novelist Harry FARM FIELDS ON ITS 245-MILE Crews’ tale of his childhood around the Suwannee’s JOURNEY FROM THE headwaters, the Okefenokee Swamp, and his lifelong OKEFENOKEE SWAMP TO THE relationship with the river. Other articles include GULF OF MEXICO. Gainesville native Catherine Puckett’s discussion of the region’s history, writer!

,_ from the region, and environmentalist Nat Reed’s thoughts on environmental ethics. These all provide a more accurate glimpse of the Suwannee’s riches. U Our most important discovery, perhaps, arose from the work Otter Springs of writer Claudia Johnson, Fanning Springs who lives not a mile from the river in the vicinity of Live Oak, and who traveled

rea ol the length of the river irLcr I1ttp I conducting interviews on our behalf. Through her work, we came understand that there is uniquely intense THE SUWANNEE to a CREATES A MOSAIC OF LAND bond between the Suwannee and its people. As she AND WATER AS IT ENDS ITS writes, "Passion is the reason people come to the river JOURNEY TO THE and passion is the reason they stay." U That passion SEA. for the Suwannee is transcendental. A century ago, it filled James Craig, an editorial writer for the old New York Telegram and Evening Mail, when he read a U.S. Geological Survey report describing the Suwannee as nothing more than an ordinary creek. He wrote this response: U "The real Suwannee River does not rise in any part of Georgia. It rises in the highest mountains of the human soul and is fed by the deepest springs in the human heart. It does not flow through the northern part of Florida, but through the pleasant, sunny lands of memory. It does not empty into a material sea, but into the glorious ocean of unfulfilled dreams ... The surveyors who would find the true Suwannee River must hunt not among the Florida streams, but among the majestic streams of infinite tenderness and love." "NONE PRETTIER"

BY HARRY CREWS This strange, lovely and deadly middle of the day with the boat tied he Okefenokee Swamp place was where I went as a boy with up to a cypress knee, under a canopy is a blessing, a curse, a my Uncle Cooter to help him work his of leaves so thick it hid the sky and the stink and a wild fra trot lines, run his traps, haul his fish sun, I ate my lunch out of a syrup grance that heats the ing seines and cast his nets for craw bucket-a lunch almost always con blood and lifts the fish. sisting of biscuit, grits and fatback or heart. The Okefenokee’s black water Uncle Cooter poled a flatbot fried squirrel-and while I ate, I lis black until you hold up a glass to the tomed boat and was nimble as a cat, tened to Uncle Cooter tell stories, the light and find it pristine, utterly clear even if he did wear a walnut peg same stories given him by his daddy is home to at least 50 varieties of fish. where his right leg was before his and his uncles, stories of how strange This immense wilderness 666 square daddy shot it off in a hunting accident. birds from far places came here to win miles, some of it very nearly impene His people did not seem very con ter in the swamp, stories of how years trable gives refuge to deer, bears, cerned about the accident, saying, ago naked and painted Indians, Creeks wildcats, otters, raccoons and alliga every chance they got, that it was an and Seminoles, had made this swamp tors. White and golden lilies, cypress act of God. Act of God or not, a man their favorite hunting ground. I came and tupelo trees mark the interior of couldn’t plow a mule with a pegleg, to understand early on that my uncle the swamp with splashes of color. but he could turn to the swamp and had more stories in him than he had make a living there. life to tell them. So I listened as hard as Novelist Harry Crews’ titles include Eipi’14.a It was into this swamp that I was a little boy could listen because I some a book ofessays and short stories. He first brought when I was eight years how knew that there would never be lives in Gainesvillewhere he teaches writing at old to work but also-more important another chance to learn what I was the University of Florida. ly as it turned out-to listen. In the learning here. 6 THE SUwANNEE IS BORN IN THE 438,000-ACRE OKEFENOKEE SWAMP OPPOSITE, WHICH LIES MOSTLY IN GEORGIA. So ARE THOUSANDS OF YOUNG ALLIGATORS LIKE THIS ONE, JUST HATCHED FROM ITS EGG LEFT. A KATYDID FEEDS ON A WATER LILY RISING FROM THE I’EAT FLOOR OF THE SWAMP BELOW.

smoked and I listened, understanding very little except his admiration for the river that turned to reverence as he talked the day into dark. Uncle Cooter’s been dead these past 30 years and I’ve grown long in the tooth and thin in the shank, but the Suwannee River still breaks free of the Swamp near Fargo, Georgia, then One day tied up under a black drops due south, its broad, shining ex gum tree, my uncle cocked his head panse carrying no industrial traffic, and asked, "Where you reckon all this veers west through White Springs, water goes to, son?" Florida, and flows on to the Gulf, the I thought on it a minute and said 240 miles of the river bordered right what seemed obvious: "No wheres." down to the water with trees that have "No wheres! Is that what you never had an ax in them, opening at said?" His eyebrows raised and his long and random intervals onto very eyes opened wide in what even I could little but very old communities and tell was mock astonishment. "If it onto fish camps, where a man can fish don’t go no where, just sets here ... he all day or talk all day or do utterly reached over the shallow draft boat nothing all day. and scooped up a palmful of water I’m proud to have had the use of how come it ain’t got no scum? Water the river and prouder still that we ain’t running’s gone turn bad. Is that have managed to keep it as unspoiled right or is that wrong?" as we have. When I lie down to die, I He knew I knew that was right, could not wish for a last memory finer so I didn’t answer, only sat watching than any of the days when I have as he reached into the bib of his overall taken my old golden retriever and my for a can of Prince Albert tobacco and writing board down to the bluff over slowly fashioned himself a cigarette. looking the Suwannee and, after writ "To the sea, son, to the sea. Ever bit of one place before: church. And it held ing four or five hours, taken a pontoon water you ever seen on land is going- that rhythm while he told me I was sit boat up river to Manatee Springs or trying to go-to the sea." He licked ting on top of the Suwannee River. where the water is so clear that I can his cigarette and fired it up. "And "River, you say?" I had no notion flip a dime into it and tell whether the sooner or later, one way or the other, at all of what he might mean. dime is heads or tails when it’s resting all the water from all the land goes He said: "Suwannee River’ll take on the sandy bottom. down to the sea. It may have to go up this water our boat’s floating on right I could flip a dime, but I almost and turn into rain two or three times, now and pour it into the Gulf of never do. Usually, I sit in the sun and and it may have to slake many a right Mexico. That Suwannee! It’s rivers look at the Suwannee River rolling on eous thirst of both man and beast, but that’s bigger but none prettier. I down to the Gulf of Mexico while I re by and by it will mingle with the sea sawmilled over in that part of the member my Uncle Cooter and remem and become salty before it becomes country when I was a young buck. ber also his stories that I have made sweet again." Lemme tell you about that river." my own during the last quarter of a I suddenly realized I had heard The boat stayed tied up the rest of century by telling them, and retelling the rhythm his voice had taken in only the afternoon while he talked and them, and telling them yet again. ‘ 7 THE A LONE RAFTER SOAKS UP SUN AND THE SPLENDOR OF SOLITUDE WHILE DRIFTING ALONG THE ICHETUCKNEE RIVER, A SUWANNEE TRIBUTARY.

The Suwannee meanders into the human soul

BY CLAUDIA JOHNSON

am lying in bed slowly losing my mind. The morning news on the r radio by our four-poster j is being drowned out by the boom box blaring in our daughter’s room-tinny ya ya, my father called it when I was 15, and now I see why. My husband ducks into her room, turns it down, and retreats to the shower, flipping on the radio there-NPR-even louder. Our son, 11, clambers onto the bed and burrows under the covers, chattering at me about the new day. I gaze out the win dow at the mist on our meadow, but what I see, superimposed like a double expo sure, is the Suwannee a mile from our house and the mist rising off the silent dark water. I slip out of bed and pull on a sweat- suit, tell the children to have a good day at school, tell my husband I’m going down to the Suwannee he smiles-lucky stiff, grab a cup of coffee and drive to the river. I settle down by a clump of palmettos and watch the water slide past, hit a lime stone outcropping and fan to each side, OF PASSION THE RIVER OF PASSION rolling into small eddies that spin themselves out. I hear a cardinal, a crow. A white heron flies, low and lazy, to the opposite bank. Mist rises and moves along with the current, but the air is motionless, cool; the Spanish moss in the cypress points down like a plumb line. The river smooths me out, soothes. My sanity, at least for the moment, feels fully restored. I’ve talked to others up and down river who feel the same way. When we talk, I’m struck by the par allels, the shared connec tions, the common humani ty here. One person seems to echo another. This seems fitting; after all, the river’s name may be de rived from the Indian word "Suwani," THE SANTA FE RIVER, A which means "Echo River." The over SUWANNEE TRIBUTARY, WINDS THROUGH A FLOOD riding emotion is passion. There are PLAIN FOREST ABOVE. A no casual acquaintances here, no one- BRISK NOVEMBER MORNING night stands with the Suwannee. SPRINKLES FROST ACROSS SWEET GUM AND Passion is the reason people come to BLACKBERRY LEAVES RIGHT the river and passion is the reason AI.ONG THE SANTA FE. Two they stay. BOYS EXPLORE BEHIND THE VEIL OF SUN-SPLASHED "The Suwannee changed my life, WATER AT FALLING CREEK I have to say," Helen Hood tells me. oPPoSITE. A VINTAGE Known to many as the Marjorie BIPLANE OPPOSITE, RIGHT FLIES OVER THE SUWANNEE’S Stoneman Douglas of the river, she is CHURNING WHITEWATER often introduced as "the mother of the RAPIDS Ar BIG SHOALS. Suwannee." She laughs and says,

"That’s sort of pretentious. It moth natural ... functioning the way nature The Griffins encountered the river ered me more than I mothered it." meant it to function." Her passion, as at Manatee Springs in 1976 when Twenty-one years ago, she started she puts it, led to 16 years of fighting George was writing backroads guides working for Florida Defenders of the to protect this spectacular river. to Florida. "We looked at that river Environment, figuring she’d stuff a George and Joanne Griffin echo and it was magnificent," Joanne says. few envelopes then get back to her Hood’s captivation when we meet for "You couldn’t describe it. And we’d weaving. The river wouldn’t let go. lunch at the Lighthouse Restaurant in done lots of other rivers in the state. It "The Suwannee Basin is such a Fanning Springs, across the river was so clean." beautiful example of an ecological sys from Old Town where they live just George laughs, "And alive." tem with all its ramifications and won outside the hundred-year flood plain. "It just got hold of us then," ders," she says. "It’s something still "There’s a mystique about the Joanne adds. Suwannee," George says. When I try If you look at a map, you see that Author Claudia Johnson teaches screenwriting to pin him down, he laughs. "It’s the Suwannee cuts a big shaky S at Florida State University’sfilm school and is hard to articulate. Mystiques are. A across the northwest part of the state. winner of the PEN/Newman’s Own First few people have caught it, John Helen Hood thinks of it as three Amendment Award for her efforts to combat Moran in his photographs, Gene rivers-the upper river, the midsec censorship. Rantz in his paintings." tion where the springs start coming in

10 about being the spring diving capital of the world and as it turned out, even with all the discoveries worldwide, this place has never been equalled. It’s a mecca," he says. Broome was enthralled when he came to the river for his first dive in 1977. "It was the feeling of finally find ing the frontier that allowed me to be in tune and more at one with nature." He traded a 16-hour day in South Carolina construction for a 16-hour day as an open water and cave diving instructor and owner of the Branford Dive Center overlooking the river. "This sport, this shop, this river valley, is my very soul. I have no other way to put it. It’s me." A week later, when I meet Sue and the lower river south of Branford. ost of the people I met Colson near the mouth of the river, she Our neighbor Ron Ceryak, a hydroge have a passion for a describes "falling in love" with the es ologist with the Suwannee River particular part of the tuary in 1980 when she moved to the Water Management District, thinks of Suwannee. Ron small town of Suwannee to harvest it as two, the upper river from White Ceryak prefers the oysters with her husband. "You see the Springs north to the headwaters and upper river. "The trees are primitive. sawgrass and you see it change colors. the rest of the river below. They’re all gnarled, just nasty. The bay You go out on the water and there’s a "I’d say eight or nine," George trees are just grotesque, they’d be a certain excitement. It’s not glamorous, Griffin says. "That’s part of the mys photographer’s dream, big and bul but there’s a wild woolliness to it. You tique. It’s elusive. It’s fluid. You go to bous and the limbs come up and bend go out and you ride in the cold and Fargo and say, ‘This is the Suwannee, at right angles." you get the pile of oysters and you’re this is where it starts,’ but it’s not the Gene Broome feels nothing less hugging your husband and you come same river that flows right here by Old than "true passion" for the river’s mid back to the cabin and get by the fire Town. Not at all." The blind men and section near Branford, hub of open and the kids get home from school and the elephant, I suggest. The Griffins water, cavern, and cave diving in the dinner’s ready, and it’s plain good. An agree. region if not the world. "We bragged instant reward." 11 THE RIVER OF PASSION

The more I listen to people de meaningful part-I am not separate George says. "A herd of 12 or so mana scribing their lives on the Suwannee, from. I am as much a part of God as tees surfaced near our canoe. This the more I realize their bond is a spiri God’s own breath, and the river keeps guy-the butcher at our grocery tual one. I drive upriver to talk to me in touch with that. If people can’t store-was fishing nearby with his Steve Williams at his canoe rental busi touch this river or the place where wife. He got so excited he jumped in ness outside of White Springs, the they live and find the wonder in it, if the water." largest town right on the river-popu you don’t have a connection in your "It wasn’t cool," Joanne says. "He lation 704. Steve pulls up two chairs in own spirit, you’re two-thirds dead and was tryingto hug them." front of his house overlooking the you probably deserve it." He roars George nods, smiling. "From that river. Golden afternoon light filters with laughter. day forward, everytime we go into the down through the live oaks and moss store, he shouts, ‘Hey, man, how are as he tells me a dream he had when he hen Gene Broome is you!’ because we exchanged a few was a boy: he was paddling in a describing cave div words about how great the manatees straight line through overlapping saw- ing, he echoes Steve are." grass on a river that ran into infinity. Williams. "People ask For the people I met, reverence "It scared me," he says. "There was no what I see. How can I for the river lies in more than the end in sight." tell them? The formations of the rocks, wildlife and natural beauty. It lies in I ask if the dream led him here. the caverns, the caves-this is an envi the past. Ron Ceryak tells me he’s "Well," he laughs, "I’m still paddling." ronment totally created by nature or a found arrowheads as young as 300 He started his business in 1978, Supreme Being or God or whatever. years and as old as six thousand. but he’s come to see the Suwannee as It’s a spiritual experience to be there." far more than a living or even a home. The Griffins have witnessed "It’s the house of nature," he says. "It’s what they call "a religious conversion" where I am and I have been placed right on the river, the story of the born- and I am part of. That’s the most again butcher. "Talk about mystique!"

"PRIMITIVE CAMPING DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO LIVE BADLY," HERB JOHNSON SAYS, AS HE PAUSES FOR A SHAVE DURING A MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND CANOE TRIP DOWN THE SUWANNEE ABOVE. AS I’HE RIVER NEARS THE GULF, THE ESTUARY IS LINED WITH GRACEFUl. PALMS NEXT PAGE. FARTHER UPSTREAM ONE FINDS WILDFLOWERS, LIKE THIS ONE WHICH LIVES ONLY A DAY NEXT PAGE, RIGHT. THE SU’WANNEE VALLEY AWAKENED TO A WHITE CHRISTMAS IN 1989, AT FALLING CREEK NEAR LAKE CITY RIGHT. "I get this feeling, I don’t know, beer or a chicken leg-and there nostalgia, whatever. I always think, weren’t a lot of people who lived here here I am standing out here in the at any one time but over time how woods or sitting down by this river, many people must have traveled how many Indians in time immemori through here?" al have done this very same thing. "I like thinking that this is the They didn’t have the luxury that I same river John Bartram saw," George do- going home and getting a cold Griffin says. The pioneer botanist died a year after the American revolution began. And, in flood season, when Gene Broome has stripped almost everything else from his store, a framed collection of arrowheads still hangs near the door. "I get mesmerized by arti facts," he says, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. "All the human sto b

‘5. THE RIVER OF PASSION

THE CRYSTALLINE SPRINGS OF THE SUWANNEE MAKE THE REGION A FAVORITE OF DIVERS AND SNORKELERS LEFT. TANNIC ACID FROM I,EAVES AND OTHER ORGANIC DEBRIS TURNS ‘I’HE SUWANNEE INTO A BLACKWATER * OR REDWATER RIVER, AS CAN BE SEEN AT THIS WATERFALL, ABOVE. YET THE WATER IS RELATIVEI.Y PURE. ONE FOLK REMEDY FOR A "TORE-UP STOMACH" IS ‘I’O DRINK FROM THE SUWANNEE. ries. If they could only talk to me." month. "In ‘84 I loaned canoes out to tress and danger first hand. In ‘84 they But Broome knows better than people who lived around here. I paddled a rubber boat across a mile of most that a reverence for the river wasn’t so tight that I couldn’t sympa flooded farm fields to help a friend must be tempered with a healthy re thize with them." He’s watched people move out of his house. "It was unreal," spect. "Just when you think every with TVs and beds in their boats head Joanne says. "The water was swift. thing is normal, the river rises and ing downriver to get away from a Swift and dangerous." When they ar shows you it’s just that quick and flood, but he sees rising water a little rived it was 20 feet up the side of the things change." more kindly. "The river came up and house. A second story porch looked While we talk, the Suwannee is got in the yard and it was just wonder like a dock. Below, under water, a 10 feet above normal level, a 150 feet ful. Everybody was worried and I lightbulb was burning. I ask if their wide, within eight inches of coming in couldn’t give a toot less. I was watch friend returned to his house after the the front door. ing the river and learning something flood. Joanne shook her head. "He was He ticks off the floods he’s been about it and trying to understand as a single parent. He couldn’t do it. It through: ‘83, ‘84, ‘86 ... seven in the much as I could and I wasn’t all that was too dangerous." past dozen years. In 1984, the water concerned." But one friend of mine who lives was five and a half feet deep in the The Griffins see floods the most right on the Suwannee moves in and store. The watermarks are still on the kindly of all. "We pray for floods," out every one or two years. "Waiting wall, just as they are on the trees along Joanne says. "The only thing that saves for the river to rise is an anxiety that our white sandy bank or the cement the river is the floods. It keeps people can kill you," she says. But she swears blocks that hold up Steve Williams’ away. It shows them what we’ve been she wouldn’t live anywhere else-the house. trying to say, what we hammer on- Suwannee is her sanctuary. "It’s my Steve has never moved out don’t build on the river. It’s the only sanity and my insanity," she says, though he’s had to get in and out of way to get the message across." laughing. his home by canoe for as long as a Still, they’ve witnessed the dis It’s the changing nature of the

15 THE RIVER OF PASSION

THE SUWANNEE IS A PLACE WHERE JOYFUL MEMORIES ARE BORN FOR CHILDREN ABOVE AND, PERHAPS, FOR YOUNG HERONS RIGHT. BUT IT IS A PLACE, TOO, WHERE FIERCE SUMMER STORMS FAR RIGHT CAN EVOKE TERRIFIED REVERENCE FROM THE MOST-WEATHERED ADULTS. Suwannee that makes it appealing, in triguing and so treacherous. "It’s never the same as it was the last time," Ron says. "Somebody drowns every year, often somebody who thinks they know what they’re doing." His children are forbidden to go near the water alone. So are ours. They’ve seen it so low in a drought that the river is the want to see what’s around the next color of amber, and they can run from bend. The next thing you know, it’s one side to the other and roll down dark." A pause, then they laugh. the fall of white sand and call them "And you’re in trouble." selves "sugar cookies." They’ve seen it ward downriver. I managed to beach George has tried for years to pin flood and fling people back like me the canoe on the opposite bank. He down this river, to capture its essence when my life overflows-get back, get had to swim over to meet us. It was on paper. "You can’t," he insists. "It’s away, give me space! They’ve seen January, the temperature a few de always changing." near disaster when we thought we grees above freezing. "It’s a metaphor for life," I sug could paddle upstream but the cur The Griffins know what I’m gest. rent was stronger than we expected. talking about. "We hardly ever go out He lights up. "That just might be My husband got out on the bank to on the river that we don’t get in it. It’s the river of life. You get up ev pull our canoe, but the rope slipped volved in some kind of adventure. It’s eryday, it’s gonna be different." out of his hand, and we rushed back- part of the mystique. You always "Yes," I say, "and if you get smug 16 you get zapped." We paddled like crazy and over the rest, and oh, how we meant I tell them a story. Every yanked our canoes up on the sand. what we sang: I ain’t gonna grieve my Memorial Day when the Florida Folk Huddled under ponchos and potato Lord no more, I ain’t gonna grieve my Festival ends in White Springs, my chip bags, lashed by the rain, hardly Lord no more husband and I meet friends-volun safe beside the cypress and pines, we For whatever reason-perhaps teers and performers-at Steve were beginning to think our number we sounded sincere-the storm passed Williams’ house and canoe a stretch of was up and wondering what we’d us by. the Suwannee. One year, on a hot done to deserve it. Since then, I’ve had a sneaking sunny day, we were having a wonder Just then, in the midst of the suspicion, confirmed by the people ful time falling into the ice-tea colored storm, Jeannie Fitchen-one of the I’ve met on the river, that this is the water when we heard a low rumble, finest voices in Florida-started to reason we go to the Suwannee-to lay the only warning we got before the sky sing: Gonna lay down my burden, down down our burden. went black and the lightning started to by the riverside ... . We joined in, harmo Except, of course, in flood strike. nizing, my husband’s bass booming season. 17 THE COURSE OF TIME Some of the earliest encounters between Europeans and Native Americans occurred on the banks of the Suwanee

BY CATHERINE PUCKETT ost Floridians’ knowl edge of the Suwannee River’s past arises from song lyrics that are wholly inaccurate. The Suwannee never was the site of large, slave-holding plantations of the type Stephen Foster alluded to in the 19th century tune "Old Folks At Home." Rather, the farms in the region generally were small, family-worked operations. created complex religious and political AT THE TURN OF THE CENILKI, Still, the Suwannee has a long, systems. WHITE SPRINGS WAS A LEADING rich history-a history stretching back The Timucuans were a visually TOURIST ATTRACTION WITH 14 HOTELS. ONLY THE TELFORD, to the very formation of the Florida impressive people. The adults stood WHERE TEDDY ROOSEVELT peninsula. well over 6 feet tall and adorned them SIGNED THE GUEST REGISTER Today, the Suwannee sometimes selves with tattoos and bits of fur ABOVE, SURVIVED A 1911 FIRE. IT IS STILL OPERATING. IN THE reveals bits of its most-distant past to draped here and there. The men wore 1890s, THE "BELLE OF THE lucky canoeists and snorkelers in the their hair in high topknots. The SUWANNEE," ABOVE RIGHT WAS form of the fossilized bones of the river women dressed in Spanish moss skirts THE FAVORITE STEAMBOAT OF HONEYMOONERS. JOHN SNIDER basin’s earliest inhabitants: mam and left their hair long and unbound. RIGHT LEARNED HOW TO MAKE moths, bison, giraffe-camels and saber- Spaniard Hernando de Soto en CANE SYRUP FROM HIS FATHER IN toothed cats. Sometimes, too, visitors countered the Timucuans when he led RURAL LAFAYETTE COUNTY. HE STILL MAKES SYRUP THE SAME find projectile points left some 10,000 his expedition through Florida and the WAY TODAY, EXCEPT THAT HE years ago by the first humans to occu Southeast in 1539-40. Reaching the NOW USES A TRACTOR RATHER the region. These were the Santa Fe River, his men named it the THAN A MULE TO GRIND THE py CANE. Paleoindians, nomads who hunted an River of Discord, reflecting the trou imals along the river. Archaeologists bles that had beset them so far. The from the Carolinas. At Santa Catalina have found more Paleoindian projec Suwannee, however, they called the de Afuerica, on the Ichetucknee River, tile points and ice-age animal bones in River of Deer, because it was there that Captain Francisco de Fuentes, with the Suwannee basin than anywhere Timucuans brought the army venison five Spanish soldiers and 40 Christian else in the state. as a sign of friendship. Indians, unsuccessfully tried in 1685 to The first Europeans explorers In the village of Napituca, near defend the mission against a force of found villages of the Timucuan Live Oak, de Soto battled with 300 English. By 1710, the missions Indians near the Suwannee and its Timucuans; his mounted horsemen, were gone and the native population tributaries. Timucuan culture began to armed with lances and crossbows, of North Florida had been decimated. take shape after 700 A.D., when killed 40 Indians and captured 300. Creek Indians, later called Florida’s earliest peoples developed In the early 17th century, the Seminoles, started moving into Florida agriculture-based economies. They Spanish established a series of mis and the Suwannee basin around the grew maize, beans and squash, and sions in Florida, including ones on the 1 740s. In 1773, the explorer-naturalist Suwannee, Santa Fe and Ichetucknee William Bartram stayed at an Indian Catherine Puckett is a Ph.D. fellow in non-flc rivers. village near Manatee Springs on the tion writing at the University of Southwestern The missions were short lived, lower Suwannee River. He wrote: Louisiana. A Gainesville native, she studied the however. They were destroyed by natural and folk history ofthe Suwannee region European-introduced disease, along The town is delightfully situated on for many years. with slaving raids by English colonists the elevated east banks of the river, the 18 ground level to near the river, when it de 1817 led American soldiers into scends suddenly to the water. ... There are Florida to recover slaves. Jackson and near 30 habitations. ... These Indians have his army destroyed Indian towns, cap large handsome canoes, which they form tured slaves, took cattle and defeated a out of the trunks of Cypress trees, some of group of escaped slaves and their them commodious enough to accommodate Indian allies at Suwannee Old Town, 20 or 30 warriors. In these large canoes near Cross City. The next year, they descend the river on trading and Jackson again forayed into the hunting expeditions to the sea coast, Suwannee region, attacking Billy neighboring islands and keys, quite to the Bowlegs’ Seminole village above point of Florida, and sometimes cross the White Springs. This time, however, gulph, extending their navigations to the Jackson was foiled-Bowlegs, suppos Bahama islands and even to Cuba. edly warned of the impending attack by the son of a Scottish trader named By the turn of the century, Indian Arbuthnot, disappeared into the relations with the whites were deterio Okefenokee Swamp. Jackson blamed rating. Slave owners in the newly Arbuthnot and hung him. formed United States believed escaped After Florida became a U.S. terri slaves were living in Seminole villages tory in 1819, Florida’s Governor in then-Spanish Florida; some of these William P. Duval wrote that the region villages were near or around the between the Suwannee River and the Suwannee. General Andrew Jackson in Alachua prairie was Florida’s richest,

19 most valuable land. Most of the earli In the early 1800s, steamboats [no boat] has ever excited more in est settlers of the Suwannee basin were began plying the Suwannee River each terest than the steamboat "Madison" did small farmers. week between Fanning Springs and to us scattered Crackers, along the But conflict between Seminoles Cedar Key. Because there were few Suwannee River in the days before the ad and settlers continued to impede pop roads or railroads in Florida’s interior, vent of railroads, or the beginnings of the ulation growth in the Suwannee basin. the steamboats of the Suwannee and Confederate war. The"Madison" carried a White settlers of the region pressured the St. Johns River were vital to the line ofgeneral merchandise which was the U.S. government to remove the state’s transportation network. They traded to the settlers for money, venison, Seminoles. carried much-needed lumber and hams, cow hides, deer skins, tallow, In 1841, Governor Richard Call naval store supplies for saw mills and beeswax, honey, chickens, eggs and hogs. referred to East and Middle Florida as turpentining camps, as well as loads of The "Madison" had a whistle that could be "an entire wilderness, of which the cotton, peanuts and tobacco. The heard ten miles and this whistle was blown Indians have undisturbed protection." boats, many more than 100 feet long, at intervals to give the people time to reach To protect land and white citizens, had crews of about 15, a bottom deck the landing with their produce. seven forts were built in Columbia for goods and a top deck for passen It was about September 1863... when County alone, including Fort White on gers. the "Madison" was abandoned by Captain the Santa Fe River and Fort Cass near Tucker and he was going to sink her in White Springs. he "Belle of the Old Troy Springs, intending to raise her The federal government, hoping Suwannee" was one of when the Civil War should cease. A num to increase the number of settlers in the Suwannee’s best- ber of citizens living near Troy wanted the the state’s interior and thereby repel known boats. Built by boat to bring a load of corn from Old Town Indians, enacted an 1842 law that Captain Robert Ivey of and Captain Tucker turned her over to granted 160 acres of land to each of the Branford for his daughter, the boat them, told them to use her as long as they first 10,000 armed settlers east of the had bridal chambers and was a must wished and then sink her for him in Old Suwannee River and south to Cape for honeymooners of the gay ‘90s. Troy Springs. The load of corn was duly Coral. The population in the The ribs of another famous steam brought to Troy, unloaded, and at 2 o’clock Suwannee basin began to grow, an ex boat, the "Madison," are said to lie at in the afternoon of a bright sunshiny day pansion in part due to rising demand the bottom of Troy Springs on the [three men, including the author] ran the for cotton. The Seminole Wars dragged Suwannee River. Historian Ed Mueller "Madison" from Troy landing into the out in North Florida until about 1843, quotes an account by journalist John spring, pulled out her plugs and sat there when nearly 4,000 Seminoles were Caldwell, a contemporary with the and watched her till she rested on the bot shipped west to Oklahoma; other Madison’s Captain James Tucker: tom. Seminoles retreated to the Everglades. 20 OYSTERING LONG HAS BEEN A * LEADING INIUSTRY WHERE THE SUWANNEE MEETS THE GULF OPPOSITE. THE OLD SPRINGHOUSE AT WHITE SPRINGS RIGHT REMAINS A MAJOR TOURIST ATTRACTION. IN DRY SEASON, THE SPRINGHOUSE STANDS LIKE A TOWER ALONG THE RIVER BANK. BUT THE RIVER SOMETIMES RISES SO HIGH THAT A CANOIST CAN PADDLE IOWN ‘I’HE SPRINGHOUSE’S RAILED WALKWAYS.

The Suwannee region played a small but important role in the Civil War. Many Suwannee Valley men served in the Confederate army; housewives and slaves at home often manufactured clothing for the soldiers. Another major industry is phos The river itself was frequently used by phate mining. Half a century ago, blockade runners, who unloaded such phosphate was being mined at Fort goods as clothing, shoes and medicine White, near the head of the near the mouth of the Santa Fe. Ichetucknee River. Today, the The former town of Columbus, at Occidental Chemical Co. has a mine what is now Suwannee River State near White Springs. Park, was an important transportation Some Suwannee River towns, center for the Confederacy, particular such as White Springs and Lake City, ly after the fall of Vicksburg in July have a history as tourist havens. In 1863. It had a river landing, a saw mill fact, White Springs oldtimers say that and a railroad that transported beef, in the Civil War the city was called sugar and other food to the "Rebel’s Refuge" because wealthy Confederate army. planters were said to send their fami In February 1864, about 5,100 lies there to sit out the war. Union troops left Jacksonville, hoping Visitors to White Springs today to capture the Columbus railroad can tour the Stephen Foster Center as bridge. East of Lake City, the Union well as the remains of the old spring- troops were intercepted by 2,500 house. The springhouse, first built in Confederates led by General Joseph 1898, had four levels inside and two Finegan. The resulting Battle of in 1865. It was dangerous to be wings. On the top floor, visitors luxuri Olustee was the most important Civil Republican or even a suspected ated in hot baths with water drawn by War battle fought in Florida. The Republican in the Suwannee region. gasoline-powered pumps. The sulphur Confederates won, leaving 203 Union Between the autumn of 1868 and 1871, water of the spring was reputed to be soldiers dead, 1,152 wounded and 506 16 Republicans mostly black were "Nature’s own laboratory, healing missing. Confederate losses totalled 93 murdered in Columbia County alone. water and tonic gases blended in a dead, 847 wounded and six missing. By the late 1800s, though, the violence Perfect Medicine." It was said to cure During the Civil War, vigilante had abated. everything from rheumatism to kidney groups called Regulators rode through The leading industry of the problems. the Suwannee region at night to pre Suwannee basin always has been agri Just where the name "Suwannee" vent, they said, slave uprisings. But culture. In the earliest days, settlers comes from is a subject of dispute. they also terrorized, murdered, beat grew corn, sugar cane, tobacco and Sea Some people contend the river was and shot at whites suspected of being Island cotton. Tobacco continues to be named after one of the early Spanish abolitionists. In Lake City, for exam the region’s most valuable cash crop. missions, San Juan de Guacara, and ple, a German immigrant, upset by the The timber industry is nearly that the name evolved from San Juan treatment of a black boy, was arrested equal to agriculture in economic im to San Juanee and finally to Suwannee and released but then beaten by portance, however, with loggers har Others say the name may have come Regulators. vesting pine trees for pulp and paper from migrating Cherokee Indians who During Reconstruction, the production. In the early 20th century, called the river the Suwani, or the Suwannee area was plagued with yet too, the Suwannee region’s vast pine Echo River. more violence, including the lynching forests made it the site of numerous Only one thing is certain: the of a Union army scout near Lake City turpentine production operations. name is "Suwannee," not "Swanee." S

21 WAY DOWN UIDN... Gathering tales of folklife in Suwannee country

BY STETSON KENNEDY 40 miles an hour in our Maxwell St. Johns had spoiled me for such phaeton. Just before reaching Ellaville streams as the Marne and Seine as S a youngster I was I spotted a bridge marker that said well. singing Stephen "Suwannee River." Before I could In any event, what we have here is Foster’s "Old Folks at blink twice, we were across. a river of great renown, which owes its Home," often referred Between blinks I got a glimpse of fame not to length, breadth, depth, or to as "Way Down a narrow, dark, languid, overhung anything else, but a song. Upon the Swannee River," with my stream, altogether indistinguishable Some say Foster chose the sister Martha dutifully pounding away from countless other swamp water Suwannee sight unseen, and never did on the piano, long before I ever saw streams embroidering the Florida see it; but old-time residents were still the stream. peninsula. insisting well into the 20th century that The first time I saw the Suwannee With everyone singing that song, I Foster did stop over in Ellaville and was in the mid-1920s, when I was still had expected something more prepos Columbia, in Suwannee County, in in knee-pants. The Kennedy family sessing. Having gotten my start in life 1850, the year before the song was re was speeding along the Lake City in, on and around the St. Johns River leased. Copies of his early drafts reveal Highway now U.S. 90 doing at least below Jacksonville, where it is so wide that he originally intended to use the the opposite shore can be but dimly Pee Dee, which traverses the Writer/folklorist Stetson Kennedy is the author seen, the Suwannee struck me as being Carolinas, but then switched to the of Palmetto Country and I Rode with the Ku not much larger than Little Fishweir "Swanee," perhaps because it sounded Klux Klan, among other titles. He currently is at Creek, wherein I waded on my way to more lyrical. work on an autobiography. school. I didn’t know it then, but the If we ask ourselves what would

22 ANNIE MAE SELLERS’S STEPFATHER TAUGHT HER HOW TO WEAVE CORN-SHUCK CHAIR BOTTOMS FAR LEFT. SHE STILL PRACTICES THE CRAFT AT HER HOME IN MAYO. SISTERS ESTELLE BRIDGES AND ESTHER MCGHIN LEFT INVEST MUCH OF THEIR TIME IN BIBI.E READING AT * THEIR HAMILTON COUNTY CABIN, WHICH THEIR FATHER BUILT AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY.

OLD FOLKS AT HOME

Way down upon de Swanee ribber, Far, far away Dare’s wha my heart is turning ebber. Dare’s wha de old folks stay.

All up and down de whole creation, Sadly I roam. Still longing for de old plantation. And for de old folks at home.

All de world am sad and dreary, Ebrywhere I roam; Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary, Far from de old folks at home!

All round de little farm I wandered the Suwannee be if Foster had stuck to What has seldom been appre When I was young; the Pee Dee, the answer is "Same river, ciated is that, in choosing a river Den many happy days I squander’d, but without the legend." named "Swanee" as locale for Many de songs I sung. This is not to say that the the plantation life eulogized Suwannee is not a charmer. The in his song, Foster affected When I was playing wid my Suwannee may not "keep rolling not only the river but brudder, along" as majestically as the American history as well. Happy was I; Mississippi in "Ole Man River," or the The song was re Oh, take me to my kind old Columbia in Woody Guthrie’s "Roll leased in 1851. This mudder! On Columbia," but by moseying along means, of course, that the Dere let me live and die. it manages to get from the Okefenokee "old darkey" wandering in Swamp to the Gulf of Mexico very a "sad and weary world," One little hut among de nicely, not unlike the protagonist in "longing for the old folks at bushes that area Afro ditty: home" on the "Swanee," One dat I love, would by definition have to till sadly to my metn’ry rushes, White Gal sing like Gallicu,* have been a runaway slave. As Nb matter where I rove. Yellow gal do the same; everyone knew deep down inside, Black gal bray like a cornfed mule, the plantation scene was drenched in STEPHEN When will I see de bees a-humming But sheget there just thesame! blood, sweat and tears; and yet at the FOSTER All ‘round de comb! same time, as anyone who has lived When will I hear de banjo tumming, Opera soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, 1887-1963. the rustic life will attest, its appeal lies Down in my good old home?

23 not only in familiar faces and places, BOTH WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS WERE HARSH FOR but such other bona fides as hounds BLACKS LABORING IN NORTH baying, cocks crowing and bullfrogs FLORIDA’S TURPENTINE CAMPS IN croaking. * THE 1930S ABOVE. NOVELIST! ANTHROPOLGIST ZORA NEAL At the time Foster was composing, HURSTON RIGHT LOUNGES ON "plantation melodies" and "Ethiopian THE PORCH OF A CABIN AT ONE tunes" were very much in vogue SUCH CAMP, WHICH SHE VISITED IN 1939 WHILE WORKING FOR THE among white Americans. The latter, WPA WRITERS’ PROJECT. ALTON written in dis, dat, dese, dem, dose GOFF AND HIS CALF oPPoSrrE "Negro dialect," were in great demand POSE FOR THEIR VICTORY PORTRAIT AFTER WINNING THE for that peculiarly American genre, the BOVINE BEAUTY CONTEST AT THE black-face minstrel show. Foster had a SUWANNEE CouN’rY FAIR. genuine taste for the romanticism of plantation songs-and a contract with and Ethiopian songs does not appear that leading minstrel ingenue E.P. to have carried with it any approba Christy, which called for 12 Ethiopian tion of slavery. Though never an aboli tunes per year for a total of $800. tionist, when the Civil War broke out Nowadays we are wont to credit he produced many a pro-Union, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston morale-building songs. and other black writers with weaning Foster died a year before the war us away, during the post-Harlem and slavery ended, but it is ironic that Renaissance period, from "Negro di in the post-bellum ideological war, like the river, they got riled up at alect" as a literary medium. It is wor white America would seize upon his times-as witness the obliteration of thy of note, however, that while Foster plantation songs as evidence that the black community of Rosewood, wrote "Way Down Upon the Swanee" blacks had been better off and happier near the mouth of the Suwannee, in in Negro dialect, he put Christy’s slave than free. 1923. By that time Ole Massa had gone name on it as composer. By the time Moseying along as it does, the with the wind, but Mr. Charlie was Foster got around to writing "Old Suwannee-song or no song-has al carrying on something awful. No mat Black Joe" in 1860, he elected to use ways had a lot to do with the lives of ter how loudly white folks sang Way mainstream English and he signed his people living around it. Taking their Down Upon, black folks up North and own name to the song. cue from the river, folks tended to out West decided to stay where they Foster’s authorship of plantation mosey about their business. But, also were and wait for an Overcoming be-

24 anybody tries to run away ... There is a grave not far from here of a hand they beat to death." With such "leads" as these coming in, I was apprehensive about following in Zora’s footsteps, but, accompanied by staff photographer Robert Cook, in I went. Once we had convinced the op erators that we were interested in recording folksongs, pure and simple, we were allowed to schedule a noctur nal campfire recording session. Life in a turpentine camp was by no means pure and simple, however, and as soon as the Woodsrider the white foreman wandered off, the talk around the campfire turned to its grimmer aspects. One stellar informant was 80-year- old Cull Stacey, who said he had "been in the turpentine" all his life. "You do know that they can’t make you work against your will don’t fore staging any Homecoming. one of those Junior Interviewer jobs. you?" I ventured. My own opportunity to become In those days of unmitigated "They do do it," came his laconic acquainted with folklife along the apartheid it was unthinkable that a reply. Suwannee came during the "root-hog- racially mixed team especially a sexu "Why don’t you leave and get out or-die" days of the Great Depression. ally mixed one travel about collecting of it?" While still attending the University of folklore or anything else. So I sent "The onliest way out is to die out. Florida, I applied for a job as a "Junior Zora ahead as an advance scout to If you tries to leave, they will kill you, Interviewer" with the Works Progress identify what I dubbed "ambulatory and you will have to die, because they Administration’s Writers Project. One repositories"-individuals who had got folks to bury you out in them had to take a Pauper’s Oath: "no job, taken it upon themselves to soak up woods." no money, no property, and no the traditions of their communities. The moment this dialogue got prospect of acquiring any of those under way, several workers jumped things." Being eminently qualified in n 1939 Zora was up and stationed themselves as sen all of these respects, I got the job, asked to scout a cer tries in the surrounding woods. Before which paid $37.50 fortnightly. tain turpentine opera long, one of them came running up to Soon I was put in charge of the tion, whose headquar deliver the hushed warning: "Here Project’s folklore, oral history and eth ters was just off of come The Man! Sing somethin quick!" nic studies components. For a time I Highway 19 west of Cross City, which One young worker, James Griffin, worked with Dr. Alton C. Morris, in turn is 13 miles west of the sang his "Chaingang Theme Song," long-time editor of the "Southern Suwannee. This particular turpentine which he said he had composed dur Folklore Quarterly," recording tradition company operated 13 camps in three ing his most recent trip to the Dixie al British ballads along the Suwannee Suwannee Valley counties, and em County prison farm. He had refused to Valley. These may be found in his ployed 15 whites and 300 blacks, who pay what the company "robbersary" Folksongs of Florida, first published with their families totalled nearly 1,500 said he owed and had gone into Cross by the University of Florida in 1950 people. City to try to make a living shining and reprinted in 1991. Pretty soon we began getting shoes. The high sheriff came to get It was in 1938 that Florida’s black cryptic notes from Zora by mail. him, saying, "James, you want to go novelist Zora Neale Hurston joined the Typical entries read: back to work in the turpentine or come Project. Although she had studied an "There is one woman who cooks, with me?" thropology at Columbia University cleans, washes and irons all for $2.25 a "Might as well go with you," and had already published two books, week ... Social Security not turned in James replied. "I be workin under the she was glad to take The Oath and get Sheriff sets up roadblocks whenever gun either way."

25 CHAIN GANGS BUIL’I’ MANY OF FLORIDA’S ROADS DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY ABOVE. JAMES GRIFFIN PLAYING BANJo, RIGHT PERFORMED HIS "CHAINGANG THEME SONG" DURING STETSON KENNEDY’S VISIT TO THE TURPENTINE CAMP WHERE GRIFFIN WORKED. THAT OL’ TIME RELIGION IS STILL ALIVE IN THE SUWANNEE VALLEY, WHERE GEORGE KEARNS oPPOsITE, TOP, PASTOR OF THE LIGHTHOUSE WORD CHURCH, BAPTIZES HEATHER MCCOY NEAR MANATEE SPRINGS. HER FATHER, DICK, HELPS IN THE ONCE ‘OMMON RITUAL. GAMBLE ROGERS TOLD TALES AND 5AN; SONGS FOR NEARLY 30 YEARS AT THE FLORIDA FOLK FESTIVAL OPPOSITE, BOTTOM BEFORE HIS DEATH IN 1991. THE FESTIVAL STILL GOES ON LACH MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND AT TIIF STEPHEN FOSTER STATE FOLK CULTURE CENTER IN WHITE SPRINGS.

His "Chaingang Theme Song" in You ain’t never heard tell of Kerosene cluded such lines as: Charlie? I can tell you all about him. I Here I go, right back in jail again, bought a whole book of those stories. I I ain’t ct no money, bought them at the Western Union tele and I sho ain’t got no friends. graph office, where they sell them at the Oh, my dear Mother, lunch counter. I can’t remember the au she prayed this prayer for me, thor’s name-his name was Thomas H. Said, "Lord have mercy Dickerson. I believe he was a colored man on my son, He had a good education. He sold the wheresoever he may be." book and went around the world. They say he started around the world with 25 cents, After The Man went away again, I and when he got back he still had 10 cents picked up on my conversation with left. I don’t believe that, but I read it. You Cull Stacey. know a man can’t walk around the world. Sensing that I was in the presence One time Kerosene Charlie got a job of one of the Great Philosophers, I de diggin potatoes. Before he started work in dessert. Kerosene Charlie made up his cided to try free association with him. the mornin his Bossman give him a break mind to quit that job right then, but he de "Women," I said. fast of fried potatoes. Kerosene Charlie cided to spend the night and then leave be "I loves em all!" Stacey replied. didn’t much like potatoes, but he didn’t fore it got daylight. "There’s no sucha thing as a bad say nothin cause he was mighty glad to get Way in the middle of the night the woman." the job. Bossman heard Kerosene Charlie moanin "Hants." He dig potatoes all morn in and when with a bellyache. "You mighty right I blieves in em! lunch time come round he go to the back "That darkie is aiIm with a belly I blieves in everything from a little door of the Bossman’s house, and the ache," he say to his wife. "I cain’t get no teencey one to a great big one!" Bossman’s wife hand him a big plate of sleep with him moanin like that. I reckon "Have you ever seen one?" boiled potatoes. This made Kerosene we better do somethin for him." "No, but I have felt the hot steam Charlie pretty mad, but he didn’t say noth "All right," his wife say, "I’ll git up of them where they have been." in cause he figgered they’d at least give and make him some ‘tater tea." "Can they hurt you?" him a good supper after feedin him on "No, but they can make you hurt potatoes all day. We recorded late into the night yourself!" So when he finished his day’s work without mishap, and the following Stacey was full of stories, especial and when it come supper time, he could morning as we prepared to leave ly about some legendary "travellin hardly wait to see what they gon give him Stacey shouted at us: man" known as "Kerosene Charlie." to eat. It turned out to be baked potatoes "Hey, Government Man! When He began: this time, with a piece of potato pie for you get back to Washington, you tell

26 would call "swamp crit ters" that had been whit tled out of cypress knees and fitted with glass eyes. One and all were kissin’ cousins of Pogo, that na tive ‘possum of the Okefenoke who for decades as a comic-strip character had lampooned some of our most cher ished American institu tions. The whittler/propri etor turned out to be one Andy Gowan, who said he had grown up in and around the Okefenokee. I took him to be an unsung genius and bought all the swamp critters he had around. Not satisfied with that, I subsequently invit ed him to my swampside home "Belutha-hatchee." We had a couple of small children around then, and Andy obligingly whipped out his pocketknife and picked up a hickory nut to show them how to do it. "It’s easy," he said. "You just take off what you don’t want to leave on." It was also during the ‘60s, when civil rights marchers were marching and freedom riders riding, that some body decided to call a public meeting at Otter Creek, which is next door to where Rosewood used to be. The dis cussion by whites of the pros and cons of civil rights for blacks had not gotten very far when one old codger got up

"I’m not for integration. I’m not for segregation. I’m for slavery!" Claude Pepper if he can’t do no better girl," he opined. "Course I figured And with that he sat down. for us than he is been doin, to come on she’s about three-fifths white!" At that same Otter Creek, and at home and plead the law, and let me go about the same time, a black woman up yonder. Tell him us folks ain’t get- uring the 1960s-a sat on the porch of her "black shack in tin our chops down here. We likes a quarter century after the foggy bottoms" rocking and chop good as anybody." my visit to Cross shelling peas. It was the Woodsrider, however, City-I was driving "Our little community’s fixin to who had the last word. along the southern do somethin here toreckly," she said "Who was that colored gal came boundary of the Okefenokee headed confidently and kept on with her rock in here ahead of y’all?" he asked. for Folkston. I pulled into a surviving ing and shelling. "Zora Neale Hurston," we replied. Mom & Pop gas station. And the Suwannee kept moseying

"She was right smart for a colored Inside I saw a menagerie of what I along ...

27 A STREAM OF STORIES

BY MAURICE O’SULLIVAN Over in the Suwannee River dle of a storm, Mart and Florry find country Florida, men read little histo refuge in a cabin with a broken door: ry and no mythology. Florry called through the thin pane. arjorie Kinnan Raw "Kin you make that sorry door stay lings, Florida’s chroni shut?" cler of cracker culture, He thumped confidently with a rusty used that observation axe-head. to begin her story "Hit’ll hold," he said. "Lord Bill of the Suwannee River," which she wrote in the early 1930s. Rawling’s "Lord Bill" is not the Despite the statement, "Lord Bill" was only nobleman on the Suwannee. Like her attempt to begin the myth-making Rawling’s story, Joyce Hart’s The Last process for William E. Bell, a railroad Cracker 1986, a fictionalized biogra foreman and riverboat owner who phy of J.T. Earl, the man who would roamed the Suwannee "in a floatin’ become known as the "Earl of the palace, straddlin’ the stern and Suwannee," offers readers a series of shuckin hisself oysters. He ate them all scenes from fishing with flour for cat the way up from the Gulf of Mexico, fish to diving in the river for lumber. three or four crocus sacks of oysters." Whether dealing with the idiosyn Rawlings spent several weeks crasies of the vampire man, who needs MARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS wandering along the banks of the river to drink blood for iron, or the collecting memories from Lord Bill’s "Lord Bill," Marjorie Rawlings pub hypocrisies of a hard shell church dea contemporaries. The stories she lished "Jacob’s Ladder" in Scribner’s con, J.T. never loses his sense of affec brought together form a loose set of April 1931. "Jacob’s Ladder" was a tion for the land. In fact, even near the frontier tall tales, more effective when far more successful story about a cou end of his life his reflections echo his she describes Bell’s "deep as thunder ple’s capacity to endure the rigors of a thoughts as a boy lying in bed, munch and rich as flat woods honey" voice primitive existence. She based her ing on hard candy, "There surely ain’t than when she tries to elevate Bell into story on a young man and woman no better place on earth." a "Hercules of the Suwannee." Both who had worked for her but found Virgil Strickland’s similar attempt Scribner’s and the Atlantic Monthly re caring for the orange groves of Cross to blend fact and fiction in evoking a jected the work. It finally appeared Creek too structured an existence. harder but purer life in earlier days, posthumously in the Southern Folklore When she asked them how they Steamboat Whistle on the Suwannee Quarterly in 1963, after the story was would survive living in the woods, the 1959, has an even more nostalgic, ro discovered among her papers. husband, Tim, answered, "Us’ll make mantic tone. This account of the maid Despite its loose, anecdotal struc out." en voyage of the steamboat City of ture, Rawlings’ story reflects two of The confidence and resignation of Hawkinsville centers on romances be the major traditions among those who that comment haunted Rawlings until tween "flirtatious village maidens and have written about the people of the she wrote her long story of Florry and solitary woodsmen" in a primitive but Suwannee. The first is the way the Mart and their struggle for survival as ideal world: "The untamed landscape river and its piney woods have shaped they fish, trap, and make moonshine has been a dream cut out of the their inhabitants. The second is the from Dixie County above the wilderness." legendary quality of those who fought Suwannee to Orange Lake in Alachua This tradition of combining both to shape rather than be shaped by that County to the Gulf of Mexico and back nobility and suffering with nostalgia demanding landscape. to Dixie County. along the Suwannee actually goes Just before she pieced together When Maxwell Perkins, her edi back to the decade in which Stephen tor, suggested a less bleak ending than Foster, needing a bisyllabic name for Maurice O’Sullivan is professor of English and the original version, she sent him three his vision of an idyllic southern re Irish Studies at Rollins College in Winter Park. possibilities and left the choice to him. treat, renamed the river. He is co-editor of The Florida Reader, published He selected one that echoed Tim’s In 1858 Captain Thomas Mayne by Pineapple Press. final words in Cross Creek. In the mid- Reid, who wrote a series of historical 28 4’,‘,*, novels of adventure characterized by dition-atmosphere of velvet, silken breeze. camps, where crippled nature, with its his publisher as "thrilling, earnest, Here nature has softened her accents, yel "scarred and bleeding trees," offers a dashing fiction," published Osceola lowed the clouds which elsewhere would be perfect metaphor for many of the in the Seminole. His subtitle, The Red black, and the bird which flew from the mates and even more of the guards. Fawn of the Flower Land, suggests north to escape the cold forgot his harsher The novel reaches its climax in a both the theme and style of this lushly notes. When the air was so still that the prison camp on the banks of the Victorian romance about a West Point Spanish moss hung motionless, the faint Suwannee, as the characters find sym graduate’s love for Osceola’s sister. roar of railway could be heard far away- bolic baptism into new lives through The hero, George Randolph, who be the low of the nineteenth century echoing. the river. lieves himself a descendent of Justice also lies at the heart of Pocohantas, meets Osceola when both The work, one of Read’s 25-cent Donald Tracy’s The Hated One 1963, are teenagers living on opposite banks Character Novels of love and chivalry, a hard-boiled courtroom drama that of the river. reflects the genteel values of the popu has the shape of To Kill a Mockingbird Throughout his novel, without the sentiment. Tracy’s Mayne contrasts the tragic fate of hero, a disgraced alcoholic the Seminole "Gone! All gone", a lawyer, must defend a defiantly symbol of the human loss of inno unrepentant African-American cence, with the enduring unity woman accused of murdering a and beauty of the land: II 1 prominent white. As the date sug nere gests, justice becomes complicated Thy forests are still virgin and by responses to the national Civil inviolate; verdant thy savannas; thy Rights movement. Part of Tracy’s groves as fragrant as ever-those per nature achievement in this superb noir is fumed groves of aniseed and orange, to keep his focus clearly on his of myrtle and magnolia. Still sparkles characters. upon thy plains the cerulian ixia; still has Perhaps the two most signifi gleam in thy waters the golden cant works to have emerged from nymphae; above thy swamps yet softened the Suwannee region describe the tower the colossal cypress, the gigan often painful lives of apparently tic cedar, the gum and the bay-tree; ordinary women along the river. still over thy gentle slopes of silvery her In Zora Neal Hurston’s last sand wave long-leaved pines, min novel-and the only one with gling their acetalous foliage with the white protagonists-Seraph on frondage of the palm. Strange anoma accents..." the Suwannee 1948, the ly of vegetation: the tree of the north, Eatonville writer explores Arvay and the tree of the south-the types of Henson Meserve’s attempt to dis the frigid and the torrid-in this thy cover her true self from the time mild mid region, standing side by she starts courting through the side, and blending their branches to edge of grandmotherhood. gether! lar literature of its time. After the hero Growing up poor in Sawley on the arrests Jim, the swamp angel, for a banks of the Suwannee, Arvay lives in Just as the Suwannee both binds murder, for example, he offers a series a family with "cutting edges" on their and separates Mayne’s characters of commands that reflect classic spirits from the struggle of existence. while offering a symbol of continuity Victorian propriety: "Marshal,’ said Throughout the work, she must deal in the midst of change, it plays a simi the conqueror, ‘take him to jail. with her sense of inferiority after mar lar role in Opie Read’s On the Gentlemen, stand about the dead rying the aggressive entrepreneur Jim Suwannee River: A Romance 1895. body. Here comes a lady." Meserve. Their economic success, sym Far more than a geographical site, the Two searing, finely written nov bolized by their migration from tur river becomes a source of atonement, els of crime and punishment focus on pentine camps on the Suwannee to renewal, and rebirth as characters find atonement for past sins without wor shrimping off the Atlantic coast, im the strength to recreate themselves rying much about either propriety or poses an increasing strain on their rela through acts of love. Early in his story gentility. Wyatt Blassingame’s Halo of tionship. Read suggests both the transforming Spears 1962 follows a spiritually con Unlike her earlier works with power of the environment and the in fused young hero in his quest for their celebration of autonomy, evitability of change: atonement as a prisoner on a North Hurston has Arvay struggle to adjust Florida chain gang. David Mayfield to the physical and psychological de A scene may be described, but a con must find his humanity in the dehu mands of an uncompromising hus dition must be felt, and this place is a con- manizing culture of the turpentine band. In the climax of the novel, Arvay 30 continuing fear of her cen tral character:

you walk through whispers of apprehensive shadows

Even though physical and spiritual deaths con stantly hover over them like the "elegiac crows" of Meeting at Alligator Lake, Sapia’s characters invariably nurture some "white flowers within." Despite the pain of her life, for example, Sister Mary, a palmreader who lives be tween Live Oak and Wellborn, continues to en dure and follow her calling:

She follows the line of my palm with a crooked thumb, the black nail shattered by mistakes of the farm which broke her husband’s back, she predicts what my blood suspects.

Sapia’s profound sym pathy and powerful imagery create a world where beauty and insight offer compensa tions for suffering. Much of the beauty arises from na ture. In the title poem of her collection The Fertile Crescit, she suggests, as so many before her have, that it is the river which best sym bolizes for all of us the mythic possibility of integra tion and connection: must return to the Suwannee to touch dislikes, for example, Arvay con The river carries ceremonies and and then burn her past. Hurston’s fas cludes, "God didn’t like ugly, and nei dreams. cination with folklore and dialect of ther did God eat okra." In the night I draw a swollen moon fers constant insight into the world of Yvonne Sapia, the resident poet at into my mouth and turn her characters as they scorch their Lake City Community College, finds a to the river going under loves to church and jubilate. One curi quiet capacity for endurance among ous facet of the novel lies in the con women much like Hurston’s Arvay- Into the black offering I fall like a nections Hurston makes between the women with little hope for physical es millstone; language of her earlier works and that cape from their lives and relationships. into forgetfulness I go further down. of Seraph’s far from angelic whites; In For a Farmwoman, Left Behind by Her The ocean celebrates my coming while thinking of some neighbors she Lover, for example, she recognizes the with the vernacular of sea gulls. * 31 "OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO THE EARTH"

BY NATHANIEL P. REED of the same biological system. As the fter spending decades EDITIRS NOTE: In A Sand planet evolves, so do we. When we engaged in the fierce County Almanac Aldo Leopold ar wound the earth, we wound ourselves. debate over land gued that the value of nature is inde We must all believe this- truly be preservation, use and pendent from the interest that human lieve it-if we are to effectively protect misuse, I have come to beings may take in it. the environment. believe that1there is a greater reason He summed up his views in a We must regain a sense of fervor for good land and water management, simple principle: "A thing is right for the very good reason that we owe and that is humankind’s ethical re when it tends to preserve the integrity, it not only to our children but to sponsibilities to Mother Earth. stability, and beauty of the biotic com Mother Earth. The debate over what we should munity. It is wrong when it tends to So many times, when faced with or should not do to the earth has creat do otherwise." obvious environmental crises, we ed deep divisions in Florida, and in the Concerned residents of North argue defensively: How could we pos rest of the world. But, to borrow the Florida are well aware of the delicacy sibly have known what damage we words of writer Wendell Berry, the ar of the "biotic community" along the were causing? When DDT thinned the guments "have begun to follow the Suwannee. We asked environmentalist eagles’ eggshells, keeping the great false logic of a feud in which nobody Nat Reed to consider our responsibili birds from reproducing, we cried: remembers the cause but only what ties to that community. How could we have known? When the was last said or done by the other side vast network of drainage canals in the Everglades choked the life from "The opponents," Berry wrote, ing principle in the coming decades. Florida Bay, we said: How could we "no longer speak in support of their vi We must make sure that we have have known? How could we predict sion or their arguments or their pur shared vision. that sending Lake Okeechobee water poses, but only in opposition to each It seems difficult to accept that we eastward, through the St. Lucie River other." don’t all intrinsically believe it is in our to the Atlantic, would have such dele In Florida, we have argued among best interests to protect the planet be terious impacts on that rich, but frag ourselves about how much water Big neath our feet and the sky above our ile, estuary? Agriculture can take from the heads. We have come to see ourselves How could we possibly have Everglades, how many houses a devel as separate from the earth. known? If we were listening to the oper can build along the banks of the In our arrogance, we make wet earth instead of dictating to it, we Suwannee River, how many condo places dry and dry places wet. We might know many things. miniums should line the once-desolate straighten the Kissimmee River when One of the first hints that there beach. We are listening to each other, its natural contours don’t fit our pur was big environmental trouble in the but we are dictating to the earth. poses. We carve out mountains, flood Everglades was subtle. Brown cattails If we are to make progress in pro canyons, drain swamps and build hills appeared in the River of Grass. Cattails tecting the environment, we must where the land is flat. We clear the thrive in poor-quality water, the kind make sure that ethical responsibility to "messy" natural areas in our yards of water that runs in drainage ditches. the earth becomes the central organiz and replace Mother Earth’s landscap Their appearance in one of America’s ing with our own superior, we think greatest natural treasures was cause Nathaniel P. Reed is a former undersecretary of orderly rows. for alarm indeed. the U.S. Department of the Interior and a Just because we have the ability to The biologists who first spotted founder of Thousand Friends of Florida, a group control the earth does not mean it is in the cattails were listening to the earth. promoting growth management. our best interest to do so. We are part They listened, and they told us what

32 SPEEDBOATS POSE A MORTAL THREAT TO THE : SUWANNEE’S MANATEES, WHILE UNTAMED DEVELOPMENT POSES A THREAT TO ALL OF NATURE.

know that what happens with the last seen in 1955; the pallid beach Everglades fits with what happens on mouse in 1946, the Chadwick beach the Kissimmee, the Ocklawaha, the cotton mouse in 1938. Loxahatchee and even the St. Lucie An alarming report by the Florida and Florida Bay. It is all part of the Biodiversity Task Force says that near same grand system. And so are we. ly 17 percent of Florida’s native ani The earth’s subtle relationships mals-ill species of fish, reptiles, are far beyond our comprehension. To birds and mammals-may be in dan think that we know enough to tinker ger of extinction. The populations of with one thing without knowing how almost half of the state’s land- it will affect another is dangerous in dwelling animals are known or sus deed. The great Aldo Leopold said it pected to be declining. well in his 1949 conservation classic, A "At every ecological level-genet Sand County Almanac: ic, species, community, ecosystem and landscape-the state appears to be on The outstanding scientific discov the brink of biological impoverish ery of the 20th century is not television, or ment," the task force concludes. radio, but rather the complexity of the land If we have the power to change organism. Only those who know the most the planet’s course for the worse, then about it can appreciate how little is known surely we have the power to change they heard. Phosphorous from fertiliz about it. The last word in ignorance is the that course for the better. It is our eco ers and from confined dairies was man who says of an animal or plant: logical responsibility. And we have seeping invisibly into the Everglades "What good is it?" If the land mechanism nothing less than our own self preser ecosystem, tipping the biological apple as a whole is good, then every part is good, vation at stake. cart. whether we understand it or not. If the The Florida river that we know But we were too busy arguing biota, in the course of aeons, has built today as the Suwannee was known to with one another over how best to something we like but do not understand, Florida’s early native residents as the "control" the Everglades, how to di then who but a fool would discard seem "Suwani." The word, we are told, vide up its watery wealth among our ingly useless parts? To keep every cog and means "echo." When we shout from selves. We were so busy making our wheel is the first precaution of intelligent the banks of this mighty river, it is our own noise that we failed to hear the tinkering. own voice shouting back at us over the most important sound of all: the In Florida, we have already lost shimmering water. Everglades crying for help. some cogs and wheels: the last dusky "All things are connected," Chief If we truly had a sense of ethical seaside sparrow died in captivity in Seattle said. "Whatever befalls the responsibility to the earth, we would 1987. The Goff’s pocket gopher was earth, befalls the sons of the earth." ‘ 33 Sifting Out the World If you talk to the locals, people like state Rep. Randy Mackey, you begin to sense how much the Suwannee River touch es the life and culture of North Florida. On a hectic afternoon when his Lake City Office is filled with demanding con stituents, Mackey pauses and his gaze becomes wistful; he talks of canoeing the Suwannee from the Okefenokee Swamp to the Gulf of Mexico, of morning mist rising off the water, of deer edging down the bank to drink at first light and a bald eagle swooping low across the river to snatch up its breakfast. "There’s something magical about these waters," he says. "I’ve been on the northern part of the river and gone two days without seeing anyone. You get out there alone and let the world sift out of your system."

LETTERS

Responses to the Native Nations Within A Nation" See Fall "Things have changed" for Americans "Forum" 1992 Forum, "Florida’s Native Indians in Florida and throughout the Americans" that coauthor Elizabeth nation. The vast increase in the num Dear FHC: Purdum, Ph.D. coeditor, Atlas of bers of individuals claiming to be I am writing to tell you how much Florida withdrew her name. Joe Indians is testimony to this change. I enjoyed the Fall 1992 issue of Forum. Quetone felt obliged to stay and try to Being an Indian, however, has nothing It was simply a superb issue and an in rescue the article. I had recommended to do with finding an Indian ancestor formative anthology of articles on the Quetone and Purdum for the job. or two or of exhibiting the external history and current existence of the na Some Koenig misrepresentations trappings of Indianness ... Being an tive peoples of Florida. "Florida’s remain: Maya Indians in Florida omit Indian comes from being part of an Native Americans" was full of new in ted. An illusion of systematic data col Indian community, of being raised an formation and learning for me as well lection used to further elitist stereo Indian, of learning the culture-as we as a solid account of the history of the types of downtrodden reservation all learn our cultures-from day-to Florida Indians. In my opinion, this Indians, soft-pedaling political sophis day interaction within a group. It issue is the best Forum I have read in tication and economic successes of doesn’t matter whether the Seminoles, several years. It now will be included tribal governments-especially the Miccosukees, or Poarch Creeks wear in my personal collection of important Seminoles. Giving credence to 1990 patchwork, ribbon shirts or business works of Florida anthropology and Census data notoriously inaccurate be suits, paddle canoes, operate air boats history. cause of inflated self- reports of being or fly airplanes, live in chickees or own Keep up the good work! "Native American." Tellingly, hotels, they are still Indians. Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller re J. Anthony Paredes, Ph.D. Cordially, cently wrote state governors includ Professor of Anthropology Robert L. Gold, PhD ing Lawton Chiles warning them of Florida State University St. Augustine 45+ "purported ‘Cherokee’ groups" four in Florida. Editor’s note: Dr. Parades is the Dear FHC: Much better than Koenig’s tired, spouse of Elizabeth Purdum. His article on Editor John Koenig so distorted trite closing is the original Purdum/ the Poarch Band of Creek Indians was pub the original manuscript for "The Quetone final paragraph: lished in the Fall "Forum." 34 JornIf you believeus innowFlorida Why We Need Your Help Participating Bookstores While our programs are free to you they are Coral Gables: Bookworks II not free to us. Florida Humanities Council Fort Myers: Shakespeare, Beethoven & Co. speakers who come to your community Gainesville: Book Gallery West; Omni Books center, such programs as our Center for Key West: Island Books Melbourne: The City News Teachers and our statewide magazine Forum, Miami: Downtown Book Center which you receive in the mail, all cost us Micanopy: 0. Briskey Books money. Your tax-deductible contribution will New Smyrna Beach: Sea Side Books more of these valuable Niceville: Bayou Book Company help us bring Orlando: Novel Ideas humanities programs and publications to Oviedo: Mickler’s Floridiana communities throughout the state. Port Salerno: Florida Classics Library As a member you receive: St. Augustine: Booksmith St. Petersburg: Bayboro Books * Subscriptions to both the Forum, our Sarasota: Main Book Shop; Pineapple Press magazine of florida history and culture, and Tampa: lnkwood Books Humanities News, our newsletter alerting you Venice: Books Et Cetera to FHC programs throughout the state Winter Park: Park Books * Advance notice of FHC travel-study The first 80 members joining at the $100 programs guided by Florida scholars level or above also will receive free FHC’s A * Special book discounts announced in our Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Reader. This book newsletter is one of the most comprehensive anthologies * A 10% discount on book purchases of more of writings by and about the legendary than $30 at the following Florida booksellers: novelist and contains many rare photographs.

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