The Tropic of Cracker (The Florida History and Culture Series)

About this book

Al Burts Tropic of Cracker is a state of mind shared by those who love "what remains of the Florida that needed no blueprint or balance sheet for its creation that was here before there was a can opener or a commercial or a real-estate agent." In his years of roving the state as a Miami Herald columnist Al Burt mapped Floridas Tropic of Cracker not with lines of latitude and longitude but with stories. The Crackers Burt tells of are men and women from Apalachicola to the Everglades from Tallahassee to the Keys. They lived in the late 1800s and they live todayalong the Ocklawaha and in the floodplains of Lake Okeechobee. They were cow hunters Conchs and alligator men. They grew oranges sugarcane and muscadine grapes. They made moonshine. They drove mules ate fried mullet and told yarns in a Cracker creole about Floridas panthers snakes alligators and hurricanes. There are luminaries among themZora Neale Hurston Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Virgil Hawkins John DeGrove Harry Crewsbut mostly they are just regular folk who mark the borders of the elusive and magical Tropic of Cracker. For anyone who loves the old Florida Tropic of Cracker is the states truest road map and Al Burt its most eloquent cartographer. A volume in the Florida History and Culture series edited by Raymond Arsenault and Gary R. Mormino