Spring break reaches its breaking point
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- April 1, 2023
- 418
Aside from the novels of Carl Hiaasen, Tom Petty records and the fact that my brother lives there, Florida and I don’t really get along.
And it’s not as if I haven’t given it a fair chance.
There’s just something about it – all stuck out in the water like a dead limb, a useless vestigial appendage begging to be lopped off – that irritates the hell out of me. Sure, I understand the appeal of its wonderful weather and tempting lack of a state income tax, but every time I’ve been there, I couldn’t wait to get out and go home.
I suppose it all started in my sophomore year in college, a time so long ago I have to force myself to remember how stupid I could be.
There was a herd – herb?? – mentality dominating nearly every discussion that winter, one that created a single focus on two words:
Spring Break.
And, as the snows of South Bend piled up and the lakes froze over, two other words took hold in our addled, testosterone-fueled brains:
Fort Lauderdale.
Ours wasn’t the first generation of idiots to fall under the sway of that southern city’s siren call. I mean, we’d all seen “Where the Boys Are,” that 1960 flick that suggested not-so-subtly that if a guy could make his way to the beach, the girls would just swoon.
This, of course, was pure bushwah.
Fort Lauderdale was 1,300 miles from campus – an unholy 20-hour ride in a balky Ford Econoline van – and that alone should have tipped us off that some things are too dumb to consider, but when you’re 19 and the open road beckons, you answer the call.
Looking back, I suppose that had there been such a thing as bucket lists, “Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale” might have been on mine, so there’s a part of me that applauds my derring-do, my bravado, my sheer dedication to a common cause of incinerating brain cells.
And, when it came time to compose an opus for my Creative Writing seminar, I had no shortage of source material, but bikini-clad girls, music in beach clubs and seafood dinners at places like the Kapok Tree can only take you so far in the expository process.
Something had to have happened.
And, like so much of my time spent in Florida, nothing really did.
Chalk it up to a failure of imagination or the tedium of uniformly humid days or that nagging sensation, the one that whispered in your mind’s ear, “You’re blowing a golden opportunity to live life to its fullest, dummy,” but Florida and I simply weren’t simpatico.
I remember liking EPCOT Center – then in its pre-hyper-commercialized nascence – quite a lot, but the others in my cadre of sun-and-fun seekers much preferred the phony allure of the Magic Kingdom, so we paid our financial tribute to Walt Disney.
A year later, I returned to the Sunshine State, this time to the Gulf side, for a week in a town called Clearwater and it offered none of the prefab glitz of Fort Lauderdale, which made me a much happier person, though even I grew weary of its golden perfection.
That’s probably part of my problem with Florida. Aside from having our car broken into at the 1975 Orange Bowl during Notre Dame’s 13-11 win over Alabama – not a whole lot bad occurred.
Amateur psychiatrists doubtless call that a first-world problem.
In the many years that have followed my graduation from college and my rather reluctant entry into reality, I have had occasion to revisit that peninsular protuberance several times, including one to Key West, a trip my wife and I often consider repeating.
But here’s the thing about that southernmost point in the U.S.
It doesn’t really consider itself part of Florida. How cool is that?
By proudly and somewhat anarchically calling itself “Conch Republic,” Key West, and its affiliated dots of civilization scattered among a series of barrier islands trailing off the mainland like a literal ellipsis, has rather openly declared its independence.
Much like Provincetown – its spiritual doppelganger on the coast of Massachusetts – Key West establishes and observes its own set of rules, the first of which is that there ARE no rules, the kind of freewheeling municipal thinking that lends itself to attracting artists, writers and other rejects from straight-laced society.
Quite naturally, I felt much at home there, though the crowds that descended the week between Christmas and New Year’s were a bit daunting, but once we’d rented bikes and dialed back our anxiety meters, the lovely laid-back pace of the place had us in its thrall.
Key West is a thousand miles away, nearly the same distance I traveled so long ago to escape northern Indiana’s iron chilly grip, back when Florida was a fantasy, a post-modern oasis where pipe dreams came true and even the bad times had warm, silver linings.
These days, though, with a governor who bans books and an ex-president who incites violence, I’m not sure I ever want to go back.
Just take a big old saw, sever it from the continent and set it adrift.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page, where Florida is considered an f-word.