“Two Floridas”

Excerpt from “Remembering Eternity”: “Two Floridas”: “From experience, Skylar knew that there were really two distinct Floridas: one populated by inland redneck farmers and the other, by largely coastal tourists, retirees, and the locals who serviced them. The rural areas shared with the coastal ones the too-proximate sun but little else. The well-established mythology that had made the word “Florida” the mental equivalent of a composite postcard—whose little rectangles showed waving women standing on the shoulders of water-skiing men; dazzlingly pink, question-mark-necked feeding flamingoes; bikinied girls kneeling and arching in the sand; and impossibly blue oceans and skies laving and covering in heavenly peace coves of powdery shell-strewn sand—had nothing whatsoever to do with small towns such as Leesburg, Palatka, and Live Oak. Most of Florida, which the strong seasonal flood tides of incoming tourist energy bypassed, remained heavy, dull, and lethargic, but the popular destinations: Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Daytona Beach, and Key West transformed that energy into electricity.”