West Coast of Florida

Emotionally, this part of Florida begins for me at Tarpon Springs, which at the time I was living in the area was a small community barely holding on. The death of the sponge trade had hit them hard. The docks were lined with abandoned buildings and a few fishing charter boats. The Greek community still had their local bars and restaurants which I enjoyed very much. There was also one big restaurant, Pappas, that catered to tourists and people from the surrounding cities. I haven't been back in years, but I understand Tarpon Springs has been reborn for the tourist trade. Part of me is pleased for the people who live there, but I don't feel the urge to go back. The memories I hold are too sharp and I don't want them overlaid with tacky tourist shops.

North is New Port Richey, where I once worked and had a house. It was a nondescript place at what was then the top of the urban sprawl that went down to St. Pete. About the only good thing that happened to me while I was living there was that my first two novels were published.

Route 19 runs north here, but most of the interesting places are between it and the Gulf. I'm particularly fond of Aripeka, a small community consisting of a general store/bait shop and a post office with houses scattered here and there tucked in among the slow-moving rivers and marshes. A short drive north of Aripeka is Bayport, the most beautiful place I've ever lived.

I lived in the old weather-beaten board-and-batten cypress cabin pictured here. The crow's nest on top was my bedroom and office. From the window I looked out over a salt marsh to the Gulf of Mexico beyond. There were tremendous storms there; the thunder seemed to roll forever over the water. I'd wake up every morning to the sound of birds pecking at seeds that had fallen on the tin roof outside my window. I could fish and crab about twenty steps from my front door. There were other houses there, but all save one or two were only occupied on holiday weekends. Most nights I fell asleep to the calls of the night birds, tree frogs and alligators.

A lot of things happened to me while I was living in Bayport and I'll write more about it when I expand this section. I loved exploring the area, went through a couple of hurricanes there and had adventures of all sorts. It too has changed, but I'll write about the Florida I found. [And I'll also talk about how I almost wrote a history of the area for their Bicentennial Project, and how it was killed when they discovered I was including oral histories of the black families that had lived for generations in the area. It seems the City Fathers and Powers That Be wanted a lily-white account of a history that never was. Much as I needed the money, I refused to be the fool who wrote it.]

Also in this area I'll write about the good-old-boy network of Brooksville, the chickens on the pool tale at Tracy's Bar, a dog named Godzilla, my stint at a print shop, my experiences teaching photography and creative writing at a retirement community, the jellyfish at Pine Island, the Rattlesnake Roundup at St. Leo, the chicken plucking festival, redneck cops with shotguns on dark dirt roads. Stories of a place and time. Places of the heart.

Shooting pool at Tracy's