OF THE ENTHUSIASM OF ALL GROWING THINGS IN FLORIDA—OF PAW-PAWS AND PROSPECTUSES AND PERFECT THIRTY-FOURS—OF FIENDS IN HUMAN SHAPE—AND OF THE WATCHFULNESS OF THE NATIVES FOR INSULTS
EVERYTHING grows in Florida. That is to say, everything grows in Florida that Florida people want to grow. That is Florida’s specialty: growing. Occasionally a few things get out of hand and indulge in some over-enthusiastic growing when Florida people wish that they wouldn’t; but for the most part Florida is proud of the remarkable growths that take place within her boundaries. This is particularly true of southern Florida. The superlatives as well as the fish grow to surprising proportions: so do the real-estate advertisements and the avocados. The sun is larger and warmer than in other parts of America; and the sky—unless the leading Florida authorities are mistaken in their observations—is higher and bluer than elsewhere.
There are only three things that southern Florida has never made any effort to grow. These are mountains, snow-storms and earthquakes. If there were any particular reason for her to grow any of these things, she could probably arrange to pump up a few square miles of ocean floor and pile the sand up into a mountain that would look like a blood relative—say a grandson—of Fujiyama; and she could unquestionably find a way to raise artificial snow-storms that would make Oregon jealous, and earthquakes that would shake out a person’s eye-teeth. Since there isn’t any reason for them, she specializes on more useful things like paw-paws and prospectuses and perfect thirty-four bathing-girls and what-not, and secures some startling results.
Take Miami, for example. Before taking it, one should understand that there is grave danger in taking any particular city in Florida to the exclusion of any other city, because all the untaken cities immediately feel slighted and begin to thirst for the heart’s blood of the one who did the taking.
Each Florida city or resort is violently jealous of every other resort or city. The residents of Palm Beach speak sneeringly of Miami as being a bit plebeian. The residents of Miami speak compassionately of Palm Beach, as young and pretty girls speak of decaying beauty. St. Petersburg and Tampa and Miami have little of a favorable nature to say concerning one another. They only unite to resist attacks from resorts outside the state, or to say a few tart words about California.
Every little while some fiend in human shape prints a piece in a South Carolina or North Carolina or Georgia paper falsely accusing a Florida city of harboring a few cases of typhoid or scarlet fever, or of being too chilly for winter bathing. Instantly the Florida people rise to defend the state’s fair name; and the low, searing curses that are hurled against the foul detractor are warm enough to singe a hog.
Every little while, too, Florida gets a chance to slip a knife into her hated resort rival, California; and when the chance occurs, the air is filled with a deadly swishing sound, due to the violence with which the knife is inserted.
A snow-storm in California causes Florida newspapers to spread loud and exultant head-lines entirely across their front pages, declaring excitedly: NO LIVES LOST IN CALIFORNIA BLIZZARD. This is the negation of news everywhere except in Florida; but Florida smacks her lips over it with the keenest delight. She emphasizes the blizzard’s severity by shrieking that no lives were lost, thus implying that hundreds—nay, thousands—might have been lost save for the merest chance. She is so anxious to have tourists realize that she is the queen of winter resorts that she is overjoyed when another resort-state is cursed with a phase of Nature that tends to discourage tourists.
There is another grave danger in taking any Florida city as an example. The natives of Florida winter resorts are constantly on the qui vive for slights and insults. They are so much on the qui vive in this respect that there is scarcely room for any one else on it. They occupy practically the entire qui vive.