OF HOTEL RATES—OF MOSQUITOES—AND OF THE OUTCRY AGAINST THE SHIPPING BOARD FOR DARING TO MENTION EUROPE
ONE can never tell beforehand what statements, phrases, remarks, words or inflections—or lack of these things—the staunch Floridans will regard as slighting or insulting. Sometimes they become just as fretful if you don’t say them as they do if you do say them.
There is the matter of hotel rates, for example: if you tell what they are at the best hotels, all Florida reviles you for frightening tourists away. If you tell what they are at the cheaper hotels, the owners and officials of the best hotels curse you bitterly for representing Florida as a cheap place. Evidently they want you to lie about the hotel rates; but if you do, they will call you a liar.
Then there is the little matter of mosquitoes. Usually there are not mosquitoes along the Florida coastline between the months of November and March, inclusive, because the prevailing winds drive them inland. Occasionally, however, the wind shifts or the atmosphere is unduly affected by the hemisphere or something technical; and the tough, leathery, muscular, hungry Florida mosquitoes are blown down to the shore, where they sink their dagger-like beaks into the soft white flesh of the northern tourists.
It is only occasionally, it should be understood, that such a catastrophe occurs. Occasionally at Palm Beach one is told with hoarse jeering laughter that there are mosquitoes at Miami; but when one gets to Miami he finds no mosquitoes, and is told with cold emphasis that there aren’t any in Miami—but that there are many of them at Palm Beach. And so it goes. If one doesn’t mention the Palm Beach mosquitoes, one runs the risk of being viewed with abhorrence by the Miami folk; and if one doesn’t mention the Miami mosquitoes, one is apt to be regarded with loathing by the Palm Beach boosters. And if one goes back North and makes any mention whatever of mosquitoes in Florida, he is more than likely to be enthusiastically damned by every Floridan as a vile prevaricator.
Not long ago the Shipping Board in its advertisements emphasized the delights of winter travel in Europe. Instantly the watchful Floridans leaped to their feet with ear-piercing shrieks of protest. A government bureau, they screamed, was taking the money of Florida taxpayers to advertise winter attractions in competition with their own. The entire state had never been so insulted in its life; and the wrathful cries which went forth traveled all the way to Washington and knocked unsightly chips from many of the capital’s ivory domes. As a result, the Shipping Board promised to change its policy, and the touchy Floridans became calmer—though it is difficult for the outsider to see how the Shipping Board can advertise at all in the winter without entering into competition with Florida. But you never can tell. You never can tell. It is about as safe to write about Florida as it would be to kick carelessly at the nubbins on a floating mine.