The Tropic Of Cracker (florida History And Culture) [Paperback]

The Tropic of Cracker will . . . end the debate once and for all, of whether the term Cracker is derogatory or a source of great pride. Al Burt has a masterpiece here. --Sandra Bogan, Florida Audubon Society

From the preface:
The Tropic of Cracker survives in myth, memory, and love of natural Florida. It exists more in the mind than in geography, more in the memory than in the sight, more in attitude than in the encounter. . . . This book tells you about one mans vision of a state struggling to remain true to itself. It mixes new essays with a span of earlier ones written during nearly a quarter century of roving the state as a columnist for the Miami Herald. All of them, in sum, help illuminate and explain the Tropic of Cracker. --Al Burt

The crack of the old-time cow hunters whip gave the native Floridian a nickname, but Al Burts Tropic of Cracker is a state of mind shared by those who love what remains of the Florida that needed no blueprint or balance sheet for its creation, that was here before there was a can opener or a commercial or a real-estate agent.
?In his years of roving the state as a Miami Herald columnist, Al Burt mapped Floridas Tropic of Cracker, not with lines of latitude and longitude but with stories.
?The Crackers Burt tells of are men and women from Apalachicola to the Everglades, from Tallahassee to the Keys. They lived in the late 1800s, and they live today--along the Ocklawaha and in the floodplains of Lake Okeechobee. They were cow hunters, Conchs, and alligator men. They grew oranges, sugarcane, and muscadine grapes. They made moonshine. They drove mules, ate fried mullet, and told yarns in a Cracker creole about Floridas panthers, snakes, alligators, and hurricanes. There are luminaries among them--Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Virgil Hawkins, John DeGrove, Harry Crews--but mostly they are just regular folk who mark the borders of the elusive andl3H