February 4, 2005
(KRT) - Since 1932, U.S. Highway 17 has taken locals back and forth from Orlando to Jacksonville. Joe Smith and wife, Karen, bought the Cheyenne Saloon, a hot spot for bikers, in East Palatka, 2 years ago. It has the state's oldest active liquor license.
This is the beginning, this small baby-blue cottage near downtown Orlando. The tin roof still provides plenty of shade for the small porch, and in the front yard, a giant oak still spreads its long winding arms over the house.
This was where Jack Kerouac, a writer's adventurer and an adventurer's writer, lived nearly 50 years ago. He was here when "On the Road" was published and that's why today, for us, this is the beginning. We're going to travel the road to the Super Bowl, but not the busy highway thoroughfare with its billboards, 70 mph signs, routine rest stops and lounging construction workers. I'm looking for the road less-traveled, the one that remains faithful to the truth and Florida culture.
The spotlight is shining brightly this week, and Jacksonville will surely smile for its close-up. But it's not really Northern Florida. The glitz is prepackaged, the glamour shipped in from L.A. and New York.
The real Northern Florida lies in the back roads, and that's what I want to find. Since 1932, U.S. Highway 17 has taken locals back and forth from Orlando to Jacksonville. The scenery and people alongside the road distinguishes the area from any other part of Florida.
In Orlando, about a half-mile from U.S. 17, I sit in front of Kerouac's old home and silently ask if I can borrow the spirit of the open road for a day. I get in the car and tune the radio to some Coltrane.
We don't want anything manufactured today and don't need any Super Bowl XXXIX logos littering the scenery. I want to slip through the part of Florida that television crews can't find, the part of Florida that time can't change.
Traveling on U.S. 17 through Orlando, Winter Park, Casselberry and Sanford, I whiz by an endless string of chain restaurants and small businesses locked into strip malls. If there was country charm here at some point, it's been subleased and now comes with a receipt.
In Barberville, I pull off to the side of the road. There's an old man sitting on a wooden stool alongside his white Ford F-150 pickup. The dirt floor around him is covered with smashed peanut shells. That's what he does here: sells peanuts, boiled and roasted.
"Up in this area, it's mostly old-timers, people that been here all their life," says John Koon, 71, in a pleasant Southern accent. "The population is inching this way, though. And it's all changing. Used to be a handshake was as good as a contract. That ain't good no more. You better have it in writin'. People's word just ain't good any more."
Koon is wearing denim overalls with a flannel shirt underneath. His white hair sprouts from underneath a black mesh trucker's cap, and Rush Limbaugh spouts right-wing wisdom from the truck radio.
We chat for awhile and occasionally a car or truck stops and Koon fills a plastic bag with peanuts, many of which were grown on his farm not far away. For most, he can tell whether they're originally from Florida or Georgia or South Carolina or, like him, Alabama.
"Just from their talkin'," he says. "Every place you go, they talk a little bit different."
This is what he's been doing for the past two decades, sipping coffee, eating and selling peanuts and smoking Dorals. For much of that time, though, his truck was parked under that palm tree across the street.
It turns out, the peanut business is a competitive one. A dozen years ago, Koon says, a competing salesman came over late at night and dumped diesel fuel on the spot of land where Koon sold his peanuts.
"Nobody knows that he done it except me," he says. "I know that he done it. They can't get rid of me, though. I'm still right here and I ain't leaving."
I'd always thought of rural areas as a bit friendlier, but Koon says that isn't the case. He says you can't afford to leave your doors unlocked at night. "If you're gonna walk off, you better keep everything tied down," he says.
It's clear Koon's an old cuss. He tells me about his struggles against local governments, who require a laundry list of permits just to sell a little ol' peanut. Koon talks about one official - "a New Jersey Yankee" - who met the blunt end of his anger a few years back.
"I told that (expletive), `You're talking to a South Alabama boy who ain't scared to stand up for his rights,'" Koon says, waving his arms in every direction. "I told him, `You're in the South now. You're not in Yankee land.'"
That much is clear.
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Back on the road, I can see orange groves in the rear-view mirror, but up ahead the scenery is covered with what looks like giant plastic garbage bags.
I'm passing through Pierson, a town that bills itself as the fern capital of the world. Because the plant needs shade, the ferneries are mostly covered with giant black blankets. This whole chunk of Central and Northern Florida is still recovering from last summer's hurricanes.
I see a sign that says Jacksonville is still more than 60 miles away. East Palatka isn't too far, though. In honor of our ultimate destination, I pipe some Lynyrd Skynyrd - rock gods in these parts - through the car stereo.
Sweeeet home, East Palatka! Where the skies are so blue!
Further up the road, I pull into a dirt parking lot in a town called Satsuma. The sign out front reads: Mema's Country Cookin'. It's the kind of place where the waitress not only knows everyone's name, she knows what he or she wants to order. Each table has a roll of paper towels on it.
Dave Gladfetter walks in and sits at the table closest to the door.
"The special?" asks the waitress, Lana Gonzalez.
"Yup," he tells her.
Gladfetter, 55, tells me he's about to go fishing out at Lake Broward but had to stop in for a quick bite.
"This is one of the few places left like this," he says. "I usually stop in whenever I can. You got to come in here tomorrow. They're having fried chicken. Everything's good, actually. It's just country, it's real homestyle. Plus, they decorate this place up real nice for Valentine's and Christmas. I like that."
Gladfetter goes on to tell me that two things rule these parts: football and NASCAR. On weekdays, people around here love the outdoors, love their fishing. But on Saturdays and Sundays, they're in front of their TVs watching whatever race or game they can find.
Today's special is 15-bean soup. "That's today's trivia questions," jokes Gonzalez, the waitress. "Can you name all 15 beans?"
Near the kitchen, there's a sign that reads: "This is not Burger King. You don't get it your way."
Don't believe it. I get the feeling that you can have it your way at Mema's - you just have to ask nicely.
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It's late in the afternoon by the time I pull into the Cheyenne Saloon. I had no idea it was such a big day here today. Earlier in the morning, the county agreed to extend the legal drinking hours for the bar past midnight on the night of the Super Bowl.
Joe Smith, the affable owner, is beaming over this news. Technically, this is a rough-and-tumble biker bar, but he's still hoping for a boost in business for the big game.
The Cheyenne Saloon holds the oldest active liquor license in the state, dating back more than 60 years. Smith has owned it for only two years but clearly loves his tattoo and bandana clientele.
There's a table near the front entrance with a sign above it that reads: "Reserved for Palatka Businessman Association, scooter trash, Moose members, yippes, old hippies, police officers and other fine customers."
"Most bikers nowadays aren't young hooligan, crotch-rocket types, you know what I mean?" Smith says. "They're doctors, lawyers, POWs, retirees, businessmen. I get them all in here."
Because of the warm weather, Florida bikers ride year-round, and they flock to places like Daytona every weekend. Putnam County alone has 1,200 registered motorcycles.
"People are different the further north you go," Smith says. "You can call them rednecks or trailer trash or whatever you want, but the difference is money. They'll work a lot cheaper, they can live a lot cheaper."
He doesn't finish his thought. A tired Pontiac Bonneville pulls up in front of the bar. Smith watches two people get out - they're both black - and then Smith turns and spots his young daughter.
"I don't let my girls cuss, I don't let them be racist either," he says. He then continues talking about the two customers.
"They're not (racial epithet). They're blacks. If they come in, they must have IDs. I tell everyone here, whether they're white or black, they're all coming to buy something. Everybody just better have an ID with them. And we don't want any kind of trouble."
Smith shows me around the bar, introduces me to the tattoo artist who works in a small room upstairs and tells me about the fund-raisers and bike rides he helps organize.
"People around here don't need as much. Not many people in Orlando or Tampa will just go out and buy a mobile home and be OK with that," he says. "But you know what, if you want me to travel on I-4, you have to pay me to live there. You can have that life."
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I'm back in the car, driving a short ways up the road and it occurs to me that at some point, I stopped being in Florida. At least, it feels that way.
Even the song on the radio - by Jacksonville's own Limp Bizkit - sounds nothing like Florida. Though it doesn't sound like North Florida either.
U.S. 17 runs parallel to the St. Johns River. I park and walk the old wooden planks of a fishing pier where I find three people, sitting in chairs, lazily monitoring a web of fishing lines glistening in the dusk sun. They haven't caught anything yet, but that isn't the point. The trio comes out here every day. They stare ahead quietly, occasionally saying, "You got one?"
I ask James Gunter how they're biting today, and he chuckles.
"If I could pull a case of beer out of there, I'd be all right," he says.
Gunter, 55, just moved up here from Orlando a couple of years ago. Seated next to him is Rose Young, 50, his girlfriend. She has been in North Florida her entire life.
"Basically, we're all kinfolk," she says, reeling in a dangling worm. "We get along here. I go somewhere else, I'm missing home right away and want to come back. So why would I even want to leave?"
While Gunter clearly enjoys "this slow-rolling life," he teases Young that he might need to visit the big city someday soon.
"Now and then I gotta get back to the bright lights," he says.
"What do you need out of some bright lights?" Young asks him.
"Some fun."
"I'm all the fun you need," she says, softly punching him in the arm.
Finally, Young's sister, Freda Cobb, 48, pulls a small crappie out of the water.
"Maybe we're gonna start getting some bites," Cobb says.
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After 170 miles and more than eight hours on the road, I pull my car off U.S. 17 for the final time. It's dark out, and I'm in downtown Jacksonville, looking at a sparkling riverfront skyline.
A giant moon hangs low in the distance.
In my head, I'm cataloging everything I saw today, everything that lives on old U.S. 17: the jai alai fronton in Casselberry and the dog track in Duval County; gas stations where there is no pay-at-the-pump and the red bricks of Stetson University; a sign for bear crossing (or maybe it was wolverine crossing?) and World War I statues that guard either side of a bridge in Palatka; bumper stickers for Bush and others featuring the Confederate flag; still another read: "Government sprawl, the real danger."
I feel bad that the characters I met along the way seemed so stereotypical. They were caricatures of the South and that wasn't necessarily what I set out to find. But maybe that's not so bad.
People honked and waved as they drove by an old man selling peanuts.
At the diner, a customer walked in and a waitress said, "Howya doin' Dave?"
At the biker bar, an old man with a bandana walked in, waved a middle finger while smiling and saying hello. At the lake, a man offered me beer from a brown paper bag.
It's not the Florida that others might be envisioning from their high-rises in New York or Los Angeles, but it's still the Sunshine State. It's still its own Florida.
Midway through On the Road, there's a passage by Kerouac that reads: "This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do."
I like that. I think it fits this road. Maybe it fits all roads.
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© 2005, The Orlando Sentinel ( Fla.).