Pioneer, Go Home!

The Florida of this book is kind of the Florida I thought I would be moving to when my wife and my daughter told me I was moving to Florida. I figured my wife and I would buy a 1950s-style concrete block house with an angled roof and a carport, set back a ways from the highway, with a big oak tree in the front yard and two big trees in the back yard, each tree with its shawls of Spanish moss. We would have a front porch big enough for some lawn chairs, and we would have breakfast there and at the end of the day watch the sun set in the semi-tropical sky.

That is not the Florida we wound up settling in, not the 1959 version of the book. Not at all.

The Florida of Pioneer, Go Home! existed at one time. The book is based on a factual event that happened from the State of Florida’s decision to put a highway from the mainland to Pine Island. Construction required removal of some underwater land. That land was piled up and made level on either side of the highway. People settled on the fill land. The State of Florida tried to get the people to move away. The people sued, and won.

That Florida, and the courts of that time, don’t exist any more. Well, maybe you would find a facsimile if you got away from construction along the coasts. But even in the interior you would have to look for old Florida.

Pop Kwimper has the right idea about people vs. the government.

“Oh, I get it,” Pop said. “I’ve run into this before. The government is telling you folks what to do, instead of you telling the government what to do. It don’t do no good to let the government get out of hand and uppity.”

My wife and I do not live in a little concrete block house set back from the highway. We live in a gated community. There are rules, and I knew that when we moved. There is a homeowners association. My wife is in her third year as a member of the board. She has been a general member, treasurer, and this year is president of the board. I don't go to board meetings. The board does not need me telling other residents that if they want to complain so much they should run for the  board and fix what they don't agree with. Some of the neighbors don't have the sense God gave a manatee.  

(Pioneer, Go Home! Was written by Richard P. Powell and published in 1959.)