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Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland - Softcover

Barry, Dave

 
9781101982617: Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1101982616 ISBN 13: 9781101982617
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

A New York Times bestseller—a brilliantly funny exploration of the Sunshine State from the man who knows it best: Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Barry.

We never know what will happen next in Florida. We know only that, any minute now, something will. Every few months, Dave Barry gets a call from some media person wanting to know, “What the hell is wrong with Florida?” Somehow, the state's acquired an image as a subtropical festival of stupid, and as a loyal Floridian, Dave begs to differ.

Join him as he goes in hunt of the legendary Skunk Ape; hobnobs with the mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs; and visits Cassadaga, the psychic capital of the world, to have his dog's aura read (apparently, she's "very spiritual"). Hitch a ride for the non-stop thrills of alligator-wrestling ("the gators display the same fighting spirit as a Barcalounger"), the hair-raising spectacle of a clothing-optional bar in Key West, and the manly manliness of the Machine Gun Experience in Miami.

It's the most hilarious book yet from “the funniest damn writer in the whole country” (Carl Hiaasen, and he should know). By the end, you'll have to admit that whatever else you might think about Florida—you can never say it's boring.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

From 1983 to 2004, Dave Barry wrote a weekly humor column for The Miami Herald, which in 1988 won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. He is the author of more than thirty books, including such bestsellers as the nonfiction Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer Is Much Faster), You Can Date Boys When You're Forty, and I'll Mature When I'm Dead; the novels Big Trouble, Tricky Business, and Insane City; the very successful YA Peter Pan novels (with Ridley Pearson); and his Christmas story The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog. Two of his books--Big Trouble and Dave Barry's Guide to Guys--have been turned into movies. For a while, his life was even a television series, Dave's World, but then it was canceled. The series. Not the life. For many years, Dave was also a guitarist with the late, infamous, and strangely unlamented band the Rock Bottom Remainders.

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A Brief History of Florida

For millions of years, Florida was uninhabited, because it was geographically remote, not to mention several hundred feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic, which meant insurance rates were very high. Gradually, however, Global Rising caused Florida to emerge from the ocean, and today the state is above sea level except during certain months.

The first humans arrived in Florida twenty thousand years ago, having crossed the land bridge from Asia and made the arduous trek across North America in search of Spring Break. These early inhabitants left primitive archaeological -artifacts that can still be seen today, including the world’s oldest-known stone bong.

In time, the population of Florida started to grow—-probably, scientists now believe, as a result of people having sex with each other. Eventually, these indigenous peoples spread out across Florida and formed Native American tribes, including the Tequestas, Mohicans, Cheyennes, Seminoles, Gators, Presbyterians and Kansas City Chiefs. These tribes established thriving, sophisticated societies based on hitting things with rocks until they became edible. Sometimes the tribes would fight wars, but after maybe fifteen minutes they would stop because of the humidity.

Thus Florida was a prosperous and peaceful place until the early sixteenth century when the first Europeans arrived in the form of Spanish explorers who had been lured by the legend of the Pájaro Temprano, which told of a mythical place where, if you were seated before 4:30 p.m., you got a steeply discounted entrée. The Spaniards named the new land La Pascua de la Florida (literally, “The Sunshine State”) and claimed it for Spain, seeing as how there was nobody there except for several hundred thousand natives.

In 1763, Spain and England decided to end the Seven Years’ War because it started in 1756 and they couldn’t agree on a new name for it. In the peace settlement, Spain gave Florida to England as part of a package that also included 167 trillion mosquitoes. England, seeking to link Florida with its colonies to the north, erected a two-hundred-mile-long line of orange highway-construction barrels, which can still be seen today.

For the next two decades, English settlers attempted to engage in agriculture, which mainly consisted of fending off alligators with hoes. Finally in 1783, England said the hell with it and gave Florida back to Spain, reserving the right for English citizens to return on holiday and lie on the beach until their skin was the color of Hawaiian Punch.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States was forming. The Spanish authorities tried to keep the Americans out of Florida, but settlers from Georgia kept coming across the border and erecting primitive log Waffle Houses. Eventually, Spain gave up and tried to give Florida back to England, which, of course, refused, as did France, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Australia, Egypt, Japan and the Republic of Fiji. Finally, in 1821, Florida became an American territory, which it remains to this day in many areas.

At first there were land disputes between the U.S. government and the Native American tribes, but these were eventually settled via a treaty under which the government got the land and the tribes got to leave. In 1845, Florida became the twenty-seventh state in the union, choosing Tallahassee as its capital, which got a good laugh from the other states because Tallahassee is located in Alabama.

In those days, the Florida economy was strictly agricultural, with the main crop being cotton, which was grown on large plantations and gathered into bales, which were then transported to seaports, where they were thrown away because of mildew. This was hard work, but much of the labor was provided by slaves, who were always willing to lend a helping hand in exchange for not being beaten to death.

In 1865, the Civil War broke out, although Florida did not find out about it until 1883, when it was too late to really get involved. Meanwhile, the state’s farmers had given up on cotton and were growing oranges, which were popular in the Northern states. One fateful day, a Florida farmer decided, as a prank, to ship up some grapefruit. At the time, nobody in Florida considered grapefruit to be edible; it was used exclusively as a weapon. But, incredibly, Northerners actually ate it, apparently believing that anything tasting that bad must be healthy. This marketing breakthrough paved the way for such “health foods” as tofu, which is actually a waste by-product of the manufacture of linoleum, and  quinoa, which gets its name from the Bolivian word for “gravel.”

January 1, 1900, marked the dawn of the twentieth century, although because of a broken telegraph wire Florida did not find out about this until July 18, 1903. For the next decade or so, the state remained fairly isolated, although it played a pivotal role in World War I on November 10, 1918, when American biplanes—in an action that was widely condemned by international human-rights organizations—dropped several dozen grapefruit on Germany, which surrendered immediately.

World War I was followed by the Roaring Twenties, a time when Americans went to speakeasies, where they drank bathtub gin until they were so impaired that they believed it would be a sound financial strategy to invest, sight unseen, in real estate located at or below sea level in a tropical -cyclone zone. This resulted in the first Florida Land Boom, during which Miami went from being a sleepy village to a thriving metropolis, until the Hurricane of 1926 turned it back into a sleepy village, but with a lot more kindling.

This was followed by the Great Depression, which was very bad in Florida.

q: How bad was it?

a: Some families resorted to eating grapefruit.

The only ray of economic hope during the thirties was the growth of Florida’s tourism industry, which was boosted by the construction of such “only in Florida” attractions as Alligator World, Alligator Land, Alligator Swamp, Alligator Jungle, Alligator Jamboree, Alligator Rodeo, Alligato-Rama and Alligators Out the Wazoo. These attractions consisted of -alligators—some of which were clearly deceased—lying motionless in odiferous muck for days at a time. But tourists flocked to them anyway, because back then people were a lot stupider than they are today. (This also explains the popularity of the yo-yo.)

The next major event was World War II, during which Florida, once it found out what was going on, was totally on the American side.

In 1956, the federal government began work on the Interstate Highway System, an ambitious project intended to realize the dream that someday, thanks to a vast network of safe, well-engineered, high-speed roads, Americans in formerly isolated communities would be able to get into their cars and, within a matter of hours, stop at a random exit to pee. Before long, millions of Americans were using the Interstate system to reach Florida, where—thanks to the modern miracle of air-conditioning—they were able to remain indoors until it was time to go home.

Florida also got a big economic boost when the federal government decided to locate the space program in Cape Canaveral, which was an ideal location for launching rockets because over the centuries hurricanes had blown away most of the gravity.

In the sixties, Florida’s population grew rapidly as large numbers of retirees moved down from the north, seeking an affordable place to grow lengthy nose hairs and drive 14 miles an hour in the left lane. At the same time waves of Cuban refugees, fleeing the Castro regime, settled in the Miami area...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1101982616
ISBN 13 
9781101982617
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
240
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

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