[-empyre-] Re: the vibe

[Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis@gmail.com>]

quick snapshot from NE Florida, USA.
i was driving South through Alachua County Florida today, heading  
towards Gainesville - the location of the University of Florida.  
Coincidentally, Tom Petty, the rock star, was being interviewed by  
Terry Gross on on NPR. Tom Petty grew up in Gainesville.
Growing up in NE Florida (Jacksonville specifically), i hadn't been  
to that particular area in probably 12 years. i was visiting various  
historical markers relating to colonialism and the 1960s civil rights  
movement. His father operated a grocery in a "black part of town."
On County Road 241 South, "American Girl" played on 89.9 FM, the  
local NPR station, between discussions of Petty's professional career  
as a musician.
It's a mostly rural area with rolling hills, sugar cane, grazing  
pastures, some inexplicably large houses with gates and lots of  
trailer homes. Quite pastoral.
I had just passed the Florida State Prison, a Maximum Security  
facility near Raiford, FL. That's the prison where Ted Bundy was  
executed in 1989.
Later that day, driving North from the Matanzas Inlet, the site of a  
Spanish massacre of French colonists in the 17th century, i listened  
to another NPR documentary on super max prison facilities and its  
horrific effects on the inmates subjected to them.
I was there because of the undertold stories of the 1960s civil  
rights movement in NE Florida. Something i had never learned, despite  
having been there tens of times, and knowing more than i should about  
events that happened more than 400 years ago -- conquistadors,  
franciscans and timucua. Hundreds of people were arrested and beaten  
in the early 60s, and today mostly ignored. The former Monson Motor  
Lodge in St. Augustine (just South of Jacksonville - a "quant"  
historic beach town), where owner James Brock infamously poured acid  
on demonstrators protesting the segregationist policies by occupying  
the lodge pool in 1964, is now a Hilton hotel. The picture of that  
event helped solidify the civil rights act of that year. No historic  
marker. But the hotel blends in well with the mixture of historical  
colonial and contemporary beach-front architecture.
"Oh yeah, all right. Take it easy baby, make it last all night."