My Trip to Gainesville, Part 1

This is a story about my trip to Gainesville on February 4. It’s going to have to be split into 2-parts because it is not just about the Gator basketball game I attended, it also encompasses the tragic crash 0n I-75 at the end of January. That’s in this part. The next one will be about Old Florida - Cross Creek and Micanopy. While this will touch briefly on Cross Creek, it won’t say anything about Micanopy, which is the oldest inland settlement in the state. This post will be heavy with photos. Most can be enlarged.

HISTORY AND THE OLD SOUTH

Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve had a keen interest in history. Growing up in New Jersey, it was impossible to miss because the area is rich with stories of days gone by. Much of the Revolutionary War was fought in my own back yard, for instance, and before that was the French & Indian War of the 1750s.

While libraries are teeming with books on history, my affection for it lays somewhere else, deep within my mind. I seek the presence of history. I like to sense it all around me. Although not an obsession, I often wonder, as I walk about, who took the same steps one hundred years before me; a thousand and more years earlier, and I yearn to learn, because I can only guess as far back as our history books tell us. I know there’s more than that.

Growing up, it was easy to explore our heritage. Where I lived was just northwest of Princeton, and that made it somewhat simple to visit historical sites and museums from Philadelphia to New York City and everywhere in between. Every so often, I’d hear news about the skeletal remains of a Redcoat and his musket being discovered in the rafters of an old house while it was being renovated. I lived in several homes that dated back to a generation or two before the Revolutionary War. The church where my late grandfather preached was established in 1733.

Some of you may find me morbid for this, but I’ve always liked to walk through old cemeteries. I’d look at the names and dates on the tombstones and wonder who they were in life. What did they do? Were they friendly? Who did they leave behind? In my own hometown of Flemington, there is a small tract of land up the street from where I lived known as the Case Family Burial Ground. Several members of the Case family are resting there, along with a Delaware Indian chief named Tuccamirgan, who died in 1750. The grave was dug deep enough for him to be placed in a sitting position, facing east.

While I am quite intrigued by my humble beginnings, I am just as fascinated with the American Civil War. Of course, being a Yankee and all, I never could get a firm grasp on the Confederacy until I moved to Florida. We were never taught to hate southerners, but we were aware that many southerners were raised to hate northerners — so we thought. It wasn’t all that many years ago when the ‘colored folk’ used separate water fountains and bathrooms in the south. When I moved to the Orlando area in ‘81, I didn’t know what to expect. To me, the Civil War ended over a century ago, so there was nothing more to it than history. Every so often, I’ll hear about how the war has never ended and that the south will one day rise again, but for what reason? To what end? Instead, I like to focus on the rich culture of the south, and that’s something I was never taught in school. It’s not anything that could be taught in school. You must live it in order to feel it.

I’ve been in central Florida for 31 years now, longer than I lived up north and I’ve got to say, I like it here. No, that doesn’t mean I’d ever give up on my home town or state, and Orlando’s not known as a bastion of Old Florida, but there’s definitely something romantic about pockets of the south. I guess you could say the bug caught me during a screening of Gone With The Wind during my freshman year of high school in, of all places, New Jersey.

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the “Old South.” Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind…

- From the opening of the film Gone with the Wind (1939)

While I don’t sense anything genuinely historical about Orlando, I have found the ‘Deep South’ — through north Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi — to be both mythical and mystical. There’s no way to explain it in a sentence or two. It’s something that has to grow on you. The bug next caught me when I flew to New Orleans on a private jet back in the early 90s. I felt something tragic about the city but I could never pin it on anything. As festive as the place was, an innate sense of sadness always seemed to be right around the corner, on the other side of the wrought iron gate.

I’ve since been back to New Orleans, but I’ve also traveled to and visited other towns from here to Houston. One of my favorite stops was Natchez, Mississippi, rife with tales of the Civil War. This story, however, is not about the war between the states, this is about one state, and it’s called Old Florida, home of majestic magnolias, stately live oaks and cypress trees jutting up from the water. However, there are two issues to cover first. 

Many of you are familiar with Nika1. She is a frequent contributor on my blog and a good friend. About a month ago, she asked me if I’d be interested in going to a live Gator (University of Florida) basketball game with her. Yes! Of course I would! I’ve been to several football games, but never basketball, something I’ve always wanted to do. I first went to see Nika1 in late September of 2010, when she invited me up for a football game. While there, she took me around the neighborhood. That included the rural area where she lives, and where her family has lived for many generations. Once again, I sensed the old south, but in this case, it was Old Florida, and its roots were deep in history.

Three weeks ago, on February 4, I drove up to the house she shares with Ali Rose, her beautiful Australian Shepherd. She had plans for me, too. After the basketball game, we were going to go to Cross Creek, made famous by The Yearling, the 1938 novel written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. She won the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1939. Fascinating, I thought. Very much so.

ANATOMY OF A TRAGEDY

Almost a week before my drive, a terrible accident happened on I-75, in the middle of Paynes Prairie. 11 people died. To help you understand Paynes Prairie, it is generally a swampy area, but the weather has been exceedingly dry in Florida, and in this state, droughts breed brush fires, and lots of them. Many burn out of control.

Burned Brush in Background

On the way up to the game on US-441, Nika1 told me what happened. 441 is east of 75 and they run parallel to each other. The fire started east of 441. The first series of accidents began just before midnight, on January 28. Smoke and fog wafted west across the highways and the first 911 call came in at 11:53:14 from I-75 to report the heavy smoke and fog. Moments later, another 911 caller reported hearing accidents. Then, another one came in saying they saw the accidents. Moments later, all traffic was stopped.

Those accidents were not fatal, but it prompted the Florida Highway Patrol to shut down the interstate by 12:45 am. At 3:21 am, the decision was made to reopen it, and the rest is history. By 4:00 am, you couldn’t see past your nose. Heading southbound, a semi had stopped in the right lane and a Dodge pickup truck plowed into it, followed by a Ford Expedition. The two Ford occupants were able to escape through the back just before it burst into flames.  The occupants in the pickup truck were on their way to a funeral, but sadly, all three family members perished.

By now, frantic calls were coming into the Alachua County Communications Center. Of course, when troopers, sheriff’s deputies and emergency vehicles arrived, they couldn’t see, either.

In the northbound lanes, two church vans were heading to Georgia. One van crashed into the rear corner of a semi stopped in the middle lane and it sliced through the van, killing five family members. One 15-year-old girl survived. The occupants of the other van survived. In front of the semi was a Toyota Matrix sandwiched between that one and one in front of it. The young couple in the Matrix died.

Meanwhile, another semi had stopped in the middle southbound lane. It was hit by a Dodge pickup and the driver was able to escape with minor injuries. Then, a Pontiac Grand Prix smashed into the back of that pickup and the driver died.

Had the drivers of those semis pulled off of the road instead of stopping in the lanes, would lives have been saved? You bet, but it will be a long time before the investigation into this tragedy is sorted out. That includes why FHP decided to reopen the interstate after it was closed.

What surprised me was that the fire burned east of 441. Nika1 told me another person died on that highway, but it didn’t make headlines like the big one.

The above photo represents what Paynes Prairie would look like during normal weather conditions.

GO GATORS!

As much of a horror as the accident was, there was a basketball game to attend, and the Gators intended to win it. This was, after all, why I took the trip to begin with, not including my visit with Nika1. The team was playing Vanderbilt. We had gotten there in plenty of time to nestle into our seats, where brand new t-shirts were nicely folded for spectators. Yes, FREE! Blue in color, the back had the Texaco logo and some type, and the front said “ROWDY yet refined REPTILE” with the Gator green and orange logo. It was a great game to watch and it was made better by the Gator’s victory. The final score was 73-65. The pictures can do the talking…

The first photo is the University of Florida Century Tower in Gainesville. Begun in 1953, it is 157 feet (48 m) tall.

Part 2 will come next week and it will take you through Old Florida and a Michael J. Fox movie. Mostly, it will be a selection of photographs I took.

Jobs Well Done

I watched a movie online the other day that was filmed in Ireland. I didn’t recognize one of the vehicles, so I Googled Irish cars and came up with nothing, as I suspected, but one of the search results led me to a question about the positioning of floor pedals, particularly with regard to left and right side driving, meaning which side the steering wheel is on. Do the pedals change positions? No, they don’t. It’s CBA the world over - Clutch, Brake, Accelerator, left to right. Some things never change. Some things do. Sometimes, it’s for the better.

Left-side and right-side driving made me think again about living in a right-handed world when I am quite left-handed. Of course, left-handed people must learn to adapt, and the older I’ve gotten, the more adept I’ve become, but it still doesn’t go without notice. There will forever be minor issues, all of which right-handed people take for granted every day.

As many of you know by now, I spent years in the design trade before transitioning into writing. I still like to dabble in design work, and in most cases, I do it gratis to help out friends or friends of friends. Since I am a creative sort, I use more of the right side of my brain than some, such as mathematicians, logicians and the like who conceptualize more in algorithms and computations. That’s from the left-side. It’s more of a black & white world, where mine is more in shades of gray and multiple colors. I have always thought more abstractly. Think different, so to speak. God knows, that describes me to a “T”.

When I moved to the Orlando area in 1981, I quickly got a job working for an advertising agency. I did everything by hand while sitting comfortably at my rather large art board. By the late 80s, rumors began floating that very much startled me and the others I worked with. To be blunt, I was afraid of change. We were going to swap in our art boards and conventional methods of design for brand-spanking new computers. I had absolutely no knowledge of the intimidating gizmos that were supposed to simplify our jobs, and I had no idea how I would adjust. I mean, the way we plodded our trade had been done the same way for thousands of years, with adjustments, of course, but a t-square has been around a long time, for instance. This was going to be one giant change I wasn’t quite ready for, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Besides, I was never one to walk away from a new way of thinking. Think different, after all.

In 1990, I sat in front of my first computer. It was a Macintosh. Wow! This is like playing Space Invaders and I’m getting paid to do it, was my first thought. In other words, while initially apprehensive, I found this new tool to be something I could learn to understand and love, and I quickly warmed up to it. It grew on me. It came with desktop publishing software called Aldus PageMaker, and the newspaper layouts that normally took an hour to create were condensed to about 15-minutes. Those of us who acclimated well became more productive and within a month’s time, I had that computer saying “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid you can’t do that” whenever someone made an error or hit the wrong key. Once I grasped the world of computers, I never looked back. Today marks 21-years of experience in front of a keyboard and I have only one person to thank - Steve Jobs.

While Bill Gates and Microsoft ventured into the fray of consumer-friendly operating systems, meaning personal computers, in 1992, Windows 3.1 was never close to what Apple started in 1984 with the advent of the Mac OS. Mac was the first to use a completely graphical operating system instead of a command line. Remember those days of DOS commands? C:\enter. Macs were a dream, and they weren’t prone to crashing. Mac was completely user friendly and that’s what made my switch from the art board to a computer so smooth. I compared Mac to Windows operating systems as the difference between cutting through soft or hard butter. In those early days, I fell in love with Mac computers and it’s a love that’s never left me.

Today, Mac computers still have the edge in the graphic design business, but Windows has come a long, long way. As stable as Mac OS has been, Windows 7 is just about as good, so why would I continue to give Mac the edge? The answer is simple, because, no matter what, Windows has always played catch-up to Mac. So has the rest of the world, and for that, I give credit to Steve Jobs for what he did with his creation - Apple. From the mouse on up to the iPad, of which I am a proud owner, it was Jobs who had much to do with what we take for granted today. The first smart phone was an Apple. The rest of the tech-world scrambled. That’s what Jobs did. He was a creative genius and a visionary, able to design and market, and if I could only harness 10% of his mind, I would be one, too. That’s not going to happen, so instead, all I can do is say, thank you, Steve. While some things never change, you dramatically changed the world and the way we think. Thank you for making art, design, writing, and every day living easier for me. You were Apple. You were Mac. You dreamed in black, white, shades of gray, and every color in the rainbow.

While the more the world changes, the more it remains the same, I’m glad you got to see the life altering changes you made, and like Thomas Edison, you will live on in perpetuity because of it. And that’s something that will never change.

Rick Rescorla - A True American Hero

This is not about the Anthonys. This is about someone who should never be forgotten.

Originally published in 2006, this is my account of but one man. I plan on posting this every September 11, in honor of Rick and all who perished that day. I will do this until I can do it no more.

Rick Rescorla was born in England. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1963 and retired as a colonel in 1990. Rick was a bonafide hero of the Vietnam war. In 1965, at the la Drang Valley battles, Lt. Gen. Hal Moore described him as “the best platoon leader I ever saw.” Rescorla’s men nicknamed him “Hard Core” for his bravery in battle. His heroism was documented and highlighted in the 2002 movie “We Were Soldiers” from the book “We Were Soldiers Once… and Young” co-written by Gen. Moore.

Since 1985, he worked in corporate security, subsequently becoming Vice President of Security for Morgan-Stanley/Dean-Witter, the largest tenant in the World Trade Center. After the 1993 attack, he trained all employees to evacuate the building. He maintained a structured, quarterly drill carried out by all staff to orderly get out. He is the man who predicted 9/11. Please see The Richard C. Rescorla Memorial Foundation.

On that fateful day, he safely evacuated all 2,800 Morgan-Stanley/Dean-Witter employees but himself and a few of his security staff. After doing his job, he returned to rescue others still inside. These were not even his people. They were all his people. He was last seen heading up the stairs of the tenth floor of the collapsing WTC 2. His remains have not been recovered. He left a wife and two children. This man is widely recognized as being solely responsible for saving over 3,000 lives. Is it of any importance that he became an American citizen after Vietnam?

Rick Rescorla is but one hero who perished that fateful day, but what a man he was and what a soul he has that will and should live forever in the hearts and minds of all who cherish freedom. All over the world.

See also: Calegion Post 149

MICHAEL NAGLE / NEW YORK TIMES / REDUX

 The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which holds approximately 2,000 pieces from the original WTC site in a hangar at JFK airport, has recently stepped up its efforts to find permanent homes for the artifacts. Any town or city, anywhere in the world, can apply for permission to take away a piece from the collection and build their own memorial around it. In this photo, a piece destined to become part of a memorial in York, Pennsylvania is secured to the bed of a trailer.