The following article appeared in Florida, a weekly insert of the Orlando Sentinel, on Sunday, December 13, 1998, p. 22. I thought it was particularly relevant to this site because it deals with so many of the regions (St. George Island, St. George causeway, downtown Apalachicola, Apalachicola Bay, Franklin County) and topics (raw oysters, bars, revolvers, fisherman, lovers) of "Little Sweetheart," and it captures the atmosphere of the area and corroborates my claim that the area is now less appealing than it was at the time the film was made.
Mike Thomas' e-mail address is resnative@aol.com. The illustration is by Shinko R. Floyd.
Many years ago, back before the advent of common sense, I woke one foggy morning in a strange bed with a marching-band headache and the taste of an old ashtray into which beer had been spilled two days earlier.
Beside me was a beautiful woman who I vaguely recalled made a living by hauling seafood from Louisiana in a tractor-trailer. Next to her on the night stand was a .357-caliber Magnum revolver.
I flashed back to a small bar. It was last call and we were about to leave when some big men with blue jeans, fat leather belts and plaid shirts walked in. They said the hell with this last call nonsense. They wanted to top off their tanks.
The bartender, so anxious to leave 15 minutes ago, went over and locked the door and proclaimed: "This is now a private party."
So I drank even more on top of what was already too much. And then I wound up in a car going some insane speed on a narrow island road. My motel was way back on the mainland, so my newfound friend brought me to her place. I arrived in a harmless, slobbering state so there was no need for the gun.
And now it was morning and I was thinking: Oh God, I need an oyster.
That is what you did on Apalachicola Bay. You drank to excess, woke up and ate 'em raw.
Life here fascinated me. Rough men with little education made their living scraping the bay bottom with wooden tongs, pulling up oysters like 18th-century serfs tilling the fields. They worked hard, drank hard, fought hard; some smacked their wives hard. You watched what you said because no telling what they were carrying in their trucks.
They lived in Franklin County. The county seat was Apalachicola, which sat right on its namesake bay. It was not a place for outsiders, who had no reason to come here anyway, not since Interstate 10 was completed far north of town.
Apalachicola was falling apart. Buildings and homes crumbled; too many years of sun, salt and hurricanes, and too few coats of plaster and paint. Every time the oyster crop dwindled, the fishermen lined up for government assistance. When I interviewed them, I wore ragged jeans, put a tin of Copenhagen in my pocket and usually bummed a cigarette before beginning with the questions.
The place was run by the seafood dealers, who, rumor had it, kept out other industries because they didn't want competition for their low-wage workers. It was the dealers who waltzed into the bar that night and ordered it open at closing time.
If there was value to be found out here it was on St. George Island, which separated the bay from the Gulf of Mexico. It was prime beach real estate, protected from the condominium builders only by its remote location. It was there that I did my partying. But the island was being discovered, and the inevitable battle over growth began.
Enter me, environmental reporter for The Orlando Sentinel, who arrived to document it all for readers in the big city.
That was in the mid-1980s.
Now I am back, wife and baby in tow, sober as the Amish. And what I am seeing is far more bizarre than anything I saw after several shots of Jack Daniels and a half-dozen beer chasers.
Because here in downtown Apalachicola I see boutiques where you can buy potpourri and cute little Christmas decorations and $100 saute pans. And there are cafes with flavored coffees, and of course, one of those restored inns with the tiny rooms and four-poster beds.
A fisherman would have to tong oysters for a month to shop in one of these places.
And the homes, once dumps, are listed in real estate magazines as historical treasures waiting for you to buy and restore. Prices are what you would pay in College Park.
I go to a seafood shop, looking to buy some fresh mullet, and they don't have any. They have mahi-mahi.
This place is not Apalachicola.
People who grew up here can't even afford to live in town anymore.
It used to be that invaders conquered new territory with spears or guns. Now they simply price the invaded out of their land.
The same thing is happening all along the Panhandle. Old coastal towns and fishing villages are being discovered and bought up by people seeking to escape big cities.
Is that bad? Beats condo-mania. And maybe it beats the slow rot that was eating away at the town.
Apalachicola could no more survive than could the dusky seaside sparrow or the Florida panther. The last blow was the ban on commerical netting.
Now the town is being turned into a quaint seaside portrait, a vision of a fishing village through the eyes of people who know nothing about real fishing villages.
I drive over the bridge to St. George Island, which reverberates with the sounds of hammers and saws.
Off to the east there is an army of small boats with men working their oyster tongs like giant chopsticks. My wife takes a picture to put in our baby album, under Carly's first vacation, so she will know what the fishermen of Apalachicola once looked like.
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File: thomas.htm
Updated: December 17, 1998
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