Tom’s Big Picture

The family and I are heading out for a little vacation the rest of this week, to the so-called “Redneck Riviera” of the Florida upper gulf coast. I thought I would share a story regarding this.

A few years ago I was discussing the real estate business with a friend of mine, an older man who had inherited a family fortune and seemed to be doing well playing the Florida real estate game. This friend of mine was from up North, but the generally likeable kind of Yankee, an unassuming Midwestern WASP from Chicago (a town historically known as a hotbead of Copperheads, and this would be especially true among the old Protestant families).

Anyway, he was sharing with me the dynamics of Florida real estate, from a sociological point of view. He basically said that there are these small little fishing villages up and down the coasts of Florida filled with likable locals and a few WASP snowbirds who prefer a small-town fishing village environment for vacation to the tasteless glitz of somewhere like Palm Beach. Eventually, though, he said, the developers come in, buy up the place, build ugly condos and lots of commercial space, which then attracts the generally distasteful population of snowbirds from places like New York and New Jersey, who ruin the zen-like calm co-existence of the locals and the genteel WASPs. So the key to small town survival and the preservation of the small-town feel, in his opinion, was enough local restrictions of development and building such that the big-city developers find buying land diseconomic. In an ironic twist, public advocacy of liberal environmentalism is really a front for the very conservative goal of keeping distasteful and unpleasant people and elements out of the idyllic fishing village.

I found this very interesting. I next shared with him that my family enjoyed vacationing in Destin, that the town tended to attract young families from the South and was definitely not distasteful like Palm Beach or Miami. Not only that, the beaches are prettier.

His comment: “Destin, well I guess it’s nice, but it’s full of crackers.” No, he wasn’t talking about Ritz or saltines. He means crackers in the pejorative sense of “poor white southerners”. I think I resemble that remark, and was surprised he would say it in front of me, knowing my background. But, then again, Yankees aren’t known for tact, even I suppose otherwise likeable ones from the Midwest.

And, with that, this cracker will see all y’all next week.