Editor’s Note: This winter, Greenfield Recorder sports columnist Chip Ainsworth has been traveling the southern part of the United States. This is the last in a series of Saturday columns about his travel experiences.
Early one morning, I had breakfast with Crosby Hunt and Deborah Anderson at their home on Cedar Key. Anderson made the waffles and bacon, and the maple syrup was supplied by Round Mountain Sugar House in Northfield.
Cedar Key, Fla. is 130 miles north of Tampa Bay and 50 miles west of Gainesville. Residents putt around in golf carts and get their caffeine fixes at the Daily Grind. Tourists get history lessons from Sue Colson at the town’s welcome center.
Cedar Key is at the end of the road, and according to a study by Levy County, its residents most value their friends and neighbors, and the town’s relaxing lifestyle.
On sunny days when the tide’s up, Cedar Key’s quaint shops with pelicans roosting on piers is alluring, but at low tide, the shoreline is a muddy quagmire.
My friends are retired theater professors from Middle Tennessee State University, and Cedar Key struck them as an affordable artist’s colony. Several years ago, they bought a run-down house and fixed it up, laid in new floors and painted the walls two shades of turquoise.
Hunt freelances for the Cedar Key Beacon and helps coach the Sharks high school baseball team. He’s fond of telling friends that until the late 19th century, Cedar Key’s prime industry was making pencils “… until they cut down all the cedar trees.”
Anderson spearheaded the effort to ban plastic straws, and both are on the National Audubon Society’s list of who to call when birds are tangled in fishing line.
“Pelicans only weigh eight pounds,” Anderson said. “I cradle them and hold their feet, and put my index finger through their bills, and Crosby untangles the line.”
Injured birds are sent to the University of Florida’s veterinary hospital, which gives out bumper stickers that say, “My Cat Goes to Florida.” Or “My Dog,” but not “My Pelican.”
One difference between this trip and my visit a year ago was the “For Sale” sign in their yard, a grudging surrender to Mother Nature.
Hunt estimated they make 150 trips a year to Gainesville for medical appointments, watch a performance at the Hippodrome Theatre, or simply to grocery shop at Publix.
It wasn’t the long treks or the crushing summer heat that got to them, nor was it the bugs or the sense of desolation when the snowbirds leave town.
It was the hurricanes.
Up north a polar vortex can burst pipes, but it won’t blow the roof off a house.
A hurricane hadn’t made landfall near Cedar Key for nearly a decade when they first arrived, but now there’s been three hurricanes in three years. Hurricane Hermine was a fastball down the middle; Hurricane Irma brushed the outside corner and the Category 5 Hurricane Michael roared past on its way to devastating the Florida panhandle.
The night Hurricane Hermine hit Cedar Key, Hunt was supposed to meet me the next day in Gainesville to watch the University of Massachusetts play the University of Florida at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Instead, my flight was cancelled and they were trudging through 2 feet of water inside their home while the dogs sat on the couch totally perplexed.
“Hermine, we lost 2,000 books,” said Cedar Key librarian Nancy Anderson. “Before Irma and Michael, we evacuated every book. Women prisoners from Ocala came and helped.”
Levy County is about the size of Franklin and Hampshire counties, and its roads are straight, narrow and lethal. According to the Florida Department of Transportation, 67 people were killed in auto crashes on county roads between 2015 and 2017. Drivers barrel along Route 24 at 75 mph, and speed strips at the junctions of Route 19 in Otter Creek and Route 27 in Bronson help remind them to slow down for stoplights.
Deborah Anderson had mentioned that rock ’n’ roll Hall of Famer Bo Diddley is buried in Bronson, and I drove onto the cemetery’s dirt road looking for the red guitar she said was on his tombstone.
A black pick-up was parked on the far end of the cemetery and its owner stood outside the truck. He saw me and waved, and pointed at the granite headstone and flat marble grave surrounded by fresh flowers.
“My son,” he said. His sunglasses weren’t large enough to hide his bloodshot eyes.
“What happened?” I asked, and he answered in spurts.
“He was shot … up the road … a police sergeant … his partner died, too.”
The story had made national news. On April 19 last year, 29-year-old Gilchrist County Sheriff’s Sergeant Noel Ramirez Jr. and 25-year-old Deputy Taylor Lindsey sat down for lunch at the Ace China Restaurant in Trenton, Fla., about 35 miles west of Gainesville.
According to the 132-page investigative report, 59-year-old John Highnote saw their cruiser, got out of his Jeep and shot them through the restaurant window. He returned to his vehicle and killed himself.
Noel Ramirez Sr. said he visits his son “Noelito” three times a day. His wife, Sonia, Noel’s mother, sat in the truck and stared straight ahead.
Last month, a cop from northern Florida was killed in Alabama. The billboard in Palatka, Fla. proclaimed: “Officer Sean Tuder, You Are Loved and You Are Missed.”
Tuder had been a Palatka police officer for five years until he joined the Mobile (Ala.) Police Department to work undercover. On Jan. 20 in West Mobile, he was shot and killed trying to arrest 19-year-old Marco Perez at the Peach Place Inn.
My former wife’s father, Jim Marshall, of the Shelburne State Police barracks also died in the line of duty. My son-in-law Corey Greene is a Greenfield police officer.
Blue lives matter.
Near the Airbnb where I’m staying in Gainesville is Kanapaha Veterans Memorial Park. Under a willow tree near a pond is a granite marker that pays tribute to police who’ve died wearing a badge. The inscription says, “Peace Time Soldier Always at War.”
A monument at Kanapaha honors fallen soldiers from every U.S. war. One brick equals 1,000 lives lost, and the Civil War and World War II look like chimneys.
The park is old, worn and overused, but has a good vibe. It has a baseball diamond, batting cage, soccer fields, roller skating rink, swings, slides, picnic pavilion, barbecue pits, a volleyball and basketball court, a gazebo and concrete benches, jogging paths and trails that go past streams, trees and ponds.
During my jogs I’ve chatted with people who are Chinese, Korean, Haitian, African-American and Caucasian. I’ve watched medieval battles, touch football games, batting practice, a woman strolling and reading the Bible, a preacher doing jumping jacks, two boxers sparring …
In the park last Sunday, a woman knocked on my car window and asked for a ride to the laundromat. We drove back to her apartment and her young children stayed in the backseat while I helped her gather the laundry on the porch and stack it into the car trunk.
Her son, Caleb, leaned into the front seat and pointed at the radio. Before he got the words out, I told him, “I don’t listen to rap.”
Rhymes with sap and farmers setting taps. It’s time to drive home, brew a pot of coffee, and wait out winter with everyone else.
Chip Ainsworth is a freelance writer whose Keeping Score column is a regular feature on the Greenfield Recorder’s Saturday sports page.