Current:Home > MarketsA lost world comes alive in 'Through the Groves,' a memoir of pre-Disney Florida -Excel Wealth Summit
A lost world comes alive in 'Through the Groves,' a memoir of pre-Disney Florida
View
Date:2025-04-14 07:34:37
Florida is in the news a lot these days, but the Florida that journalist Anne Hull writes about in Through the Groves is a place accessed only by the compass of memory.
Hull grew up in the rural interior of Central Florida during the 1960s and '70s. Her earliest recollections are pre-Disney, almost prehistoric in atmosphere. Hull's father was a fruit buyer for a juice processing company. Every day, he drove through miles and miles of remote orange and grapefruit groves, armed with a pistol and a rattlesnake bite kit. Think Indiana Jones searching for the perfect citrus, instead of the Lost Ark. Here are some of Hull's descriptions of riding along with her dad when she was 6:
His CB radio antenna whipped in the air like a nine-foot machete. ... Leaves and busted twigs rained down on us inside the car. Pesticide dust exploded off the trees. And oranges — big heavy oranges — dropped through the windows like bombs. ...
Looking out my father's windshield, I was seeing things I would never see again. Places that weren't even on maps, where the sky disappeared and the radio went dead. Whole towns were entombed in Spanish moss . ... Birds spread their skeletal wings but never flew off. When it seemed we may not ever see daylight again, the road deposited us into blinding sunlight.
Hull, a wise child, soon catches on that her father has a drinking problem and that her mother wants her to ride shotgun with him, especially on payday, to keep him from "succumbing to the Friday afternoon fever."
Eventually, her parents divorce, Hull grows up, and she struggles with her queer sexuality in a culture of Strawberry Festival queens and pink-frosted sororities. At the time of that early ride-along with her father, Hull says, Walt Disney had already taken "a plane ride over the vast emptiness [of Central Florida], looked down, and said, 'There.'" Much of that inland ocean of citrus groves and primordial swamplands was already destined to be plowed under to make way for the Kingdom of the Mouse.
With all due respect to Hull's personal story, Through the Groves is an evocative memoir not so much because of the freshness of its plot, but because Hull is such a discerning reporter of her own past. She fills page after page here with the kind of small, charged and often wry details that make a lost world come alive; describing, for instance, a Florida where "Astronauts were constantly flying overhead ... but [where] the citrus men hardly bothered to look up. ... The moon was a fad. Citrus was king and it would last forever."
Of course, other things besides astronauts were in the air, such as everyday racism. Hull observes that when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the newspaper in her hometown of Sebring, Fla., "put the story at the bottom of the front page." The headline that day announced the crowning of: "A NEW MISS SEBRING." And, then, there were literal airborne poisons — the pesticides that fostered the growth of those Garden of Eden citrus groves. Here's Hull's recollection of seeing — without then understanding — the human cost of that harvest:
At each stop, [my father] introduced me to the growers, pesticide men, and fertilizer brokers who populated his territory.
I had never seen such a reptilian assemblage of humanity. The whites of the men's eyes were seared bloody red by the sun. ... Cancer ate away at their noses. They hawked up wet green balls of slime that came from years of breathing in pesticide as they sprayed the groves with five-gallon containers of malathion strapped on their backs. No one used respirators back then. ... When the chemicals made them nauseous and dizzy, they took a break for a while, then got back to it.
Hull left the world of her childhood to become a journalist, one who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her stories about the mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. Maybe those early trips with her father first awakened her to the horror of how casually expendable some human beings can be.
veryGood! (47166)
Related
- EU countries double down on a halt to Syrian asylum claims but will not yet send people back
- Nikki Garcia's Sister Brie Garcia Sends Message to Trauma Victims After Alleged Artem Chigvintsev Fight
- Uncover the Best Lululemon Finds: $49 Lululemon Align Leggings Instead of $98, $29 Belt Bags & More
- NYC accelerates school leadership change as investigations swirl around mayor’s indictment
- Why Sean "Diddy" Combs Is Being Given a Laptop in Jail Amid Witness Intimidation Fears
- Jersey Shore's Ronnie Ortiz-Magro Shares Daughter's Gut-Wrenching Reaction to His 2021 Legal Trouble
- Armed person broke into Michigan home of rabbi hosting Jewish students, authorities say
- Biden’s student loan cancellation free to move forward as court order expires
- Don't let hackers fool you with a 'scam
- School of Rock Costars Caitlin Hale and Angelo Massagli Hint at Engagement
Ranking
- Former Danish minister for Greenland discusses Trump's push to acquire island
- Newsom wants a do-over on the lemon car law he just signed. Will it hurt buyers?
- Two California dairy workers were infected with bird flu, latest human cases in US
- 'Nothing like this': National Guard rushes supplies to towns cut off by Helene
- See you latte: Starbucks plans to cut 30% of its menu
- Hawaii nurses union calls new contract a step in the right direction
- Mark Estes and the Montana Boyz Will Be “Looking for Love” in New Show After Kristin Cavallari Split
- For migrant women who land in Colorado looking for jobs, a common answer emerges: No
Recommendation
Google unveils a quantum chip. Could it help unlock the universe's deepest secrets?
Orioles wonder what's next after another playoff flop against Royals in wild-card series
‘Beyond cruel’: Newsom retaliates against this LA suburb for its ban on homeless shelters
Alleged Kim Porter memoir pulled from Amazon after children slam book
How to watch new prequel series 'Dexter: Original Sin': Premiere date, cast, streaming
Texas man sought in wounding of small town’s police chief
Ron Hale, retired 'General Hospital' soap opera star, dies at 78
Get 30 Rings for $8.99, Plus More Early Amazon Prime Day 2024 Jewelry Deals for 68% Off