The wild was the congregation of alligators that trolled the lake. The not-so-wild was the polluted water. It didn’t emanate a foul smell, but it didn’t offer that redolent aura of wholesome water either. If you dunked your hand in, it quickly disappeared in the eutrophic turbidity.
“Impaired” is the word scientists and bureaucrats deployed to describe polluted water bodies, which we use for drinking, recreation, and waste disposal, mindlessly flushing what we don’t want into a life necessity, mindlessly tolerating the absurdity of this eternally unbroken circle, mindlessly spoiling our homeland and that of every other species, carrying out these agendas with inviolable hubris. Maggiore had a full complement of impairments: nitrogen overload, mercury contamination, low dissolved oxygen, high dissolved solids.
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Who knew? Not we, even though nearly every water in Florida was unsafe for swimming and fishing. The powers that be undermined Maggiore’s health when they decided to finesse the natural watershed of which the lake is a part, the Salt Creek system. That happened in 1941. Maggiore had been a brackish bayou, fed by freshwater springs and Tampa Bay, drinking in saltwater during high tide and expelling it during low, a natural cycle that rankled a throbbing growth industry preferring fresh over salt and human control over nature’s. The solution: enlist engineers to build a tidal gate—a “barrier against pollution,” said the local newspaper—to keep out the salt. The consequence: a robust bayou subverted by a stagnant lake unable to flush humanity’s hubris.
We might have taken a hint—if we were interested—from the sullen park where we launched the boat. Pinellas County had not yet passed a penny sales tax to, as the St. Petersburg Times put it, “provide plenty for parks.” Maggiore needed plenty. The grass was sparse, the picnic tables splintered, the pavilion spurned, the boat ramp spare.
The lake itself, 363-acres and triangular, was undramatic in size and appearance. The reedy edge of Boyd Hill Park palisaded its southern rim, tidy houses huddled in sunburnt grass sodded the northern, and the park squatted disconsolately on the east. The attraction for us was what it lacked—the lashing, wake-making recreational boat traffic of every other lake—and what it offered—a slalom course set up with buoys anchored in the mucky bottom. After launching, we became the lake’s uncelebrated lashing energy, bane of the sodded neighborhood, revving up high decibels by racing the boat through the slalom course to chase away alligators before one of us dropped over the side with a ski.
We were young and reckless and, like Tom Cruise in “Top Gun,” feeling the need for speed. You ran the course as fast as possible, peeled out from the center toward the first buoy and, with one hand gripping the rope handle and arm outstretched, leaned low to the right, torso inches from the water, rounding the buoy, rooster tail flying, then pulled the handle with both hands vertically close to the chest, sweeping back toward the wake hard and fast, crossing it and shifting your weight to the other side, easing your speed and targeting the next buoy to mirror the previous motions.
Back in the boat—shoulder, forearms, and thighs aching—the sun warm on your back, you’re in the thrall of a runner’s high. You go again and again, until the gas or sunlight gives out. Would I 40 years later? Surfers say members of their breed never retire. I understand. I need to find a boat, a ski, a course, and clean water.
Maggiore is still impaired.
Jack E. Davis is Distinguished Professor of History and the Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities at the University of Florida. He is the author or editor of 10 books, includ- ing the Pulitzer Prize-winning ”The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea,” and he is currently at work on a new book, tentatively titled, “The American Coast: History and Prophecy at Land’s End.”
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This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2025.