"You'd be too cold," he answers, and he's not wrong. My friends joke (but not really) that I get Seasonal Affective Disorder when the sun's behind a cloud for more than 15 minutes, and that whenever the mercury drops below 80º I run for my sweatshirt. Right now, it's in the low 80s and I'm writing with a blanket over me.
Nevertheless, the Florida panhandle beckons. Specifically, the Forgotten Coast of Gulf, Franklin and Wakulla counties. Sand dunes line the coast, buffeted by pine forests from the small towns selling hyper-local seafood and low-key tourist dreams. Few roads trace the edge of the land here — US 98 through Port St. Joe and, to its west, 30A. I am hopelessly, totally, irrevocably charmed by seaside forests and small-town splendor.
I'm not the first. Years — centuries — before Tampa Bay became a place to live, Florida's panhandle attracted people. After Ponce de Leon’s 1513 discovery of Florida, pioneers opened the West — West Florida, that is, which totally became a thing as our much-maligned state bounced between five flags until becoming part of the US in 1821. Of course, statehood wasn't an easy road — the U.S. couldn't let just anyone in, right? So, in 1838, Floridians got together and convened a constitutional convention at St. Joseph, Florida's largest town with a whopping 6,000-ish people.
By the time Florida became a state in 1845, that town was gone.
What happened?
In July 1841, a ship from the Greater Antilles docked there. NBD: St. Joseph was a significant port (’member, anything south of the Panhandle was a swampy morass of death, what with the skeeters and gators and lack of air conditioning) so ships came and went like it was today's Miami. Except this ship had a passel of passengers lousy with yellow fever, which sucked for the passengers who died — but not before they infected most of the town. Of the 6,000 living there, all but 1,500 died. Of those, another 1,000 fled because they weren't fond of death. So when a hurricane hit a couple months later, the 500 remaining residents found themselves homeless, because the storm trashed pretty much every building. Resolute pioneers that they were, they soldiered on… only to have fires rip through town a while later.
That should have been enough, right?
You would think, but no. These plucky bastards kept going, which worked for a couple of years, until another hurricane washed over the town, at which point even the pluckiest of plucky bastards was all "Oh, hells no" and got the hell out of Dodge. You can't really blame them, but it's a shame that all remains is a yellow fever cemetery on SR 384A.
Then there was St. Joseph's beleaguered lighthouse. Congress gave St. Joseph $10,000 to build the beacon at Cape San Blas in 1837. It burned down in 1851, because apparently St. Joseph was cursed by an ancient evil the likes of which you only see in B-movies. People rebuilt the lighthouse, but Union troops torched it, because fuck navigation.
I could regale you with tales of the lighthouse and erosion and efforts to fix it, but the least you need to know is this: The water will win. It always wins. Two and a half years ago, after much small-town angst and federal assistance, the lighthouse moved inland to Port St. Joe, the former site of St. Joseph.
And every speck of sand and the story of the crappiest luck ever charms me. Why? The sand is powdery, the breeze is salty and sweet all at once, and pine forests line the edge of the beaches. The stretch of US 98 and 30A near the old St. Joseph — now called Port St. Joe — reminds me of an imaginary, perfect Florida, soaked in sunshine and drenched in rum. Nearby beaches stretch out sand dunes against pine, dotted by the odd gnarled trunk and boardwalk to nowhere. It's a magical fairytale beach paradise.
Sans, of course, the plagues, fire and floods. But hey, every place has its challenges, right? Faced with the odd wave of death layered in against those dunes and pines, I'll take my chances.
Cathy Salustri is the arts & entertainment editor for Creative Loafing Tampa. Her book about a month-long road trip across Florida's backroads, Backroads of Paradise, is available at big box stores and online, but she'd prefer you buy it from a local bookseller. Follow her adventures at greatfloridaroadtrip.com, on Twitter, or on Facebook. She also has a personal website and an Instagram, which has mostly pictures of her dogs. Email her here.
This article appears in Dec 22-29, 2016.