There’s a misconception about Florida and Floridians, that we’re not as bright as the rest of the country, that if we live more than 50 miles from a beach we’re backwoods hillbillies. This fallacy gets passed down on Facebook, the Florida Man Twitter account, and every time there’s a slow news day.
Don’t believe a word of it. Floridians have a history of being clever, especially Floridians who live off the beaten path.
Take Two Egg, at the northernmost edge of the state, a town so far north it’s actually west of Georgia. Two Egg has many claims to fame: Faye Dunaway grew up here, the first woman over 100 who earned her college degree lived here, and they have their own pint-size Skunk Ape. Also, that name. Once upon a time, people called the town Allison, but during the Great Depression, everything changed. Families couldn’t afford the necessities and so started trading things for food. While today we all understand refined sugar is Satan dressed as a donut, sugar serves a physiological purpose: energy. When Florida’s hot summers made growing many fruits and vegetables impossible, families needed to find sugar through other means and if they otherwise couldn’t afford it, they could trade food they’d produced for it. The cost of a cup of sugar (pre-federal subsidies, of course)? Two eggs. Two young boys, local lore says, traded two eggs for sugar at one particular store so often the locals began calling the store — jokingly — a “two egg store.”
The name stuck.
Historians refer to this story — and others like it — as “anecdotal,” which is the politically correct way of saying the story might be bullshit. However, neither a 1939 map of Florida nor the state’s WPA-era guidebook, A Guide to the Southernmost State, mentions Two Egg; the name makes an appearance only after the Depression ends. As the economy improved, the town name held firm, although you can no longer trade eggs for sugar (most shops prefer cash).
This story speaks to the ingenuity of these “hillbillies,” and if the creative way they found to triumph over hard times name isn’t enough to entice a visit, the chance to see a mini-Skunk Ape and the springs and swamps that pockmark this area of Florida are. Think of the Skunk Ape as Bigfoot with a, shall we say, distinctive, aroma and a penchant for lima beans, and you’ve got an accurate picture. Skunk Apes live in South Florida (allegedly) while northern Floridians call the same creature the Bardin Booger. Even farther north, in Two Egg, they call the creature the Two Egg Stump Jumper or, on occasion, the Two Egg Monster, which seems unfair, as no one has ever met him: As is habit with such creatures, the Two Egg Monster has yet to appear long enough for locals to snap a non-blurry photo. Anecdotally, the Two Egg Stump Jumper prefers to hang out by the Chattahoochee River, a swampy expanse of land that will not only convince you the Two Egg Stump Jumper exists, but also that you and he are the last two people on earth. If you don’t care to meet him, Blue Springs await. The name says it all: This freshwater hole in the earth is a gorgeous shade of teal.
Speaking of holes in the earth, about 15 minutes away you’ll see many of them at Florida Caverns State Park. If you know where to look, you can also find the cave that helped a local tribe of Seminoles outwit General Andrew Jackson.
See, Jackson did his best to spin his keeping of slaves and killing of local tribes as “defining the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase,” but ask a bear: A hunt is a hunt is a hunt. This hunt took Jackson to a spot north of Marianna in search of some “injuns” to kill because, you know, why not? These Floridians had inferior firepower but superior knowledge of the land, and they outwitted Jackson by hiding in a cave while the troops walked overhead, searching for them.
OK, so it isn’t a long story, but it’s a fun way to understand how the locals defeated their “Northern” aggressors with true American ingenuity. Clever, weren’t they?
The state park offers a tour of the dry air caves, and as we tour the “rooms” I wait to hear the tour guide tell us about the crafty Indians fooling the silly Northerner (if we may consider a Carolinian “Northern,” which I totally do), but she fails to mention it. Finally, at the tour’s end, I ask her, and she tells me to follow a separate, unguided nature trail.
At the end of a 30-minute trek along an uneven trail, I spy a hole in the side of a piece of land. This looks more like a short, squat tunnel than a cave. I can see light from the end at its start. It is, essentially, a hole under a piece of rock.
This fooled a future president? I crawl through the tunnel for “historical purposes,” but secretly I revel in walking where Indians hid from a man determined to erase their existence.
The Two Egg Stump Jumper, though? I’m willing to bet he’s real — he’s simply too clever to get caught.
Portions of this article will appear in Cathy Salustri’s book, Backroads of Paradise, available this fall from the University Press of Florida. Contact her here.
This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2016.