My latest issue of Garden & Gun arrived a couple of weeks ago and, as I usually do, I let it marinate on the office desk for a while before I dug in to it.
First of all, let me preface by saying that I would heartily jump back in to full-time writing faster than a cat catches a moth if I could write for this magazine. This magazine has the most intelligence of any magazine I have ever read, and Lord knows, I have a ton of them, given my chosen form of artwork. It has a deep undercurrent of hospitality, a dollop of two of dry, sarcastic wit, incredible writers and outstanding photography. It embraces the charm of the South, the soft underbelly of its pride and profiles of people who truly make the South, well, the South.
This fine morning, a day off from work, I scurried into and out of the shower, dressing and primping and, donning my favorite flip-flops and pouring a cup of strong coffee, ventured into my office, intent on getting a new paper mosaic crab done by eleven o'clock. I opened up the new magazine, and flipping through the pages, landed on a story about Carl Hiaasen and his fly-fishing passion.
Hiaasen and I go way, way back. I used to work at a newspaper, and as such, read other newspapers constantly. This was before "online," it was before "Yahoo" and the social news network was shared via subscription. One of my favorite newspapers was the Miami Herald. And one of my favorite columnists was Carl Hiaasen.
He lived and worked in South Florida, which causes my heart to catch a bit whenever I talk about it. My earliest search for a house to live in was in the old Coconut Grove, a small community outside of Miami proper, which had degraded from the 1950s retirement village to the 1960s hippie vibe to the 1980s crack town. I found a lovely bungalow, in the middle of drug row, that I absolutely fell head over heels with. It had a courtyard garden, rampant with Traveller's palms, Fishtail palms and overrun, absolutely overrun, with philodendron. The roof was cracking tile, the doors had stucco archways and there was no air conditioning in site. It was 1986, and the price was $15,000. I was married to a man who grew up in Miami Springs, and there was no way in hell he was buying a house in cracktown.
Okay, so I'd be a millionairess right now with that little house in "cracktown," so thanks for seeing my vision, buddy. Needless to say, decisions like that predicated my divorce from said man. Last time I heard, he was living la vida loca with a bike tramp in Ocala, toothless and unemployed.
Hiaasen was my muse, my first acceptance of politics as a viable source of conversation. He fiercely shot word arrows into the communication world like a tree-hugging Robin Hood, bent on bringing the true aftereffects of the devastation caused by a bad government, seeded by graft and and fueled by ignorance. I started reading his books, and fell in love with his characters and his cheeky wit and just have not been the same since. I even wrote two of my own, based in Florida of course, one a romantic tale of love spawned over centuries and the other a delightful murder mystery with a heroine in the form of a photojournalist who has several bad hair days.
There are a few writers of whom I will buy books without hesitation, without reading reviews, without even blinking a single eyelash or raising a single brow. One of these is Hiaasen. He could write about dog poop and I would buy it. I also read Randy Wayne White, Tim Dorsey and Thomas McGuane. Oddly enough, I have a particular passion for Tom Robbins, who writes out of Washington state, and who wrote of of the most pivotal books in my youth, Still Life with Woodpecker, of which the infamous line, "It's Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood," comes from.
This article from Garden & Gun, written by Monte Burke, revived my love for this man and his work. I knew he went fly-fishing – no article is ever written about Hiaasen that does not include that fact – and I had done my own share of flats fishing, so I could relate to that. The article focused on the sport, not the writing, and that opened up a little more insight into the man himself. The photographs of Hiaasen, by Nathaniel Welch, were wonderful – are wonderful – and those laughing, crinkly eyes will get me every time. And I am now in love with this man's feet, for heavens sake. Nothing I admire more than a man who takes care of his feet. Strange, but true.
I read the article twice, then read it again. I could see Hiaasen in every character he had ever developed, and noted that his new book will be published in June. Needless to say, I could care less what the reviews say. It will be on my bedside table the minute it hits the shelves at Books-A-Million, price or subject matter be damned.
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