
I wanted to go to Boston University with all the passion and fervor my 17 year old body could muster. I got in, too. But BU is expensive. My parents were divorcing, so money was tight, and BU didn't offer any financial help.
The University of Tampa did. They were in the middle of a huge recruiting drive and kept throwing money at me. "It's not a matter of whether you get in," an admissions counselor told me when I made my on campus visit. "It's a matter of how much money we give you." The eventual answer was almost the full amount. By the time I became editor of the student newspaper, I was covered since my pay for that job was a stipend applied toward my tuition - and the first steps toward what would become my eventual career.
But I didn't stick around after graduation. I barely stuck around during my four undergraduate years - I left every summer and, one semester, for England. I didn't think the UT was terribly challenging, so I tacked on experiences that made it so (internship in a Washington, DC newsroom, semester studying Shakespeare at Oxford, editing the student newspaper).
Another reason I fled? I don't like Florida.
Sure, it's a great place to visit, especially when it's 20 degrees and snowing in New Jersey. While my family and friends dealt with snow and ice last weekend, I was lying by a pool in my bikini reading James W. Hall's Hot Damn!: Alligators in the Casino, Nude Women in the Grass, How Seashells Changed the Course of History, and Other Dispatches from Paradise
Even though I was offered the job, I turned it down. It might get hot here in the summer, but it's a different hot, no matter if the temperatures in New Jersey and Florida sometimes come out the same. Florida heat will suck you down into a deep abyss. New Jersey heat passes you over.
Hall didn't leave - obviously. He moved his life to Florida and bristles that he can never put a Florida native bumper sticker on his car. Even if we feel different about the state, I enjoyed his essays. It was perfect reading to go along with my explorations of Florida's west coast. While, yes, I did spend a lot of time by the pool, I also visited those sites I couldn't get to in college because I didn't have a car - the Salvador Dali Museum, Fort DeSoto, the Ringling Estate. And for a moment, while wandering the grounds of the gulf-side estate in the soft humid pre-storm winter Florida air, I thought "maybe I could do this." Then I remembered what it was like to run in that humidity, and that it was already sticky in January, and called my mom back home.
I picked up Hot Damn!
Comments
Glad you plugged Inkwood. A great store run by two wonderful ladies.
Enjoyed your blog.
James Hall
Okay, you talked me into buying the book. I need some recreational reading right about now. And there's something about Florida authors, like Carl Hiaasen, that makes them a fun read.
Hey, if you get the chance to extend your visit, do so. They're predicting snow up this way, about 12 inches, maybe more in South Jersey.
Larry - Already home! The dog and I are preparing for a big storm.
If you do even spend August in ME, let me know. I'd make the drive to share come coffee and a chat.