Last Saturday, my wife and I attended the Founders Day Festival in Winter Garden, a small, turn-of-the-century town just west of Orlando that was once the capital of Central Florida's citrus industry.
I grew up here and I hate the place. Until the 1980's, Winter Garden was also the capital of the local KKK. Now it's surrounded by 30,000 corporate builder houses ($300,000 median, lots of foreclosure signs), and struggling to gentrify---the sort of place Sarah Palin would call "real America." The evening was a family obligation thing, in-laws, so I went.
I wore my Obama t-shirt.
I'm a big guy, just turned 57, big Moses beard and hair. My wife is half my age, 6'2" tall, with blond hair down to her waist. So we're used to being stared at when we go anywhere.
But this was a little different.
After the first couple encounters, I started counting. There were maybe 1,500 people at the event. Before the night was over, 86 people---men and women, all ages, all white---stopped me to ask where I got the shirt, where they could get one, does Obama have a local office, do I really think Obama can win, can Obama really change things, or just motioned to me---peace signs, thumbs-ups, "okay" signs. Some of them just smiled and said "Obama," in the same tone most people say "Merry Christmas."
It started to get a little embarrassing. We---wife, in-laws, wife’s aunt-and-uncle and me---felt like Peace Corps volunteers in a Third World village (I don’t mean to diminish the holy work those people do, just making an analogy).
Like I said I grew up around here, and I used to be a journalist. We were standing in front a barbecue stand---the in-laws are pulled pork sandwiches people---when an old acquaintance passed by with his wife.
George is a former county Republican chairman, former county commissioner and scion of a wealthy citrus family who sold much of the land that now sports so many foreclosure signs.
He’s in his late 70’s now, his no-account wastrel son played on my Little League team 40 years ago and back in the late 70’s I wrote about one of his deals. He recognized me and said hello.
He was smiling. I introduced him to the family.
My in-laws are thoroughly lovable except for one respect---they’re all die-hard Republicans, it’s one of the reasons I wore my Obama shirt. My father-in-law knew George by reputation and beamed in admiration. He and I had been trading political barbs all night (he’s my age) and he thought George would provide him a little cover.
"You got some balls to wear that out here," George said, pointing at the word "Obama" on my t-shirt.
My father-in-law gushed. "I tried to tell him," he said.
"I think you’re in with the right guy," George blurted.
My father-in-law sighed.
"It’s gone too far. Izzat boy the answer? I don’t know, but we sure need something," said George.
"You got that right," I said.
I kind of respected George. Back in the late ‘70’s he gave more than $1 million to local community colleges. That’s how I met him, I wrote a magazine piece about it that’s particularly memorable (to me only).
During that interview, he used the ‘n’ word repeatedly. He said that citrus workers (the ‘n’ word) helped make his grandfather rich and he was paying it back.
Community colleges, he said, "give (‘n’ word again)s a chance." I especially appreciate the banal irony of that statement every time I hear a version of the John Lennon song that refrains, "All we are saying...".
I never mentioned his language choice in my article. As it turned out, George had a lot of land to sell that needed road and sewer capacity. Back when counties funded their own community colleges, he was buying good will. It took me a couple years to learn how that works.
The woman who ran the barbeque stand---one of about six non-WASP people we noticed that night, Winter Garden is Beaver Cleaver white---leaned out and said, "You know, I’m an Obama girl too."
Loudly, my wife shot back: "Everybody is. Some people just don’t want to say so yet."
"You got that right," George said.
After George left, the barbeque woman told me Founders Day was her best day all year. She ran out of buns after 600 pulled pork sandwiches---at $5 apiece---and sent her son out to buy loaves of bread. My father-in-law asked her to cater his company’s Christmas party.