Best.State.Ever. by Dave Barry

Reading Dave Barry's Best. State. Ever. - A Florida Man Defends His Homeland is a great way to visit the The Sunshine State without actually having to go there and be subjected to relentless sun, sand, and big bugs - unless, of course, that is your thing.

Mr. Barry, who is always hilarious, decides to tour his adopted state (he has lived in Florida for 30 years) and write about its many attractions - from a spiritualist community to a shooting range. No Disney World fantasies here. These are homegrown, albeit strange, places that he visits in an effort to highlight a few of Florida's charms.

So we are treated to the wonders of Weeki Wachee Springs, home of the underwater theater featuring mermaids performing aquatic ballets. It is a place, a little north of Tampa, where the fifties never ended, he notes, and makes for a pleasant, low-key outing. There is a Wilderness Cruise where one sees actual animals and fish and not the animatronic ones encountered on Disney's Jungle Cruise.

This is also where he comes across, to his delight, the classic Mold-A-Matic (which he adopts as the icon for his tourist site rating system), a machine that spits out a freshly baked plastic souvenir related to whatever attraction one is visiting: in this case a mermaid.

He makes other trips to livelier places: LIV, a nightclub in the Fountainbleau Hotel on Miami Beach where the young hip crowd dances till dawn, and The Villages where many of the residents of this popular retirement community also spend the evening dancing (although they are usually home in bed way before dawn).

In all, he checks out eight tourist spots including Key West where he and a friend spend a day and evening bar hopping which leads to the inevitable morning hangover. 

He writes a fractured history of the state and includes photos of many of the sites which add even more pleasure to this literary journey. 

If you are a native of Florida or are one of its many Snowbirds you might either be highly amused at Mr. Barry's take on the state or highly offended. I for one have never seen the attraction, but then I don't take to heat and humidity. I noticed that he made his tour during the winter months so as to avoid that double dose of discomfort.

Anyway, Mr. Barry is in good form here. He offered me a tropical trip that put me in the mood to reread Carol Ryrie Brink's The Pink Motel (here).

For my own Best. State. Ever. I would definitely have to include Mammoth Cave National Park (although I have only been there once and cave crickets scare me...they jump so high and so quickly!), and My Old Kentucky Home in Bardstown that was the inspiration for Stephen Foster's famous song. If you have ever been to the Kentucky Derby or watched the race on television, you can't help but get chills when all in attendance stand and sing this anthem.

What places from your city/state/country would be on your list?

The Pink Motel by Carol Ryrie Brink

It is only May and I already have my Book of the Year! It is a vintage copy I was delighted to discover on the sale table at the library: The Pink Motel written by Carol Ryrie Brink and
published in 1959.

You may be familiar with Ms. Brink as the author of the 1936 Newbery Medal winner Caddie Woodlawn. 

The Pink Motel is one of those old-time, individual small cabin motels that used to dot the American landscape. This one is on the beach in Florida (before monster hotels and condominiums took over) and has been left by Uncle Hiram to his great-grand-niece and her family. Mr. and Mrs. Mellen, 10-year-old Kirby and 9-year-old Bitsy, live in Minnesota. They leave the cold and snow and fly to Florida over the children's winter school break with the thought of selling the motel. But the warm winds and soothing surf begin to work their magic on the children as well as their parents.

The kids have adventures. They make new friends their own age and meet the regular winter guests: an artist who seems to have a few witchy-like powers; a magician whose magic seems to have disappeared; the woodcarver who crafted the weather vanes atop each cabin; and, two shady characters that Kirby, who proudly wears his Junior G-Man badge, is sure are gangsters. They investigate a mystery. They put on a talent show. 

There are no vampires. No one has a deadly disease. There is no sex or violence. 

It is all great fun. Ms. Brink captures the sounds and tastes and sights of this cozy spot by the sea. The weather vanes on top of the cabins flap in the breeze, the palm tree leaves rattle in the wind, the waves whoosh against the shore, the sky is colored a bright Southern blue, and the taste of fresh coconut lingers in the mouth. There are also entrancing illustrations by Sheila Greenwald which add to the charm of the tale.

One of my favorite parts of the story concerns the messy desk in Uncle Hiram's office that Kirby gets to investigate. 

No one had made any attempt to tidy it. The roll-top desk was bulging with papers and shells and old books and fishing reels, and many other things. Nothing seemed to be valuable. A shelf ran around the wall, and on it were a great many coconut shells which were also stuffed with string and fishhooks and small pieces of paper. The bits of paper were of many colors, but most of them were pink. Kirby suspected that the coconut shells, like the filing cabinet in his father's office up north, kept Uncle Hiram's business secrets and personal treasures. The only difference was that Father's filing cabinet was so neat that it was quite uninteresting, whereas Uncle Hiram's coconut shells were full of mystery and promise.

Don't you wish you could go on a treasure hunt through Uncle Hiram's desk? I sure do.