EATONVILLE, Florida – Temperate is not an adjective oft used to describe Central Florida. Clouds seem to permanently loom in the distance, portending liquids from the heavens.
This is what I was faced with upon arriving to Eatonville. Though the journey through it was short, that made it no less sweet.
The streets were quiet, though there were residents who tended to their properties just off the main road. The Hurston Museum provided a map to follow, a self-guided tour of the town, homestead created by many African Americans. Walking along the roadway is like peeling back layers of what it once was.
The heat threatens to overtake you, as do all the bugs creeping about. A restaurant embedded nearby sells sweet liquids and fried catfish slaw. These are a must try – local cuisine that flavors your existence.
Along the roadways leading out of Eatonville, you pass by industrial complexes and residential areas. Among these numbered locales, the city sits, a symbol of the past. Yet walking through the town, you feel its living, breathing form. Though borne by the novels, they stand separate and alive in our modern times.
Eatonville Book Recommendations:
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, 1937.
A woman survives in a small town, including subsisting in the Glades.
A Land Remembered, by Patrick D. Smith, 1984.
A magnificent accounting of a family’s survival in the early American days of Florida.
postcardsfromanne.com 