My Florida

   

   by Chairman Joe

   It was on this day in 1513 that Ponce de León first sighted Florida. The indigenous peoples living there would have liked it if he and his peers had postponed their visit for a couple of centuries, at least until they had developed gunpowder and canons to more properly welcome their larcenous guests.

    Everyone knows about Florida. It sticks into the ocean like the handle of the United States. When I traveled in Europe and the locals asked where I was from, no one had ever heard of Minnesota. It's in the middle, under Canada, I'd say. Dylan? Prince? If they had travelled to the U.S. at all, it had mostly been to Florida to see the Mouse.

   Around Ponce de León's time, Europeans believed there was a fountain of youth somewhere in the New World. Ponce had travelled with Columbus on his second voyage and after a few years as governor of Puerto Rico, he headed north on a voyage of exploration. Historians agree the story that he was searching for the fountain of youth is a myth. The myth may have been started by real estate agents to convince northern retirees to haul their frozen bones to the Sunshine State for an extended run.

   When I was a kid, I didn't bother asking for a trip to Disneyland, much as I wanted to go. And by the time Disney World came along, I was too old. Our oldest son has taken his kids to Florida several times. And our middle son went to a school in Florida for a week-long course to help him get a work promotion.  Our youngest son's ship has stopped a few times along the Florida coast.

    My only trip to Florida occured when I was 14. I flew there on a Navy cargo plane and stayed for a week. I had joined a unit of the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps a few month earlier without any expectation of flying to Florida. The Sea Cadet Corps was sponsored by the Navy League which is a group of veterans who support the Navy's mission. 

    We met Friday evenings in the mammoth Fargo building in the South Boston Navy Yard (now closed). We stood at attention, answered roll call, watched movies about ships and the Navy, learned to tie knots, did a lot of marching drill with rifles in a gymnasium, then stood at attention to be dismissed. Afterwards some of us went to a late night café for refreshments. The waitresses thought we were cute in our uniforms.  Also, we behaved ourselves, unlike some real sailors. 

    Around Christmas there was an open house so our parents could watch us drill. The four squads competed against each other and our squad was judged the best, though I thought all four squads looked about the same. The next week the captain announced that our squad had won the trip to Florida to take place during February school break. I was disoriented. I had never been out of New England.

    Early one cold February morning, the fifteen members of our squad and an adult chaperone boarded a Navy transport plane at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station (now closed). This was my first flight. We were strapped into our bench seats with our backs to the wall. Nowadays a flight from Boston to Florida takes three hours. Our prop driven plane lumbered southward all day long. It was loud, cold, and boring.

    At noon we were issued a box lunch. The plane was not pressurized and as we descended, I felt an excruciating pain in my ears. Our leader said hold your nose and blow, but I couldn't get the hang of it. Looking out the window behind me, I could see that the ground under the scattered trees was white sand. That was exotic. Soon we were on the ground at Pensacola Naval Air Station (still active). The air was soft and humid. That too was exotic.

    The pain in my ears gradually abated and we checked into our barracks. Four sea cadets to a room. College students flooding Florida wasn't a big thing back then. We did a drive-by of the beach to say we had seen the Gulf. Pensacola is a major training station for Navy and Marine pilots and we made the rounds of the training grounds. 

   The thing that impressed me most was the ancient 12 foot high brick wall around the base hospital. Our guide said the wall had been built high in the belief that mosquitoes carrying yellow fever could not fly above eight feet. But the connection between yellow fever and mosquitoes wasn't made until long after the wall was built, so this is another Florida myth. The wall was likely built high to keep out intruders. There were pirates roaming the Gulf back in the old days.

   On the day we flew home the weather was bad at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station so we diverted to the Quonset Point Naval Air Station (now closed) in Rhode Island, then took a bus home. The first Quonset huts were built near here during WWII.  We waited in a Quonset hut for our bus, naturally. I had practiced the nose holding technique during the week and successfully equalized the pressure in my ears during the landing.

   A few weeks later, our unit marched in the big St. Patrick's Day parade in South Boston. I stayed in the Sea Cadets a couple of years then eventually lost interest in naval matters. But after college, the Army came looking for me. Having no interest in camping in the jungle for a year, I joined the Navy instead and won a trip to California and the Philippines.

Florida's first lighthouse, Pensacola