Foreverglades_Valiente2019

CHAPTER ONE
This Was the Everglades
Now folks, I reckon there may still be some misguided
people who picture the Everglades as a watery wilderness
populated only by alligators, snakes and Seminoles. To be
sure, I've seen it when it was that way, but now, by gollies,
the Everglades is mostly pastures, and fields of vegetables
and sugar cane. Men come from far parts of the world
to learn our modern ways of farming. Around the shores
of Okeechobee Lake are villages and towns and cities, and
the biggest city of them all is Belle Glade, on the lake's
south-eastern curve. It's got its highways, its super markets
and its parking meters, just like any other dad blamed
metropolis. Its population now is 21,000, leastways, so the
Chamber of Commerce claims.
But now folks, I'm a-fixing for to tell you a few things
which transpired here in these woods back in those primitive
days when this was a wild frontier, when all travel
had to be by boat, when it would take you a dreary three
days, or maybe even a week, just to visit the courthouse
in the county seat. You'll learn that our post office was
on far off Torry Island, and how the postmaster ran a
rural free delivery by row boat. You'll hear of the gigantic
tractor which set fire to the land it was supposed to
LADE FROM SW AMP TO SUGAR BOWL THIS WAS THE EVERGLADES 9
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