A year in Ephemera: 2010 in review

On January 2, 2010, I laid out goals of places I'd like to visit and blog about. Today on this last day of 2010, I look back at how my year played out and compare it to my intentions.

In my own backyard I did stop and photograph the world's largest alligator in Christmas at Jungleland Adventures. I had a great trip to Gatorland and will be back in 2011 to visit the bird rookery during breeding season. I also participated in a local history tour of the Lake Eola Heights district conducted by local historian Steve Rajtar, but I did not get enough compelling images to warrant a blog post. And finally while I did not visit Blue Springs, I did have an up-close and personal experience with a few manatees at De Leon Springs on Christmas Eve.

Although I stopped to take pictures, I have yet to visit Jungleland Adventures

For a bird lover, it's hard to imagine anything more inspiring than the rookery at Gatorland

From Orlando's Lake Eola Heights neighborhood

De Leon Springs manatee

Overall I attempted to look at Central Florida with fresh eyes, as if I didn't live here and was seeing it for the first time. I explored downtown by bike and took inventory of some of the architecture. I visited historic homes in Howey in the Hills and at the Nehrling Estate (future post.) Overall I learned that sometimes a long drive isn't necessary to see interesting, historic stuff and there are still many sites I haven't been to in my own backyard.

I got to see the Howey Mansion because of an auction

The Nehrling House

Expanding my reach outside of my immediate area, first and foremost I wanted to re-visit Silver Springs, and although I haven't blogged about it yet, I did finally make it back to this venerable old attraction. Bad weather over the holidays prevented me from exploring more of the Gainesville area, so that will have to wait until 2011. I also made a fantastic visit to St. Pete and had a great evening shuffling at the St. Pete Shuffle (Treasure Island will have to wait until 2011 too.)

Look for a future post about my Christmas Eve visit to Silver Springs

My trip to the St. Pete Shuffle was one of the year's highlights

While I didn't get to Soloman's Castle or Chalet Suzanne, I finally got to the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Florida Southern College and explored a little bit of Lakeland. And while I never made it up to Jacksonville, I did get back to St. Augustine and re-visited the Fountain of Youth and made my first visit to Potter's Wax Museum (future posts.)

Frank Lloyd Wright's Pfeiffer Chapel at Florida Southern

Year end visits to St. Augustine's Potter's Wax Museum and the Fountain of Youth will be covered in 2011 posts

My final goals were to learn about the states fascinating folks who make Florida so interesting and on that note I can proudly say, mission accomplished. From artists like Martin Cushman in Mt. Dora to the late Joy Postle, I tried to document those who use(d) their creativity to document their home state. I met some of my favorite roadside buddies like Jeff and Kelly of Vintage Roadside and prolific author Tim Hollis. I also learned more about historical figures from Coral Gable's George Merrick to the influential Henry Plant.

Kelly and Jeff of Vintage Roadside

Christmas display inside the amazing museum of Tim Hollis

Much of the year's post, however, were not the results of goals at the beginning of the year. A late December trip to South Florida yielded posts well into February (this was actually accomplishing a goal I set in 2009.). That was the same month that a birthday dinner in Ocala produced several posts and I learned of the plans to tear down Kissimmee's KAST club.

Coral Gables' Biltmore was one of the many highlights of last years South Florida excursion

A mid-century roadside survivor in Ocala

Kissimmee All States Tourist Club, 1941-2010

In March I visited Brooksville, Cassadaga and New Smyrna. April posts reported on my explorations of Lakeland and May's highlight was Gatorland. In June my attention was focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As summer progressed my focus left the Sunshine State as I prepared a paper on hillbilly iconography to be delivered at the SCA Conference in October.

Ruins of the Turnbull Colony in New Smyrna

A Weeki Wachee beauty superimposed against the ugliness of the oil spewing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico

The idea for the Hillbilly paper was spawned from a spring break visit to the Mountaineer Inn of Asheville, NC

I am blessed to be able to explore and write about this wonderful state and I am continually struck with a sense of wonder and amazement at its whimsical, historical and natural places. I still believe that we are at a critical time in the future of our state, and so much of Old Florida is in danger of sliding away. My goal continues to be to write about and photograph these great Florida places, with the hope that as more people become aware of them, they are more likely to be preserved. My intention is to try to prevent the spread of "generica" and blandness across the state and preserve its uniqueness. I have big plans for 2011. Please stay tuned!

Hillbillia

The reason for going to Birmingham was to visit author Tim Hollis and his fabulous museum of 20th century stuff (for lack of a better term). It's more than ephemera, more than collectibles, more than souvenirs, more than toys, it's basically all the stuff from American popular culture for much of the later half of the century. Words don't do it justice. And Tim, a prolific author of countless books on Southern popular culture, is the perfect person to offer more information about the hillbilly stereotype.

The museum, two full stories added to the back of Tim's house, is really overwhelming. The walls are lined with records, children's books, games and puzzles. Advertising characters hang from the ceiling and shelves are packed with everything from lunch boxes to collectible shampoo bottles. Downstairs the fun continues with more stuff like regional tourist ephemera like maps, brochures and pendants from roadside attractions. There is a "grocery store" with vintage packaging, a Halloween area with glow-in-the dark kids' costumes, a Christmas section with animated characters from department store window displays and re-creations of entire rooms from Tim's childhood home. Too much to take in on one visit.

Tim pulled great samples of print ephemera for me detailing everything from the hillbilly-esque radio duo of Lum and Abner to the now defunct Arkansas theme park Dogpatch USA. In addition, we poured over souvenirs and collectibles from the Lil Abner, Mountain Dew, The Beverly Hillbillies, and countless other pop cultures examples of Hillbillyana. My dad found memorabilia from radio shows he listened to as a kid while my brother had flashbacks from Saturday morning cartoons we used to watch together.

Tim was gracious and hospitable, a true Southern gentleman, setting us on our way with more than I can ever use for my 15 minute presentation, and the soundtrack from his museum. If you have some free time next time you are in Birmingham, I suggest looking him up to see his amazing collection.

Next stop for us was Hillbilly Village in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. If you've never been to Pigeon Forge, it's somewhere between Orlando's International Drive and the strip in Vegas. Miniature golf, dinner shows, outlet malls, souvenirs shops and roadside attractions compete to out do each other in Southern gaudiness. A giant Titanic replica stuck by the side of the road and dinosaurs compete with religious-themed attractions to overwhelm the visitor. And right in the middle of this chaos is Hillbilly Village, an attraction that has been pulling in visitors with its "authentic" re-creation of a mountaineer homestead for almost 60 years.

But first one has to endure two layers of gift shops with tacky souvenirs, many of which are hillbilly themed. From corncob pipes, hillbilly cookbooks, figurines, hats, and novelties, they have all your hillbilly needs covered. The "exhibit" consists of a couple stills, an outhouse with a hillbilly mannequin inside and a 100-year old cabin. Decaying plywood figurines are posed throughout the village and some are missing body parts after years of use. I was amazed that with all the over-the-top glitz on the commercial strip, that this deteriorating presentation still had the ability to draw in tourists.

As I purchased my hillbilly calendar and vintage souvenir decals, I inquired about the history of the place and immediately got a cold shoulder from one of the clerks. The other explained that the establishment had been around for at least 58 years, more than 40 with the current owner. I really wanted to know if they ever encountered anyone who felt offended by their blatant use of the hillbilly stereotype, but it felt like I had already offended them with my questions, so I took my purchases and moved on. My father who grew up in the mountains about 3 hours away, said it didn't offend him, it was just tacky. I agree with him – to me Hillbilly Village is equivalent to the numerous t-shirt and citrus shops found around Florida, but instead of luring tourists off the road with alligators and orange juice they use mountaineers and moonshine.

Hillbilly Road Trip

I was asked to design a logo for the Society for Commercial Archeology's upcoming conference in Arkansas, Odyssey in the Ozarks, and I asked "what kind of imagery do you want to use, hillbillies drinking moonshine?" The overwhelming response via email was a collective "NO!"

Fresh off a spring break trip to the Appalachians where I stayed in Asheville's Mountaineer Inn, which features a 40-foot high neon hillbilly complete with bare feet, corn cob pipe, and rifle, I was surprised at the conviction of my client's wishes. At the Asheville motel the hillbilly stereotype is celebrated in the motel's office and throughout the rooms; in fact the young clerk was more than happy to tell me about how he knew moonshiners who still practiced their illicit trade.

I wondered about the paradox of how the hillbilly stereotype could at the same time be offensive on one hand, yet embraced in enormous neon on the other. I realized that I had mixed feelings about the term myself, as my father's family had left the mountains of Appalachia to find work in the auto industry in Michigan, traveling the "hillbilly highway" back and forth between their mountain homes and their Detroit factory jobs. My dad, plucked from rural Rabun County, Georgia right before high school, soon found himself in Pontiac, Michigan in what must have been to him a strange new world. Eventually he found his way to Michigan State University where he met my mom, a native Michigander, and they stayed up north until I was 18 months old before relocating to Florida. Some of my father's brothers and sisters stayed in Michigan and some moved back to the mountains. As a result, I grew up knowing two families that had very different cultural backgrounds, one Midwestern, one Appalachian.

That's my dad on the right

As a kid, my dad's family in the mountains always seemed more mysterious than my Michigan relatives. They talked funny, grew their own vegetables, and went to churches that prohibited drinking. Just driving up the steep roads to their homes was an adventure for a flatlander like myself. When I was young, I saw my mountain relatives as hillbillies in the negative sense of the word; simple, primitive and unsophisticated.

The film Deliverance was filmed in my dad's hometown of Clayton, GA

As I grew older, however, I found that these folks were some of the kindest, generous and most loving people I have ever met. I see them now as hard working, industrious, warm and sincere. I guess I needed a little maturity to get over my own naive bias. And while my mother's childhood is well documented; she even has self-published a book on growing up in a small mid-western town; my father's childhood still seems mysteriously fascinating to me.

Intrigued by the paradox of the hillbilly stereotype and my own history with the term, I decided to present a paper on the subject at the aforementioned SCA conference. While preparing the paper, I have had great help from my roadside friends, even Debra Jane Selzer, the amazing creator of roadsidearchitecture.com, has been collecting images for me on her latest roadtrip. Friends on Flickr have offered to let me borrow their images. And I'm headed to visit one of my favorite authors of the roadside South, Tim Hollis, author of books like Dixie before Disney and the Land of the Smokies.

After visiting Tim's museum in Birmingham, I head to Gatlinburg and its many hillbilly-themed tourist traps. From there I'll cross the Smokies into Rabun County to see my North Georgia kin. My goal is to post updates from the road, ala Debra Jane, but that will all depend upon the quality of the wireless connection and my commitment level once I actually get out there.

My traveling partners on this road trip are my father and brother. In addition to looking for hillbilly stuff along the road, I think I'm trying to learn about my own inner hillbilly. Ride along and I'll let you know what I find...