Old Florida: A Song of Oaks and Springs

The Land Before Change

There was a time when Florida was more than just a postcard, more than just the glint of neon lights along the highway. It was a land of towering live oaks, their gnarled arms draped in Spanish moss, cradling the dirt roads beneath them like an old guardian watching over its children.

Men rose with the sun, their boots pressing into the damp morning earth as they set out to hunt turkey in the thick palmettos or cast their lines into the blackwater rivers, where bass lurked in the shadows. Their hands were calloused, their backs strong, not from office chairs and commutes, but from farming the rich, untamed land.

Children, barefoot and wild, ran through pastures and pine groves, their laughter blending with the hum of cicadas. They climbed trees, built forts, and worked the land beside their fathers—planting, harvesting, learning the way of things without a classroom. The world was their teacher, and the seasons were their lessons.

In the cool of the shade, women stirred pots of jam in old iron kettles, their hands sticky with the sweetness of muscadine grapes and wild blackberries. They kneaded dough, fried fresh fish caught from the river that morning, and set tables under the stars where supper was more than a meal—it was a time to gather, to share stories, to pass down the unwritten history of the land.

The old country stores, weathered by time and thick with the scent of sawdust and sweet tobacco, stood like relics along the winding backroads. Their screen doors creaked a welcome, swinging shut with a clap as locals lingered over glass-bottled sodas and stories told a hundred times. Barrels of roasted peanuts sat by the door, warm from the sun, their salty shells cracking beneath calloused fingers.

Just beyond, roadside stands lined the highways, where farmers sold boiled peanuts from steaming pots, the briny scent mixing with the thick, slow air of a Florida afternoon. It was a simpler time, where a handful of change bought both a snack and a moment of conversation, where time moved slow, and the land still held its old charm.

And the springs—oh, the springs! Cold, clear, and untouched, like glass pools set into the earth by God himself. They bubbled and swirled, their limestone beds shining beneath the water like buried treasure. The people swam, they drank, they lived beside these waters, knowing they were sacred, knowing they were life itself.

This was Old Florida. A place unpaved, untamed, and untroubled by time.

The Coming of Change

But time does not wait. It moves, like the tide, slow at first—just a whisper on the wind.

Then came the roads, the highways stretching like scars across the old farmland. The orange groves, once heavy with fruit, were bulldozed for subdivisions. The woods where deer once stepped silently through the ferns were replaced with strip malls and parking lots, their surfaces hot and lifeless under the Florida sun.

By the 1980s, the change was undeniable. The old dirt roads were paved, and the towns where people once knew their neighbors by name were swallowed by chain restaurants and tourist traps. The family farms, unable to compete with industrial agriculture, withered away, their fences falling like the last sigh of a dying way of life.

Children no longer roamed the land barefoot; they were told to stay inside, away from the dangers of roads and strangers. The springs, once pristine, grew cloudy with pollution and runoff, their blue depths choked by algae.

And the people—those who remembered—stood by and watched, powerless as the world they had known faded into history.

A Whisper of What Was

Now, if you listen closely, you can still hear it.

In the rustle of the moss-draped oaks, in the lonesome call of a barred owl at dusk, in the cold kiss of a forgotten spring—there is still a whisper of what was. A memory of Old Florida, waiting for someone to remember, waiting for someone to fight for what remains.

Because the land does not forget. And maybe, just maybe, it’s not too late to save what's left.