By Scott Graber
It’s Thursday, and Susan and I have a room at the Wakulla Springs Lodge just south of Tallahassee, Fla.
This evening I’m sitting in a granite-tiled, stucco-walled lobby partially heated by a huge stone fireplace. There is also a mummified alligator named “Old Joe;” a box of mastodon bones; a video monitor that continuously plays “Creature From the Black Lagoon.”
Two Persian rugs define the sitting areas that come with brown leather sofas that might easily seat eight or 10 people. Unfortunately, these sofas have backrests several miles removed from where one’s back would normally rest; causing one to more or less lie flat. To make matters worse none of the “big and tall” sized furniture is anywhere near the fire.
Nonetheless this lobby invites the same kind of long, lingering conversations one might have at the Grove Park Inn or the Jefferson in Richmond, Va. But I’m not interested in conversations. At the moment I’m watching the entrance where a friend, Ken Tucker, will shortly appear.
I’m slightly worried because a movie is being shot in the lobby. There are lights, cameras and young production assistants walking around with walkie-talkies. All of this action swirling around a beautiful young actress, and a young bellhop who, apparently, are falling in love.
Yesterday I talked with the film’s director, Evan Patrick Adams, who told me that his movie, “Private I,” should be out in August. “This has been an exercise in chaos — controlled chaos,” he said. “But filming here, at the Wakulla Lodge, is the realization of my dreams …”
Earlier today my wife and I hiked part of this semi-submerged landscape then took a boat ride over the crystalline waters of the Springs. We passed through alligators, water birds and, of course, the huge, slow-moving manatees that one smells before one actually sees. Notwithstanding the methane I can report that, at $8 a person, the boat trip is the best ticket in Florida.
After our ride I did laps in the 70-degree water, passing near a hole that descends 185 feet and connects with another 26 miles of underwater caverns. As I swam, I tried, but did not succeed, in forgetting that a huge alligator named “Young Joe” was sunning himself 50 yards away.
Some of you may know that I have long held a disdain for anything, everything Floridian. In this connection I refused to take my son, Zach, to Disney World or any of the theme parks near Orlando. While I refused him entry to the Magic Kingdom, I tried to compensate with overnight hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains, especially in the Nantahala Forest around Mt. Pisgah.
I must confess that I was not constant in my loathing of everything Floridian — I did take Zach to the famed Alligator Farm near St. Augustine. And yes, it is true that we sometimes lingered in the gift shop buying Alligator-themed magnets, ashtrays and coffee mugs.
I have sometimes wondered if my banishment of Mickey Mouse had any adverse effects on Zach. In those long-gone days, I did not believe there was any redeeming value in a $10 ride through Space Mountain. But now, in my dotage, I wonder if it was the cost of that visit that I really feared.
Tonight, I’ll have dinner with a Citadel classmate, Ken Tucker, in the dining room. Ken is a retired lawyer now living a few miles away in Tallahassee.
If Ken can navigate past the cast, cameras and crew, we will talk about Larry Moreland’s course in Constitutional Law; about Ken’s time on the Honor Court; about classmates lost in Vietnam; about Japanese-discovered comets streaking through the night-time sky.
Ken — a native of Florida — went to the University of Florida for his law degree. Thereafter he worked in the Attorney General’s office rising up to Chief Deputy, second in command of that large, consequential office. I know Ken then went into private practice, representing Lockheed-Martin among other Florida-based business firms.
But what will forever bind Ken and me was a car wreck that happened our Junior year as we made our way up I-95 to William and Mary College. We were both injured — my parents were told I would not survive the night — and I have forgotten many details of that late-night crash.
But I do remember lying in the median of I-95 and discussing a newly discovered comet. I do remember Ken saying, “Look Scott, there’s the comet!”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
