COLUMN

See What It Was Like In Dreamland

By STEVE OTTO

Published: Oct 14, 2007

Some of you still remember a different Florida, and if you do, you also wonder what happened.

I'm talking about the Florida the rest of America discovered during and right after World War II, when tens of thousands of servicemen came here to train at installations up and down the peninsula and decided to return one day.

Florida always has been different, but in the postwar years it was another planet.

It was the South, but it wasn't the South. It was in many places a vast and exotic wilderness, but it also was the stuff of dreams, a refuge from the dreary North with its cold winters and high taxes.

There's going to be a terrific documentary on public broadcasting Thursday at 9 p.m. (locally on WEDU, Channel 3) called "The Florida Dream." I wish it was a little earlier because this is one of those rare shows that Florida teachers ought to have their classes watch. As entertaining as it is, it's a wonderful look at what Florida is all about and there is footage of many of those events that have shaped the lives of those who choose to live in this place.

The show was inspired by University of South Florida St. Petersburg history professor Gary Mormino's new book, "Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida." It's narrated by Ed Asner, but what really makes it work is the direction of Larry Elliston. You might remember Elliston from his years with Channel 13 and his great "Down Home" pieces on Florida. Elliston is one of us and he grew up during those tumultuous times.

I think it took someone like Elliston, who remembers a Florida without Disney and a time when you could drive over to Indian Rocks Beach and see beach instead of condo canyons, to capture and edit a half century of Florida in less than an hour.

More importantly, along with looking at the dreamers and the doers who re-created the Florida landscape of today, the show examines those same underpinnings that are determining or threatening our future.

The documentary points out that at the close of the war, the population of Florida was still less than 2 million and most of the development had been in the Panhandle between Pensacola and Jacksonville.

Soon, though, came the developers, taking advantage of those soldiers who had come this way and were being lured back with affordable homes near the coast, an exotic lifestyle and even air conditioning.

Personally, I think the reason there are now nearly 19 million souls crowded along the coastlines of the state is air conditioning. I can remember when my grandparents put a unit in their bedroom and how the family all came to stand and wonder at how cool it was in the middle of summer in that room. Suddenly you didn't have to spend your nights sweating, with your nose inches away from a buzzing fan.

There were so many other factors unique to Florida: the astounding race for space that transformed the small towns on the east coast; the Cuban revolution and its profound effect on the diversity of the state; and the effect of Disney and the theme-parking of Central Florida.

There is all of that and more in the documentary, but Elliston and Mormino's show also should be the beginning of a discussion as it looks at the unrelenting sprawl and the continuing efforts of dreamers and developers to reshape and mold a fragile state into the profit margins of their own dreams.