2002-11-29 - 8:58 p.m.
A lost generation
The dark concrete forms of the new Ringling Causeway lurch over the causeway as it turns. Having not passed over Sarasota Bay since its construction began, the unlit, dark underbelly of the bridge struck me. The radio unsatisfying, I slammed in the first tape I found under my seat – i’m afraid of Americans i’m afraid of the world i’m afraid i can’t help it i’m afraid i can’t
An American flag, a light from the ground reflecting against the white, was the first thing to appear above the circle. A neon cross towers over from the Lutheran Church, blue blue and gigantic. god is an american Then, an enormous stature of President Warrren Harding, winter resident of Sarasota, presided over the circle named after him, Harding Circle, during the time of intense economic polarization.
Actually, the republican president Harding was consumed by the Teapot Dome Scandal, which involved the giveaway of western lands for oil drilling, died, and after his death subject expose by his former mistress, The President’s Daughter, alleging he fathered her child and that they made love in a White House hat and coat closet. Ringling had enough sense to rename the circle after the key, St Armands.
I passed onto Lido Key, named after a barrier island in the gulf of Venice, Italy. There, in a hotel room at the Raddison beach resort, I met my family: My mother, sister, and grandmother. In an arrangement that has served me well for several years, they take a vacation to Sarasota for thanksgiving, allowing me to avoid travel time during paper season and not become prisoner somewhere. We had thanksgiving dinner at “Hemmingway’s,” a restaurant on Harding Circle. The bar was pitifully inadequate for the name. I had a $6 Mai Tai and felt nothing. Entrees cost around $20. Ernest Hemmingway, among others, actually left America in the 1920s because of our repressive culture—the ability of capitalism to absorb and appropriate messages directed against it came to mind.
Thanksgiving dinner, which came to $150 including tip, was pleasant enough. The big news in my grandmother’s life is that a new show is competing with Opera – which she prefers, and it is in fact beating Opera in the ratings. I also learned it was the sale of a corner of the family farm to the Rite-Aid Corporation—which was partially in her name—gave her the financial independence to move into her current home, an apartment far from my grandfather. This formally makes her a “serendipitous entrepreneur,” according to the neo-Marxist parlance of Dr. Brain. My grandmother told me that someone is interested in buying the remainder of the turn-of-the-century farm; she said my grandfather refers to the prospective buyer by a term that is an Italian slur I don’t recognize. “I’m from a different era, a politically-correct era.”
Hearing all of this, and seeing my mother’s reaction, reminded me of New Yorker article I coincidentally re-read yesterday. O.J. Simpson’s new life—as I mentioned before, he recently moved into my neighborhood, only a few miles from my house. “Simpson said that he likes South Florida because ‘everyone’s got a history here.’ He meant a history they were trying to escape: that people come to South Florida to create a new life.”
That night I went home and continued the work I left the previous morning. “The history of all hitherto existing Sarasota is the history of class struggles.” I was hung up on an incident that occurred in 1884, the year before the Scots arrived. The long version is too much to go into, but the short version is – the land of Sarasota was stolen as cleanly as that by the British ruling classes. I can document this, although ultimately everything is a matter of interpretation.
