Download or read book Totch written by Loren G. Brown and published by . This book was released on 2018-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Totch Brown's memoirs of vanished days in the Ten Thousand Islands and the Everglades--the last real frontier in Florida, and even today the greatest roadless wilderness in the United States--are invaluable as well as vivid and entertaining, for Totch is a natural-born story-teller, and his accounts of fishing and gator hunting as well as his life beyond the law as gator poacher and drug runner are evocative and colorful, fresh and exciting."--from the foreword by Peter Matthiessen In the mysterious wilderness of swamps, marshes, and rivers that conceals life in the Florida Everglades, Totch Brown hung up his career as alligator hunter and commercial fisherman to become a self-confessed pot smuggler. Before the marijuana money rolled in, he survived excruciating poverty in one of the most primitive and beautiful spots on earth, Chokoloskee Island, in the mangrove keys known as the Ten Thousand Islands located at the western gateway to the Everglades National Park. Until he wrote this memoir--recollections from his childhood in the twenties that merge with reflections on a way of life dying at the hands of progress in the nineties--Totch had never read a book in his life. Still, his writing conveys the tension he experienced from trying to live off the land and within the laws of the land. Told with energy and authenticity, his story begins with the handful of souls who came to the area a hundred years ago to homestead on the high ground formed from oyster mounds built and left by the Calusa Indians. They lived close to nature in shacks built of tin or palmetto fans; they ate wild meat, Chokoloskee chicken (white ibis), swamp cabbage, even--when they were desperate--manatee; and they weathered all manner of natural disaster from hurricanes to swarms of "swamp angels" (mosquitoes). In his grandpa's day, Totch writes, outlaws and cutthroats would "shoot a man down just as quick as they'd knock down an egret, especially if he came between them and the plume birds." His grandparents were both contemporaries of Ed J. Watson, the subject of Peter Matthiessen's best-selling Killing Mr. Watson, and Totch is featured in the recent award-winning PBS film Lost Man's River: An Everglades Adventure with Peter Matthiessen. He also appeared in Wind Across the Everglades, the 1957 Budd Schulberg movie in which Totch and Burl Ives sing some of Totch's Florida cracker songs. Loren G. "Totch" Brown was born in Chokoloskee, Florida, in 1920. After purchasing his first motorboat at the age of thirteen (and retiring from formal schooling after the seventh grade) he worked as an alligator hunter, commercial fisherman, crabber, professional guide, poacher, marijuana runner, singer, and songwriter.
Download or read book Gladesmen written by Glen Simmons and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2010-09-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few people today can claim a living memory of Florida's frontier Everglades. Glen Simmons, who has hunted alligators, camped on hammock-covered islands, and poled his skiff through the mangrove swamps of the glades since the 1920s, is one who can. Together with Laura Ogden, he tells the story of backcountry life in the southern Everglades from his youth until the establishment of the Everglades National Park in 1947. During the economic bust of the late ‘20s, when many natives turned to the land to survive, Simmons began accompanying older local men into Everglades backcountry, the inhospitable prairie of soft muck and mosquitoes, of outlaws and moonshiners, that rings the southern part of the state. As Simmons recalls life in this community with humor and nostalgia, he also documents the forgotten lifestyles of south Florida gladesmen. By necessity, they understood the natural features of the Everglades ecosystem. They observed the seasonal fluctuations of wildlife, fire, and water levels. Their knowledge of the mostly unmapped labyrinth of grassy water enabled them to serve as guides for visiting naturalists and scientists. Simmons reconstructs this world, providing not only fascinating stories of individual personalities, places, and events, but an account that is accurate, both scientifically and historically, of one of the least known and longest surviving portions of the American frontier.
Download or read book Everglades Patrol written by Tom Shirley and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2012-09-03 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As law enforcement officer and game manager for the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, Lt. Tom Shirley was the law in one of the last true frontiers in the nation--the Florida Everglades. In Everglades Patrol, Shirley shares the stories from his beat--an ecosystem larger than the state of Rhode Island. His vivid narrative includes dangerous tales of hunting down rogue gladesmen and gators and airboat chases through the wetlands in search of illegal hunters and moonshiners. During his thirty-year career (1955-1985), Shirley saw the Glades go from frontier wilderness to "ruination" at the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers. He watched as dikes cut off the water flow and controlled floods submerged islands that had supported man and animals for 3,000 years, killing much of the wildlife he was sworn to protect.
Download or read book Hidden History of Everglades City and Points Nearby written by Maureen Sullivan-Hartung and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2010-11-12 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of quirky and fun stories about the history of Everglades City. Drawing from the author's time as a reporter for the Everglades City Echo, this book will chronicle lesser-known stories about the area. The book discusses the original pioneer families of Everglades City, and the time when this city was the governing center of Collier County. It goes on to chronicle colorful characters from the area, local landmarks, and the annual Seafood Festival that draws 20,000 people to the city every year.
Download or read book The Everglades written by Anne McCrary Sullivan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everglades National Park’s mangrove ecosystem, extending over 230,000 acres of south Florida, is the most expansive in the western hemisphere and the largest continuous system of mangroves in the world. Most of this mangrove area is remote, accessible only by boat, complex and difficult to navigate. In The Everglades: Stories of Grit and Spirit from the Mangrove Wilderness we hear 21 stories from people who have ventured into this wilderness—for scientific work, artistic work, search-and-rescue missions, for personal renewal, or for the pure adventure of it. They tell stories of manatee rescue, shark encounters, storms and strandings, stories of environmental value and threat, wild beauty, personal enchantment and spirit. Together these stories reveal a world beyond the reach of most travelers. They also offer support and offer enticement to the intrepid few who may venture “out there” and return with stories of their own.
Download or read book The Ghost People of The Everglades written by Barbara Tyner Hall and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last frontier is no more. Commercial fishing has been banned in Everglades National Park, and the locals were forced to find other means of work, but no one expected drug-smuggling to become big business in a small sleepy fishing village with less than one thousand people in population called Everglades City, Florida, and an island called Chokoloskee. The intertwined and dense mangrove system of the Ten Thousand Islands that surrounded the area and with remote locations provided a perfect environment for smugglers to bring and hide their drugs until they could deliver them for big profits. The Daniels family knew the backcountry of the Everglades and the complicated waterways of the area and knew how to travel through the shallow and treacherous waters and go through other passages unknown to anybody else. The Daniels family were sought after and hired to bring in large loads of drugs from South and Central America, as well as a few other countries. This family was born in the area and knew it like the backs of their hands. The Daniels crew was dubbed the "Saltwater Cowboys" because of their daring and reckless style and the "Ghost People of the Everglades" because they could disappear at a blink of an eye. Their wild and daring stunts happened on the high seas as well as in the complicated waterways of the Ten Thousand Islands. These boys could turn into a cluster of mangroves and disappear into another waterway just behind it. This adventurous family that turned outlaw became the largest importer of drugs into the United States that ran throughout our country. This area was world-renowned to some of the largest cartels or drug-smuggling rings around today and now call Everglades National Park their home.
Download or read book Killing Mister Watson written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1998 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of The Snow Leopard, The Tree Where Man Was Born and On the River Styx, this novel is based around the circumstances of the death of a man in Florida 1910, who had terrorized his community in the Florida Everglades. It explores whether it was murder, exorcism or sacrifice.
Download or read book The Smugglers Ghost written by Steve Lamb and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-01-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marijuana turned a Florida teen into a millionaire fugitive
Download or read book Travels Along the Edge written by David Noland and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-10-07 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A travel writer describes in detail forty of the world's most singular and offbeat travel adventures, from paddling by sea kayak around the fjords of Greenland to an elephant safari through Botswana, detailing tour outfitters, gear, health tips, and more.
Download or read book Best Backroads of Florida written by Douglas Waitley and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this third of a three-part series, follow Douglas Waitley along the beaches and over the hills of north Florida, watching rocket launches, meeting dolphins face to face, and trying your luck at the "World's Luckiest Fishing Village" along the way. This volume offers single-day tours to some of the most interesting and remote small towns along some of the most beautiful roads in the northern third of the state. Starting in Melbourne on Florida's Atlantic Coast, skirting Lake Okeechobee, delving into the Everglades, creeping up the Gulf Coast, and ending in Haines City in the heart of citrus country, this volume contains nine one-day romps through some of Florida's most interesting and remote small towns along some of the most beautiful roads in the northern third of the state. Next in series > > See all of the books in this series
Download or read book Island in a Storm written by Abby Sallenger and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the story of the 1856 hurricane which decimated Isle Derniere, an island one hundred miles off the coast of New Orleans which served as a summer resort for the wealthy, and the tragic loss of life and environmental devastation which resulted from the disaster.
Download or read book Homegrown in Florida written by William McKeen and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of stories by writers who grew up in Florida.
Download or read book Diddie Dumps and Tot written by Louise Clarke Pyrnelle and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The adventures of three young white girls on her father's large cotton plantation in Mississippi prior to the Civil War.
Download or read book Florida Literary Luminaries written by James C. Clark and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2022-05-02 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sit down for a spell with the bevy of famed writers who've found inspiration in the Florida sun. From the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca to James Patterson, writers have found inspiration in the Florida sunshine. Ernest Hemingway met his future wife at Sloppy Joe's in Key West. John Kennedy recovered from back surgery in Palm Beach while working on his Pulitzer Prize winning book. James Weldon Johnson wrote what became The Negro National Anthem at the Stanton School in Jacksonville. And Edna St. Vincent Millay watched in shock as her manuscript went up in flames in Sanibel. Florida historian James Clark tells the stories of scores of writers including Robert Frost, Jack Kerouac, John D. MacDonald, and Stephen King. Hunter Thompson driving through the streets of Key West using a bullhorn to warn the citizens, Tennessee Williams partying with Truman Capote, Ring Lardner planning a get together with Al Capone--it's all here.
Download or read book The Most Outrageous Alligator Poachers written by Barbara Tyner Hall and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is going to take you deep into the heart of the Everglades before it became a national park. This journey will give you a great insight into how the laws of the land changed and how it affected the people of the area. This story is plunging deep into the swamplands whose people learned to live off the land as a way to survive in this harsh terrain. Many are commercial fishermen and stone crabbers, and as the I was from the area, it took me a year or so before I learned that they were ex-moonshiners, and their fathers were plume hunters. The best guides in the area are, in fact, the best alligator poachers and hunters known to this area, and the best of all is known to be the men depicted in this story. Behind all the complicated waterways, there is a root system like no other just like a brain of a computer, and behind that is a maze of rivers that are some of the most complicated known to man. People have lost their lives trying to maneuver through the shallow waterways. The new park rangers that were now assigned to this area had to appeal to the local fisherman to show them how to get out if Chokoloskee Bay and a few other waterways so they could patrol the area and return safely that evening to their families. Most of the families and early settlers were related to each other and would clan up like the Indians and did not like outsiders. When the information that was provided to the first park rangers were not at all accurate, the locals, as well as Peg Brown and his friends, enjoyed toying with the rangers as much as possible. They would lay out some routes for the park rangers to follow, and let’s just say there were always some significant points missing. With that the temperament of the poachers grew more mischievous than ever, which led the authorities on highly action-packed chases and exciting adventures and escapades throughout the dangerous maze of the Ten Thousand Islands. Everglades natives believe that the animals in the national park belong to them, and they should be allowed to use animals as they saw fit, much of the same way a developing nation controls its oil. The local people were not all that upset about the widespread killings of the alligators. Most alligators were a nuisances, but they believed in the hidden supply theory, which was said that an unlimited supply of alligators would always emerge from the swamps to replace the ones that were poached and made into shoes, belts, and purses for some of the wealthiest people who could afford to buy them.
Download or read book Saltwater Cowboy written by Tim McBride and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1979, Wisconsin native Tim McBride hopped into his Mustang and headed south. He was twenty-one, and his best friend had offered him a job working as a crab fisherman in Chokoloskee Island, a town of fewer than 500 people on Florida's Gulf Coast. Easy of disposition and eager to experience life at its richest, McBride jumped in with both feet. But this wasn't a typical fishing outfit. McBride had been unwittingly recruited into a band of smugglers--middlemen between a Colombian marijuana cartel and their distributors in Miami. His elaborate team comprised fishermen, drivers, stock houses, security--seemingly all of Chokoloskee Island was in on the operation. As McBride came to accept his new role, tons upon tons of marijuana would pass through his hands. Then the federal government intervened in 1984, leaving the crew without a boss and most of its key players. McBride, now a veteran smuggler, was somehow spared. So when the Colombians came looking for a new middle-man, they turned to him. McBride became the boss of an operation that was ultimately responsible for smuggling 30 million pounds of marijuana. A self-proclaimed "Saltwater Cowboy," he would evade the Coast Guard for years, facing volatile Colombian drug lords and risking betrayal by romantic partners until his luck finally ran out. A tale of crime and excess, Saltwater Cowboy is the gripping memoir of one of the biggest pot smugglers in American history.
Download or read book Lost in the Jungle written by Yossi Ghinsberg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-03-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four travelers meet in Bolivia and set off into the heart of the Amazon rainforest, but what begins as a dream adventure quickly deteriorates into a dangerous nightmare, and after weeks of wandering in the dense undergrowth, the four backpackers split up into two groups. But when a terrible rafting accident separates him from his partner, Yossi is forced to survive for weeks alone against one of the wildest backdrops on the planet. Stranded without a knife, map, or survival training, he must improvise shelter and forage for wild fruit to survive. As his feet begin to rot during raging storms, as he loses all sense of direction, and as he begins to lose all hope, he wonders whether he will make it out of the jungle alive. Lost in the Jungle is the story of friendship and the teachings of nature, and a terrifying true account that you won’t be able to put down.
