In the big hotels in Palm Beach, Miami, Ormond, Daytona, St. Augustine and other Florida resorts are the time-killers, with their jewel-lariats and their acres of white trousers: with their flask-trimmed tea-dances and their hard-boiled social aspirations and their refined gambling houses, and their trick whisky-canes. The sun, to the time-killers, is not of the utmost importance. If they were unable to change their clothes several times a day they would feel ill-at-ease; if they were unable to be charged a little matter of forty dollars a day for a double room and bath, they would feel that they were being slighted in some way; if they couldn’t have the knowledge that they were inhaling the same air which was being inhaled by the leading millionaires and society pets, they would feel cheated.
Not so the sun-hunter. The sun-hunter knows the value of a dollar. He usually knows the value of a nickel, also. It is said that before he relinquishes his hold on a twenty-five-cent piece, he gives it a farewell squeeze of such violence that the eagle on it frequently emits a strangled squawk of anguish. This statement, I believe, is a gross exaggeration. The fact remains, however, that one never finds the sun-hunter throwing his money around in the loose, spasmodic manner which always characterizes the genuine time-killer. And the sun-hunter wants just two things: sun and air. He knows nothing about Charley Schwab or Harry Payne Whitney or the Stotesburys, and he would take no interest whatever in them unless they got between him and the sun.
He might entertain the notion of running over to Miami Beach to view the residence of Bob Hassler, who invented a Ford shockabsorber; but other plutocrats and social luminaries leave him cold.
Clothes mean nothing in his life. The male sun-hunter is usually garbed in dark trousers which hang loosely on his legs like the trousers always inflicted on sculptured statesmen by sculptors of the Horace Greeley period. He may or he may not wear a coat, depending entirely on his whim of the moment; but he almost invariably affects the old-fashioned gallus, or suspender. He will be found in this garb on Sunday morning, when fishing for yellowtails on the edge of a creek with a bamboo pole; he will be found in it on Wednesday afternoon, when visiting the movies; and he will be found in it on Friday evening when engaged in an exciting game of euchre with a pair of brother and sister sun-hunters. He may change it, but there are few who are aware of it if he does. It is the sun-hunter’s uniform.
The sun-hunters are not recruited from any one class of citizens. The natives of Florida, with their unflagging determination to place everything in the most favorable light, tell you that they are bankers, merchants, doctors, lawyers and what-not. They’d have you think that most of them are bankers. As a matter of fact, there are some bankers among them—and some burglars, too. The bulk of them are farmers; for a farmer can, if he wishes, arrange matters so that he has little or nothing to do during the winter months. Next to them come contractors, builders and carpenters. The sun-hunters are the people who can get away from home with the least amount of trouble; and among them one finds retired business men of all sorts, dairymen, doctors, bankers, lawyers and similar folk.
Such is the modern American migrant, and Florida is the goal of his migration. As soon as the first snow begins to fall in the North, or when the earth has tightened up under a black frost, the sun-hunters prepare for their flight to the South. Great numbers of them travel by automobile; and their automobiles are completely stocked with folding chairs, collapsible beds, accordeon-mattresses, knock-down tents, come-apart stoves, telescopic dishwashers and a score of dishpans, tables, dinner-sets, tin cups, water-buckets and toilet articles that fold up into one another and look like a bushel of scrap-tin. In addition to this, each automobile carries a large assortment of canned goods. There are canned goods under the seats, slung against the top, packed along the sides, tucked behind cushions and stacked along the floor. Some of the automobiles are so well stocked with canned things that they could make a dash for the Pole. And as one passes some of them on the road, they sound as though their owners were carrying a reserve supply of canned goods under the hood—loose.
CHAPTER IV
OF THE TIN-CAN TOURISTS OF THE WORLD—OF IMMIGRANTS AND OTHER UNSUPERVISED VISITORS, NATIONAL AND LOCAL—OF CHEAP SKATES—AND OF THE REASON WHY TIN-CANNERS DO NOT ABOUND IN PALM BEACH
It is due to the heavy weight of cans carried by these automobiles that the true, stamped-in-the-can sun-hunter is known to himself, to his friends and to his enemies as a tin-can tourist. He lives in more or less permanent settlements known as tin-can towns; and his interests are safeguarded by a flourishing organization rejoicing in the impressive title of Tin-Can Tourists of the World.
The badge of the Tin-Can Tourists of the World is a small white celluloid button with the letters T C T tastefully disposed on it in dark blue. The insignia of the order is a small soup-can mounted on the radiator of the member’s automobile. There is also a password which the members bawl at one another when they pass on the road; but this is one of the secrets of the fraternity that should not be profaned by publication.