On top of these depressing spectacles, many of which may some day be partly obscured in tropical verdure, certain enterprising citizens of Miami have added to Florida’s scenic beauties by lining the roadsides with blatant sign-boards setting forth the delights of garages, restaurants, clothing emporia and similar enterprises. Not content with building self-sustaining sign-boards which protrude gauntly and repulsively from the flat landscape and convince the newcomer that he is approaching a slum-city, they have nailed countless numbers of huge yellow monstrosities to the palms and fruit-trees along the highways—signs that have no influence on any one except the lover of beauty, and which only serve to fill him with contempt for people who can permit the few natural beauties of their surroundings to be so befouled. In the North one expects to find—as he does find—a plague of sign-boards, and hideous summer resorts whose predominant features are those of the awful and tasteless ’eighties. In the new South, however, which lures tourists with honeyed words and promises of every sort of beauty, the erecting of roadside sign-boards should be viewed with as much disgust and loathing as grapefruit-stealing or murder—both of which crimes fall under somewhat the same head in Miami.
Spreading through and beyond the subdivisions are the orange and grapefruit groves, and the truck gardens and vegetable farms. Oranges and grapefruit are so common in southern Florida that grapefruit are served free in many of the hotels; while many other hotels keep large bowls of free oranges alongside the ice-water tank. So far as is known, these are the only things that one has a chance of getting for nothing in Florida hotels.
There are hundreds of three-acre and five-acre farms owned by northerners who didn’t like winter, and ran away from it with one or two thousand dollars in their pockets. Many of these little farmers not only manage to make both ends meet, but even salt away comfortable bank rolls. One little town near Miami shipped sixty-one thousand quarts of strawberries to northern cities during the first six weeks of the 1922 season, and the growers’ share of the spoils was fifty cents a quart. The wise strawberry farmers, who plant their land to velvet beans during the summer and plow them under in September, and otherwise indulge in the clever tricks of the trade, get some very snappy results. One of the best strawberry farmers near Miami had four and one-tenth acres of land planted to strawberries in 1921. His first berries came in on December twentieth, and he picked twice a week until July fifteenth. The total yield of his four and one-tenth acres was 41,059 quarts, his average price for each quart was forty-five cents, and his gross sales amounted to slightly over eighteen thousand five hundred dollars. His total expenses were a little over six thousand dollars.
More than eight thousand acres are planted to tomatoes in the vicinity of Miami, and nearly five hundred thousand crates were shipped north during the 1921 season. These tomatoes bring the growers about three dollars a crate, of which about a dollar and seventy-five cents must be charged off to fertilizer, labor, hauling and crating. The life of a tomato farmer is not a happy one, for the crop is very sensitive to wet weather. It is also very sensitive to dry weather. The slightest nip of frost also puts a severe crimp in it. Some of the tomato farmers say that the plant is so sensitive that if a man cusses or chews tobacco in its vicinity, it will refuse to bear. In spite of all this, there are plenty of tomato-lovers to plant tomatoes every winter, and some of them have made fortunes out of this popular fruit—or vegetable.
CHAPTER VII
OF THE SUSPICIOUS STORIES CONCERNING THE MANGO—OF THE PET MANGO OF THE MIAMIANS—AND OF ITS SUPERIORITY TO OTHER THINGS
The cupidity of farmers who are sick of northern winters is easily aroused by prices obtained for the best varieties of mangoes. “Their rich, spicy flavor, tempting fragrance and beautiful coloring,” say the Miami prospecti, “make them one of the most tempting table desserts that can be imagined.” Miami, it appears, has a monopoly on this fruit, and the catalogues rub in the bad news by adding that “this monopoly is not only confined to the cultivation, but also to the exquisite joy of eating it, as very few find their way to the northern markets, the local demand far exceeding the supply.” One reads that the choicest varieties “readily sell in the northern markets for from one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents each,” thus confirming the skeptical northerner in the belief of the late P. T. Barnum that there was one born every minute. The weak spot in this argument is not visible offhand to the doubting Thomases from the North who spend the winter in Florida. The mango ripens in summer—in June and July—so the winter visitors can not sink their teeth in the widely advertised fruit. Consequently they always feel sure that there is some good reason why the Florida people prefer the exquisite joy of eating the mango to the even more exquisite joy of shaking down their northern brothers for one dollar and fifty cents per mango.
Strangely enough, there is no Ethiopian concealed anywhere in the mango woodpile, although any one who aspires to become a mango-grower may have his first fine enthusiasm dashed by the fact that mango trees don’t begin bearing until five to seven years after they have been set out; and seven years is a long time to wait, especially if one is hunting for quick returns.
The mango in its finest form, however, is worth waiting seven years for. The mango with which northerners are familiar is a small, mottled, unhealthy-looking fruit about the size of a large lemon. The interior is partly mushy and partly stringy, and it gets tangled up in the teeth in a most annoying manner. The general effect obtained from dallying with it is that the mango is a total loss. The pet mango of the Miamians is a very different proposition. It is known as the Hayden mango, and is about the size of a large coconut. When ripe it is rosy red all over, and has the fragrance of a flower. It is a baffling fruit to open, as its seed is about the size and shape of the cuttle-bone used as an aid to canaries’ digestions. The unskilled mango eater will frequently wreck an entire mango trying to worry it open gently; but he eventually learns that one must wring its neck in a brutal manner to get the best results.
The meat of the Hayden mango is sweeter than that of any other fruit I know; and it has a peculiar and delicious taste and aroma of pine forests. Years ago my grandfather, in the spring of the year, would go prowling through the New Hampshire woods; and on his return he would bring with him a lardpail full of the tender, slippery, fragrant inner lining of the bark of pine trees, locally known as “slyver.” This was always seized with delighted acclaim by the entire family and wolfed down greedily because of its delicious piney taste. The Hayden mango has the same piney taste raised to the thirty-third or master’s degree. One Hayden mango makes an ample dessert for two people; and I have not found that the Miamians are averse to selling them, or that the prices are as high as the catalogues claim. Packages of six Hayden mangoes have been sent to me repeatedly from Miami by parcel post at three dollars a half dozen.