The forecast for today
is for record highs in the mid to upper 80s. Santa will arrive in Central
Florida tonight wearing flip flops, red gym shorts and a white tee-shirt with
SPF60 covering his exposed parts, no doubt.
It has not always been
thus. Christmas has, upon occasion, been the time of horrendous freezes in
Florida. While we await a Santa who will not doubt find his woolen suit very
warm and itchy this Christmas Eve, my thoughts go back to Central Florida in
1983.
It was my first
Christmas back in Central Florida after having spent the last two years in
South Florida and the previous three years in law school. We had moved to
Orlando the previous summer, Andy from Vero Beach, having left his job at the
down-sizing Piper Aircraft, and I from Lake Worth, where I had tried my hand at
a brief but painful stint as a Legal Services attorney and finished the year
teaching journalism and English at Lake Worth High.
We had found a rental
house on the outskirts of Orlando in an old neighborhood called Clarcona. Our
subdivision of 1960s era CBS houses included the requisite crazy cat lady next
door, the little hoods running the streets at night in their hot rods and the
wheeling and dealing good ole boy landlord seeking to move into real estate
after a lifetime of raising horses. The land had become too valuable for horse
and cattle ranching and the pastures were already beginning to disappear by the
time we had arrived in 1985.
I had auditioned and
been accepted into the choir at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. Luke
downtown. It was a long ride each Wednesday to practice and each Sunday to
church. But I loved singing with a very high quality choir which consistently
produced beautiful music from its loft high above the looming Gothic style
cathedral and periodically was asked to sing in a circuit of Anglican
cathedrals in England.
Candles in a sea of
scents
Christmas Eve 1983, I
had spent the day at a friend’s house eating snacks and watching football. A
cold front had moved through the area that morning and gale force winds blowing
in a dome of very cold air had whipped the area. The sun had come out bright and
clear that afternoon and the highs reached the mid-60s. While the forecast said
it would be cold that evening, no one really knew what was coming, forecasters
included.
The midnight mass
service at the Cathedral had been absolutely stunning. All the lights were
extinguished following the communion. Candles had been handed out to
parishioners and everyone took their turn lighting their candle from their
neighbor’s candle to in turn light the candle of the person sitting on their
other side. “Silent night, holy night….” we sang, the massive cathedral nave
awash in a sea of wonderful scents of candle wax, incense and evergreens all
lit only by flickering candles.
All too soon, that
magical moment was over, the final processional hymn sung and the exhortation
to “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord” was shouted from the narthex of the
cathedral. The happy masses assembled responded “Thanks be to God!”
As I walked across the
close of the Cathedral to the choir room to change, the cold wind of a winter
Central Florida had not seen in at least two decades whipped up under my choir
robe. Suddenly, I knew it was much colder than it had been forecast to be. And
just as quickly I knew that my many tropical plants I had brought with me from
South Florida sitting on my back porch were in major danger.
Photo from Mt. Dora Citizen, July 17, 2015
Rolling Blackouts and
Christmas Lights
Our house lay about
eight miles north of Colonial Drive, SR 50, the eight lane highway which
bisects Orlando east and west, stretching from Titusville across the Banana
River from the Kennedy Space Complex on the east to Pine Island on the Gulf of
Mexico to the west. The area along west Colonial Drive was an aging subdivision
called Pine Hills, alternately known as Crime Hills for its high rates of
burglaries and thefts.
Pine Hills was
bisected by a major road called Silver Star. On our end of Pine Hills, Silver
Star marked the limits of subdivision encroachment into the former citrus
groves which prior to tourism were the economic mainstay of the region and
which gave Orange County its name.
A strip shopping
center had been carved out of the corners of Silver Star and Hiawassee Road,
one of three north/south arteries running through Pine Hills. As I neared the
bank at the intersection, the time and temperature sign out front read in
succession 2:00 AM, 20°F.
My heart sank. I knew
my tropicals were largely gone now.
I got home, mixed
myself a stiff hot toddy and went out to mitigate whatever damage I could. The
first plant I picked up to move broke off in my hand, already frozen solid. I
covered the plants with blankets and towels, an old Florida custom, and went
back into my house to thaw out. There would be little left but a green mush
when I took the coverings off two days later when the temperatures came back up
above freezing.
The temperature would
drop to 21°F that night at the international airport though in the hills north
and west of the downtown core where we lived, the 18° recorded on my backyard
thermometer would be closer to the lows experienced there. Rolling black outs
occurred across Florida as power grids trying to keep largely electrical
heating systems in homes and businesses overloaded the system. Public service
announcements exhorted Floridians to turn off all unnecessary electrical
appliances. Many huddled in the dark, some even resorting to the heated
interiors of their cars, even as they awaited their Christmas lights outside to
come back on along with their heat.
And that would not be
the end of the cold. The following winter, a second killer freeze would follow
the first with temperatures down to 19° at the international airport. Yet
another killer freeze came in 1989. The landscape of Central Florida would be completely
devastated with ancient palms and tropical trees and shrubs frozen to the
ground, many never to recover.
The freezes came at a
pivotal time in the Orlando region’s history. With the Disney complex to its
south just over a decade old, there was already a tension between the
historical ongoing agricultural usage of the land and the sugar plum fairies
which danced in the heads of developers who envisioned a Central Florida of
endless tract housing and strip shopping malls.
In the end, it would
be that vision which prevailed, the unreliability of the weather making ongoing
citrus production a poor bet. Many broken-hearted former citrus growers plowed
their dead trees under after 1985. Thereafter the former grove land would
sprout houses.
Photo
from Orlando Sentinel, Dec. 24, 2014
This Year, Santa Comes
on a Surfboard
This Christmas our
worries are very different in nature. The beaches will be crowded this day as
Cocoa Beach holds a Surfing Santa contest in temperatures usually not seen
before April. The National Weather Service has predicted above normal
temperatures all the way through January 5. The lows for the next week will not
drop below 65°F, a mere five degrees below average highs for this time of year.
Many of us wonder if
this is the harbinger of things to come in a state at great risk for coastal
flooding if even the most stringent of predictions for climate change will
prove correct. My father has long said that “In Florida only fools and Yankees
try to predict the weather.” Perhaps that is true. I have no crystal ball to
rely upon, only an uneasy feeling in my stomach these days.
I am glad that we do
not face killing cold this Christmas. I remember those cold winters of 1983-84
and 1984-85 only too well. Even so, I would gladly welcome some slightly
cooler temperatures if for no other reason than to give us a break from the
daily highs in the 80s. And I look with no small amount of trepidation at a
future in which this somewhat warmer winter may prove a desirable alternative
to what could be coming.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life
is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or
political, is not worth holding.
Most things worth
considering do not come in sound bites.
For what does G-d
require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with
your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew
Scriptures)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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