Peace River Pete: A Florida Tale

                                 Writen and Contributed by Nevin D. Sitler

    After consulting several heavily thumbed, dog-eared river guidebooks, my decision to explore central Florida's Peace River was an easy choice. Considered Florida's most popular State Canoe Trail,  this 106 mile wandering flow appears on the map as if Mother Nature lazily dragged her index finger from central Florida's Green Swamp southwestward to Charlotte Harbor. Springing forth as little more than a trickle in backcountry scrub, the Peace River spreads nearly a mile wide by the time it confronts the salt-laced Gulf of Mexico.

    My unexpected companion on this exploration, a crusty Florida cracker named Pete, was one of happenstance, thanks to Smith - "Just Smith." I encountered them both, however, when my need for directions got in my way.

    Ten miles outside the town limits of Bowling Green, Florida, the adventure begins. Alone in my canoe-topped pickup truck, and apparently lost, I begin searching for signs to get my bearings. Soon I spot a battered mailbox: its front lid missing, its body scattered with what could only be a volley of buckshot. Turning into the gravel driveway, I notice that fading pinkish-red reflective stickers on the battered mailbox identify the postal recipient as SMIT.  Half-nervous and half-relieved, I drive to the end.

    
    Standing alongside a rusted truck, that outdates mine by some fifty years, is Mr. Smit - I hope. Arm cradled on the driver's door, I lean out and inquire of my location. Either tired of answering lost "city folk" questions or maybe a third of the way into the day's bottle, Mr. Smit gravely announces, "Hell son, you're in my front yard" - not a drop of humor in his reply.

    OK, I think, time for some rephrasing.    

  I try again: "How far to the nearest boat ramp or put-in point?" Not a stupid question given the borrowed fire engine-red Mohawk canoe on top of my truck. Mr. Smit attempts to describe a series of turns and switchbacks, all of which manage to use nonexistent landmarks as points of reference. His "turn left just past the old Massey campground" statement is received with glazed eyes. Mine.

    Mr. Smit slowly shakes his head as if I had failed his Manhood Test and offers to let me follow him in his truck. While Smit did say he was "headin' that way anyhow," I got the feeling that he simply did not believe that I would (or could) follow his directions all that well."Good gracious, what have I got myself into?" I say aloud to myself as Mr. Smit walks toward his truck. 

      "Rivers," as Thoreau proselytized so eloquently, "must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travelers." I wonder how many "Mr. Smits" have helped along the way? 

     As he nears his truck, Mr. Smit bellows a string of grunts, which manages to beckon a young oval-faced child from her hiding spot. Covered in straw and missing one shoe, the little girl runs toward the truck with knotty pigtails flapping. The girl shoos off a pair of slate gray cats from the cab while Mr. Smit coaxes the old jalopy to life.

    
    Billows of smoke and a hacker's cough from beneath the truck's hood announce ignition. Calling for me to keep up, Mr. Smit barrels off. This quickly becomes sound advice. Smit must have put the remaining two-thirds of his liquor stash in the gas tank of that rust- and primer- spotted, fire-breathing dragon.

    Watching Mr. Smit send his suspension into epileptic seizures, I pull on to a road that was likely last paved by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.  A shock-blowing race for six miles places us in front of a mobile structure whose marquee proudly proclaims: Pete's Peace River Repairs - We Cut Hair Too!  "Wait here," my surly guide orders. I wait.    

    Surveying the outside of this small boat repair shop, I take in the well-weathered exterior and a parking lot occupied with more weeds than customers. In an attempt to hide the wheels still attached to Pete's place, an ingenious plan of piling wood crates around the structure's perimeter was in place. To mute the harsh lines of the stacks, fine layers of grass and sand complete the motif.

     A booming voice accompanied by an outstretched hand announces Pete's arrival. With a baritone resembling that of a Tennessee Oak Ridge Boy, Pete explains that this is his shop and he would be happy to let me use his dock. "Give me five minutes to cut Sissy's hair," he says with something pronounced more like "har," "and I'll show you the Peace myself." Not in a position to hack off Mr. Smit or my new pal Pete, I wait, again.       

    Exactly five minutes later the trio emerges. Pete leads the pack, an antique one-piece wooden canoe paddle in one hand, and a life vest in the other.

Complementing Sissy's new hairdo (cut to the exact shape of a medium-sized salad bowl) earns me a shy smile before she hides behind Mr. Smit. I extend my hand to thank Mr. Smit, only to receive an engulfing grip and a short reply: "The name's Smith, Just Smith. Enjoy yourself."

    When the chirps and burps of the banks no longer mask our silence, Pete, who has not spoken a word for nearly an hour since we launched our canoes, explains that his mom and dad had owned seventy-five acres right around here. Young Pete and his two brothers would steal old bean cans from behind the school cafeteria and punch a few holes in the sides and a few in the bottom. They would use their homemade scoopers to drag up the sediment from the banks - sifting arrowheads and shark teeth, often finding bones and fossils "by the can full."

    
    Still a fossil-hunters paradise, according to local advertising and outfitters, the river has been "a little chubby since the last storms" making it difficult to find any ancient mysteries in the high waters, explains Pete. We continue against the current in silence.

    
    Watching a snowy egret preening herself, I reach for my National Audubon

Society Field Guide to Florida in my see-through dry bag - two of the more practical items to bring paddling. The birds' long black legs, offset by pure white feathers and black, pointed bills, sit atop bright clown-yellow feet. This small white wading bird, which stands nearly motionless, strikes prey in the water with near perfect accuracy. As we slowly and silently pass by, the snowy egret, one leg akimbo, contently remains perched on a downed sassafras tree. The browning leaves of the sassafras contrasts with the red tinted bark, creating Monet-style reflections in the peaceful water.

    
    Jotting notes and accustomed to the ease and maneuverability of kayaks, not canoes, I drift too close for comfort near an alligator on the bank. I attempt to turn and wind up flailing around a bit more than I would like to admit and nearly falling into the drink. I escape unharmed but a bit embarrassed. Chuckling lightly, Pete suggests that I try an inside turn with a J-stroke. My blank stare encourages him to continue the paddling lesson.

    "To increase your turn," Pete continues, "begin each stroke away from the canoe then pull towards you before following through with the rest of the 'J' like stroke." My companion finishes his demonstration by reminding me to keep my thumb pointing down at the end of the stroke.

    
    Attempting to recreate Pete's maneuvers, I guide my canoe to a stop and question him on the Peace River's namesake. Natives called it "Tallackchopo," meaning "River of Peas." It was thus appropriately labeled as "Rio de la Paz" on Spanish maps as early as 1544. Eventually, under English rule, this wild-pea-flanked waterway was Anglicized as the Peace River. 
    
    While history books espouse the same accounts, another version circulates in these parts. Some say that the division of Indian Territory from the white-man's frontier is the Peace River, and that, Pete insists, is what the namesake stems from: "all them peace treaties made 'round here."

    
    We turn into an adjacent creek cradled between high hammock banks. From research, I knew that due to higher elevations and a rich soil composition, the American Indians cultivated these fertile lands from the mouth of Lake Hancock to just north of present day Fort Meade. Pete announces with an air of awe: "Seminole and (Red Stick) Creek Indians were the largest tribe around (the Peace River Valley) and were some of the most fierce warriors," during the three Seminole Wars. "That explains why arrowhead hunting has been so popular an activity in these waters," Pete says, echoing my own conclusion.

    
    Pete's property sits on the family's last five of the original 160 acres his great-grandfather homesteaded in 1881. Nineteen years prior, the Homestead Act offered 160 acres of land to any frontiersman who had maintained and resided on the property for five years. Many attempted what few were able to accomplish. Most frontiersmen were actually bounty hunters trying to cash in on capturing Indians, explains Pete - referring to congressional incentives of up to $500 per captured Indian. The Creek and Seminole tribes proved more resilient than expected. Distraught, exhausted, and penniless, many pioneers left - leaving behind the persevering homesteaders like Pete's great-grandparents and a few small bands of Indians.

    
    However, financial misfortune fell upon Pete's ancestors within a year. Unable to produce enough crops to trade or sell profitably, Pete's great-grandmother kept up the house and fields, while her husband used carpentry skills as a member of a work crew erecting the much-needed Tater Hill Bluff Bridge. Early frontier life often ended in disease, premature death or discouragement; however, Pete's great-grandparents persevered.

    
    Rapid grunting and thrashing in the overgrown shrubs on the shores halts our conversation and paddling. With a scrunched forehead Pete declares omnipotently "Wild boars, they're everywhere." My thoughts immediately flash to images of flesh-seeking, half-rabid, calf-size wild razorbacks with lengthy tusks slowly curving skyward to end in a Vietnamese style punji stick. The inherent problem with such musings is my need to share them with others. Pete, looking a bit confused, dismisses my thoughts as "interesting." The pigs, he boasts, are descendants of Christopher Columbus' stock from his second voyage in 1493. 
    
    Hidden in the thick brush, the brown to blackish brown grizzled and coarse coat provides superb camouflage and protections for the forty-pound, four-toed omnivore. Whether these swine are really from ancestors aboard Columbus' small flotilla of vessels, who knows? The pigs aren't saying. However, my Audubon field guide does support the claim of European swine ancestors.

    Keeping an eye peeled towards the shore for feral pig sighting, we pause. I toss Pete a granola bar and inquire about the local railroads and their impact. "Thanks, a soul thinks better on a full stomach," Pete says through a mouth of granola. "The rails (of the late nineteenth century) stretched the river from Arcadia to Charlotte Harbor crossing banks near Zolfo Springs," crunches Pete. Along with the work crews came the discovery of phosphate.

    
    The "phosphate fever" sprung forth from the findings of Captain J. Francis LeBaron. Commissioned by the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers, his 1881 task was to study the feasibility of steamboat navigation from the St. Johns River to Charlotte Harbor. Impracticality was Captain LeBaron's conclusion. However, his fortuitous and unexpected discovery of black pebbles of phosphate along the banks of the Peace River would encourage speculators and land developers to sell the valley as a national player in the fertilizer industry. Soon, cargos of phosphate flowed down the Peace River. 
    
    Coupled with the intensive railroad construction from Lakeland to Bartow, shipping of the fertilizer eventually switched from steam powered barges to steam powered locomotives. For decades, the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railroad would transport phosphate-laden trains directly onto world-bound ocean freighters.

    For better or worse, the railroad would make a permanent mark in Florida's history. The visual scarring on the shore of the Peace River and her valley reflect those sentiments. "Around here," my companion laments, "Highway 17 is dotted with crater-like surfaces," covered with the nutrient-depleted sandy waste of Florida's phosphate farming. Little remains the same. The initial 1890s phosphate boom was stifled some years later by bad weather and economic issues, only to regain its strength in the 1960s.

    
    The phosphate fields are still a source of contentment for some, and needed income for others. In fact, Pete continues, the 1919 birth of his mother coincided with the eve of prolonged phosphate labor strikes. After nearly twenty years of dredging the mosquito flocked banks for phosphate, Pete's grandfather, still supplementing his meager wages with roadwork, went on strike with hundreds of other workers, demanding better compensation and hours. 
    
    The April to September 1919 labor strike put hundreds of jobs at risk, and meant Polk County's largest private employer and biggest tax paying pool were causing the county coffers to dwindle; ultimately forcing mediation and, thanks to Governor Sidney Catts, the mobilization of National Guard troops to promote negotiations and compliance. To some, the government responded as it should; to others, like Pete and his clan, "the phosphate industry flexed its long arms and won."

    
    A fieldhand in the agriculture industry is not far removed from those working the surrounding phosphate fields. Less seasonal, the thankless chore of mining phosphate has encouraged migrant influxes thankful to eke out enough wages from the pits to survive and send some earnings back home. To an increasing migrant population, phosphate is simply seen as steady work.

    Environmentally aware locals, like Pete, see the bored out and scraped phosphate pits - that stretch for thousands of acres - as cesspools. Pete explains how one byproduct of the extraction process is clay, which is now stored in ponds that encompass nearly fifty percent of a depleted mine site. These retention ponds capture rain that ordinarily would soak in the soil and replenish groundwater and the river.

    
    Uranium and radium laced, clay waste ponds have at times collapsed, sending toxic sludge into the Peace, killing plants and wildlife alike. Newspapers compared Charlotte Harbor at the mouth of the Peace, "to chocolate milk" after one historical spillover. While bottled water is chic for some, it is often a necessity for Peace River Valley residents. "Some," says Pete, "have sadly stopped relying on the Peace River for clean drinking water. Especially after what happened about thirty years ago. . . ."

           "Well?" I inquire after his extended pause.

    "In the early 1970s, a phosphate company over in Ft. Meade had a phosphate tank collapse," Pete tells me, shaking his head in disgust and dismay: "It sent over a billion gallons of toxic sludge into Whiddon Creek," which flows into the Peace. Fearing the potentially toxic uranium and radium levels, "some local and die-hard paddlers won't camp on the banks or paddle here anymore." Pete's last sentence hangs in the air - its impact showing on his sun-weathered face.

    Our float downstream is quiet enough to provide us with two more alligator sightings; one hisses, announcing that an imaginary line has been crossed, and leaps into the air as he dives into the water. On the opposite shore, a beautiful reddish-orange downy-covered fawn lifts its nuzzling lips from dinner and follows her mother's gaze in our direction.

    Wanting to grab my journal for sketching or at least my camera, I dare not to budge. I soak in the sight, motionless and not able to miss a second. The fawn's white spots and black ringed nose appear even brighter against the older female's graying fur coat. The majestic duo snorts a whistling-like response before prominently displaying white tails and fleeing into the brush. The setting sun reflects on the water causing me to shield my eyes. A golden hue backdrops the trees and creates a feeling of negative space reflecting in the current.

    
    Full from the adventure and pruned by the river, we pull alongside the dock ready to disembark. Forty minutes later, with canoes stacked and packed, we share a handshake and a pact to do it again. Nodding to Pete, I drag myself out of the experience and into my cab of silence. The truck smells a bit of mold - I have to stop leaving my life jacket in the front when it is still wet. 
    
    Heading home and reflecting on the day's experience, my brain races from one event to another. Sissy, Pete and, of course, Mr. Smith, all shared something strangely intimate, albeit not foreign. These fine folks, like countless "Peace River Pioneers" before them, had invited me to share their surroundings, their experiences, and their local tales.

    
    Fearful of forgetting the details and lessons bestowed, I decide that I had better do some journaling now. I pull off State Road 62 and park in front of a gas station emblazoned with neon declaring Botas de Trabajo, and Comida Mexicana. Stomach growling, I grab my field diary and venture in for an enchilada con salsa verde. Processing Pete's story would have to begin here.

   
    After all, "A soul thinks better on a full stomach." 

    

About the Author: Nevin Sitler, Education Curator for the St. Petersburg Museum of History, is an avid kayaker, outdoor enthusiast, and United States Air Force veteran. He holds a Masters Degree in Florida Studies, as well as a Bachelors in Political Science, both from the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, where he and a fellow grad student Edward C. Woodward formed Paddle & Path, LLC., a forum celebrating Florida history and exploration. In addition to webmastering for the University of South Florida- St. Petersburg and the St. Petersburg Museum of History, Nevin has written for World Publications, Cigar City Magazine, and the Pinellas County Historical Society. Nevin has worked for The St. Petersburg Times, as well as historical reviews for Florida (Celebrate the States) 2nd Edition (2006), and Florida's Fabulous Lighthouses (2007). He is a contributing author for The Rivers of the Green Swamp Anthology (2008) and Florida’s Fabulous Historical Places (2009).  Nevin can be reached at nevin@paddleandpath.com.