Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990 TAG: 9005130291
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: George and Rosalie Leposky
DATELINE: GAINESVILLE, FLA. LENGTH: Long
Once a derogatory reference to lower-class Southern whites, the epithet "Cracker" was embraced by North Florida's pioneers. They associated it with the qualities of forthrightness, honesty, ingenuity and wry wit necessary for survival on the subtropical frontier.
Now, any native Floridian takes pride in being a Cracker, and Gainesville remains Florida's "Cracker metropolis," center of a region where these old values still hold sway.
Set in forested hills 70 miles south of the Georgia border, Gainesville is best known for the University of Florida and its football team. But it's also a convenient base for exploring Cracker Country.
At Cross Creek, a tiny settlement 21 miles southeast of the city, a Yankee "tourist" named Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings chronicled the Cracker way of life. Despite several years of working for big-city newspapers in Louisville, Ky., and Rochester, N.Y., she found affinities with the Cracker neighbors among whom she settled. Her most famous novel, "The Yearling," was published in 1938 and became a 1947 film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman. An autobiographical volume, "Cross Creek," appeared in 1942 and was made into a 1983 movie starring Mary Steenbergen as Marjorie Rawlings.
The home and 72-acre working farm, which Rawlings and her first husband, Charles, bought for $14,500 in 1928, is now a state historic site. She died in 1953 and is buried 7 miles from Cross Creek in Antioch Cemetery, near Island Grove. Ask the rangers at her home for directions to the cemetery.
The Rawlings home, with the broad covered porches, breezeways and detached kitchen typical of Cracker-style architecture, is open from 10 to 11:30 a.m. and 1 to 4:30 p.m. daily except Tuesday and Wednesday. Admission is $1 per person (under 6 free).
"Over 40,000 visitors have toured the Rawlings home since Universal Studios released `Cross Creek,' " says Lisa Vidal, a ranger there. "To keep the place from wearing out, we have to limit tours to 10 people at a time."
When you arrive, you'll sign up for a tour - first-come, first-served - then wait, or explore the surrounding countryside and come back later. In hot weather, take drinks along. No refreshment stands are nearby. Upon entering the house, you'll pay the fee and receive a bookmark as a receipt.
Vidal enjoys telling visitors about how "Mrs. Rawlings used common household items in unusual ways. She turned wooden butter bowls upside-down to create indirect lighting, used a cedar-lined closet as a liquor cabinet, and hung out a red flag to indicate when the outhouse was in use."
Rangers prepare canned foods for display in Rawlings' kitchen, following recipes in "Cross Creek Cookery," her 1942 cookbook issued as a companion volume to "Cross Creek."
For information about the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Historic Site, write to Route 3, Box 92, Hawthorne, Fla. 32640, or phone (904) 466-3672.
The Yearling Restaurant in Cross Creek, a landmark since the mid-1950s, features regional Cracker cuisine: Alligator, cooter (soft-shelled turtle), catfish, frog legs, quail and cheese grits. Many menu items are fried and can be greasy, but the place remains popular. You may have to wait for a table. Hours are noon to 10 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon to 8:30 p.m. Sunday.
On the drive from Gainsville to Cross Creek, you'll pass through the edge of Micanopy, another Cracker town 11 miles south of Gainesville on U.S. 441. Diana Angle Smith, proprietress of a Micanopy antique shop for 17 years, recalls when the town scenes for "Cross Creek" were shot in Micanopy. "They covered the street with dirt and straw to make it look like a dirt road," she says.
Named for a powerful Seminole Indian chief, Micanopy is Florida's oldest inland town. An Indian trading post in the 1700s, it was incorporated in 1821 and grew into a bustling commercial center for the surrounding farms and citrus groves, with five hotels for winter visitors.
Then the Great Freeze of 1894-95 devastated the area's agriculture, and the railroad carried tourists south to more temperate latitudes. The little town languished until the mid-1970s, when it gained a new lease on life as an arts-and-crafts and antiques center. In 1983, the Micanopy Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It contains 39 historic structures built between the mid-1860s and 1930.
Today, more than a dozen antique shops and a second-hand bookstore line the main street, Cholokka Boulevard. Frank James, a stained-glass artisan, and his wife, Susie Brown, built their new Shady Oak Gallery on the boulevard in the old style, with a tin roof and widow's walk. "It's the biggest thing built in Micanopy in a hundred years," he declares.
Many of Micanopy's 756 residents worry about urban growth as refugees from nearby Gainesville, population 100,000-plus, eye Micanopy's quaint tranquillity. "We're terribly proud of our town, but if you tidy it up too much, you'll spoil it," says Town Commissioner Diana Cohen. "We're debating an architectural review board which will decide what constitutes a vernacular house, and help us to settle with people about what would be acceptable."
While exploring the antique shops, you can obtain lunch or a snack at the only restaurant on Cholokka Boulevard, the Stage Coach Stop. Its menu features fresh, homemade chili and soup, sandwiches, ice cream, and frozen yogurt.
For a different kind of Cracker experience, visit Paynes Prairie, a state nature preserve on the southern edge of Gainesville. It is home to sandhill cranes and other native wildlife the early settlers knew. You may see birds and animals from the shoulders of U.S. 441 and Interstate 75, which cross the prairie, but the best way to appreciate this vast bog is by walking into it.
Take the Bolen Bluff Trail from the parking lot just south of the prairie on U.S. 441. You'll pass through a mature upland forest of live oaks and magnolias to the edge of the prairie, where the path descends a slope into a vast sweep of maiden cane and cattails punctuated by willow thickets. Here you can find deer stalking like gray ghosts through the early morning mist If you're very lucky, and a flock of sandhill cranes may swoop in near you, filling the air with bugling cries.
In the Paynes Prairie State Preserve visitor center, 10 miles south of Gainesville and one mile north of Micanopy off U.S. 441, displays explain the prairie's origin. A basin 8.5 miles long and 2 to 4.5 miles wide, it probably formed from multiple cave-ins.
Indians hunted on Paynes Prairie as early as 10,000 B.C., and the Seminoles grazed cattle there in the 18th and 19th centuries. From 1871 to 1891, debris plugged the outlet in the center and the basin filled with water to become a broad, shallow lake. Small steamboats ferried produce from farms on the southern shore across the lake to market in Gainesville. Then, one day, the plug broke loose and most of the water drained out, leaving the boats mired in ooze on the former lake bottom. Thereafter, the prairie became a cattle ranch until the state acquired it as a natural preserve in 1971.
Near the visitor center, a walkway leads to an overlook from which you can scan the prairie below. Bring your own binoculars or telescope, or use a coin-operated telescope mounted atop the overlook.
For information on where to stay in Gainesville, contact the Alachua County Visitors and Convention Bureau, 10 S.W. 2nd Ave., Suite 220, Gainesville, Fla. 32601, phone (904) 374-5210.
by CNB