PART VIII
Brewster, Fla.
Sat., March 20, 1926
We hated to leave Fort Myers, as it is a charming spot with an unusually fine climate, even for Florida. This was emphasized on our way north the other day. Near Arcadia smudge pots hung on the orange trees to prevent fruit from freezing. A bad frost had already killed young beans and other vegetables. One old lady said, “Frost don’t matter much up north because they’re ready for it, but here we don’t expect it. Fertilizer costs a heap when you have to replant.”
Thank goodness much of the road has been scraped since we came down, and the puddles dried up. We shifted into second only once, whereas coming down we hardly ever were able to drive in high gear.
Naturally spring is not as advanced here; the cypress hardly show green, but the few orange blossoms in bloom are enough to sweeten the air. White water lilies fill the roadside ditches, instead of blue water-hyacinths which color many of the drains usually paralleling roads in Florida. The swamps are blue with iris and a slender, grass-like blue blossom overshadows its more delicate pink cousin in the fields. I picked violets in the woods this morning. Spring is wearing her blue-flowered dress.
The American Cyanamid Co. Owns and runs the town of Brewster. We expected to find a ramshackle mining village but, arriving at night, a line of street lamps led to a veritable castle of lights. In the morning we discovered that Brewster, a town of about two thousand inhabitants was laid out like a subdivision--with vine-covered cottages, a central park, golf course, tennis courts and swimming pool. There are “barracks” for bachelor men and dormitories for bachelor women.
We found the city manager had gone fishing when we sought permission to camp, but his young assistant, Mr. Curry, was willing and kind. Bill seems to have a knack of painlessly extracting succulent scraps of information from company officials, and it was not long before he had learned some spicy bits about the bidding for Muscle Shoals.
Now that it is warm, camping is much easier than it was in the wet and cold coming down. Mr. Curry suggested a good place in a pine grove, hung with spanish moss. In the morning, when he drove us to the mines, which cover about fifteen square miles, he picked up a bit of rock, saying, “This is probably a part of a tooth of an icthiosaurus. Anthropologists claim that the bones of the three-toed horse (about the size of a shepherd dog) and the three-horned rhinoceros have been found here.” Bones were everywhere and we picked up a few interesting ones ourselves.
In the evening when we went to see Mr. Curry, he showed us a perfect specimen of a little crab-like “trilobite,” over sixty million years old, which he had dug up near Buffalo. The only other known one, he says, is in the Smithsonian Museum.
At the mines, what is called the “overload” is pumped away by hydraulic pressure; streams of water everywhere play against the bank. When the phosphate matrix is reached, the rock is blasted out, causing one tremendous geyser, with little ones splashing around where the debris hits the water. At a nearby screening plant, much of the sand, clay and gravel is eliminated from the rock.
Water in the reservoir is used over and over again, and although they claim the waste is minimum, some of the phosphate is escaping.
Bill was interested to see that the Power House was using all General Electric equipment, and is thrilled at the efficiency of the whole establishment, estimating the stock is earning $45 a share.
While Bill and I were both trying to write--he, his report and I, a note to Mother--two “sharpies” invaded our camp. Nearly the whole afternoon was wasted listening to “clever” deals they had put over. Black lace spangled with blue glass beads edged the brim of Mrs. Sharpie’s hat and like her stocking, she had had seen better days. She, as canny as he, kept slyly winking at us, as Mr. Sharpie told how he built their car out of two old Fords, one of which he had paid $10 for, then, taking out the engine, sold for $15. Some financing!