Accent on Living

MOST Bostonians, and New Yorkers as well, remain extremely standoffish about. Florida — especially at this time of year. “I have no desire to go there,” says the Bostonian. “Wouldn’t he caught dead there,” says the New Yorker. These are broad opinions, applying to Florida life in general, and held most firmly by those who have never been to Florida at all — an outpost, they tell you, a plague spot. Not even the weather is acknowledged by the skeptics, who are full of warnings about killing frosts, hot-water bottles, and pneumonia. “ It’s not as if we did not have the ocean,” the Bostonian explains as he plods through the slush, snug in his galoshes and ulster, “to temper our winter; but in Florida they have no protection against cold weather — so I am told.”

The traveler setting out from New England for Florida may thus feel that he might just as well be headed for Montreal. (If he is a real Yankee he probably will go to Montreal instead, because it’s much cheaper to get there.) In a few more days the latest snowfall will have been cleared from at least the main streets here at home, he reasons. January will be mild, according to the almanac; that is, temperatures won’t fall below zero, and it’s only a few months until spring. So why go to Florida only to freeze? (Why go even to Montreal?) He feels misguided and a shade mournful as he departs for the South, He wears his heaviest coat and tweeds. He wonders whether he shouldn’t have taken the galoshes. The murk of Penn Station and the sleet beating against the train windows throughout the afternoon do nothing to cheer him.

The train traveler’s first great shock comes the next morning at Jacksonville, when he steps out on the station platform for a breather on his way to the dining car. The winter sunrise is still vast and magnificent above the mists of morning, but the day is already summer itself. It feels like exceptionally promising July weather along Cape Cod or Long Island. None of the loungers — railroad employees in Florida manage to seem like loungers even while loading ice on the train — is wearing a coat, and the traveler is aware suddenly that Florida may be true after all. Fifty or two hundred miles further south, when he disembarks, he is sure of it.

The people meeting the train have that unmistakable air of holiday makers. Cotton dresses, sports shirts, blue jeans, sneakers, and all sorts of backless-strapless variations confront the Northerner on the platform. The tops are down on the convertibles. Not an overcoat in sight . Even more startling is his realization that the whole crowd has obviously been carrying on like this all along. It’s just an ordinary winter morning on the Florida coast — sunny, breezy, and with a hint of a damp, ultra-mild quality rarely felt in the North, even on a hot day.

The traveler is about to liken the summery effect to that of East Quisquid, his favorite warm-weather locality in Maine, but the differences arc too many and too extreme. The palms, however frayed, are convincingly palms, and there are far too many new automobiles, too wide an assortment of license plates, for East Quisquid. He catches a glimpse of a filling station across the way— green stucco with brick trim in bright yellow and heliotrope, and a massive tile roof of chocolate brown. The whole town is absolutely flat—flat and square, no iwisis, no curves. A sign announces that along ihe twenty-two miles of adjacent beach are 2.5,000 motel units. (One of the motels, the Northerner finds later, offers 1000 units “for rent by the day, week, month or year.”) It is not like Maine, not like New Jersey, not like anywhere else. It’s Florida, and it’s a genuinely hot day.

The consistency of Florida sunshine in the days that follow will drive even the most reluctant visitor to admit it. There isn’t any way of denying it. The other circumstance that confounds the doubters is the motel; and surely the easiest — and t he cheapest — way to experiment in a Florida winter vacation is to try out a few motels. If isolation is the goal — and isolation does not seem quite the boon in Florida that it often does in the North — there are motels miles from anywhere, on the great reaches of the small coastal roads that parallel the main routes. There are also motels situated shoulder to shoulder along the seaside in the beach communities, and life in one of the latter is extraordinarily comfortable and effortless.

The motels have much more lurid color schemes than the tilling stations. Thirty or forty of them in a row have a staggering effect , and a man feeds self-conscious about even entering one. It would be like living, lie feels, in a fun-house in an amusement park. Yet, for around $50 a week per person at the peak of the season, a. good motel offers accommodations bearing litlle resemblance to whal is included under the word “Cabins" in the North. A sample: —

Living-room-bedroom about seventeen by seventeen, with a large picture window looking directly out to sea and another large window in an adjacent wall; two beds, a double and a single. A crank-operated system of shutters in one wall and the entrance door afford abundant ventilation. There is a small dressing room and closet, a dazzling lavatory and shower, and a kitchenette with china and utensils, a gas stove, and a refrigerator. The furnishings are unexpectedly attractive — durable, modern pieces — and so is the decor. The floor is tiled and the whole effect, is thoroughly agreeable. On the terrace just outside are windbreaks and long chairs. A team of maids maintains the apartment each morning and even washes dishes (!) without being asked to. Within five minutes’ walk is every convenience of housekeeping — markets, laundry service, restaurants, shops. If you have a ear, it is parked at the entrance. Oh yes, there’s a gas heater in the unit if anyone wants it. All that, with the sunshine thrown in. . . .