Florida Girls

Although I was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, I spent the majority of my 'growing up' years in Florida. Only two months after I began kindergarten in Asheville, NC my father's promotion moved us to 'The Sunshine State.' Our family's vacations to Disney World in Orlando and to the charming Marco Island in the Gulf of Mexico had set the standard for what my imagination had created as I made my move from our shared hometown to our new beginning. Unable to comprehend it back then, I was unaware of the completely different lifestyle I would grow up knowing for the next seventeen years.

Oviedo, Florida (above)

Granted, I have been a year-round studen t at Alabama for four years now. My residency still h as the status of Florida citizen, however. This month marks seventeen years of Florida-hood for the Jones Family. My sister graduated from high school in 2003 and moved to Birmingham, Alabama to attend Samford University - the lovely, small, private school that sits atop rolling hills that are impressively and neatly defined with landscaping perfection. She said good-bye to her little sister, who still had two years of high school left, and set out into the wild blue yonder. Like most things about my sister's life -her college choice fit her perfectly. The perfect, 'to a tee' fit that Samford University provided for her was an impossible stretch of some people's imagination it seemed. To the three of us she left at home, no imagination was needed. Her acceptance to this school and decision to go there were easy for us. She was made for small and intimate places that gave opportunity to a challenging four years of education and a hard-earned and honored nursing degree. Wake Forrest, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Vanderbilt also seemed fitting but like I would experience two years later upon making my college decision - when you know, you know. For us, we knew Ashley and we knew when we were in Alabama visiting Samford that it would not be our last visit to neither the Southern state nor the school. Maybe the fact that a small, private, Christian affiliated college in Birmingham seemed undesirable to the typical student in central Florida. However, she was not typical. She stood out from the crowd of peers.

She swam up-river to a place that would provide a breath of fresh air at the first sign of Fall and Autumn. She didn't swim with the schools of fish that went to Tampa, Gainesville, and Tallahassee or with the one's that simply stayed put to attend community college or go to nearby University of Central Florida. Neither of us considered the Florida schools that were well-known and popular to attend by fellow graduates of our high school.

When I graduated from Oviedo High School in 2005, I had made my decision about where I would attend school that coming August. After debating whether to go back 'home' to a school in Carolina or to move near Ashley and attend Auburn University or The University of Alabama, I decided on The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. "Why?" people would ask instantaneously. The number of reasons far surpassed any reasons why I would want to stay in Florida. The fact that I would be attending a school in a place other than the beloved city of Chapel Hill if I chose to head back to my home state was too hard to grasp. A disappointment in Auburn that resulted in an instant hatred for the school that sat on the East side of the state made Tuscaloosa and The University of Alabama feel sacred to me and I developed an instant passion and love for my future school and future town. Only 50 miles down the interstate from the hill that perched Samford University, I have always been able to see my sister often and make it convenient for our parents and their weekend visits to the deep South's "Bible-belt."

Alligators in Lake Jessup, Oviedo, FL (below)

While we experience the change of seasons - Summer to Fall, Fall to Winter, Winter to Spring, and Spring back to Summer - our peers experience the dull but high-heat of Florida sunshine and the suffocating feeling of Central Florida humidity. While Ashley experienced close personal relationships with her professors at Samford where enrollment averaged 5,500 undergraduates; our peers went to mega-size universities such as UF and UCF where enrollment is 50,000 to 60,000 and only continuing to grow. From my window on the fourth floor of the fourteen in Tutwiler Hall, I could look a block away at the freshmen sorority pledges in cocktail dresses and high heels overflowing the lawns of the sorority mansions on Magnolia Drive and in to the student section of Bryant-Denny Stadium with a boy wearing a coat and tie on her arm. We left palm trees for giant oak trees and beautiful, blossoming dogwood trees. We made friends from Atlanta, Memphis, Mobile, and New Orleans. We went out on dates with boys who had their mother's maiden name and natural Southern charm. We pledged Chi Omega and Delta Delta Delta by fitting in at our respective schools and showing our own charm and well-mannered upbringing. We fit in but it didn't change the fact that we were the minority - being from Florida made us a minority group.

Proving that we were sisters despite our different styles and personalities was our common ground of standing up for your beliefs that was as strong as the argument that made up my great-grandfather's legal cases when he was a Wake Forrest Lawyer and an outspoken member of North Carolina's Public School System. The fire that would run through us when we would protect one another, was a hot temper controlled by poise and grace just like our Mom taught us in true spirit of women in the South.

We preferred different flavored ice cream from one another but loved all the cuisine that defined our upbringing. Pudding was meant to be banana, it's a Coke whether Classic, Diet, or called Sprite. We could spit our own watermelon seed out in a lady-like way in order to keep our favorite fruit in July as natural as we could. Our hometown knew Southern food, and made sure it was served with utmost hospitality. Tea was nothing short or sweet and rice, potatoes, biscuits, and meat were supposed to be served with gravy. All vegetables can taste good fried and we prefer a menu item we can actually pronounce and if truly a Southern dish, can give away just what area of the Southern region your from. Both of us being one part Carolina girl and one part Florida girl, we each know our seafood and we both enjoy good, homemade grits at any time of the day. Oviedo's famed 'Mom and Pop' restaurant, "The Townhouse", does breakfast just right and is probably why even our Yankee friends enjoy the small-town's "place to be" atmosphere. The 'Oviedo Chickens' that hang out on the street corners of downtown Oviedo underneath signage that warns drivers to yield and stop for our bird friends as they walk from the restaurant to the ironically enough Popeye's Chicken establishment next door and across the street to the First Baptist Church's sprawling campus.

The Town House Restaurant, Downtown Oviedo, FL (above)

Each of us being tagged a "Florida Girl" in our new Alabama home was something we didn't necessarily brag about but also did not mind admitting. Many of my new friends in Tuscaloosa have only Destin, Pensacola, Disney World, and Miami to think of when they picture life as a full-time resident rather than only one of the millions of Florida vacationers. I received a somewhat odd amount of sad looks on the day I confirmed their worst fear: the fact that NO, I DID NOT GO TO DISNEY WORLD EVERY DAY JUST BECAUSE I LIVED IN METRO-ORLANDO. AND NO, EVEN AS A KINDERGARDENER FROM NORTH CAROLINA I NEVER ACTUALLY THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO LIVE IN CINDERELLA'S CASTLE. As if I had just told them Santa Claus wasn't actually real but rather a childhood fantasy, they looked at me in astonishment were honestly appalled at my lack of taking advantage of my living so close to Walt Disney World. I lived in a real house in a country club community, not in a beach condo that was surrounded by cheesy beach-themed restaurants and mega surf shops. This, too, came as a surprise to my new sorority-girl friends. When we go home for holidays and visits, we meet our group of small-town twenty something year olds at a biker bar that shares a water-front view with our local fish camp sitting on our famous pool of fresh water - Lake Jessup. Sticking in your toes to feel the water is comparable to sticking your finger in an electric socket while dripping wet. The lake is recreational only to the large population of airboat owners in our town. You are guaranteed to see an alligator from your own table if you bring an Oviedian with you - we can spot those red eyes from a mile away. My friends from Memphis and New Orleans understand what I mean when I break the news that we don't party it up with the rich and famous in South Beach like some of them imagined a Florida upbringing would involve. Just as they have other realistic things they do rather than hanging out with the tourist on Beale Street and Bourbon Street. In my small hometown we prefer a rowdy get together with old friends at The Black Hammock, Froggers, or The Hitching Post. As patrons in downtown Orlando at high-end clubs, bars, and other establishments we don't look like a bunch of hillbilly bumpkins. With true small-town kid attitude we act like we run our town, we relax in denim, boots, and pearls. When we downtown or to the layed-brick of Park Avenue in Winter Park where the infamous Rollin's College yupsters and former prep-school trouble-makers and their entourage seem impressed by a group of sorority-clad girls from UF, Florida State, Alabama that show their own sophisticated style of the always loved, Southern girl. The number of similarities being up there with the number of differences in our Florida style and Alabama style, has always made the transition from school back home and from home back up to school and easy feat.

We did it well, however, because Alabama had called us there for a reason and no Florida school had ever really interested us. We were Southerners from North Carolina who came from a long line of hard-working and successful people on both the Redmon, Fox, Pless and Jones sides of our deeply rooted family tree. We grew up in a small-yet-booming town of Oviedo in the nature-loving county of Seminole County where swamps and lakes add charm to a town that for decades has revolved around the Oviedo High a class 6A school, which earns highest honors for academics, athletics, and arts year after year - seemingly equal and sometimes even higher than the preparatory schools that are found few and far between in the public-school dominated Seminole and Orange counties that make up the Orlando area.

When I pledged Tri-Delta at Alabama in August of 2005 I was the only pledge, out of fifty-eight girls in my pledge class, that hailed from Florida. The only other members of the sorority from Florida were 2003 private school graduates from Pensacola, FL. The panhandle, usually not even considered "true Florida" to the peninsula's residents, is definitely a different lifestyle than the Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami havens. So, my Orlando-area hometown and the age margin between the veteran Florida Tri-Delt's made my acceptance to the very tradition-oriented and very Southern group of women was considered a high honor and an impressive feat by my fellow pledge sisters and even by the one, two, and three year veterans. I had to remember that Florida was a vacation destination to my friends, not a home. They seemed to not comprehend, but be amazed by, Florida being someone's home state. My fear of sticking out like a sore thumb, despite my shared upbringing and values as the girls raised in the deep-South, I was intriguing to them. Girls from Mountain Brook and Mobile; from Brentwood, TN and Charleston, SC. Girls that grew up in the Kentucky bluegrass and in the muddy water of Memphis, TN. Girls who were raised in Buckhead and St. Simons Island but loved Alabama too much to go to Athens the same way I didn't go to a Florida school. New Orleans wild-childs and Montgomery prim-and-propers. I was one of them. The way I wanted to know what it was like growing up down the cobblestone street from the Battery Park in Charleston, they wanted to know what it was like growing up in Florida and what my town was like to have raised such a well-fit Alabama sorostitute.

To some people being "Southern" depends on a geographical location. To others being "Southern" is determined by social hierarchy, family history, and outward appearance. To some, however, being "Southern" is a state of mind and a way of life that is rooted somewhere below the Mason-Dixon but can be taken to any state, region, or university.

This state of mind can move with a family to a charming, Civil War town in Central Florida and does not have to be left behind in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains. The promotion that moved a family of four from their roots was an example of true Southern-hood by being a reward for hard-work and determination - qualities that have been passed down in our region for generations. Well-dressed and well-mannered, a North Carolina family can fit in right away in their new town because Friday night they'll be at the football game and if you miss them then you know where to catch them on Sunday morning. If it's an emergency, you know you can call that family at any time of the night or just drive over to their house and go on in - being welcomed with twang in their voices and sweet-tea in their refrigerator. Their neighbors are wine conoisseurs from Virginia, a former University of Alabama football player and Athletics Director, fellow North Carolinian's but rivaled Duke fans, middle school teachers with deep accents from Jackson, Mississippi and Columbia, South Carolina, a family from Troy, Alabama, and Junior League mother's from New Orleans and Atlanta. The kids I grew up with are spread out across the nation from Georgia Tech to Wake Forrest to Alabama to LSU and to Kentucky. As Southern Baptist's we get baptized as a personal testimony when we find redemption in the Lord whether it be at Vacation Bible School when we're 5, during a visit to our house by the Senior Pastor when we were in middle school, and maybe not even until we're 56 and about to be a grandmother. We are taught how to make coconut pie despite the Florida heat ruining our meringue. We can cook like a Cajun, like a Cuban, like an Italian mobsters wife, and like our great-grandmother did when we'd go to potluck family gatherings.

Even though our climate is sub-tropical, we still know Oaks and Pines in addition to the many types of Palms. We know how to wear floppy hats on the beach with our sorority sisters no matter how old we are, even though we go skiing out West to make room on our beaches for our neighbors from Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. We know how to shake a martini, we just prefer to blend daiquiris made with our world-reknown citrus. The celery factory down the road that sits underneath the water tower makes the celery stalks that garnish Bloody Mary's in New Orleans and Mobile. We embrace both college football and college basketball because our state is big enough for both ACC and SEC schools, and we are Tar Heel die-hards that come from basketball's finest state. The quarterback still marries the Homecoming Queen and high school sweethearts go to small schools in Alabama and Virginia but bring it on home for a high class Southern-style wedding that gives out R.C. Cola and a Moonpie as the favor at the reception. We raise our children to follow Jesus, to respect their Mother, and to mind their Daddies. Just because our country clubs sit on some of the world's finest golf courses and PGA and LPGA properties instead of in a downtown historic district does not mean we don't have tradition. We went to school with kids who came from minority backgrounds and we and were friends, teammates, and lab partners with dual-language students, but we made sure they taught us 'Roll Tide' and 'Bless Your Heart' before we left our little-but-big, big-but-little hometown.

The City of Oviedo, Seminole County, Florida (below)

Even though I came to Tuscaloosa a couple of weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday, I had been brought up and raised to have the same lady-like poise and elegance that my grandmothers portray through their golden years, just like a Southern lady should. I carried with me Christian values, good morals, and a strong sense of family and community. I appreciated history and 'what was' by having knowledge of the storied history of the Confederacy, but I looked ahead to 'what is' and how the Southern region is changing just like the rest of our nation. My sister and I hold on to every little piece of Southern charm that our hometown of Oviedo still has, and will never forget the many things that have already changed from the way it was in my own glory days. The town I call mine is small enough to keep it's old-Florida charm but big enough to stay in touch with the reality of the post-industrial, techno-savvy and almost futuristic world we live in. A town that used to survive in very large part by the family-owned celery and citrus farming companies named Nelson and Co. and Duda & Sons, Inc. can still find itself to be a cozy-yet-quickly-growing community made up of engineer's at near-by Kennedy Space Center and Lockhead Martin and home to college professors who help the nearly 60,000 students of UCF earn their college degree at the sprawling campus just a short, five-minute drive from our high school. The same August I started my college endeavors at Alabama, a second high school opened it's doors for the Oviedo community - a community that rocked on Friday Nights by coming together as one and making Florida high school football an equal to the always dominating high school football-crazed state of Texas. We smile when we see the flags of the Confederacy still flying in Oviedo's "little sister towns" of Chuluota and Geneva. We wake up and sip coffee in sorority t-shirts on a weekend back home to see Momma and Daddy but prove miracles exist when we make it to church on time in our Sunday best and sit beside our favorite Deacon and his offering plate.

Whether in pearls or pony-tails, the 'Florida Girl' twosome made up of my sister and I always dress ourselves in the correct state of mind. We proudly show our twenty-two and twenty-five year old Southern manners and we take good care of our Southern men in our life just like we do our favorite strand of pearls. We don't show up empty-handed and we would never buy it from a store when we've got the recipe for it memorized. The seventeen years in Florida falls short of the twenty-two years in 'the South.' Simply, our twosome may only be evidence to Alabamians that even in Florida your sister's your best friend and your strength in your moments of weakness. We may only be evidence that not all Florida residents spend their college years in Gainesville and we may only just be the most naturally tan out of our friends but we above our 'Florida Girl' status we are Southerners.

As sure as we are that the sun comes up in the East and sets in the West - thanks to our short drive to each Florida coast from our Spanish-moss decorated driveway - we are sure of our Southern-hood, proud of our style and grace, and Alabama Girls going on five years and running!!

-bjj

the 'other' sister