A Flash of Green Read Online Free PDF

questionable the source of the statistics. They fretted about the accessibility of the Caribbean islands. But at the heart of their unrest was the never-spoken conviction that there was really nothing to keep them coming down. It was a fine place to live, and a poor place to visit. They could not quite see how any sane reasonable person would willingly permit himself to be “processed” through that long junk strip of Tamiami, exchanging his vacation money for overpriced lodgings,indifferent food, admission to fish tanks, snake farms and shell factories.
    So secretly disturbed were these businessmen about the proliferating shoddiness of the coast that they were constantly taking random and somewhat contradictory action. The more the beach eroded away, or disappeared into private ownership, the more bravely the huge highway signs proclaimed the availability of miles of white-sand beaches. As the shallow-water fishing decreased geometrically under the attrition of dredging, filling, sewage and too many outboard motors, they paid to have the superb fishing advertised, and backed contests which would further decimate the dwindling fish population. As the quiet and primitive mystery of the broad tidal bays disappeared, as the mangroves and the rookeries and the oak hammocks were uprooted with such industriousness the morning sound of construction equipment became more familiar than the sound of the mockingbird, the businessmen substituted the delights of pageants, parades and beauty contests. (See the Grandmaw America Contest, with evening gown, talent and bathing suit eliminations.)
    So quietly uneasy were the business interests that the few tourist attractions of any dignity or legitimacy whatsoever were pointed to with more pride than they merited. (Weeki Wachee, Bok Tower, Ringling Museums—and “The Last Supper” duplicated in genuine ceramic tile.)
    One motel operator on Cable Key had expressed the hidden fear to Jimmy Wing one quiet September afternoon. “Some season we’ll get all ready for them. We’ll fix up all the signs and raise the rates and hire all the waitresses and piano players and pick the trash off the beaches and clean the swimming pools and stock up on all the picture postcards and sunglasses and straw slippers and cement pelicans like we always have, and we’ll set back and wait, and they won’t show up. Not a single damn one.” He had peeredat Jimmy in the air-conditioned gloom of the bar, and laughed with a quiet hysteria. “No one at all.”
    And this hidden fear, Jimmy realized, was one of the reasons—perhaps the most pertinent reason—for the Grassy Bay project. Once you had consistently eliminated most of the environmental features which had initially attracted a large tourist trade, the unalterable climate still made it a good place to live. New permanent residents would bolster the economy. And so, up and down the coast, the locals leaned over backward to make everything as easy and profitable as possible for the speculative land developers. Arvida went into Sarasota. General Development went into Port Charlotte. And a hundred other operators converged on the “sun coast,” platting the swamps and sloughs, clearing the palmetto scrub lands, laying out and constructing the suburban slums of the future.
    In the Palm City area it had not worked the way the downtown businessmen had hoped it would. Buck Flake had developed Palm Highlands, and Earl Ganson had set up Lakeview Village, and Pete Bender had made a good thing out of Lemon Ridge Estates, but just as fast as the population density in the newly developed areas warranted it, the big new shopping centers went in.
    Grassy Bay would be an entirely different kind of proposition. It was a lot closer to downtown than the scrub-land housing. The waterfront lots would be more expensive, the houses bigger, the future residents a little fatter in the purse than the retireds who bought their budget tract houses back in the piny flats where