Florida Flash with Peter Meinke
Daniele Pantano
1) Why Florida?
I’d just finished my PhD at the U. of Minnesota (1965), and a friend called offering me a job at what was then called Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd). My first reaction was to say, “Jesus, Jim, FLORIDA PRESBYTERIAN?!” But I went to the interview just to see some sunshine; I loved it immediately.
2) Your best-kept Florida secret?
Although we’ve gradually become devout St. Petersburgers, Jeanne and I both believe we wouldn’t have stayed these 40+ years if we hadn’t found, accidentally and early on, our dream house, a Wordsworthian cottage surrounded by oaks and azaleas, which we bought for $14,000. We often refer to it (looking uxoriously around) as our “sweet trap.”
3) Your strangest Florida?
Florida grows strangeness like Spanish moss, but the strangest to us has been its political backwardness, mendacity, and mind-boggling ineptness.
4) Your silence before the storm?
Sorry for thinking so politically, but it can’t be helped these days (a week before the election): If the Democrats lose this time, we’ll look into leaving, not just Florida, but the country. We thought of doing this before, during the Vietnam war, but then we had four children with us. Now it’s just us. Even poets should take moral positions now and then.
5) Your six-word Florida memoir?
St. Petersburg welcomed and surprised us.
This interview was conducted on 25 October 2008 via email.