A Visit to the Real "Defuniak Springs"

Poor white trash! Hillbillies! Rednecks! These are some of the negative monikers that are often used to describe families like ours who were living in rural southern Arkansas back in the fifties. I prefer to think we were just ‘pore folks’. But what I prefer may not be accurate. Although those days are a distant memory now, the memories occasionally both please, and haunt. Yes, I was a teenaged redneck! It was thus surprisingly seamless to write my first fictional novel—a story of a working-class New England family that finds itself suddenly transplanted to a small rural town in the South, surrounded by rednecks. Dismal Hollow is a hopefully humorous parody that is loosely reflective of the environment of my childhood. As I searched for a southern setting for the novel, I discovered Defuniak Springs, Florida, that was once voted the best small town in Florida. It was a former idyllic resort town with interesting historical roots. It also has the second roundest spring-fed lake in the world. It is close to the highest hill in the state. It has the first memorial to what some locals call the “War of Northern Aggression”. The state’s oldest library. It reminded me of Andy Griffin’s Mayberry RFD.

Annual Festivity

I had never been to the Florida Panhandle and certainly not to Defuniak Springs. Because we live in litigious times, I opted to not visit the place or its perhaps litigious inhabitants until the novel was completed. I further invented a fictitious suburb (Dismal Hollow) and a fictitious neighboring county (Izard County). I also didn’t want reality to get in the way of a good story. The novella is now available on Amazon. I then decided to get to know the Real Defuniak Springs, as opposed to my whacky and Wikipedia’s sanitized versions. With some trepidation, I met the mayor, Mr. Bob Campbell, a sturdy guy— with an even bigger smile and personality. Mr. Campbell is a native Defuniak as was his grampa who himself once been the mayor. The more we talked, or the more he did, the more comfortable I became.

Grampa Campbell (photo) myself and Mayor Bob

Bob told me a lot about his life, and how, as a young man, he had had a somewhat checkered past. Mr. Campbell may have been even more colorful than any of my fictional creations—until he had a spiritual awakening. A former minister, he now considers himself the pastor of this still idyllic Best Small Town in Florida. Mr. Campbell stated that one of his goals as mayor is to instill in his constituents an appreciation of the past. Following the interview, I visited the round lake, the tight-fisted civil war monument, the very tiny, very old extant library, the historical caboose, the tall hill, and had my best meal in Florida at Bogey’s Bar and Restaurant located alongside the still functioning railroad tracks that helped cement Defuniak Springs’ place in history. A wonderful day in Peaceful Pleasant Perfect Defuniak Springs!

Civil War Memorial

Historic caboose