Bright Futures

PROLOGUE

Twelve hundred years before I drove my dying car into the parking lot of the Dairy Queen on 301 in Sarasota, saber-tooth tigers, mastodons, giant armadillos, and camels roamed what are now the high-end malls that house Saks, Nieman-Marcus, Lord amp; Taylor, and twenty-screen movie theaters.

The land that is now the Florida Keys was part of a single landmass double the size of the present state.

People who inhabited Florida twelve hundred centuries ago were hunters and gatherers who lived on nuts, plants, small animals, and shellfish. There was a steady clean water supply, good stones on the ground for toolmaking, and more firewood than they needed. Complex cultures developed with temple mounds and villages. These villages traded with one another and developed cultivated agriculture.

As ocean waters wore away land, the peninsula shrank.

Juan Ponce de Leon landed in 1513 in what became St. Augustine. He called the area “La Florida,” in honor of Pascua florida-the feast of flowers. In 1539 Hernando de Soto arrived, and a short time later, in quick succession, came settlers, slaves, and hurricanes. The natives were gone, though remnants of natives and runaway slaves created the Seminole tribes. By this time the peninsula had already long since shrunk to its present size.

Soon came the railroads, the airplanes, and the almost endless stream of cars on I-75 and I-95 carrying snowbird Canadians and retirees from Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Michigan, and even California. The few remaining Seminoles were herded into casinos, which they fought over and operated at a profit.

Towering buildings rose, blocking out view and sun. The more that were built, the more they cost and the greater the crowds.

Then my wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver on the Outer Drive in Chicago. With a Chicago Cubs cap on my head and in need of a shave, I came 1,044 miles looking for the end of the world and settled in an office at the rear of the Dairy Queen parking lot in Sarasota when my car broke down forever.

Now the DQ is gone, replaced by a bank. The less-than-shabby, concrete block two-story office building I live and work in will be torn down in a few days.

There are twenty-nine banks and numerous branches in Sarasota County, and only one DQ remains.

There are more than 360,000 people in the county. Florida progress.

My name is Lewis Fonesca. I find people.