“Old Florida” can be an evocative phrase, calling to mind scenes, real or imagined, and attended by strong emotion; yet it rarely means the same thing to two people. For some, it may call to mind sandy roads, orange groves, and the soft glow and balmy warmth of an evening spent under the moss laden arms of a mighty oak. For others, it might conger up images of fishing camps, bait shops, or family run stores where locals gathered to trade rumors; or a town before traffic lights and subdivisions.
What is often overlooked, though, is that each of these memories are more reflective of someone’s Florida, shaped by time, circumstance, and the gauzy filter of nostalgia, much more than they are Old Florida, as ifOld Florida was or is a universally shared memory or experience.
Every person’s “old” is, though, only a snapshot. Like a photograph, it captures a moment, freezes it, and treats it as if it were a timeless phenomenon; ignoring that moment was itself preceded by another “old,” and followed almost immediately by a different “old”. The Florida of the 1950s was not the Florida of the 1920s; while the Florida of the 1960’s and 70s is the Old Florida many of us recall, even though there were those who, at that time, were lamenting the loss of theOld Florida that came before it. Each era finds those who inhabit it experiencing both continuity and change, inheriting while at the same moment evolving. The sense of loss we might sometimes feel is merely evidence of the passage of time, not actual loss or betrayal.
Nostalgia, that deeply human and sometimes beautiful, even poignant manner of reminiscing about the past, is inherently selective. It’s focus is upon the familiar, the meaningful, often quietly editing out the difficult, unjust, or simply inconvenient elements of the past. I’m not suggesting that nostalgia is inherently dishonest, but rather incomplete, and consequently often inaccurate. When nostalgia is permitted to form a blueprint for the future, it not only seems to demand that life stop moving, remaining frozen at the moment it felt most like home to us, it almost always assures that entropy will insure decline. An insistence that our nostalgic recollections of yesteryear, however heartfelt, reign in growth is not only unrealistic; it is unkind to the people who live here now.
Small towns, including Melrose, are sometimes spoken of as though they were antiques, artifacts to be preserved and admired, but held in limbo, remaining unchanged. This misunderstands the nature of community. A town is not an artifact . It’s nearer to a living organism; something that both shapes and is shaped by its environment, given life by its people, and dependent upon adaptation for its sustained health and growth.
Healthy organisms change. They respond to the changing world around them, to the changes occurring within them, to opportunities, and needs. As they grow they adjust to the fluid nature of of change; they mature. They shed unhelpful anachronisms while preserving their formative values; their DNA.They reorganize themselves to adapt and thrive. To deny a small town this essential capacity is to confuse preservation with a stubborn willful blindness to decline and its consequences. What some call “protecting” a town can, instead be a dogged effort to hold it hostage to an idealized past. In this stultifying environment decline is strangely elevated to a virtue, with stagnation and entropy its inevitable reward.
Does this suggest that everything new is also good? That all change is progress? Traditions that endure do so to the degree that they remain useful and meaningful. A town’s character is not preserved by resisting change, but by adapting to change while being guided by our values, our ethos.
“Old Florida” has always been in motion, its contours, and expressions shifting and growing through different eras, the arrival of different people and the same people who themselves are growing and changing. Small towns cannot remain healthy attempting to reenact a vanished past, but to live well in the present, providing an opportunity for those who will come after us to enjoy their own old Florida.
In the final analysis a healthy and thriving small town will never look exactly as it once did, can never remain as it once was. That’s not a failure, that’s not a cause for grief. It’s the sign that it’s alive and healthy, with the promise of a bright future.
As a town grows and changes, it must welcome the emergence of diverse visions and interests. No single group or generation can lay claim to shaping the future, a community is, by nature, plural. Long time residents and newcomers, families and individuals, entrepreneurs and retirees, preservationists and innovators each bring to the table of vision for the future. A vision shaped by their own experiences, perspectives and aspirations.
The belief that any one group possesses a veto over a town’s future betrays a misunderstanding of authentic community. The impulse to control outcomes is rarely a sign of malice, but fear; fear of loss, fear of being elbowed aside, or even irrelevance. When fear manifests as control, rather than participation, it becomes counterproductive, and destructive to authentic community. Ironically, over time, it actually marginalizes its own influence as it withdraws from the shared civic space where the future is being shaped through dialogue, compromise, and good faith.
Healthy towns grow through conversation. They understand that civic life requires listening, restraint, and a willingness to yield at times. This is civic maturity. A community capable of holding differing visions in tension, without demanding rigid conformity, cultivates stability, vitality, and hope.