Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Tim Dorsey

Quote by Tim Dorsey

“There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast. "The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways. "Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller. "I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state. "You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.”

Quote by Tim Dorsey

Work

Florida Roadkill

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Tim Dorsey
Tim Dorsey

Tim Dorsey, born in 1961, is an American novelist known for his humorous and satirical style. His works primarily focus on the life and crime themes in Florida. more

You May Also Like

“The shuttle would announce its arrival with the trademark double sonic boom-- Boom, BOOM!!-- and shortly thereafter you could see the bright silvery craft dropping from the sky. Space enthusiasm in the state has dimmed somewhat sine the final return of the Space Shuttle on July 21, 2011, but even now, there are traffic jams on the access roads whenever a launch is scheduled. If you are within five miles of the launch site, the sky lights up, the ground rumbles, the crowds cheer, and waves of unrepentant patriotism surge through your body.”

“Labor Day. We could hear their bellow and grind from the Route 19 overpass. Below, the river gleamed like a flaw in metal. Leaving the parking lot behind, we billy-goated down the fisherman's trail, one by one, the way all mountain people do. Loud clumps of bees clustered in the fireweed and boneset, and the trail underfoot crunched with cans, condom wrappers, worm containers. A half-buried coal bucket rose from the dirt with a galvanized grin. The laurel hell wove itself into a tunnel, hazy with gnats. There, a busted railroad spike. The smell of river water filled our noses.”

“The pumpkin itself is a symbol for mortality. Like mortals, the pumpkin seed is planted in the darkness of the earth, where it is left to search for the light. When the plant finally sprouts, it travels along the ground, as if in search of its place in the world. Then, once the pumpkin has found its place, it blossoms into a fruit that towers above all others. And when the pumpkin is ripe, it's a veritable life-giving force.”

“A pumpkin lives but once a year when someone sets its soul afire and on that night it stirs up fear until its flame is snuffed. But e'en one night of eerie light is fright enough.”

“On Hallows Eve, we witches meet to broil and bubble tasty treats like goblin thumbs with venom dip, crisp bat wings, and fried fingertips. We bake the loudest cackle crunch, and brew the thickest quagmire punch. Delicious are the rotting flies when sprinkled over spider pies. And, my oh my, the ogre brains all scrambled up with wolf remains! But what I love the most, it’s true, are festered boils mixed in a stew. They cook up oh so tenderly. It goes quite well with mugwort tea. So don’t be shy; the cauldron’s hot. Jump in! We witches eat a lot!”

“The whispers you hear in your ear that you fear in the air everywhere, they are ghosts. The moans and the groans in the lowest of tones no one owns or condones, they are ghosts. You might deem them gremlins or water or wind, while others say shadows or rodents or sin. But oh! I say no! ‘Tis not so, child, for lo! The chills that you feel in a thrill that proves goose bumps are frightfully real, they are ghosts!”