Fuck You Daycare
Folks who’ve only ever been to Disney World think they know exactly what Florida is. They know it's the land of palm trees, and detectives in speedboats; a place whose quirky residents are prone to attacking soda dispensers while wigged out on bath salts . They are also certain that, whatever Florida is, it definitely "isn't really the South," and they are fond of telling me this as soon as they find out I grew up there. To these people, I simply reply, “Fuck You Daycare.” First, some context. This is my grandfather, Merrill Glisson. He’s from that other Florida, the Florida of palmetto-choked slash pines and mean, sandy soil. He called it “the land that holds the world together,” not because it’s so essential, but because it’s the space in between the places people come to visit, the land nobody wants. The people who live there are similar. His neighbors, descendants of the “turpentine negroes” who worked next to my grandfather as a boy, live in yellow...