He's a Cracker,
and he's darned
proud of it

	Examiner Staff Writer Peter H. King and Photographer Lee Romero have been traveling across the country to sample it's mood in this election year.
	By Peter H. King Examiner Staff Writer

AUBURNDALE, Fla.   Crackers, according to Carl Allen, are better than the rest of us.

Crackers are "Wise enough to take advice from anybody, but not smart enough to use it..."

Crackers are as friendly and open as bare feet. I don't know of any true Florida Cracker who would, turn down anyone who needed help..."

Crackers, however, "won't take a whole lot. These Crackers are bad about that. They'll stick their head in a fire for you -- but they'll cut off your head if you hurt them. . ."

According to Carl Allen.

Carl Allen, according to Carl Allen, is as Cracker as they come. He has. bronze plaque on a wall of his Allen's Historical Cafe here to prove it.

Carl Allen, according to members of a service club. called the, Sertomas, is, as a matter of fact, Florida's No. 1 Cracker. Four years ago, the Sertomas elected Carl Allen king Cracker over scores of candidates from throughout the state. They presented him with the bronze plaque in the, middle of a cow pasture, a ceremony attended by hundreds of fellow Crackers.

The title and, plaque are his for life. Every so often, the Sertomas will call him. Just making sure the time hasn't come to find a new king Cracker, they say. "A Cracker," Carl Allen reminds them, "won't pass along without a fight."

Carl Allen is 62 years old with clear blue eyes and a charming down-home manner that makes you want to listen to his nostalgia-laced Cracker lore for hours over a plate of catfish and a pot of gifts, he spent a recent afternoon talking about the old days in Florida, a time when the state had, more cattle than oranges, more farmers than tourists.

"You'd spend all day fishing," he said his blue eyes lifted toward the ceiling, focused on a spot decades away, "and at night the families would get together around a fire. The women would swap recipes and tell stories and, the men would sit under a tree and whittle and talk politics."

But those good old days, Carl Allen said, are largely a thing of the past – like the Pioneer Crackers he used to share them with.

"I think the real Cracker way of life is going," he said sadly. "Progress, you can't stop it, and before long the slow, sluggish way of life will diminish."

"Everything is faster. Hey, I used to plan all day to go to Lakeland -- and it's only 12 miles from here. Now you're there in 15 minutes.

"And pretty soon everything is going to be, act and look just alike. All you'll be seeing is filling stations and convenience stores. You won't be able to tell if you're in Alabama, California or Florida."

Allen's grandfather was a Civil War doctor who after the war moved from Georgia to the swampy part of central Florida known as The Ridge. His father was a farmer in Auburndale.

After high school, Allen toured the United States on an 18-month adventure. "Couldn't find anywhere else that compared," he said, so he returned to Auburndale, where he has worked as an usher, a cowboy, a restaurateur, a music promoter and, more than anything else, a curator of all that is Cracker.

"A Cracker is someone who is Florida born, and loves this land," he said. "Of course, there are Crackers and there are Pioneer Crackers. I'm a Pioneer Cracker." Pioneer Crackers, by Allen's definition, are Floridians whose ancestors are Southerners who came here to the state after the Civil War to escape the Carpetbaggers.

Allen said it was the women of this generation, "the grandmommas," who were the strong ones. "They settled Florida. They would tell their husbands, 'I'll raise your kids and make you a home, but you go out and clear the land and build me a house.'"

''And those grandmommas had a strength that has been transferred to every Cracker you meet. Crackers were born and raised and died and buried in the sand, And every Cracker left something. He left strength."

It was one of' those great old Cracker grandmommas who convinced Allen he should try to preserve as much of the old way of life as he could, to store up Cracker stories and artifacts before they crumbled.

"I went to my Aunt Feta one day and I said. 'Aunt Feta, how do you grow such a pretty garden?

"She pulled up an old turnip and said, 'When you get as old as I am, you'll realize how deep roots can grow in this sand.'

"She wasn't telling me about turnips," Allen said. "There's an old saying, if you get the sand in your shoes you will come back. It's the oldest saying in Florida, and it's true. My head and heart are buried so deep in the sand I can't leave it."

Carl Allen spends much of his time with old Pioneer Crackers taping their stories about the early days with a vague notion of someday compiling their accounts in a book.

Once a year, he holds an Oldtimers Day at Allen's Historical Cafe. All the old Pioneer Crackers are served a free dinner and entertained. Last year, more than 2,000 showed up.

"The tears would fill a bucket," he said. They say, 'Carl, if I'm not here next year, remember I'm here in spirit.'

"These are the people I try to represent," said the state's No. 1 Cracker.

The restaurant, which Allen has had for 15 years, is his museum. He serves a basic Florida Cracker fare: Catfish and hushpuppies, lake perch, smoked mullet, shadroe, quail, Florida softshell turtle, armadillo, fresh deep fried rabbit, rattlesnake, frog legs and fresh alligator.

The walls are plastered with Americana artifacts,. trinkets that were part, of everyday life from earlier times. An 1819 time clock. An 1882 telephone. A bed-bug duster. One of the first cigarette, lighters. A wagon shock absorber. Pearl-handled pistols signed by Gene Autrey.

"You can't name anything I haven't collected," said Allen, who on this day was wearing a belt buckle made of 16 indian-head nickels --just one of his buckle collection. He also has collected his own definition of how Crackers came to be known as Crackers.

Crackers, according to Carl Allen, were named by Northerners in the late 1800s. Vacationing Yankees would travel through Florida in trains, watching through open windows as cowboys herded "scrub cattle" with whips. Every time a cowboy cracked his whip, one of the Yankees would observe, "There's another Florida cracker."

Later, Allen says, Georgians "borrowed" the term. But a true Cracker, he says, is someone who has been born in Florida.

Crackers, according to the Dictionary of American Slang, is a derogatory term that his been around since the 18th century. It first applied to frontier outlaws, braggarts and deadbeats. It now refers to "a poor white of the Southern states, esp. Georgia and Florida." The Dictionary of American Slang does not mention any Florida cowboys with cracking whips.

I prefer Carl Allen's definition.

He's the one with the bronze plaque.