A heapin' helping of Cracker history

AUBURNDALE   There's a lake across the street, and if Carl Allen wanted he could walk over right now and smell the fish. That's one of his talents as a genuine Florida Cracker. He can walk a lakeshore and smell where the bream and the stumpknockers have built nests in the shallow water.

"That's what all we little ole Cracker boys did when we was kids," says Allen, who has lived every one of his 73 years in Central Florida. "We'd smell out them fish and sneak up on ' em and catch 'em on worms. There was some good fishin' around here when I was a boy."

Allen fishes less than he once did. He's busy running Allen's Historical Cafe and serving native cuisine that includes everything from fried catfish, rabbit, armadillo, gator and rattlesnake to homemade grits, baked beans, sweet 'tater patties, watermelon soup and pickled peppers.

I don't serve nothin' that don't come from Florida," declares Allen, a former cowboy who grew up among the pine and palmetto eight blocks from the ramshackle restaurant on U.S. 92.

I don't want people to forget how we Crackers ate," he says, and the smell of fried food wafts out of the kitchen.

Hunting the wild cow

Nor does he want folks to forget how the old-time Floridians known as Crackers lived, loved and worked the land . His restaurant is an antiquefilled museum that celebrates pioneer Florida culture, and Allen is a walking, talking history book. The Department of State recently honored him with a Folk Heritage Award for his lifelong devotion to preserving Cracker ways and his talent as.. a colorful. storyteller.

"I was a cowhunter," Allen is telling a restaurant visitor, a city boy who has stopped for lunch.

"You know, there was no such thing as a cowboy in Florida. We was cowhunters, 'cause we hunted these scrawny wild cows that was descended from the cattle the Spanish brought here with them."

"We chased them wild cows on Cracker ponies. You don't know ,what a Cracker pony is? They was the greatest kind of horse we ever had here! They was kind of little and scrawny, too, but real tough. You could hunt cows on them all ray and all night and then use 'em the next day to plow your fields."

"They extinct in Florida now. Just plain disappeared. Last one I saw was in '53. Man named Robertson had one. I wish I had me one now."

That's how it is when you visit Carl Allen. While you quietly munch your fried armadillo or sip iced tea out of a fruit jar, he's likely sit for a spell, push his black cowhunter hat back and tell you how it was.

"Way back when, the real estate folks would bring Yankees into the state by train. These Yankees would be leanin' out the window, and the cowhunters would be ridin' on their ponies and showin' off crackin' their whips. And the real estate boys would say, 'Look at them Florida Crackers.'

"That's how we got the term Florida Cracker. Did you know that?"

Jumping the broom

Most people don't. But if they're ignorant when they walk into the restaurant they are usually educated by the time they leave. All they have do is listen.

"You ever hear about a broom ceremony? In the old days, we had a lot of travelin' preachers. They might not come by your town but once every three months or so. What if somebody wanted to get married in the meantime?

"Well, everybody gathered in a house and the man and woman who wanted to marry jumped over a broom laid on the floor. That meant they was allowed to live together as man and wife until the preacher could marry 'em legally."

Allen, who writes a folksy weekly column about old Florida for the Lakeland Ledger, can talk non-stop about the old days. Crackers like to swap stories with him. Tourists step up, snap his picture and listen, enthralled, to his words about Florida folklore.

"If you kill a snake and hang him on the fence you'll get rain."

"If you put you a stick over a pot, it won't boil over."

"Rub a pig's snout for good luck."

A visitor to Allen's Historical Cafe can learn a heap about how things worked in Florida by just looking around.

In seven decades, Allen has collected more than 20,000 Florida antiques and photographs and novelties. Many hang from his restaurant's walls and ceilings. He's got a grist mill, ancient farming tools, rusty guns and animal heads. He has old washing machines, arrowheads and musical instruments. He's got a frying pan made out of a door from a Model T. Most tables are supported by the legs of worn-out sewing machines.

"Crackers, they didn't waste nothin'."

He's got a 3-D Florida postcard of a winking bathing beauty. He has an old FBI poster advertising a $5,000 reward for information about criminal John Dillinger. He's got a sign out front that the yuppie gourmet restaurants of Tampa Bay have not bothered to post: "Notice: Spitting Spreads Disease. Do Not Spit On The Floor."

Carl Allen can show visitors an antique linen bag once used by modest Cracker women for hiding their underwear on the clothes line. He's got a raccoon reproductive organ that Cracker men employed to pick their teeth. He's got a jar of rabbit tobacco Cracker teen-agers liked to smoke.

"Any Cracker boy come in here knows what rabbit tobacco is," Allen says. "It was a weed, and we let it dry good, and then rolled it in paper from a brown paper bag, and had a smoke. We did that when we wanted to do something wild and wooly."

Keeping old ways

Carl was one of nine children of W. F. and Amilou Allen. They farmed and raised cattle and hoped for the best. The Allens ate well when Mother Nature was kind and the crops came up and when Carl and his brothers could catch *a meaty alligator or kill a juicy rattler. But sometimes they had to fill their bellies with grits and beans.

"My momma was a great cook. I was her youngest, and I spent a lot of time with her, and she showed me how to cook. Back then, you didn't have stores to go to for your ingredients and mixes and such. You cooked from scratch.

"She was an artist. She could do beans 900 ways."

Carl Allen and Jewel, his wife of 40 years, still use family recipes and prepare almost every dish from scratch. They bake their beans seven hours before serving them to customers. They are particularly picky about their catfish, which they buy from Lake Okeechobee fishermen.

"I don't like farm-raised catfish," Allen says. "They just sit in a muddy pond all day. Wild catfish get out and move. They taste better for it."

Today, he sells about 200 pounds of fried catfish a week. It's his most popular dish. In contrast, he sells about 400 fried rattlesnake dinners a year. "Rattlesnake is good," Allen says about the white, mild meat. "But not everybody takes to it."

Heaven on earth

Old-time Crackers like to munch snake from time to time. On April 29, when Allen plans his annual oldtimer's day, they'll get their chance. He feeds them for free at his restaurant and provides bluegrass music.

"There ain't many of us left," he says. "So it's nice to get together. We're dyin' out. Too bad. Florida Crackers are the finest folks you'll meet. Determined, too.

"Why a Florida Cracker'll walk 10 mile to pay you back a nickel he borrowed. He'll walk 20 mile to get a nickel you owe him.

"An' let me tell you somethin' about Florida. God made Florida so we all could sample heaven on Earth."