A visit to Inverness

Zoe and I fly to Florida so she may meet my father's family and attend my sister Angel's wedding aside the dark and winding Crystal River. Years ago, when I first met them, they took me to this river where we snorkled from the mouth in the bay with a spring at the bottom, up into the narrow river bed lined with white sand and tangles of cypress roots whose tannins turn the water a rich brown. I saw turtles and fish; we looked for manatees, but the mysterious sea cows eluded us.
There are a lot of people for Zoe to meet: my brothers Chris & Tony, my sister Angel. Cousin Patty and her kids, Tony's little ones- Zoe's new cousins, and of course Grandpa Bobby & Sharon. Not to mention numerous cousins and aunts & uncles.
My father lives in Inverness, Florida. On a map if you point to Daytona (where Tony lives) draw your finger directly across the state until you are a couple of centimeters from the gulf coast, you'll find Inverness.
Miles from what we know.
The air is warm and thick as magnolia flowers, trees dripping with tangled gray moss, tea water lakes everywhere- full of gators, country music on the radio. The landscape is eternally green. Towns are small, trucks are big, life is slow. Lightning bugs hide among the thin pine trees and palmettos. If the Winn Dixie doesn't have what you need, you'll find it at Walmart. There isn't a whole lot that a day of fishing can't fix.
For a state where you can't throw a cooter without hitting a hyacinth laden pond, lazy river or wide lake, it's hard to imagine that they are suffering a terrible drought. As the ashes and smoke from a distant forest fire darken the sky and choke my lungs, I find it hard to imagine that there is anything dry enough to be on fire. The airconditioned car that drives me to the airconditioned store or cool house drives along rambling highways dotted with ancient oak trees covered in moss, lawns the size of strip malls, sticks of pine trees, little purple flowers, brown cows growing fat on endless expanses of green, green grass. As the radio plays country hits we pass "Ouch tatoo parlor", Bait shops, gun superstores, and "paradise lost" trailer parks. A giant pink elephant grabs attention for a flea market. BP sells gas for $3.23 a gallon.
The songs vacillate from aching tearjerkers of lost love to witty comic ditties about machismo and small-town red-state way of life. I laugh as they rise to the chorus, "I want to drive with you into the sticks /I want to kiss you in a field of wild flowers /I want to check you for ticks". When a crooning but ageing cowboy is greeted in a bar by two cute sisters looking to party, he replies, "I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was". There you go buddy, cowboy up.