Missing the greatest show on Earth

By DIANE ROBERTS

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 17, 2000

TALLAHASSEE -- Tumbleweeds are rolling down Duval Street. Cobwebs cover the now-famous indoor-outdoor lectern of the Supreme Court.

It's the night before the electoral college vote, and all through downtown, not a creature is stirring -- not even a member of the Bush legal team, trying to keep those under-votes in a lockbox.

The biggest thing ever to happen in Tallahassee is over. We feel like those people in the late Middle Ages when Copernicus up and said, No, sorry, Earth is not the center of the cosmos; it's just one little planet spinning around the sun. Tallahassee is no longer the hub of the universe, the adrenalin capital of the world, the omphalos of the Biggest Political Story Ever.

We are bereft, we are bothered and we are bewildered. We are going through withdrawal, shaking like a six-hit-a-day smackhead in cold turkey lockdown. We are running after departing satellite trucks like starved mongrels, calling after Greta Van Susteren like lost souls in the night.

Let's get one thing straight: Despite news reports from London to Lubbock suggesting that Tallahassee got collectively tired of having the world media swarming like a fire ant colony, while ex-secretaries of state prowled the filet mignon-festooned tables of Andrew's Second Act (one of Tallahassee's chic-est -- don't laugh -- restaurants) and creamy-voiced lawyers in handmade shoes jogged from courtroom to courtroom, no one around here wanted this great rococo business to end. I know I didn't. It's way more interesting than Christmas shopping.

But the press didn't quite get Tallahassee. We are not a community of simple Crackers whose idea of fun is fried mullet and a six-pack of Bud followed by shooting rats down at the landfill. Tallahassee is a progressive, government-obsessed city with good sushi, a groovy art scene and several bars of gum-numbing coolness frequented by angelheaded hipsters who know from jazz. We are tree-huggers who voted almost 3-to-1 for Al Gore. And though we love our football (while noting with a raised eyebrow that FSU quarterback and new Heisman Trophy winner Chris Weinke is an admitted Republican), politics is our real favorite sport.

The thing we won't miss is being patronized by the lazy adjectival phrasing of the world press. The following words in any combination -- "folksy," "quaint," "Old South," "Spanish moss," "camellias," "gracious," "charming" and "drawl" -- are hereby outlawed in Tallahassee until the next time the fate of the Free World hinges on us.

In the meantime, what will the dry cleaners do?

Their business has been up by about 500 percent (not making this up, I promise) since Nov. 8, what with all the reporters and lawyers, soothsayers and camp followers in town. There are rumors of dry cleaners driving new Ferraris, dry cleaners flying in black truffles from Normandy with which to stuff their Christmas turkeys.

But the dry cleaners bore a heavy responsibility in this constitutional crisis: They were charged with seeing that David Boies' jackets looked fly. It was their patriotic duty to ensure that Barry Richard's ties were as smooth as the surface of a glacial lake -- which helped to lessen the sense people got when they looked at him that he was about to break into Good Golly, Miss Molly.

And there are the restaurateurs, the newsstand operators, the hoteliers, the purveyors of overcoats and umbrellas (Tallahassee is not Miami, as some of the over-coiffed, under-dressed TV tribe discovered when it started sleeting on the steps of the Capitol), the deliverers of shrimp Po'Boys and onion bagels, and, most important, the barkeeps -- what will they do when business goes back to depending on frat boys, aspiring poets and the usual lobbyists? It will be like the Fall of the Roman Empire with empty Absolut bottles.

Thank God Tallahassee had a few extra days of blue-ribbon weirdness to let us down easy. Last Saturday, a gaggle of judges holed up in the Leon County Public Library, named after Gov. LeRoy Collins (who must be spinning in his grave like a rotisserie with failed brakes), to count disputed votes. On the library steps, separated from the citizens by yellow tape that said "CRIME SCENE," Outside Agitators such as Sen. Barbara Boxer and some man who looked just like Dave on the Wendy's commercials (he claimed he was governor of Oklahoma) made the usual speeches.

A wedding party on the steps of Trinity Methodist Church got desperately tangled up with a Bush rent-a-mob. Some said the bride's train looked like a Palm Beach county ballot by the time the Republicans stomped on it.

On Tuesday, the Florida House of Representatives distinguished itself in the usual manner by passing a completely pointless resolution naming a slate of electors for George W. It's identical to the slate of electors already written down (in pink ink on Katherine Harris' official notepaper) but hey, why not cost the taxpayers a few extra hundred thousand to make extree-extree sure your boy gets to the White House?

There were some fine speeches in the Chamber by Democrats about the sacredness of the vote. The Republicans spun around in their chairs or fiddled with their laptops (probably ordering Bibles, with all the hard words taken out, from ChristianRight.com). When it was their turn to speak, one Rep. Ken Littlefield, for whom English was clearly not his best eighth-grade subject, told a story about baseball that might have had some bearing on an issue but it was impossible to tell what, while one Rep. Jefferson Miller from the snake-handling provinces west of Marianna quoted First Corinthians (and not the verses about love, either).

Speaker Tom Feeney kept banging his gavel, taking time off or putting time back on the official debate clock. It was like the worst SEC ref you ever saw. Finally, Rep. Lois Frankel, leader of the Democrats, declared the resolution "unjust, unnecessary and illegal" -- as if details like that have ever stopped the Florida Legislature.

Outside, the mayor of Tallahassee tried to hold a "Unity Luncheon" to bring everybody together, but Republicans disrupted it by marching in with noise-makers, bellowing "Charge!" The Democrats got ready to have the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Joseph Lowery in to uplift the weary on Wednesday (the Republicans said they'd disrupt that, too). But the fire had gone out of everybody's belly.

One lone guy in a Cat-in-the-Hat hat with an actual tail-swishing cat draped across his shoulders ran into a magnolia tree in front of the First Baptist Church. He dropped his "I Support the Florida Legislature" sign to save his cat and his hat, and snorted in exhausted disgust.

At Cypress, the staff was lamenting never seeing Warren Christopher again.

"Such a cute little old man," said one. Cypress is the new fashionable political restaurant that stands -- most satisfactorily for Tallahassee traditionalists -- on the site of Garcia's, which was the fashionable political restaurant in Pork Chop Gang days. On Tuesday night a bleak air of finality, chill as a bottle of King Estate Pinot Gris, swept the room. The reporters, lawyers and spin-bunnies shivered. And when word came down that the U.S. Supreme Court was about to rule, everyone sucked down the last of their grouper with pecan sauce, threw credit cards at the hostess and tore out the door. "It's the end of an era," a waitress sighed.

There was one last midnight press conference with James Baker, smug as Steve Spurrier after another contract extension, one last stampede around the Capitol with microphones and cameras. On Wednesday, it was over. CNN, the BBC, NBC, CBS, NPR and the rest of the alphabet soup of world media rolled up their extension cords, took the Christmas lights off their trailers and, like Stonewall Jackson's army, folded their tents.

Tallahassee's now just another folksy, gracious, Spanish moss-draped Old South town waiting for Christmas.

Diane Roberts is a sixth-generation Tallahasseean and former St. Petersburg Times editorial writer.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.