As a community, we tend to mark the passage of time through memorable events whose impacts are as powerful mentally as they are physically. Just as the memory of the great hurricanes of 1906, 1916 and 1926 imprinted itself on past generations of Pensacolians, many of us today will carry the marker of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 for the rest of our lives.
And now we’ve all had our tickets punched by the great ice storm of 2014. Yes, it was short in duration, and at least the visible impacts were short-lived. But it was a powerful marker for our psyches. Because to steal a line from Monty Python, nobody in Northwest Florida expects a blizzard.
A longer-lasting concern, however, is the impact the severe cold had on local citrus, which has undergone such a renaissance that locally grown fruit had begun showing up in area stores, and local food banks developed a program to harvest fruit from homes across the area. It has become a common sight in East Hill, Downtown and other areas to see citrus trees laden with fruit.
At my mother’s home on Gull Point, we have become accustomed to harvesting oranges and lemons from her trees, and trading them for a neighbor’s juicy white grapefruit.
But, of course, the only constant is change. Sometimes it occurs slowly, and then one day we realize that citrus trees are all over town. And sometimes it comes quickly, and a two-day ice storm threatens to reverse years of gradual change.
Well, I hope I don’t sound pretentious, but it is ever thus. We think life the way we know it is the way it is, and then a freight train barrels down from the Arctic and resets our understanding of the world.
But Pensacola didn’t wash or blow away in 1906 or 2004, and the deep freeze of 2014 isn’t putting us on ice, either. While our memories might be short, the long view brings some perspective.
Doing a little research, I found references to citrus-killing freezes across Florida in 1835, 1894, 1899, 1917, 1927 and, well, you get the picture. Oldtimers told me about Satsuma groves in Ensley in the 1920s, which might explain street names just off North Palafox like Satsuma Avenue and Orange Avenue. Of course, Ensley also has streets named Pecan, Poplar, Cherry and Juniper, but let’s try to stick to my narrative here, OK?
I found a reference to plans by a local entrepreneur to plant a 50-acre Satsuma grove in 1923 between Floridatown and Mulat, and someone even built something named the Satsuma Beach Pavilion at Floridatown, only to see it wrecked by the 1926 storm.
And a recent article by Kim Blair in the Pensacola News Journal noted the remnants of an orange tree plantation from the 1800s in the Gulf Islands National Seashore’s Naval Live Oaks Preserve outside Gulf Breeze.
The theme is constant: a hurricane knocks us down, we rebuild; a freeze kills our citrus, we replant. We lose the memories of the past, acquire new ones, and keep going.
One thing I think we can all agree on: the hope that the great ice storm of 2014 was such a singular event that it remains a prominent mental marker. If this is going to happen every year, it might be time to move somewhere warm, like Florida.
