Q Hey, why doesn’t the Panhandle belong to Alabama? Florida stole it, right?
A Not outright, but it was a shady grab. Now we mainly know Floridians as a strange folk who cannot be stopped from paving a swamp and then trying to sell that as workable realty. Not so this juicy parcel. The Panhandle—roughly, the territory between the Perdido and the Apalachicola Rivers—featured as the pigskin in a gamesection. No go. The moral of the saga? The beachcomber mentality is tricky. Although Floridians will definitely sell you piles of Pacific coral, thong bathing suits, taxidermy mounts of crocodile heads, “Hawaiian” shirts made in Vietnam, and giant polyethylene pool floats painted up like gators, when it comes to something they really want, they hang on to it.
