The Banyan Review: D. Elton McCord

D. Elton McCord

Bio: D. Elton McCord is a long-time Professor of Law at Drake University Law School in Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of numerous law-related publications. The inspiration for “Florida Man” was a reminiscence shared by law school classmate and friend Michael Raiden, who grew up on his family’s plant nursery in Central Florida. 

Florida Man

The grandfather went as far back in Florida soilas a Floridian can. Nurseryman,ironic that the photographer posed your hands in Sunday clothes when your life was in clay, coaxing bloomsfrom bygone fruits with names of Spanish dancers.Your grandson would find your hands while browsing antique seed catalogs, and remember the story;the other photo: you sport a striped one-piece bathing suit,slung casually across your shoulder, an alligator, unrestrained, that postcard for decades a tourist-trap gold mine.Florida everyman: unnamed, uncompensated, unconcerned,decamped like the Lancetilla mango, the Jaffa orange,  leaving the nonchalant grin forever frozeninches from the gator’s maw.

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