Surely Garden & Gun did not know what it had wrought when it tucked DeLand, Florida, into its Best Main Street in the South bracket. It could not have foreseen that a contest built around slow-paced charm would gin up such rabid intensity in Central Florida.
But for a fevered fortnight or so, DeLand went to the mat for its treasured downtown. News of the contest flew around in grocery aisles and via text message. Soon the city’s official social media accounts were telling folks to vote, with an urgency usually reserved for hurricane alerts.
And why not? This was important, by golly. The community and the lovely two-lane ribbon running through it were gaining recognition, from a very high-toned national magazine. Many folks knew of Garden & Gun from the newsstands in one of the town’s two Publixes, so they knew what this signified. (Now, those are some small-town bona fides: only two Publixes, in a state where they sprout like toadstools.)
All told, there hadn’t been this much commotion on Woodland Boulevard since they started replacing traffic lights with roundabouts. (Our city planners have a stomach for controversy.) Or maybe since DeLand’s own Stetson University, which occupies a particularly gorgeous oak-flanked stretch of the street, made the actual March Madness tourney a couple of years back. Yeah, the Hatters got stomped by UConn, 91–52. But they were gracious in defeat. DeLand was ready for that kind of a result here too.
But some sort of heedless faith kept people going. And, surprise of surprises, DeLand kept winning. The loyalists spurred each other on. Have you voted today? How many times? It was all carried out with characteristic small-town manners, no animus at all. But the vanquished towns left smoldering in its wake—fine, upstanding places like Beaufort, SC, and Thomasville, GA—must’ve wondered what’d hit them.
Easter weekend came, and DeLand found itself in the Finals. Folks were voting steadily every hour, per the rules. They’d swipe grandma’s phone and vote with hers too. That wily veteran Fredricksburg, VA, was gaining, passing, falling, passing again. Easter Sunday arrived. He is risen—He is risen indeed! But our vote share percentage was falling, falling.
At some point it almost didn’t matter. The experience had already borne fruit. It made people step back, take stock, and appreciate the town’s lineaments. For a few days we counted blessings: the walkability. The persistence of small businesses. A downtown that is real and alive and humanely scaled, in bold counterexample to nearby sprawl. The ongoing, seamless weaving in of influences from Latin America and elsewhere. Its prime niche between two very different ecosystems—the freshwater wilds of the St. Johns River just west, salt breezes off the Atlantic calling from the east.
These blessings show. In a state defined by transience, DeLand newcomers tend to get rooted and stay that way. I should know. My wife and I were welcomed here, and realized very quickly that we’d found good soil. Just two months ago the second of our two sons was born, both of them native to its bounds. I have no idea what they’ll see when they look around a decade or two from now—I never want to mistake a place’s sense of history with unchangingness.
But something tells me that if anyone dares to put it in another head-to-head contest with rival small towns, they too will be mashing the VOTE NOW button until their thumbs go numb, every hour on the hour, and disparaging the likes of Fredericksburg, VA, in the most courteous and sportsmanlike way possible.
James Chapin is a novelist and a naturalist. He is the author of Ride South Until the Sawgrass (Lanternfish Press, 2020), a novel set during Florida’s frontier period.
