When growing up in Los Angeles, I remember a lady approximating retirement age who hailed from…read moreDeFuniak Springs, Florida. It's not every day you hear a name like DeFuniak. Then, this lady was sort of eccentric, so you wouldn't easily forget her. You see, in L.A., there are no normal people. They are either sarcastic, irreverent, wannabees, direct, materialistic, angry, eccentric, cool, narcissistic, or some combination of these things. I'd say her calling card was "eccentric," so she fit right in.
Well, on a cross country trip using I-10, there it was! It was an off-ramp for DeFuniak Springs! Thus, it was a real place. And this lady's tire tracks had, at one time or another, probably matched the very ones I was laying.
This time, I pulled off the interstate to briefly check out the town of DeFuniak Springs. The town is only slightly north of Interstate 10.
The town itself is very quaint and there is a large lake in the middle of it. Around this lake is a loop road lined with large, beautiful historically inspired homes. For that matter, there are a lot of nice homes and interesting structures, such as churches, government buildings, and others, in DeFuniak Springs. Being in Florida's Panhandle, the area is very forested.
I randomly asked a lady what put DeFuniak Springs on the map. She said that it was the railroad. As far as I know, the railroad's importance must have diminished, seeing that Amtrak does not run across the top of Florida but, rather, descends diagonally from Atlanta toward New Orleans, missing most, if not all, of the Panhandle cities and towns. So I got my answer.
The question I didn't ask is who DeFuniak was. I thought I'd give that a rest. Even I thought it was somewhat strange to lower the rental car's window and randomly converse with someone about their small town to begin with.
