Articles
Living in the land of a lost way of life
By Susan Cocking
With school over for the day on a warm, late-March afternoon, a gaggle of kids swarmed the dock at Mack's Fish Camp on the edge of the Everglades. They cast small worms and lures into the Miami Canal and pointed and laughed at Sneaky Pete, an alligator that lives beneath the wooden planks.
After a couple of little boys lost interest in fishing, they launched into horseplay that escalated into complaints and sniffles.
Everglades history lives at fish camp
By MIKE CLARY South Florida Sun Sentinel.
IN THE EVERGLADES - Two miles down the levee, where the bumpy gravel road gives way to sawgrass, sits the last outpost in southeast Florida of an Everglades world almost forgotten.
Here, going for a swim means plunging into the canal from a rope swing. Travel is by airboat. And alligators swim right up to the back door.
"I call this one Elvis," said Keith Jones of the 9-foot reptile whose snout touched the wooden planks of his deck. "Known him since he was small."
In the Everglades, two Florida boys live to tell the tale of Mack's Fishing Camp
By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer
Marshall Jones and his brother, Keith, who operate historic Mack's Fishing Camp in the Everglades, are barefoot boys in the tradition of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. The 30-year-old twins wear shoes only if necessary, perhaps because buying proper footwear is a challenge.
Marshall squeezes his ample paws into size 13s. Keith's feet measure a sawgrass-stomping 15EEE.
Their toes are prehensile, bent and misshapen, topped by yellow nails that appear more reptilian than human. Banged up and scarred, their feet look like something large and toothy must have gnawed on them.
Something did.