FL Authors: Jeff Klinkenberg

Author Jeff Klinkenberg

WUSF's Florida Authors series continues with a visit to a Tocobaga Indian mound on Boca Ciega Bay. That's the site selected by St. Petersburg Times reporter Jeff Klinkenberg to talk about his book "Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators."

Klinkenberg doesn't do telephone interviews for his newspaper stories. He talks to people in their "habitat." So, it seems only natural to interview Klinkenberg at one of his favorite Florida spots, the Jungle Prada Mound Park in St. Petersburg.

"These mounds they go up the coast for a couple of miles," Klinkenberg said. "A lot of people are living on them probably without knowing. And in a way, sometimes I think that it's sort of a metaphor for Florida. You know, a lot of Floridians sort of live without realizing they live in a special place."

Finding Florida's special places and people and telling their stories is Klinkenberg's specialty. He worries that nowadays people are just driving past the "real Florida" - whether it's a guy battling a hammerhead shark off the sunshine skyway or a chance to chow down on the "best pancakes" in Florida at the Old Spanish Sugar Mill and Griddle House.

"One of the things that worries me a little bit as someone who writes about Florida culture is that the power of popular culture is so strong that everything else is like mowed down," Klinkenberg said. "For example, you have people who live in Florida, they know about Britney Spears. They know about "Dancing with the Stars." However, they don't know what's in their backyards."

Growing up in Miami , the Everglades were Klinkenberg's backyard.

"We were the boys without dates," Klinkenberg said. "We were catching snakes and it wasn't as if our parents allowed us to have snakes. They didn't. So, we just were catching them to catch, carrying them around in a sack for a while and then let them go."

Klinkenberg said he was never a good fit in a classroom, yet he was the first in his family to graduate college. His first job was at the now defunct afternoon newspaper Miami News.

"Right out of Front Page era, where people drank in the newsroom and there were fistfights. It was a pretty colorful place. It was a great place to be a young reporter."

He came to the St. Petersburg Times in 1977 as a sports writer. But, he soon gravitated to writing about Florida. His first book was published in 1983. He got the title after asking a guy who started the big bass fishing tournaments about his success.

"He said, Well Jeff, I was like a blind dog in a smoke house. I was wheeling and dealing,'" Kinkenberg said, "And, I thought well gosh that's me in Florida you know because there are all these stories that no one has ever written and everywhere I snap there's something meaty."

Author Jeff Klinkenberg is scheduled to appear this Saturday at the Times Festival of Reading.