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Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

Jeff Klinkenberg

Jeff Klinkenberg writes about Florida culture and the people who make the state unique. He joined the Times in 1977, and his work takes him from Pensacola to Key West.

Klinkenberg's interest in Florida began when he was a small boy growing up in Miami on the edge of the Everglades. He jokes he was a charter member of "the boys without dates'' club because of hobbies that included catching snakes. He started working at the Miami News when he was 16 and later graduated from the University of Florida's journalism college, where he is in the hall of fame. His latest book, which collects favorite columns, is Alligators in B-Flat, published by University Press of Florida. Other anthologies, Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators, Seasons of Real Florida and Dispatches from the Land of Flowers, are also in print.

For additional information about Jeff Klinkenberg, his latest book, and speaking engagements, please go to his website, JeffKlinkenberg.com.

Phone: (727) 893-8727

Email: klink@tampabay.com

Twitter: @JeffKlinkenberg

  1. His dad played Liberace for Liberace

    05/22/13 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    We were a Liberace family when I was growing up in Miami.

    He was from the Midwest like my parents. Like my dad, he was a piano player, only successful. In the 1950s, he had his own television show, which we watched religiously, dad grinning at his flamboyance while admiring the musical chops. My mom, her hair up in bobby pins, took notice of Liberace's mother beaming from the front row. You had to like a boy who was so kind to his mother. ...

    Liberace even signed this photo for Jeff.

  2. Make this old-time Florida roadside stop for a mango shake

    05/01/13FloridaBy Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    HOMESTEAD

    In South Florida, where burglar bars are as common as alligators, nervous clerks store their trusty 12-gauges behind the counter. Terrible things have happened to Robert Moehling, no doubt about it, but that's not a Glock loaded and ready under the cash register.

    It's a power drill.

    "Here, let me help you,'' says Robert, attacking a coconut. Seconds later a tourist ambles through the store, sipping the milk through a straw....

    Robert Moehling chats with customers at Robert Is Here, a Homestead fruit and milk shake stand he started in 1959 when he first sat on the side of the road to sell his father’s cucumbers. Emily Springer, 18, is one of his employees. 
CAROLINA HIDALGO / Times

  3. Finding flaws in 'Finding Florida' by T.D. Allman

    04/03/13BooksBy Jeff Klinkenberg and Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writers

    T.D. Allman's new book Finding Florida is subtitled "The True Story of the Sunshine State" because it's supposed to correct all the myths and mistakes in the other Florida history books. But while reading it we kept finding forehead-slapping errors. You'd forgive a couple of goofs in a 500-page book, but after a while you wonder if your tour guide is Cliff Clavin.

    We emailed Allman to ask how he committed so many errors. First he announced he was going to ignore us. Then he sent us a two-page letter, denying any significant errors of fact but simultaneously inviting readers to submit corrections for future editions. Here's our short list, as well as the complete text of Allman's letter....

    Nine months after Hurricane Ivan made landfall in Pensacola, signs of the storm’s destruction remain everywhere, with boarded-up windows, buildings with gutted interiors, piles of debris and miles of new construction. Ivan, a category 4 hurricane, rendered about 45,000 homes unlivable in Pensacola. In 2004, four hurricanes hit Florida within six weeks — Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne — causing more than $42 billion in property damage and 123 deaths. No one was killed by a collapsing condo, however, despite T.D. Allman’s statement: “When the killer hurricanes of the early 2000s struck, many of these monstrosities became high-rise death traps” (Finding Florida, p. 390).

  4. For Mayport ferryman, a rapid rhythm on the river

    04/03/13 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    MAYPORT

    Let's talk about the voice, which hurts the ears like a tenor sax with a bad reed — loud, squawky, piercing. Even when B.J. Hart is standing on the deck of the last public ferry in Florida, the voice cuts through the great throb of the diesel that propels the Jean Ribault across the St. Johns River.

    "YESSS! OH, BABY. WELCOME ABOARD!''

    East of Jacksonville, a Navy helicopter whup-whups overhead. On Ocean Street, an ambulance rockets past with siren screaming. Over on A1A, radios blare hip-hop boompity boomp. Doesn't matter. You can hear B.J. Hart's caw from hundreds of feet....

    B.J. Hart is known for chatting it up with travelers as they cross the St. Johns River at Mayport. “We make each other’s day because we share something, a simple word that deals with a simple feeling, deals with a simple moment,” he said near the end of another shift.

  5. Ponce de Leon through the ages.

    03/02/13 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    Did Ponce de Leon come to Florida in 1513 to look for the Fountain of Youth? Unlikely. Yet our country's founding myth has hung on for five centuries.

    These postcards are courtesy of Rick Kilby, from his upcoming book Finding the Fountain of Youth: Ponce de Leon and Florida's Magical Waters.

    Eventually St. Petersburg moved its Fountain away from the waterfront and next to the spring training ball park. In the 1920s, tourists arrived daily to have their photographs taken.

  6. Can one man overcome 500 years of distorted Florida history?

    02/28/13 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    Nobody has ever needed to find the Fountain of Youth more than J. Michael Francis. Okay, Ponce de León's famous fountain is probably nothing but bushwa. That said, he needs to fill his wineskin from those make-believe waters just in case.

    Francis, 45, is a blond-haired, blue-eyed, baby-faced historian at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. His specialty is what happened when the Spanish arrived in the New World. He knows a whole lot. He also wonders if he has only scratched the surface, and whether he needs to live forever to learn what he needs to know....

    At the castle in Segovia, Isabella has her own stained-glass window.

  7. Florida's Stonehenge is Coral Castle in Homestead

    02/01/13 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    HOMESTEAD — Unlucky in love, Ed Leedskalnin went about his life quietly and sadly while building the most peculiar home on the edge of the Everglades. It was going to be a valentine to the woman who had jilted him. And who knows? Maybe she would hear about his grand monument to her and come back to him. She would say "I am sorry for hurting you" and they'd marry and have many children.

    Ed died alone. But Florida's most amazing tourist attraction remains at 28655 S Dixie Highway. It's called the Coral Castle. It's our Great Pyramid, our Stonehenge....

    Rebuffed by Agnes Scuffs, small, shy Ed Leedskalnin, right, built a solid ode to her. He led tourists through Coral Castle, in Homestead, until his death in 1951. It’s still open.

  8. I'm a citrus romantic

    01/05/13 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    LAKELAND

    “Stop the car, Ernie," my mother ordered my dad. "I'm going to pick some oranges."

    "You'll get arrested," my dad said. "Or you'll be shot."

    We were driving toward Winter Haven along the spine of the state. On a winter's afternoon, Temple oranges hung like ornaments. From a hilltop we saw orange-laden trees reaching to the horizon.

    "Come on, Ernie," she begged. "Look at all those oranges. Nobody will miss one or two."...

  9. As 500th anniversary nears, cities vie for title of Ponce de Leon's landing spot

    12/28/12TourismBy Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    ST. AUGUSTINE — Where did that most ambitious conquistador, Juan Ponce de Leon, wade ashore five centuries ago and name his prize "La Florida?" Inquiring minds all over our state would like to know, the sooner the better, for planning purposes.

    With the big day approaching — the anniversary arrives on April 3, 2013 — what east-coast beach city gets to shoot off the fireworks? If King Juan Carlos I of Spain graces us with a visit, where will he and Gov. Rick Scott shake hands? This being Florida, where communities joust like 16th-century knights for tourist dollars, it's important....

  10. A black cowboy hangs tough at 80

    11/30/12 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    LACOOCHEE — When the old cowboys woke, he could smell the horses through his open window. Their manure smelled to him like the most fragrant perfume. His daughter helped him dress before breakfast. As a girl she didn't know her daddy had feet because they always were tucked in cowboy boots. Now his legs and feet looked tiny and weak.

    Tom Everett, her daddy, is 80. For nearly 70 years his home was on the Florida range. Since an accident two years ago, home has pretty much been the wheelchair. ...

  11. Rattlesnake was king, and antivenin was near, in 1930s Tampa

    10/24/12FeaturesBy Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    TAMPA

    George K. End, who was born in Wisconsin and educated in New York in the craft of journalism, became instead Florida's king of the rattlesnakes.

    He loved everything about those Eastern diamondbacks, from their beauty to their danger. But more than anything, he was fond of their potential to grab headlines and add money to his bank account.

    Catching them by the thousands, he sold their venom, hides, rattles and even their meat in a neighborhood he founded on the Tampa side of the Gandy Bridge in 1937. He called it Rattlesnake, Fla. ...

    George K. End first began canning rattlesnake in Arcadia in 1931. Later he moved his cannery operations 
to Tampa.

  12. USF professor retires with a storehouse of Florida knowledge, colorful stories

    10/05/12 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    Gary Mormino, who retired from his University of South Florida history department in St. Petersburg on Monday, will have time to work in his garden now. I would like to think the professor emeritus will discover a way to grow olives in his back yard. Perhaps he will have time to work harder on his tennis game. Finally, I hope he will develop a new recipe for his already outstanding meat sauce, using sausage from Mazzaro Italian Market. ...

    Above: At a cane grinding at a Dade City farm, where almost everyone wore jeans or overalls, Gary Mormino arrived in his usual sweater vest. He’s talking to Steve Melton. left: Gary’s favorite headline from Jan. 10, 1915. For decades he lived among library microfilm files and extracted old newspaper stories. If he found something exceptional, he’d print multiple copies for friends and students.

  13. Florida's history, beauty found in Sam and Robbie Vickers definitive collection of artworks

    09/08/12 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    JACKSONVILLE

    In my Florida travels I've seen panthers, bears, crocodiles and even the now extinct dusky seaside sparrow. I've waded in a swamp to look for ghost orchids. I knew Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who wrote the book on the Everglades, and I'm such a Florida boy I was just as tickled to meet Ricou Browning, who played The Creature From the Black Lagoon in a favorite childhood movie. ...

    Robbie and Sam Vickers have collected more than 1,500 original works of Florida art during the past quarter century.

  14. Murf the Surf: He stole the Star of India, killed two women in the Whiskey Creek Murders, but that's not him any more

    08/25/12 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    BUSHNELL

    Jack Roland Murphy hates visiting prisons. "They're literally hell on earth," he always says. As Inmate No. 02467 he spent nearly two decades in Florida's most notorious lockups. But he keeps going back to the places he hates most with a message he once sneered at.

    A gate opens with a bone-rattling buzz. A Sumter Correctional Institution warden extends his hand. "Glad to see you," Murphy says. ...

  15. August melts resolve of all but the strongest

    08/03/12FeaturesBy JEFF KLINKENBERG, Times Staff Writer

    It's August and I refuse to take the blame. August is always Florida's longest month — and not only because it lasts 31 days. It's the heat, man, it's the humidity and tropical weather, it's the mosquitoes. If you go swimming in the wrong place, an alligator might bite off your foot. A Florida August is Dante's Inferno come to life.

    I am not complaining, really. I am only stating the obvious. I also want to point out a few good things about August, too. I will do so as soon as I can think of some. ...

    iStockphoto.com