Often when a book or movie reaches for Great Florida Myth quirkiness, a Weeki Wachee mermaid comes in handy.

Consider Elmore Leonard’s classic Sunshine State noir novel “Maximum Bob,” where the title character’s wife, Leanne, is a psychic and Weeki Wachee mermaid gone to seed. (She had retired abruptly after an alligator had made its way into the mermaid tank. Something that has been known to happen.)

Leonard’s novels picture Florida as just the kind of place where a girl might meet her husband while swimming in a fishtail and breathing through a hose. Additional proof, as though more were needed, that this is not a normal state.

And now it seems that future Leannes could be state employees. Like park rangers, corrections officers and assistant undersecretaries of community affairs. Proof, as though more were needed, that this not a normal state government

News-Journal (Daytona Beach, Florida)
Saving the mermaids may have them working for taxpayers
BYLINE: Mark Lane

Few pre-Disney, pre-interstate highway system tourist attractions still operate in Florida and that’s a sad thing.

In my mind’s eye, I see our old-time transportation corridors as riotous with monkey jungles, alligator farms, jungle cruises, scenic gardens, water shows, all-you-can-drink orange juice stands and roadside souvenir joints with monkey heads carved from coconuts. This is an idealized memory but it amuses me and I choose to stick with it.

Pre-eminent among pre-Disney Central Florida attractions was Weeki Wachee Springs, the park with the mermaids.

The whole mermaid thing is deeply ingrained in the Great Florida Myth. It was a quaint bit of underwater vaudeville—pretty girls in Lycra fins taking deep breaths from air hoses and gliding underwater while tourists look on through windows.

Often when a book or movie reaches for Great Florida Myth quirkiness, a Weeki Wachee mermaid comes in handy.

Consider Elmore Leonard’s classic Sunshine State noir novel “Maximum Bob,” where the title character’s wife, Leanne, is a psychic and Weeki Wachee mermaid gone to seed. (She had retired abruptly after an alligator had made its way into the mermaid tank. Something that has been known to happen.)

Leonard’s novels picture Florida as just the kind of place where a girl might meet her husband while swimming in a fishtail and breathing through a hose. Additional proof, as though more were needed, that this is not a normal state.

And now it seems that future Leannes could be state employees. Like park rangers, corrections officers and assistant undersecretaries of community affairs. Proof, as though more were needed, that this not a normal state government.

Florida is now negotiating to buy and operate Weeki Wachee Springs as a state park. And that includes taking over the mermaid show.

According to the St. Petersburg Times’ account of Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, the governor asked the very question that had been on everyone’s mind since these negotiations were first announced.

We’re going to keep the mermaids?” Gov. Charlie Crist asked.

Yes, sir,” replied Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole.

Of course, keeping the mermaids could mean they’d be state employees. That means job descriptions, and defining what’s expected at different pay-grade levels of mermaid. And it means coming up with job evaluation checklists. (Does the employee seem perky and buoyant? Although not so much that she floats to the surface.)

And, as anybody who has worked in a government shop knows, if you have more than two mermaids, somebody must be designated as head mermaid.

Leaving this up to the vagaries of the civil service bureaucracy is a worrisome thing. The job of head mermaid carries great mythic weight in the Sunshine State.

For that reason, I think head mermaid should be an elected post.

The campaign would give ordinary Floridians a feeling of having a stake in the future of Weeki Wachee Springs. It would encourage voter turnout and enliven the usual dreary lineup of political campaign commercials.

If the mermaids are going to work for all of us, we might as well treat the post accordingly.

As for Cabinet status, I think that’s negotiable.