Mount Trashmore

A few years ago I was wandering around Realtor.com and becoming enamored of the seemingly bargain prices for homes in Florida. In fact today you can still get a three-thousand square foot home right on the beach for about $12,000. OK, that last part isn’t true, but the prices did seem remarkable, especially when compared to our own merciless California market.

Now you know and I know that I wouldn’t do well in Florida’s oppressive heat. I suspect that I’d last about two, maybe three, days before I hopped the next direct flight to Greenland, never to be heard from again. I often have this fantasy about God coming on Judgment Day and yelling, “What the hell are you doing? I never intended for people to live there! I made Florida for the lizards!”

At about the same time I was checking out the Florida real estate I had asked two friends who had come from Florida to send me, just for fun, their top ten reasons for not moving there.  I wish I had saved what they wrote, because both lists were very funny and I could have easily published them here on these pages and passed them off as my own.

I do, however, recall one of the reasons given for not moving to Florida. “You don’t want to live in a state where the highest point is a garbage dump named Mount. Trashmore.” This is hilarious if true, and while I’ve been able to locate several people on the Internet who repeat this claim I find no name for the particular dump or any hard evidence that the claim is valid.

The official high point in Florida is some place called Britton Hill. It towers 345 feet above sea level, and is surely destined to become Britton Island after Al Gore gets his way and Florida disappears beneath the Atlantic. The second highest point in Florida is Oak Hill at 331 feet, followed closely by High Hill.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the list of the eleven highest points in Florida is that five of them are man-made. In fact, we can even name the man. You see, all five happen to be rides at Disney World. Funny, sure, but not nearly so much as that trash heap story. I guess I’ve got some more research to do.