In Everglades City, on the edge of the world, there's a place named Leebo's Rock Bottom Bar. There you will find a drunk named Floyd Brown — one of the last remaining survivors of the 100-man marijuana operation that got the majority of the town's male population thrown behind bars in 1983. The grist rocketed this crazy cracker from Argentina to Guatemala and back to Florida —you can only imagine the terrible things he's done and seen.
Today, at 69, he remains lecherous and unrepentantly racist. He smells like cat piss and around 40 percent of what he says is lost between his rotted bottom teeth and his ancient cracker drawl. But for the price of a drink he will tell you all about being Totch Brown's brother (actually, his cousin, he'll later admit) and all the roughneck craziness that life involved.
To wit:
"After I got shot twice in the leg in South America..."
"—who shot you?"
"South America. Anyhow, I had these crutches. And I came into a bar and set down and four fellas come up to me and tell me they gonna kick the shit outta me. Well, I look over at the tender and I says: 'You gonna let this happen, now?'"
"And he says, 'Floyd, this ain't no church house.'"
"—why did they want to beat the shit out of you?"
"Because I'm a drunk asshole. Anyhow, I says, 'ain't no church house, eh?' And I dials up around the corner, where my four boys stayed at. I ain't seen them in a few months but I call and say: 'Boys, daddy's in trouble.'"
"Well they showed up and they wiped that bar clean. They whomped and stomped every motherfucker in the room — they had to be carried out on stretchers. Like the goddamned Cavalry-Marine Corps. And I looked up at the tender hiding behind the bar and he says: 'Floyd this is a church house.'" -Calvin Godfrey
