Alas, Babylon: Mount Dora, Florida
Alas, Babylon is set in
central Florida in the fictional town of
Fort Repose. Author
Pat Frank lived in a 4,744-square-foot house on
Lake Beauclaire in
Tangerine, Florida. Frank wrote the book while living there and published it in 1959 (Winefordner; Award Winning Novelist 7-F).
Pistolville, an
Alas, Babylon town close to Fort Repose, was also an authentic place adjacent to the real city of
Mount Dora (King; Lavin).
Pistleville or Pistolville was the focus of racist activity in the 1920's (King). R. Eugene Burley, author of Mount Dora: The Rest of the Story Plus!, claims that Pistolville was corrupted by Prohibition era moonshine, gambling, "unsavory characters," and the poor Southern Crackers" (qtd. in King). By the 1950's many blacks had fled to nearby (and segregated) East Town (King). Mount Dora is today just under forty minutes north of Orlando. In 1957 East Town, northeast of Mount Dora, was known for having the first pool in central Florida that would permit black Americans to swin in its waters (Lavin).
The word "Pistolville" is obscure. A full-text keyword search of the ProQuest Newspapers database, which contains newspaper articles as early as 1984 and content from sixty different newspapers, found only Lee King's article.
Author Vivian Owens describes Pistolville as being a section of Mount Dora on the southern edge, just before Tangerine. She notes that until the 1920's African Americans in downtown Mount Dora, East Town, and Pistolville all shared a common way of life (29,40). Owens states definitively: "Used as the setting for Pat Frank's most famous book, Alas, Babylon, Mount Dora is referred to as The {sic} New England of the South. . . ." (20).
The Sylvan Shores community, parts of which were incorporated into Mount Dora (Sharman), is home to the Catacombs. A group of twenty-five families secretly constructed this large, underground nuclear bomb shelter in Sylvan Shores. Pat Frank acknowledged J. B. (James Basil) Hall, Lake County Health Director, and wrote about the shelter in his 1962 book How to Survive the H-Bomb and Why. Ramsey Campbell interviewed Dr. Hall (who provided a detailed history of the Catacombs) in 1991. Campbell, in his article and interview with Hall, also spoke with Federal Emergency Management Agency representative Bob Blair. Blair was unaware of any privately financed shelter constructed on the scale of the Catacombs.
Researcher and columnist Barry Schrader, writing for the internet web site Current History Detectives, found that another similar structure had been built for thirty families in Livermore, California. Though not a secret, the subterranean complex sat on six acres and held thirty-three rooms.
Works Cited
"Award Winning Novelist Toured the World and Took Florida." Orlando Sentinel. 3 May 1959: 7-F+.
Campbell, Ramsey. "A Cocoon as Big as the Fear That Built It in 1961, Mount Dora Families Afraid of Nuclear Holocaust Built the Ultimate Hideway. It Still Stands--Unused." Orlando Sentinel 22 Dec. 1991, 3 star ed.: A1. ProQuest Newspapers. ProQuest. 16 Oct. 2006 www.proquest.com
Frank, Pat. Alas, Babylon. 1959. 1st Perennial Classics ed. New York: Perennial-Harper, 1999.
---. How to Survive the H-Bomb and Why. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962.
King, Lee. "Books Detail Mount Dora's Racial History." Orlando Sentinel 10 Feb. 2001, Florida ed.: 1. Proquest Newspapers. Proquest. 16 Oct. 2006. www.proquest.com
Lavin, Chris. "A Clash Out of the Past, Quaint Florida City Is Torn by Latent and Blatant Racism." St.Petersburg Times 4 June 1989: 1B. Proquest Newspapers. Proquest. 16 Oct. 2006. www.proquest.com
Owens, Vivian W. The Mount Dorans: African American History Notes of a Florida Town. Waynesboro: Eschar, 2000.
Schrader, Barry. "Underground Shelters Abound in Valley Part 1." History Detectives. 9 Feb. 2006. 16 Oct. 2006 http://www.bunnweb.org/histdect/2-16-06.htm
Sharman, G. K. "History Shapes Sylvan Shores' Future: The Community Clings to Its Niche with Charm Established Over Decades, and Its Popularity Is on an Upswing." Orlando Sentinel 10 Sep. 1995, central Florida ed.: 1. ProQuest Newspapers. ProQuest. 16 Oct. 2006
www.proquest.com
Winefordner, Terri. "The Home Front." Orlando Sentinel. 28 Sep. 1996, metro ed.: G1. Proquest Newspapers. Proquest. 16 Oct. 2006 www.proquest.com
Works Consulted
CTCStrela. "Girding for the Apocalypse." Online posting. 21 Feb. 2005. CurEvents.com--a Global Current Events Discussion Forum. 16 Oct. 2006 http://www.curevents.com/vb/showthread.php?t=8803
Copyright 2006.