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Cutting the Dust With Sugar Cane Juice in Homestead, Florida
Wait for it... I'm number 84. Fans are whirring, juicers squeezing, blenders growling and thirsty sunburnt visitors pretend to be interested in the lychee jelly. They lick their lips and check their claim stub every time the girl steps to the window and hollers out a number. I'm at the intersection of two half-melted strips of asphalt in rural south Florida, at the intersection of heat and dust and farm fields stretched out sunbathing. Robert Is Here. A landmark, an institution since six-year-old Robert sold cucumbers from his red wagon in 1950, Robert Is Here Fruit Stand is a carnival of color and a beehive of activity in the sun-slowed afternoon. Great heaps of blushing mangoes, warm mounds of carambola, prickly lychee, shiny oranges and pink grapefruit, barrels of dry brown tamarind pods. I'm contemplating a football-sized papaya when my number is called. Fresh sugar cane juice over ice. Sweet but not cloying, it tastes precious, sacred even.
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