Deliverance

The classic Florida dream is insomnia here in northeast Collier County. This is one sector of old Florida where Midwesterners rarely tread, neither as tourists nor condo hunters, not even as day-trippers from their crystal squattings on the jeweled Collier coast. Blue-line roads are the only way here, through farms and cypress swamps, past road kill, vultures, boiled peanut vendors and the Skunk Ape the locals swear haunts the strands and sloughs where the Everglades begin.

Damned old real life is so entrenched here that it can bewilder the postcard seekers and snowbird gaggles. Mexican banditos and pirates from the Caribbean walk the streets, but no discount tickets to Disney are sold. This ain't Epcot, though Hispanics and Haitians make up more than 75 percent of the permanent population and a whole lot of the signs are in their tongues. Immokalee is a wild world, after all-not easily tamed by government, economics or superficial convention of any kind.

In a state almost bereft of signature culture, Immokalee is as close to primal Florida as one can get.

But look close, say community leaders: Immokalee is changing. It has to.

A messiah is coming.

Pretty town entranceways now welcome us to Immokalee (in Seminole ohm-MOKE-le is "my home"). Newly planted palm trees and fancy streetlights grace a Main Street not quite ready for Southern Living (but charming in the way that it is the exact opposite of stepmother Naples). Beat-up cars and semi-truck cabs are parked in front yards, Mr. Mullin is selling melons out by the highway, and beautiful, dark-haired children wait with palms full of pennies for the pineapple popsicle man to pedal by.

Sundown cane-pole fishin' at Lake Trafford, mamas suckling babies on the front steps, troubadour Raiford Starke singing "I'm gonna take my chances in this funky little cow town" at Los Gators bar, aimless souls walking the streets, and the crossbar stuck-up-at the entrance to Jubilation, Immokalee's first and only gated neighborhood.

That's quirky, evolving Immokalee. "Anyone who hasn't been here in the past 10 or 20 years would be shocked to see how Immokalee has changed. This is not a nasty little farming town," says Chamber of Commerce executive director Benny Starling. "It was once commonplace to see winos passed out on the street, or wherever they fell. But you never see that anymore. "

It can look menacing-"High Crime Area" is stenciled all over one downtown flophouse corner. English is not the preferred language. Picking stoop crops from dawn to dusk can make men look and feel nasty. But statistics show Immokalee's serious crime is about average for Collier. The community mirrors the problems of migrant areas everywhere-it ranks high in prostitution and drug activity (though low in gang and domestic violence). Unlike farmworkers in Woody Guthrie's Pastures of Plenty, who camped near the edge of town, Immokalee's migrants live smack-dab in the center, their lives in full view for all to see.

"During certain times of the year, when you drive in from Naples, the first thing you see in Immokalee are the watermelon pickers. They are here for a few weeks and all they do is work and sleep on top of, under, inside their trucks and vehicles," says Fred Thomas, a former Housing Authority leader who has made affordable housing his life's work. "There are places for them to stay, and they can afford it, but they don't want to. Their attitude is: 'Why waste the money on a room when we can sleep in the truck?'

"It's economics to them. They have no concept of or concern about the way it makes the community look."

Sixty percent of the people who live here walk for transportation. Mariachi music swings out from a tiny café, reggae from a dilapidated motel, booming rap from a muscle-car stereo two blocks away, country twang each time the door to El Lugero bar opens and shuts. Exotic lingo swirls from every hand-waving conversation. This is not John Cougar's small town. This is not Norman Rockwell's Main Street. Lifetime resident Betty McReynolds has it proudly tattooed in gothic letters across her low-lower back: I-TOWN: "That's what we call it-I-Town, the greatest place to live in the world."

One can almost feel Naples wincing as McReynolds wiggles her pants down to show all concerned.

Immokalee, you see, is not an official city. It has threatened to but has never incorporated. All decisions, rules, regulations, ordinances, orders, declarations and gotohells are dispatched from the county throne in Naples. There is no Immokaleean on the County Commission. "You can't find too many places more opposite than Immokalee and Naples," says Ed "Ski" Olesky, owner and operator of the Lake Trafford Marina. Olesky is an Immokalee activist who also spends his Decembers playing Santa Claus all over Collier. "We should not be governed here by the same rules as Naples."

In Naples, say Olesky and other Immokalee leaders, they don't like jungle gyms at the McDonald's, they don't understand six cars parked in the front yard or 12 guys living in one trailer. They want all their signs real tiny and close to the ground. They don't like kids playing on those movable basketball goals. There are impact fees, special taxes and the sort of growth-sucking, control-freak attitudes that inspired that violent tea party up North a couple of hundred years ago.

"We need incentives to pull in industry. We don't need Naples' outlandish impact fees on building. We're growing. They're trying to stabilize. We can't go by those rules. We need it now," says Olesky, who merely smiles like a community Mafia don when asked about (hush!) secession from Collier County.

The Chamber and Economic Development Council have handed a wish list of proposed incentives and changes to county commissioners, gleaned from a $25,000 survey of Immokalee business interests. "Let's see what happens," says Olesky, eyeing the big 'gator floating in the canal out his back door.

At one glance, Immokalee is the old refrigerator tossed out to rust in Naples' back yard. But a closer look shows this community is a treasure chest of precious culture, buried beneath its social problems. Tears of nostalgia welled in the eyes of legendary Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, who peeked with amazement at Immokalee through a car window, on a chance visit through town a few years ago. "This is like my home town," she said, too shaken to move her camera over the scene.

Immokalee is Florida's produce stand, a vibrant community of 20,000 permanent residents that doubles from November through May, when more than 80 percent of the nation's tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, squash, potatoes and eggplant pass through its hands. It is the watermelon capital of the world. It is the jumping-off place for thousands of migrant workers who fan out in a labor network across the South Florida fruited plains.

Immokalee is job town. Work town. The poor people of planet Earth can find work in Immokalee, if they can make it to the pick-up corner at dawn. Transporters will take workers to farm fields and packing houses, construction sites, hotels and restaurants, some of them many miles away on the coast. And bring them home at dark. Immokalee is Collier County's unskilled work force, kept out of sight, out of mind and on the job.

Most of the work-during the seven-month growing season-is provided by big agriculture, an industry rife with exemptions, subsidies, political favors and government officials looking the other way; U.S. Department of Justice officials estimate that 90 percent of Immokalee's farmworkers are illegal aliens. Picking two tons of tomatoes has earned a man about $50 since 1978. Average yearly income: just under $7,000-still three times, five times, 10 times what can be earned across the border. For most: no overtime, no sick leave, no benefits, medical or otherwise. There are exceptions, but as a rule, grandsons on the ladder's bottom rung are making what their grandpas made there 25 years ago.

A messiah, however, can improve on that lot.

And that's exactly what Immokalee leaders are banking on.

A brand-new Catholic university and city-both named Ave Maria -will soon rise on fields about eight miles away, a true messiah of economic opportunity for a community where nearly half the residents live below the poverty level (in a county with the highest median income in the state). The deal was struck late last year, combining the philanthropy of former Domino's Pizza owner Tom Monaghan ($200 million) and a partnership with the Barron Collier Companies. Collier, the county's chief mover and shaker, donated 750 acres of old fields for the campus; the company will supervise the development of the town and share profits with the college, as well.