Onyx reviews: Swamp Story by Dave Barry

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 12/26/2022

As a longtime resident of the Sunshine State, former Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry has probably read every story under a "Florida Man" headline. He may well have written some of them. In 2016 he wrote a book in defense of Florida and the types of stories that have arisen from the swamps and Everglade wetlands.

In Swamp Story, Barry assembles a group of unrelated characters who personify the genre of "Florida Man" tales and other legends. Naturally, most of these characters live in and around the swamps, finding creative and generally illegal ways to keep themselves alive. Of course there are people dealing (and using) a variety of illicit substances. Inevitably, those selfsame dealers owe their suppliers impossible sums of money, necessitating inventive get-rich-quick schemes.

The central storyline, insofar as the book has one, deals with several men who conspire to create a viral sensation surrounding a legendary (in their minds) cryptid called the Melon Man (misspelled "mellon" on the t-shirts they make in anticipation of high demand for memorabilia) who migrated from the Midwest and has now been spotted in the vicinity of the family bait shop they are on the verge of losing to bill collectors. The scheme was inspired, in part, by a viral YouTube video of a birthday party gone wrong when the birthday girl accidentally struck a man wearing a Dora the Explorer papier-mâché head with a golf club, hitting him in a part of the anatomy Dora would not possess.

They convince the man to don the head again while a couple of wannabe reality TV stars are filmed stumbling across the Melon Man. One man insists on taking off his shirt to reveal his buff body and the other insists on injecting awkward, self-serving references to their bait shop. To prepare for this exciting adventure, they smoke a lot of dope and the star of the video ingests unknown pharmaceuticals that "enhance" his performance. This alone could be enough for many novelists, but does Barry stop there? No!

He adds in such diverse stories as an accidental discovery of legendary lost Civil War gold worth millions, a swamp man on an airboat accompanied by a wild boar and a python, an unethical lawyer, a politician with presidential aspirations, criminals and gangsters of varying aptitude, a beautiful young woman trapped in a dead-end relationship with a man who fathered her child and misappropriated what little money she had, a journalist obsessed with climate change. And alligators, of course. If it's Florida, there must be alligators.

The Everglades Melon Man videos go far beyond viral. Celebrities create tiktoks using and parodying the brief, shaky, poorly produced clips that by all reason should fool no one. People descend on the bait shop in droves, snapping up whatever souvenirs they can get their hands on, taking selfies with the stars of the video, and generally creating chaos that inadvertently complicates all the other hilariously complicated things going on in the area at the same time.

There is violence, some of it played for laughs but some of it of the lethal variety. Mostly, though, it is a delightful, rollicking series of misadventures lampooning social media, politicians and all things Florida, colliding in a climax of improbability and hilarity.