Wanted: Message in a Bottle

I grew up in the Florida panhandle, a vast section of real estate referred to by writer Gloria Jahoda as "The Other Florida."

I liked living in the other Florida, driving forgotten roads, exploring a scrub oak, slash pine and palmetto world tourists avoided en route to the rest of the state; I swam at beaches that I hope are just as little known today as they were fifty years ago.

The tides brought me scallops and periwinkles and sand dollars and blue crabs and sea horses and dreams, one of whi...