LIVING HISTORY
67
Cracker grandam shares her love
of the Old Florida lifestyle
Florida’s Cracker culture is alive and well
thanks to Indiantown’s homegrown celebrity
Iris Wall. The 87-year-old cowwoman proudly
promotes and enjoys speaking around the state
about the Cracker lifestyle.
She understands firsthand about adventure because
she lived in South Florida when it was one of the last
frontiers. Awarded Woman of the Year by the Florida
Department of Agriculture and inducted into the Florida
Cracker Hall of Fame, the fifth-generation Floridian talks
in an animated, down-home manner about the people in
her native state.
“Being a Cracker is more a culture than anything else,”
Wall says. “Most of the Crackers that I know are a long
shot from royalty and many of them have made money.
They are a very generous, kind people and have a great
respect for women. They are proud and well educated,
not in book learning, but in pure basic life.”
The vivacious and witty rancher speaks about old
Florida — a place that most can only imagine in a book
or a movie. She shares her Cracker tales of growing up
on the back of a horse while hunting for cows out in the
swamp or scrub. The pioneer knew the perfect way to
kill a gator for its hide and to survive, she and her family
simply lived off the land. She married her childhood
sweetheart Homer Wall, and together they went from
cutting fence posts to building a prosperous lumber
business. Today, preserving the agricultural traditions of
Old Florida is Wall’s passion. A children’s book has been
written about her and she enjoys speaking to groups and
imparting her folksy words of wisdom.
DEPRESSION DAYS IN DIXIE
The expression of seeing a glass half full perfectly describes
Wall’s optimistic view on life. She was born Iris
Pollock in Indiantown in 1929 — the beginning of the
Great Depression. To many, those difficult and depressing
economic times would harden one’s outlook, yet
Wall shares a different perspective.
“To be born in 1929 was in itself bad luck. The good
side of the story was I didn’t even know there was a depression,”
she recalls. “Everybody I knew was the same
>>
While most young
girls were learning to
sew, Wall preferred to
explore the outdoors on
her favorite horse Dollie.
IRIS WALL COLLECTION