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Want to read some surprising statistics?  Walk this way.  The University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) published the following 2008 annual information for Florida:  Total acreage in citrus-621,373,  Production-162 Million boxes, Florida's total value produced $1.4 billion.

It takes a lot of people to move the crop from the grove to your table.   One of those people was Tony Saprito, who with his brothers Salvatore and William, operated Saprito Grove and Fruit Co. at Main Street and Osprey Avenue for over thirty years.  During the season, several times a week, you could see the Railway Express Agency truck picking up a hundred or so half-bushel hampers destined for the folks "back home".

Tony was on the City Commission and served as mayor several terms.  His conservative environmental concerns brought him much notoriety.  When the F.D.O.T. put "no fishing" signs up on the bay bridges he championed the causes of the boatless fishermen by ramroding construction of the Saprito Fishing Pier, named in his honor in 1979, seven years before he died.

Another person, involved only slightly, in the distribution of citrus was myself and fellow SHS classmates.  As seniors, in 1945-46, we reigned over the front walk and steps of the building.  When the fully-loaded semi-trailers from the nearby Hyde Park Grove (now SouthGate) crawled by through the "school zone", a couple of my buddies would climb on the load and lighten it by a dozen or so.  I was a "designated catcher".  Life was/is good.