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Plant City's Strengths Tested By Hard Times

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 22, 2009

It's in eastern Hillsborough County, but Plant City is the most Southern town around.

It's a charmer with a real downtown where people greet you with a smile, a nod and a drawl perfected by five or six generations of kin speaking the same language and sharing the same godly values. The kind of place where if you bump into somebody, they apologize.

Strawberries are its claim to fame, and thoughts of shortcake dripping whipped cream and fine country pickin' draw crowds to its annual strawberry festival. For decades, pretty girls have vied to be the strawberry queen reigning over the event, which opens Thursday.

But it's also a city of big shoulders, where a fellow's dad or uncle or cousin could get him on at a plant processing pork, pounding aluminum or making fertilizer. Noisy work, maybe not as sweet-smelling as ripe strawberries in the fields. But if a man was willing to bust his hump and work some overtime, he could provide a decent life for his family.

The year 2008 was a tough one for this town. Some places went belly-up, layoffs hit others. Hardworking folks were unable to find jobs. And last week, a staggering blow - word that Smithfield Foods, the largest private employer, would be shut down by September.

Plant City is a proud, self-sufficient place with deep roots. Now, its people worry that the economic bruises it has suffered will wreak as much damage on their town as a late frost on its strawberry fields.

Donna Koehn

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