Rancher's book depicts authentic cowboy lifestyle in Florida

Alvin Futch won't describe himself as a good storyteller. But as it turns out, he has quite a knack for it. The 81-year-old Plant City rancher recently released his second autobiography, "Saw Mill," a sequel to his first autobiography, "Wild and Wooley." The book is on sale at Come See, Come Save in Bradenton and Parrish General Store. In both books, Futch retells his experiences as a cracker cowboy in Florida, from his early beginning in the late 1930s into the 1990s, and documents the development of urban and rural Florida through family photos. "You get people saying,'I remember growing uplike that' or 'My grandfather used to live like that,'" Futch said. "I wrote what I knew." The authenticity of his writing, which includes several cowboy phrases and retelling stories that portray hardships of life as a cowboy, has resonated with Manatee ranchers and farmers and others across the country. The book includes a preface from Jim Strickland, Manatee's agricultural property appraiser, who also owns agricultural land in East Manatee. "What I like about both books is he tells a story from somebody that has been there and done that," Strickland said. "That's a great perspective from an older gentleman. He was in the mud. He was in the cattle business and timber business. It's an inside look of how we came to be by him being right in the middle of it."...more