panhandle

Their bond goes deeper: Gaetz, who represents the Florida panhandle, won his first race for the House in 2016 as a Trump-style firebrand who loathed the establishment.

Allegations of misconduct have hung over the legislator from the Florida Panhandle for years, thanks in part to his association with convicted sex trafficker Joel Greenberg.

For example, Steinbeck placed his main characters, the Joads, who’d been “tractored out” by their corporate landlords, first in Shawnee County and then in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, both of which are far from the panhandle and outside of the areas deeply affected by the Dust Bowl.

“Think we were due,” Lynn said, noting they had never filed an insurance claim in 25 years living in hurricane-prone South Carolina, the Panhandle and now south Florida.

Milton is the third hurricane to make landfall in Florida this year; it comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene barrelled into the rural Big Bend region of the state’s panhandle, then moved on to Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, killing more than 230 people across multiple states.