Lakeland is about halfway between Tampa and Orlando, which means it is surrounded by Worlds (Sea World, Disney World), Lands (Gator Land, Tomorrow Land), Gardens (Cypress Gardens, Busch Gardens), and innumerable theme parks (Universal Studios, Wet'n'Wild, the Seminole Bingo Reservation).

Although there are a dozen sizeable lakes within the city limits, only one of them is more then a couple of feet deep, thanks to decades of storm runoff. Of those several lakes in the middle of the city, one is controlled by gangs of obese muscovy ducks, another by gangs of joggers.

There is no city center. People throng at the megamall to the north, or swarm at the industrial estate to the south. Much of the city is built on reclaimed phosphate mining land, so pockets of radiation persist in the suburbs.

Lakeland's chief exports are electricity, ammunition, orange juice and Pepperidge Farm Cookies. The chief imports are retired Canadians and Detroit Tigers.

A notable annual event is the Sun n Fun Fly-In, a ten-day party for flight enthusiasts in which most of the private planes in the US -- as well as a couple of brace of F-16's and a wondrous assortment of warbirds and antiques -- gather at Lakeland's small airport. For those of us under the flight path of this otherwise sleepy air field, it is a time of astonishing noise.

Lakeland contains the largest aggregation of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture on this planet, at Florida Southern College. It looks the way a space academy ought to look, but is in fact a rather conservative-religious liberal arts college. Architecture is not taught here.