Reason took a wrong turn on the road to this city : The citrus industry is fading in Eagle Lake, Fla., which may or may not explain why its politics have gone bananas.

The bad blood between Linda Weldon and Walter Young goes back almost 20 years. And that feud would seem to account for some of the behavior that has transformed this bucolic small town into crackpot city.

“I’ve never been Mr. Young’s favorite person,” says Weldon, who has been city manager here since 1979, in speculating on why Young and another local businessman, Earl Rice, would break into her office to plant a bug in her telephone while police videotaped the crime through the window.

Young, 65, who was a candidate for City Council at the time of the October break-in, and Rice, 54, were both arrested on charges involving the burglary, attempted extortion and soliciting a prostitute--whom they wanted to seduce the mayor. On videotape, Young and another co-conspirator--who turned out to be an undercover cop--were seen exchanging a celebratory high-five before getting into the getaway car with Rice.

Their objective, police contend, was political power in this fading citrus town of fewer than 2,000 residents. And while Young lost last fall’s election to Mayor Marty Kellner, he did receive 91 votes while in jail. But the politically motivated break-in--which of course the regulars at Big Mama’s Restaurant refer to as Eaglegate--doesn’t explain all of the events and characters that recently have turned this town into a black hole of reason and a magnet for tabloid television producers.

There is, for example, Dan Daniels, a former sheriff of surrounding Polk County who now heads the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of White People and publishes a racist monthly newspaper available all over town. In years past, fully sheeted Ku Klux Klan members have appeared at City Council meetings.

There is Rice, the owner of Earl’s Trading Post, a used furniture store, who says he was led into the conspiracy with Young in part because the Weldon-controlled City Council would not sell him a piece of land he wanted--despite his efforts to beautify the city with what he called “$2,000 worth of yard art” that included huge ceramic figures of Jesus, chickens and deer. “She rules like Saddam,” said Rice of Weldon.

There is Councilman Dave Whitacre, another Weldon foe, whose house in the middle of town began to look like a construction site after the city cut off his water and he had to dig a well. “Vindictive politics,” says Whitacre’s wife, Char, to explain their water woes. Recently, she says, six Eagle Lake police officers--virtually the entire force--showed up to serve her husband with a citation for illegally watering the lawn.

And finally there are the 50-year-old identical twins from Miami, Terri Sue and Mary Lou. After dating Terri Sue, last fall Young suddenly married Mary Lou--but then invited Terri Sue to move in with them. Within a span of several days, Young filed for divorce from Mary Sue, was nabbed in the break-in, and from jail proposed marriage to Terri Sue. She said yes.

If Terri Sue does marry Young, he would not be the first husband she and her sister have shared. In 1994 the twins both were married to an Eagle Lake electrician.

Now the sisters each profess love for Young. “I watched the police videotape, and what I saw was a man looking confused,” said Terri Sue Kundtz of Young’s actions. “He has diabetes, and I think that he missed his 10 o’clock snack, got low blood sugar and that led to bad judgment.”

Both Young and Rice are now in prison. After pleading no contest to several break-in related charges, Young was sentenced to five years. “I don’t know how I got involved in this thing, but I did,” Young lamented to the judge in February.

Rice also pleaded guilty to several charges stemming from the break-in as well as an unrelated charge of false imprisonment after he allegedly tried to force a female customer to exchange sex for furniture in his store. He was sentenced in January to 13 months in prison.

Despite years of bitter politics and an outbreak of wackiness in Eagle Lake, Weldon, 49, insists that “this is a good community. Unfortunately, we have an overabundance of people that are total jerks. And they put us in a bad light. But we are not some red-necked small town. We are one of the best-run city governments anywhere.”

Over the years, the political bickering in Eagle Lake has led to dozens of lawsuits and ethics complaints. Weldon says she has been investigated three times by the state, once after an allegation that she had city employees hang Christmas lights at her home. “Frivolous,” she says of the complaints, all of which were dismissed.

With her chief antagonists jailed, Weldon predicts the end of local events “so bizarre they almost sound made up.” Life in this one-mile-square town just 40 miles east of Tampa has reverted to “dead and dull,” she says.

But others aren’t so sure that the sentencing of Young and Rice will end the zaniness that has gripped Eagle Lake. With the citrus groves moving south, the packinghouse closed and summer coming, politics is about the only game in town.

“This is a beautiful, nice town where the politics have gotten outrageous,” says Char Whitacre. “It would be nice if it all stops now, but I don’t think it will.”