22: believe it or not, the senator, no bagels for you!, ken, oldest schoolhouse, me in a few years, our lady, potter's, human foot in a cat hair rug, narrowest street, young crossing, king arrested, lion, castillo, the wars, oaks on magnolia, peacock - My Midlife Crisis - CycleBlaze
22: believe it or not, the senator, no bagels for you!, ken, oldest schoolhouse, me in a few years, our lady, potter's, human foot in a cat hair rug, narrowest street, young crossing, king arrested, lion, castillo, the wars, oaks on magnolia, peacock
rest day in St. Augustine
There are several cities along the way that I've been looking forward to visiting, and St. Augustine is one of them, so I'm taking a rest day.
It was founded in 1565 (thus the name of the hotel I'm staying in: Villa 1565), forty two years before the English colonized Jamestown, and fifty five years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. I always thought the Pilgrims were the first people to colonize America.
I saw a lot today, but there was even more that I missed. These three places I wish I could've seen, and especially the first two: * The St. Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoological Park was founded in 1893 and remains the only facility in the world containing all 23 currently recognized species of crocodilian. There's a zip line over the alligators. * The Tiny Art Museum - I wish I'd made some time for this. It looks interesting, and only costs $10.00. * The St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum, which has the world's only pirate chest, and one of only three existing 17th-century Jolly Rogers.
There were two main cemeteries in the downtown area: the Protestant and the Catholic, both of which are very old. The tour guide stated that in the Protestant cemetery bodies were sometimes buried 13-25 per gravesite, and in the Catholic cemetery, there are 1000 people buried, but only about 90 headstones.
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! museums seem to be everywhere now, but this is the very first one, the original. It has 19 themed galleries and more than 300 exhibits and artifacts in its 20,000 square feet.
When it was time to eat lunch I found a place, a bagel shop, and ordered an "Avobacodo sandwich."
"Can I get that without the bacon?" "NO!" was the prompt response, as if I were a puppy that had just lifted my leg up and was about to pee on the carpet. Then, after my accompanying response of complete silence, "But you can pick it off. I'll bring you some utensils."
It was a pleasant day, and I was enjoying the patio. I had selected this cafe because when I checked my phone I saw that it had wi-fi, and I thought I might sit here for a bit working on the blog. When the same lady delivered my sandwich (without the promised utensils) I asked about the wi-fi password. Spoken slowly, her response was a challenge: "We don't have any." I felt like her next statement was going to be: "I dare you to ask about it." But instead, it was "It's just for the staff." She seemed overly proud of that fact, as if she had just solved a complex trigonometry equation, or perhaps just learned how to button a shirt.
Later, as I was sitting there without utensils and without wi-fi, I was thinking that alongside from the customer service, this place has a terrible business model. They open at 8:00 and close at 1:00 unless they sell out of bagels. And they always sell out. It just seemed to me that a bagel store might want to obtain and sell some additional bagels. As I was pondering this monumental puzzle, my thoughts were mirrored, almost verbatim, when I heard one of the locals talking to another customer. "It's a terrible business model."
If you've read three words in any of my posts, you know I'm a dedicated eavesdropper, and learned that the gentleman talking owned the business just around the corner. After I finished eating I wandered that way and found him sitting in a chair just outside his and his wife's art gallery, and we struck up a conversation.
I had a really pleasant conversation with Ken. He moved here from New Jersey in 2018, after which he and his wife, Mare, opened this art gallery. He was born just a few months before me.
I sipped on the glass of sangria he offered me as I wandered around. Each of of the artists was local, and none of them were even close to any of the others in style.
From there I wandered down St. George Street, the most touristy place in town. You can tell because of the spelling: "Olde" and "Shoppe." Plus, the crowds are sort of a giveaway.
St. Augustine claims this as the Oldest Wooden School House in the U.S. The exact date of construction isn't known, but it first appears on the 1716 tax records. The mannequin in the window looks sort of creepy.
When I saw this guy on St. George I did a double take, thinking he was me. Considering the restrictions of time and space I realized that's not possible, but still, for just a second there....
I wonder why they mix the Spanish and English in the name. That is, why "Our Lady of La Leche" instead of "Nuestra Señora de la Leche," or "Our Lady of the Milk?" I could hazard a guess, but won't.
Potter’s Wax Museum’s claim to fame is that it’s the oldest wax museum in the country. As a child, Potter visited Madame Tussuaud's Wax Museum in London and became passionate about “wax art,” and after becoming a wealthy man he contracted with a company to create figures for his collection. I’ve never had a real interest in wax figures, but felt I needed to visit because of the place’s history. Wax figures just seem…. creepy. This, coming from a guy who intentionally stayed at The Scoot Inn. Some of the figures were a lot creepier than others, but I'll leave that to the individual readers to determine which ones are which.
One thing I noticed was the fact that almost all of the figures (mainly the ones prior to the 1950s) were *really* short. I asked an employee about it and she said that the models were created with the best information they had at the time - meaning that they were very likely all that short.
This house, now the Villa Zorayda Museum, was built in 1883. It was already an unusual house, and when Abraham S. Mussallem, an avid collector of the rare, bought it in 1913, he brought his relics here.
As if that wasn't weird enough, the rug itself was found to be more than 2,400 years old, making it, arguably, the oldest rug in the world (there are some Persian rugs that also claim that distinction). The rug depicts a large stylized feline, much like the African wild cat. From my extensive medical training, I believe it's male.
This is the narrowest street in the entire country. I found it odd that it wasn’t marked as such, and I had to go looking for it. (In fact, I took a picture of it in another location, thinking “This thing is, like, 15 feet across! No way is it the narrowest!”). Treasury Street, at this point, is seven feet wide. In Europe, of course, that would be considered an autobahn.
At the age of 32, Andrew Young tried to lead a group of civil rights protestors into the city plaza. Upon being attacked, instead of retaliating or retreating, he just kept standing back up and, maintaining his principles of nonviolence, continued to speak to the crowd. He was finally beaten unconscious.
Forty seven years later, St. Augustine put ink on the bottom of his shoes, after which he walked along a 20-foot carpet of paper. They turned them into a set of these bronzed footprints. Young went on to become the mayor of Atlanta and later a U.N. Ambassador.
These steps were tucked away off the street and around a corner. They were salvaged from where Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested for the crime of “trespassing,” that is, entering the Monson Motor Lodge & Restaurant, a “Whites Only” establishment. This motel was also the scene of an infamous hate crime in which the owner poured acid into a swimming pool of anti-segregationists. It was leveled in 2003, but these steps were preserved as a reminder of our history.
Unrelated to this memorial, but related to racism, Henry Flagler sponsored a black baseball team in St. Augustine. They were called the “Cuban” Giants to make them more palatable to the local residents.
The famous Bridge of Lions, a double-leaf bascule bridge that spans the Intra-coastal Waterway connecting Anastasia Island to downtown, features a pair of Medici lions made of Carrara marble.
My next stop was the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the U.S. This is the point at which this could get really boring, with me telling you about the history of this place. I'll limit that (the history part, not the boring you part) and only write a few of the facts that I found interesting. I'll even put them into bullet points.
It’s been periodically used as a prison throughout its history, and has held Christopher Gadsden (Lieutenant governor of SC and delegate to the Continental Congress) and three Founding Fathers: Heyward, Middleton, and Rutledge. Native Americans were also held here, including the famous Seminole war chief, Osceola (taken prisoner while attending a peace conference under a flag of truce), as well as members of Geronimo's band of Chiricahua Apache.
When members of the Plains tribes were being held, such as Howling Wolf of the southern Cheyenne, they developed Ledger Art during their captivity.
Britain and Spain were continuously battling for this area during its early days and during my reading about the fort, I learned about the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739-1748). After a fight broke out between sailors, a Briton named Captain Jenkins lost an ear. The Spanish officer picked it up and said “Take this to your king and tell him that if he were here I would serve him in the same manner!" The British government then used that statement as a casus belli to declare war.
There are two things I find fascinating about that last story: (1) You’re in a battle to the death with a guy and you cut off his ear. All fighting around you stops, and you pick up the guy’s ear and have a conversation with him?!? It sounds more like an Errol Flynn movie. However, doing my due diligence, I did a little more reading and (disappointedly) found that it was after the fighting had ended that the ear was cut off. (2) There’s actually a war called the War of Jenkins’ Ear. “And how did your husband die?” “In the war." (dramatic pause) "The War of.... Jenkins’ Ear.” [Listener shudders]
Then, of course, because I'm me, I wondered if there are other wars with interesting names. Of course there are. Since this is a bicycle touring blog I won't drag you down that rabbit hole, but will gift you with three names: The Fantastic War, The Ragamuffin War, and The Pastry War, and a website with seven more.
During one such battle between the Spain and Britain about 1500 Spaniards sheltered in the small fort for more than a month while the British burned St. Augustine.
Because of its strategic cannon placement and star-shaped design, the fort was never breached or taken by force. However, on 7 January 1861, three days before Florida seceded, 125 Confederate militiamen marched on the fort by the order of the Florida Governor. The Union soldier (singular, as in one) manning the fort refused to surrender it unless he was given a receipt for it from the Confederacy. He was given the receipt, and the fort was taken by the Confederacy without a shot.
Note the area just under the stairs in the center of the picture. That's where the "tidal toilet" is, the location of the restroom. By design, twice daily the tides would remove all of the waste that had been deposited there. I took a picture of it because I'm absolutely sure everyone wants to see a picture of a toilet, but it wasn't on my camera at the end of the day.
I never realized how they made the altitude adjustments.
Spelling errors make me question the veracity of the claim. That's a bias on my part, but at least it's recognized. If you're not diligent enough to check a dictionary, are you diligent enough to check your sources?
After my last journal, you'll get very few pictures of food this time around. However, this was the best pad thai I've had in as long as I can remember. If you're in St. Augustine and The Village Inn is closed, check out the Ayata Thai Street Cafe.
I really liked St. Augustine, and would absolutely come back here to visit sometime.
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Jon AylingFrom one of my favourite books:
"They couldn't be sure how the English would react; nobody ever is. After all, we once went to war for the ear of a Captain Jenkins - though Jenkins was an obscurer person than myself and had, considering the number of laws he broke, been treated with no great barbarity." Reply to this comment 11 hours ago
Mark BinghamTo Jon AylingI love the quote. Which book is it from? I’m always looking for a good book, and a new favorite author. Reply to this comment 9 hours ago
Jon AylingTo Mark BinghamIt's from "Rogue Male", by Geoffrey Household. The title makes it sound very much like a boys-own thriller - and it's certainly a classic of the hunted-man genre. But it has real psychological depth and some very odd atmosphere - the protagonist spends a fair bit of time trapped underground being tormented by his pursuer, but refusing any violence: "An embodiment of that myth of foreigners ... the gentle Englishman. I will not kill; to hide I am ashamed. So I endure without object". A proto-touring bike (in the 1930s) also features at one point. Better than the Thirty-Nine Steps for my money! Reply to this comment 4 hours ago
Mark BinghamTo Jon AylingI actually have that book on my Kindle. SOMEone mentioned it in a previous journal so I decided to buy it, but haven't yet gotten around to reading it. :-) Reply to this comment 31 minutes ago
