The One-Log Cabin

Next time you're in St. Augustine, even if you don't feel like shelling out the cash to take the extended tour at the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, they have this free attraction adjacent to it.

It'a log cabin home constructed entirely from one singular hollowed-out redwood log. Well, what do you want for free?

It is kind of interesting, actually - even though the log is cramped (or cozy, depending on your perspective) and dark and there really isn't anything to see or say other than "yep, that's a house inside a giant log, alright". It's all part of life's rich pageant.

(Life in a log isn't perfect, though - the roof evidently leaks, hence the giant blue tarp draped over the entire shebang.)

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Marjorie Kinnan was born in 1896 in Washington, D.C., and was a precocious writer, publishing short stories in newspapers in elementary school, and winning a literary prize for her story The Reincarnation of Miss Hetty at the age of 15.

She married Charles Rawlings in 1919, and the couple moved to Louisville, KY, where they both worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal. By 1928, they'd relocated to Cross Creek, Florida, where they lived on a 72 acre orange ranch. Mr. Rawlings did not take to Florida living, but Marjorie fell in love with the area and its "Florida Cracker" culture, which transformed her writing. But the crackers weren't so in love with Marjorie and didnt know what to make of this big-city girl who was suddenly writing about them. In 1930, Scribner's accepted two of her stories, "Cracker Chidlings" and "Jacob's Ladder," with characters based on her neighbors at Cross Creek. Locals became paranoid and uppity, in a textbook example of one of a writer's worst problems - the "Hey, is that character supposed to be ME?" syndrome. One mother reportedly recognized, or claimed to recognize, her son as the subject of a story and threatened to whip Rawlings until she was dead.

(Oh, those Florida crackers! They're a little funny in their ways, but you gotta get to know 'em. Oh, they may threaten to kill you, but that's just their way. Marjorie should have just thanked her lucky stars she wasn't yet living in the age of meth, "bath salts" and oxycontin.)

Marjorie's first novel, all about the lives of Florida Moonshiners, was called South Moon Under, published in 1933. To get the necessary realism for the story, she actually lived with a moonshiner in Ocala for several weeks. I wonder what hubby thought of that? Apparently not much, for in that same year he left her and moved back north.

Her three most popular books then followed: The Yearling, When the Whipporwill, and Cross Creek. In particular, The Yearling was her true claim to fame, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1939 and was subsequently made into a very successful Hollywood movie. Suddenly she found herself deluged with offers, deals, fan mail and friends, but chose to continue living the simple life in the swamplands.

But reality just wouldn't stand for Marjorie's reportage. In 1943, she faced a libel suit over Cross Creek by her friend Zelma Cason. Ironically, Cason had been the one who helped to smooth over the fracas with the woman wanting to kill her for writing about her son. Now Cason was the one who was furious over Marjorie's depiction of her:

"Zelma is an ageless spinster resembling an angry and efficient canary. She manages her orange grove and as much of the village and county as needs management or will submit to it. I cannot decide whether she should have been a man or a mother. She combines the more violent characteristics of both and those who ask for or accept her ministrations think nothing at being cursed loudly at the very instant of being tenderly fed, clothed, nursed, or guided through their troubles."

Though Marjorie and Zelma eventually mended their friendship, she moved away and never wrote about Cross Creek again. She bought a beach cottage ten miles south of St. Augustine, and married Ocala hotelier Norton Baskin (who remodeled an old St. Aug mansion into the Castle Warden Hotel, which is now the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum).

Marjorie was vociferously about rural and beach living, and harbored an intense hatred of cities. She wrote a sonnet titled, "Having Left Cities Behind Me", a portion of which states:

"Now, having left cities behind me, turned away forever from the strange, gregarious huddling of men by stones, I find those various great towns I knew fused into one, burned together in the fire of my despising..."

She died in 1953 in St. Augustine, and is buried in Antioch Cemetery near Island Grove, FL.

Magic Beach Motel

This wacky inn is located on that island near St. Augustine that has no name, but I call it Vilano Key because Vilano Beach is its primary hub unless you count Mickler's Landing and I don't.

Originally this motel, which is very near the pier and the pavilion that once was the Vilano Beach Casino, was called simply Vilano Beach Motel. But in 1999, it was used as the set for the TV series Safe Harbor, which altered the sign to read "Magic Beach Motel" because the show's setting was in the fictitious town of Magic Beach, FL. After the show was cancelled, the owners chose the keep the sign and the name change, and is now of Florida's most elusive specimens: a old-school retro "Cadillac" motel that is also clean, updated and modern at the same time.

And yes, at night when the sign's turned on, the neon bunnies light up in a staggered manner so that it creates the illusion of them bounding out of the top hat.

The Disappearance of D.P. Davis

Florida real estate developer D.P. Davis, the man who created Tampa's Davis Islands resort and started St. Augustine's Davis Shores, set sail on the luxury liner Majestic in October 1926.

The transatlantic voyage, from the United States to France, had an unhappy ending for Davis. On the night of October 12, Davis went overboard and was lost at sea. And ever since then, speculation continually churns: did he commit suicide, did he accidentally fall, or was he pushed?

The suicide theory is plausible. Davis had just been forced to sell out his shares of the Davis Islands. He'd hoped to turn Davis Shores into a cash cow but was facing setbacks at the fade of the Florida land boom. His marriage was failing, and his wife had fled to France. Some say chasing after her was apparently the entire reason for Davis' ill-fated voyage - Cherchez la femme? - except then it would seem rather strange that he brought along his girlfriend Lucille Zehring.

Was he murdered? A steward claims to have overheard a fight between Davis and Zehring, followed by Davis shouting, "I can go on living or end it. I can make money or spend it. It all depends on you," followed by a loud splash. The steward's story is not very believable, however - when you're inside a giant cruise ship several stories high, you could throw an elephant overboard and not hear the splash.

Could his death really have been an accident? Zehring insisted she didn't push him. According to her version of the story, Davis had been sitting in an open porthole and accidentally fell. Davis was a raging alcoholic and was probably drunk at the time of the incident, whatever that incident was.

I suggest that a fourth possibility, that Davis faked his own death could be even likelier. Davis knew the Florida land boom was ending. He had lost his wife and was squabbling with his new girlfriend. He reportedly was carrying $50,000 in cash on his person, which was unlike him. Just a few months prior, Victory National sold Davis a life insurance policy to the tune of $300,000. Additionally, Davis already held life insurance policies with other companies as well. It was the insurance agencies who first raised the possibility of a fake death, out of suspicion that his body was not recovered after a mysterious disappearance off a ship in the middle of the ocean on a cruise whose purpose no one was really sure of.

Failing finding a surprise confession tucked inside a dusty forgotten book beneath the floorboards in the locked basement of an abandoned building in Gainesville or something, we can't know what happened, and thus we must be left in a mystery forevermore.

The plots of the TV show Mad Men have an uncanny ability to key in on concerns of my own life great and small, and in ways ranging from symbolic to literal. In the current storyline, Pete Campbell's mother has vanished by falling off a ship on a cruise. I'm watching closely this season to see what their resolution is, as "divination by television" is my specialty. Hey, it's either that or ask the Magic 8-Ball.

Columbia Restaurant

You're probably too young to remember this, but in 1905 the greatest restaurant in the solar system - Columbia Restaurant - was founded in Ybor City. Today it has numerous branch locations around Florida, including St. Augustine, Tampa and Clearwater, but the one nearest and dearest to my heart is on St. Armand's Key. This was the first Columbia's I experienced, so I suppose I've been imprinted on this one.

(Yes, I am a habitual indiscriminate adder of apostrophe-S to places whose names lack them, at will. Sue me.)

If I could choose only one thing to eat for the rest of my life, dear reader, it would be Columbia's Steak Palomilla - and I think it might take a billion years before I began to get bored with it. Maybe two. It's a very holy thing, and words cannot convey the alchemical magic that occurs in this dish, so I won't even try. I'll just say that even if you don't take seriously any other opinion proferred herein on this blog about matters culinary, listen to me on this one. Columbia's is the alpha and omega of Florida foodiedom.

And then there's the drinks. I usually have a pitcher of Mojito or Sangria but sometimes indulge in random stabs like the Absinthe Sazerac (pictured above.) The server sets up a folding table beside you and mixes your drinks (as well as your salads) tableside while you watch. I still remember years ago, watching in awe the first time I ate here, as our server Cecilia squeezed the limes and poured the rum and conjured up a pitcher of Mojito that was more than the sum of its parts. You never forget your first time.

Did I mention that their black bean soup, covered in fresh cut onions, is worthy of being a meal all to itself?

And that their Crema Catalana dessert takes Creme Brulee to a whole new level?

Or that they have their own line of cigars, the mere mention of which has me twitching and jonesing even now? Must cut this short now and step out for a puff by the pool...

Key Deer

The Florida Keys have their very own species of deer that exists only there: the Key Deer, Odocoileus virginianus clavium, originally roamed all of the lower Florida Keys but is now limited to a stretch from about Sugarloaf Key to Bahia Honda Key. How did they get here in the first place? Well, deer can swim, but it's been surmised by scientific sorts that they got here over a land bridge that must have existed towards the end of Wisconsin Glaciation period, roughly 10,000 years ago.

The earliest known written reference to Key Deer comes from the diary of Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, a Spanish sailor shipwrecked at the age of 13 in the Florida Keys in the 1550s. The Calusa captured and enslaved the ship's crew, eventually killing them all except for Fontaneda. He spent the next seventeen years living among them, learning several native American languages in the process and traveling extensively through Florida. In 1566 he was rescued by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Florida's first Spanish governor and founder of St. Augustine.

Estimates of Key Deer population are put as high as 800 nowadays, a far cry from the days when they numbered in the tens of thousands but certainly a step up from 1955 when it was feared that only as few as 25 specimens existed.

Florida Water

If you've ever been in New Orleans or Miami and happened to find yourself in a smells-and-bells shop that sells knick-knacks and nostrums aimed at the witchcraft set, you probably have noticed the garishly ornate little bottles of the puzzling perfume known as Florida Water, and registered a dull sense of free-floating wonderment. Maybe you've even subsequently gone home and googled its purpose, and come away even more bereft of a frame of reference than before.

The stuff dates back at least to the year 1808, when a company called Murray & Lanman introduced it in New York City as a sort of Americanized Eau de Cologne (Cologne Water). Like Cologne Water, Florida Water is citrus-based, but really emphasizes the sweet orange - along with notes of lavender and clove oil.

The product's name derives from Murray & Lanman's marketing of the fluid as more than just a bottle of smellum-good, but rather an all-purpose tonic and cure-all. Hence, "Florida Water" was chosen as a nod to the life-giving properties of the mythical "Fountain of Youth" fabled to be located somewhere near St. Augustine.

Given that Florida Water's genesis was in a New York marketing scheme to sell perfume by appropriating Ponce DeLeon's myth of magical springs, I wonder then what mssrs. Murray and Lanman must have thought when they realized that Florida Water began to really take off as an ingredient in practices of Voudoun (Voodoo) and Santeria. Florida Water started showing up in rural deep-south traditions as a "drawing" ingredient, meaning drawing money, love or luck toward you. Some would pour Florida Water into a metal or porcelain cup and ignite it, warming their hands over its flames and letting the evaporating elixir work its thing. Other rituals call for it to be used as a floor wash, as a cleaning fluid to wash implements from one's altar, to scent bowls of water left out for spirits of the dead, or as an ingredient in making your own ink-dyed scrying solution.

You can still find Florida Water today at any hoodoo-ish sort of place, from the silly ones to the serious ones. I keep a bottle around; you never know when it might come in handy. Especially with all the other kind of "Florida water" around here - the sewage-scented reclaimed water that is unfortunately ubiquitous in the Sunshine State.

St. Augustine Sea Monster

On November 30, 1896, two young boys bicycling on Anastasia Island, off the coast of St. Augustine, made a frightening discovery: an enormous dead sea creature's decomposing carcass washed up along the shore.

They notified a local physician, Dr. DeWitt Webb, the founder of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science, who visited Anastasia Island the following day to inspect the creature. It was very pale pink, almost white, and glistened with a silver reflection in the sunlight. It was of a hard rubbery consistency, and could only be cut into with great effort. Despite this fact, the body was severely mutilated - presumably by sharks - and from all outward appearances seemed to be explained away best by being the remains of a giant octopus, having the stumps of four arms, with a severed arm buried nearby.

The carcass was half buried in the sand under its immense weight, but the part of the carcass that was visible above the sand measured 18 feet in length and 7 feet in width. Dr. Webb estimated its weight to be at least 5 tons. Numerous photographs were taken and drawings were made before the carcass washed in a storm that dragged it back out to sea. But shortly thereafter it came back, washing up on Crescent Beach, two miles south of its first location. Dr. Webb arranged for the creature to be hauled away, so that it would not be lost again to the ocean. It was moved to a spot next to a South Beach hotel, where it became a tourist attraction gawked at by large numbers of visitors.

What happened after that is murky. No one seems to know what became of the mystery carcass. Did they eventually get sick of its rotting smell when the following summer came? And if so, how did they dispose of it, since it was only dragged to the hotel with great herculean effort and, literally, a team of horses? Much written anecdotes exist from newspapers and magazines telling of the lump's discovery and subsequent analysis, but nothing tells of where it ended up.

The monster's legend didn't stop there, however. In 1957, a curator at Marineland who read of the old stories about the blob that washed ashore on Anastasia, and after making some inquiries found that tissue samples still existed at the Smithsonian Institution. He arranged for a biologist, Dr. Joseph F. Gennaro Jr., to analyze the sample, and Dr. Gennaro declared in the March 1971 issue of Natural History:

After 75 years, the moment of truth was at hand. Viewing section after section of the St. Augustine samples, we decided at once, and beyond any doubt, that the sample was not whale blubber. Further, the connective tissue pattern was that of broad bands in the plane of the section with equally broad bands arranged perpendicularly, a structure similar to, if not identical with, that in my octopus sample.

The evidence appears unmistakable that the St. Augustine sea monster was in fact an octopus, but the implications are fantastic. Even though the sea presents us from time to time with strange and astonishing phenomena, the idea of a gigantic octopus, with arms 75 to 100 feet in length and about 18 inches in diameter at the base—a total spread of some 200 feet—is difficult to comprehend.

In 1986, another scientist investigated all over again, and came to a similar conclusion:

I conclude that, to the extent the preserved O. giganteus tissue is representative of the carcass washed ashore at St. Augustine, Florida, in November 1896, it was essentially a huge mass of collagenous protein. Certainly, the tissue was not blubber. I interpret these results as consistent with, and supportive of, Webb and Verrill's identification of the carcass as that of a gigantic cephalopod, probably an octopus, not referable to any known species.

But in 1995, yet another scientist disputed these findings, stating, "the St. Augustine carcass was "the remains of a whale, likely the entire skin [blubber layer]... nothing more or less."

So now who knows what to think. The more recent the scientific inquiries, the more weight their verdict should carry, due to their advanced technology, right? But I've been up and down the block in this burg called Earth long enough to know that I'd believe an 1896 or 1957 scientist over these modern-mindset ones. I trust 'em about as far as I can throw 'em. I remain content having no clue whether this beach blob was a giant squid, an octopus, a whale, or something else entirely. Only the blob knows for sure and he isn't telling.

Jean Baptiste Coudroy de Lauréal

Couple days ago I was meandering around the graveyard at St. Augustine's Mission Nombre de Dios (you know, where The Great Cross is) and wondering about just who these people were and how came they here. Selecting one at random, I decided to do some research on this here Jean Baptiste Coudroy de Lauréal fellow.

Surprisingly, there's very little out there to be found. The most information to be gleaned about ol' J.B. comes from a page not about his grave, but his wife's:

Madame Augustine de Laureal, for many years a resident of Carondelet [Missouri], and related to some of the best known French families of that part of the city, died Monday evening at the residence of her niece, Mrs. Macklot Thompson. The deceased was the widow of J. B. Coudroy de Laureal, a wealthy South American planter who settled in Carondelet in 1848. Mons de Laureal and his family were driven from their vast estates, near Trinidad by an uprising of slaves, and came here stripped of almost all their wealth. Mme. de Laureal was greatly esteemed, and her piety and unostentatious charity endeared her to many. The funeral will take place this morning from the residence of Mrs. Mackot Thompson, third and Kansas streets.

(Curiously, my novel The Seventeenth Island also deals, tangentially, with a tropical plantation overthrown by an uprising of its slaves. Life imitates art imitates bread imitates butter imitates toast and jam.)

Sounds like the de Lauréal folks led an interesting life, but what I still don't know is how he ended up buried in St. Augustine if he and his Haitian wife (whose grave is shown at right) were living out their twilight years in Missouri.

Apparently he authored a medical text, Some Considerations on the Vertebral Disease in Children, which may mean he was a scientist or a doctor, but back then in those freewheeling days, that's not necessarily a given. Maybe he was a self-styled physician (there's a lot of those in Interzone), or just one day woke up and decided to declare himself a spinal expert.

The Great Cross of St. Augustine

Overlooking Matanzas Bay in St. Augustine, you'll find the Great Cross of St. Augustine - not to be confused with the "Cross of St. Augustine" medal or the stone memorial in Kent, England - marking the site where the city of San Agustin was founded on September 8, 1565 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a Spanish admiral. Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, the Spanish fleet's chaplain, performed a Thanksgiving Mass from a primitive altar erected on the shore. (Contrary to everything we were taught in grade school, this is the site of the first introduction of Christianity into America and the site of the first Thanksgiving held in America, not Plymouth Rock and its Mayflower pilgrims.)

The Great Cross was erected in 1965 to coincide with the city of St. Augustine's 400th anniversary, and is designed to theoretically be hurricane-proof.

Hyppo

In the Colonial Quarter of St. Augustine a few months ago, I discovered the most amazing frozen treat - so amazing it completely derailed and distracted me from my quest for sangria: Hyppo Gourmet Popsicles.

Hyppo has carved out a unique niche. offering such unlikely sounding flavors as Blueberry Goat Cheese, Datil Strawberry, Cucumber Lemon Mint, Pineapple Cilantro, Cracked Pepper Melon, something they call "Elvis" (peanut butter, banana and honey) and yes, they even offer sangria popsicles. Their wares are made from fresh fruit, cane sugar, and real ingredients.

They have five locations - four in St. Augustine and one I haven't been to (yet) in Orlando. (But I will.)

Their name, in case you were wondering, derives from the combination of the street name of their flagship location (Hypolita Street) and that of Saint Augustine of Hippo, for whom the city of St. Augustine is named.

The Didgeridoo Dog

During my recent fact-finding mission into St. Augustine, I kept encountering the surreal sight of a man playing an Australian didgeridoo on the streets, with a implausibly upright dog wearing a hat, kerchief, and sometimes a jacket. Just one of those little everyday touches that makes the old district of St. Augustine every bit as interesting as NOLA's French Quarter is cracked up to be.

I also ran into them on Anastasia Island, where they were set up with a booth at the island's Farmers Market, selling miniature curved French Horn-like didges. Clearly, this man and his dog have got it going on.

Curious, I just now did a quick Googling and found that I'm not the only one enamored by the peculiar pair; I found this and this and this and even this.

North Atlantic Right Whale Season

Every winter, pregnant North Atlantic Right Whales migrate to the coasts of South Georgia and Northern Florida to give birth in warmer waters. The public is urged to help watch for them and report sightings of this endangered species (there are now less than 500 of them known to exist.) Their life span used to be approximately 50-75 years, but thanks to environmental factors and collisions with boats, has been diminished to about 15 years today.

Presently, North Atlantic Right Whales are among the most endangered whales in the world, protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Most of the remaining ones occupy the western North Atlantic Ocean, but in the eastern North Atlantic, with a total population reaching into the low teens, scientists consider them already functionally extinct.

(Top: Sign on pier, reminding the public to watch for whales, St. Augustine, FL. Bottom: Video of mother and its calf, Marineland, FL.)