i was in st. augustine but i didn’t take the tour

from around 4/20

after surviving a few days of camping, steve and i headed to the other side of the state to a little town called st. augustine.  it is THE oldest city in the US, founded even before jamestown, and is full of a myriad of interesting characters, living and dead!

take for example, underwear man.  i was hanging out on the sidewalk one afternoon and a guy with long gnappy dreds rode by on his bike.  i nodded a hello, admiring his dirty, holey, tie-dye t-shirt.  as he passed, my eyes traveled further down his person and realized that he was only wearing a pair of white tighty underwear on the bottom.  of course, i had to call him back and talk to him.  learned that he was living on a friend’s boat and had found his outfit in the dumpster the day before.

or my friend, marv, who could always be found playing guitar with his friend charlie brown, on cuna street.  check out the sign on the keyboard.

anyway, i was instantly in love with this town. the moment we drove into downtown with it’s imposing old fort, gleaming sailboat-filled bay, and crowd of funky, narrow cobblestone streets lined with the remnant buildings of an age past, i decided i would stay.  maybe a couple days.  and a couple days quickly turned into over a week.

my travel companion, steve, had moved on.  he had a hot date up north in jacksonville with some guy he’d met on the internet.  i checked myself into the only hostel in town – the pirate haus – a fantastic little old building right in the middle of everything.  i ingratiated myself with one of the guys who was running the place while the owner was out of town and ended up getting to stay on for free for most of my stay in exchange for cooking dinner for him, doing a little cleaning and taking his spot in the kitchen in the mornings when all the guests came to eat free pancakes.  he was claustrophobic and couldn’t handle too many people crowded into the room at once.  i, on the other hand, LOVED it!  the hostel is known (among hostel folk, anyway) for serving a big breakfast of “pirate pancakes” pancakes cooked in a special way so they have designs on the top that look like little pirate faces.  or whatever design you desire.  i was initiated into the secret of their production and spent my mornings schmoozing with guests and pumping out plate after plate of piping hot cakes decorated with flowers, palm trees, smiley faces and funny messages.  i started to feel like i ran the joint until the owner came back into town and i had to explain how i’d managed to stay on for free during his absence.

i quickly fell into a little community of hostel guests and local street musicians and found that, even in the short time i was there, i could go out at any time of day and see people i knew on the streets.  at night, a group of us would go out to listen to this or that musician performing at one of the many venues in the old downtown.  i sang at a couple open mic nights and ended up getting drawn into the circle of musicians that got called up to sing a song or two with the musician who was performing for the night.  not entirely a comfortable experience for me, but a chance to conquer a little stage fright at least.

st. augustine was an incredible place for getting lost.  one evening, i took one of the bikes from the hostel, a banana yellow rusted rattletrap that didn’t have any functioning brakes or gears, rode it to a quiet part of town where oak trees draped themselves over a tranquil avenue.  i came upon a deserted park, snuck in through an open gate, and found myself surrounded by a gaggle of brilliantly colored peacocks, unearthly colors of blue, green, magenta and one that was entirely white.  they were engaged in an intricate mating dance, strutting and shaking their tale feathers at any unwitting female.

i was always on the lookout for ghosts since the town was supposedly full of them.  in fact, tours were led all day long and into the evening, guiding visitors to some of the more haunted sites in the area.  it was a ridiculous spectacle, these trolleys full of tourists, cruising through the streets at all hours, everyone craning necks to get a glimpse of the spirits of the honorable judge john b. stickney or the shrewd keeper of the casablanca inn.  i was utterly opposed to these and other tours of the town, feeling that not only did it create noise and traffic in the streets, but by cashing in on it, the tours had a way of robbing the magic of a town with a very colorful and mysterious past.  tourists were taken for every penny, with entrance fees for everything from the fort, to the old schoolhouse, even the cemetary!  i prefered to wander the shady back streets alone, admiring the crumbling brick and peeling plaster, the weeds and vines sprouting up through and enveloping erratic cobblestones and decomposing stone walls, hidden gardens spied through wrought iron gates.  there, i felt the eyes of several centuries watching me as i passed.  although i myself never saw a ghost, many of the inhabitants of the town had enough stories to tell that i don’t doubt the truth of the tales. 

on my last day in st. augustine, i got to view the town from thousands of feet up.  one of the guests at the hostel, ronald, a cheeky bloke from britain had the cutest little accent, i couldn’t help imitating him (“ronald, are you lookin’ at my bum?”).  he had come to florida to renew his pilot’s license and offered to take me and one of the other guys from the hostel up in his plane for a quick cruise around the area.

 

 

leaving st. augustine was difficult.  i felt i could have stayed there for a long time.  but, the next adventure was calling.  and there’s something kind of cool about making an exit before the finale, knowing that you can always return and continue to the show another time.  underwear man will continue raiding the dumpster for his wardrobe.  marv and charlie brown will be rockin’ out on cuna street, entertaining adults and kids alike.  the hostel will still be making pirate pancakes.  tours will go on exploiting the haunted schoolhouse.  life (and death) will go on.

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