St Augustine, FL - Jailbird

Just walking around St Augustine is a lesson in history. Everywhere you go, you see old homes, an old jail, lots of plaques commemorating events, old cemeteries, old churches and all manner of things. Of course, there are lots of new shoppes, new tourist traps, new ice cream shops, new restaurants and lots of new tourists coming into town. If we had thought that if we toured on a weekday we might find fewer crowds, we were sadly mistaken. We’d turn a corner and find a new bus disgorging a new bunch of tourists with cameras. Hmmm - just like us.

Here I am, standing by one of the oldest tourists. Hmmm, maybe I'll take him home - I wonder if he can drive an RV. 

We took one long walk and got up to the ‘new’ jail, built before the turn of the century, the 20th century, and now open as a museum. We didn’t have time to visit it since it was late and it closed within a few minutes but we did have time to read the plaques and see the displays outside. We first learned that the south was the first area to employ lots of convict labor to make roads, build bridges, clear forests and many other sorts of labor requiring a strong back. Convicts were ‘leased’ out to whoever had a job and could pay the state for convict labor. I’m reminded of ‘Cool Hand Luke’ and his time on the road gang, chained together, drooling over the young woman washing her car. Good movie.

But getting convicts to the labor site and housing them while they were there must have been a problem. Not after the Manly company invented its Convict Car, ‘the Car That Has Made Possible the Economical, Safe and Humane Housing of Convicts at Night on Public Road Work.’ Note all the advantages they list in their advertising: portability, security, perfect sanitation, increased efficiency, comfort to prisoners and, the 'piece de resistance', low cost. And, see the one on the right - you can wrap it up at night for darkness and open it for breezes during the day.

They even had one on display here. Notice the stove in the middle for heat and the ‘toilet’ also in the middle.

Of course, Gary can’t help but get into trouble and it took him no time at all in St Augustine. Here he is, already on the chain gang.

We wandered around and found some cute tourist shops. One had this sign:

We also saw the woman who actually made lots of the statues around town. She was at work, making another one, slapping on some plaster of Paris, molding it around her wire frame and remolding it so she would have the shape she wanted before it set.

Yes, St Augustine is a fun town to walk around, lots going on, lots of people watching, lots of history, just a fun town to visit.