My big sister, Lucy, in 1949 at Biloxi lighthouse

The Mississippi Gulf Coast figures prominently in my family’s history since my father’s relatives are in southern Mississippi and Alabama. Also, as a poor Methodist preacher’s family in Illinois, about the only vacation we could afford when I was a kid was to head south in our old Buick, camp out with relatives, and then spend a week at the campgrounds the Methodist church maintained on the coast.

The original Biloxi seawall, now hidden beneath sand

In those days, there was no beach in Biloxi. There was simply an enormous seawall consisting of steps that one could walk down to be closer to the water to fish. Which step one chose depended on the tides. As a child of 4 and 5 I remember that close, black water as frightening, but my father managed to coax me down the steps by showing me how to use crab-nets baited with bacon. Here is a post card from that era showing the wall; the bit of sand you see in that card was the Gulf floor and was seldom visible.

Huge manmade beach covering the original seawall

These days, that magnificent seawall is covered by countless tons of white sand as seen above. I suppose I prefer the beach, but it seems a shame that that seawall is history. The sand was pumped onto the seawall in 1951 (see MS History for background on this and other Mississippi public works).

Famous Biloxi lighthouse

An indelible memory of that childhood time is the famous Biloxi lighthouse. Here are several good links on it. I’ll let you read about it for yourself.

• Biloxi Lighthouse
• Web Lighthouses
• Through the years
• Drawing
• early photo
• good vintage MS vintage postcards
• Lighthouses of the United States: Mississippi

The OTHER Biloxi lighthouse

West of the historical lighthouse, on a small promontory jutting out from the shore, there is another lighthouse, pictured above. I can find no mention of it anywhere! It appears to be a functional lighthouse, but it’s not listed among the three lighthouses in Mississippi. If anyone knows something about this one, I would enjoy learning about it.

Shrimp boat (singular!) heads out for the day

In those days, shrimping was huge on the Gulf Coast. It still exists, but not like it used to exist. It was already in serious decline because of all the cheap shrimp shipped in from Asian shrimp farms, then the catastrophic BP oil spill damned near dealt it a death blow. I hope it recovers.

A considerable distance out from Biloxi are a series of barrier islands (see Barrier Islands of Mississippi). One of our family treats in those days was to take a commercial boat out to Ship Island–one of those islands. Halfway out, the boat would stop and haul up nets of live oysters. (Vegans hold your ears!) The shells were cracked open for us and we downed them while they were, literally, still quivering.

Piers that once reached far out into the Gulf remain demolished

The Mississippi Gulf Coast has a long history of recovering from assaults from nature. It’s always bounced back, although sometimes it takes longer than others. The trauma of Hurricane Katrina is still evident. These pictures were taken just this past year. Notice the devastation that still exists both on the coast and inland.

Scarred landscape of Biloxi remains–buildings once stood where those blank squares are

But they’re slowly rebuilding.

One rebuilt pier

Part of the economic engine for that rebuilding is casino money; they were rebuilt first, of course. I don’t know what I think about the casinos. The Biloxi of my youth was poor, poor, poor, poor, poor–a sleepy little town on the water. Now there are jobs. And, people should be allowed to gamble if they wish. I don’t believe in legislating “morality,” ever! But, I, myself, don’t enjoy the casinos in Biloxi. (Vegas is another matter! That can be fun…if one doesn’t gamble.) The Biloxi casinos are full of people my age (old) obsessively frittering away their social security checks. Few are smiling. Mainly, I see grim futility. Here are a couple of links that speak to the issue of casinos on the Gulf Coast: here and here).

One of many casinos

Whether you’re into the casinos or just a new place to visit that’s a (long) day’s drive, Biloxi is only 9 hours away from Tampa. That’s really not that far. The casinos make for cheaper rooms, so that’s good. I highly recommend the trip and the experience.

View Larger Map

amusements and pastimes

There’s an interesting getaway a leisurely five hour drive from Tampa: Jeckll Island, Georgia (www.jekyllisland.com).

The History of Jeckll Island page of the above website gives an encapsulated account of its history:

“In 1886, Jekyll Island was purchased to become an exclusive winter retreat for America’s most elite families, known as the Jekyll Island Club. For more than half a century, the nation’s leading families, including the Rockefellers, Morgans, Pulitzers, and Goulds, came to Jekyll Island ‘to secure an escape.’”

Jeckll Island Hotel Club exteriors

As with many of the pleasures one discovers in life, a trip to Jeckll Island would never have been something I would have sought out on my own initiative; rather, I went there because of an external event–the wedding of my son!

My son and his fiancé–now his wife–decided to have a small, “destination wedding.”

I’d never heard that term before. But, now that I’ve learned about it, I must say I’m taken with the idea. The couple and those invited to the wedding go to the destination and rent rooms through the night of the wedding. The wedding takes place on the grounds of the destination and included in the price of the event are things like the officiant, the musician, the photographer, the wedding dinner, etc. Then, the day following the wedding, the guests return home and the couple stays at the destination for their honeymoon.

Such a lovely idea. And in this case, this particular destination was such a lovely place, a place I would never have come to otherwise.

The guests and bride and groom stayed at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel (www.jekyllclub.com)–either the main building or one of the “cottages,” which are the former residences of people who used to winter there and who originally bought the island, people such as the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Pulitzers. Humble folk. Just about as humble as their three storey “cottages.”

Jeckll Island Hotel interiors

All the pictures in this post are of the Jekyll Island Club Hotel buildings and grounds.

There are other, quite good, less expensive places to stay on the island, but the Jekyll Island Club Hotel was less expensive than I thought it would be. Actually, it was less than some hotels on St. Pete Beach. So, if you’re only going for a couple nights, as I was, it doesn’t break the bank. For a very nice two days within a short day’s drive from Tampa, I really do recommend Jeckll Island, Georgia, and the other neighboring Golden Isles of Georgia (St. Simons Island, Brunswick, and Sea Island–see Brunswick and the Golden Isles of Georgia).

Jeckll Island Hotel dock

One last suggestion: when you visit the Jeckll Island Club Hotel, take time to visit its bookstore. Allow at least an hour to browse its many rooms, each dedicated to a specific theme related to the Georgia islands. My favorite (you can tell by checking my credit card statement for that visit) was the cookbook room, with many cookbooks relating to the Atlantic barrier islands cooking history.

Jeckll Island bookstore

There are two cookbooks in particular I’d like to mention. One is Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way: Smokin’ Joe Butter Beans, Ol’ ‘Fuskie Fried Crab Rice, Sticky-Bush Blackberry Dumpling, and Other Sea Island Favorites. The other is Cornbread Nation 5: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

Cornbread Nation is the most recent in a series of Best of Southern Food Writing volumes. That title is obviously carefully chosen. It’s the quality of the writing, not just the recipes, that is the appeal of the series.

trees and moss

Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way is, of course, about the cooking of the Gullah region (the coast of South Carolina and Georgia), home to the Gullah who…

” are known for preserving more of their African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African-American community in the United States. They speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure. The Gullah language is related to Jamaican Creole, Barbadian Dialect, and the Krio language of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Gullah storytelling, cuisine, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming and fishing traditions, all exhibit strong influences from West and Central African cultures.” [ref]

To say more about the Gullah would require another whole post. There is also an incredibly rich and beautiful Gullah musical tradition that would require yet another whole post! So, I’ll leave you with these five links that interested me in a Google search of Gullah.

• Gullah Language & Culture
• The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection
• Hilton Head Island Gullah Celebration
• Gullah Festival
• Gullah Gourmet

Also…all best wishes to my son and daughter-in-law. May you have many, many happy years together!

[Disclaimer: if you buy something, like the books above, through my Amazon.com links, I receive a teeny-weenie commission from Amazon. It really is miniscule. It doesn't increase the price of the item in any way. So, if you'd be willing to buy something through my Amazon links, I might be able to afford a second cup of coffee some morning! I make this disclaimer because we are now required to by law, so please consider things thoroughly disclaimed.]

On a recent trip to Fort Worth, Texas, a friend, born and raised in Texas, took me to the old Fort Worth Stockyards. If you’re ever in Fort Worth, a free (except for parking) bit of entertainment that’s very enjoyable, especially for kids or easily amused old folks, is a trip to the stockyards.

The big event–I think it only happens twice a day–is the “cattle drive.” (I didn’t know they could drive; did you?) Actually, it’s more like a “cattle mosey,” since they just amble along the street, the whips in the hands of the cowboys and cowgirls only for decoration. Such gentle, beautiful creatures.

Cattle Drive

 

Museum

There is also a free museum. It’s chock full of stuff from the era that made Fort Worth the legend it is. The museum is in a still functioning office building of the era.

 
 
 
 
 

I grew up with these

However, some of the items in the museum I remember from my own childhood home. I must be even older than I thought!

 
 
 

Around the restored old-town

Many of the buildings in old town around the stockyards have been restored and are now filled with shops and restaurants. I particularly enjoyed this one shop that specialized in hats, boots, spurs, and other articles of cowboy/cowgirl attire. Even the hotel was decorated with period furniture.

 
 
 

The rodeo arena is also here at the stockyards. I’ve only been to a couple rodeos in my life, but I’ve always enjoyed them. If I ever get a chance to return to Fort Worth, I hope to take in another one. I truly do enjoy the American West culture, history, and mystique.

That’s not all there is to Texas, of course! All the people I met on this trip were active professionals, highly cultured, and politically progressive. That should be no surprise since the music scene in Texas is among the finest in the country. Just the number and quality of pipe organs (why I was there) exceeds the number and quality of pipe organs in all of the Southeast US. Texas is a remarkable place that I hope to revisit.

1929

OVERLOOKING LAKE DORA FROM LAKESIDE INN

• Mount Dora Center for the Arts
• Mount Dora Chamber of Commerce
• What to do in Mount Dora
• Mount Dora Village Merchant’s & Business Association
• Wikipedia: Mount Dora, Florida
• City of Mount Dora

Mount Dora is a small historical Florida village on the shore of Lake Dora that has successfully made itself into an arts and convention center with plenty of opportunities for outdoor recreation.

LAKESIDE INN PIER

JUST A FEW OF MANY MOUNT DORA SHOPS

HISTORIC MOUNT DORA TRAIN STATION

ONE OF MANY LOUNGE/RESTAURANTS

NESTING BIRDS DOWNTOWN MOUNT DORA

STREETSIDE HARPIST

TAKING IT EASY

WORLD’S SECOND LARGEST LAWN BOWLING COURT

VINTAGE FLORIDIANA