Goodbye Greasy Goodness

I must admit I have stopped to take pictures of the Olde Dixie Fried Chicken sign more than I've actually eaten there. It is one of the few vintage signs left in the Orlando area, and occasionally I like to ride my bike into historic Pine Castle where the restaurant is located on photo safari. So when I heard it was shutting down, I made the conscious decision to ignore the fact that I normally try to adhere to a plant-based diet, and I stopped in for lunch.

It was quit chaotic when I arrived – folks lined up along the back wall waiting for take-out orders, what seemed like 8 or 10 women working hard to full those orders, and a disorganized crowd milling around the order counter. Immediately I was truck by the notion that if there was system in place, it wasn't clear. Was there line at the order counter, when did you pay, was there table service or pick-up? Turns out if you dine in, and they bring you your food, which I did in order to soak up the ambiance.

The place looks like it hadn't changed in half a century, the interior consists of wood paneling and stacked rock walls covered with posters of John Wayne. Large clusters of chicken collectibles line the counter. A mural of an old Southern plantation surrounded by oaks draped in Spanish moss covered the wall behind the cash register. There were amazing midcentury details like an incredible terrazzo compass rose and Googie-like multicolored hanging lights.

The smell of fried chicken coated everything, and the women behind the counter were in constant motion taking freshly fried chicken parts out of the fryer and putting them in boxes. At lunchtime the restaurant posted on Facebook that due to demand they had bought more chicken (as they were going to only stay open until they ran out.) As I was leaving I heard one of the ladies say they had run out of boxes, despite ordering about 5,000 of them.

While I was enjoying my delicious chicken breast, (it was so fresh and hot I couldn't pick it up with my fingers), one of the guests asked a member of the staff what was going to happen to the restaurant. She said they were looking for a new location, and I believe she said in Oviedo. I also overheard that the she understood the building would not be demolished, it would just not be Olde Dixie Fried Chicken anymore.

The place was crowded with a diverse group of people in all shapes, sizes, and colors. I found that interesting since the Confederate flag is prominently featured in the establishment's sign. My theory is that they named it "Olde Dixie" after the Dixie Highway which followed the route of Orange Avenue through Pine Castle.

There are very few restaurants with any history in the Orlando area, and even fewer buildings with original mid-century details. I'm sad to see this place go. And the chicken was moist and crispy, the cole slaw sweet and tasty, and the mac and cheese was delicious. I guess I'll go back to my plant-based diet until I have to say so-long to the next Orlando dining institution ready to bite the dust. Let's hope that's in the distant future.

Freedom at Fifty: the Power of Place

I was excited to embark on my 5th Annual Freedom Ride, a tradition in which I enjoy the freedom of riding my bike with no agenda other than taking photos of whatever strikes my fancy. My odyssey began at an industrial area between the newly renovated Orlando Train Station and I-4, an area normally too busy to ride a bike. On this day, however it was like a ghost town so I felt free to ride around and investigate the textures and colors created by the processes of manufacturing and recycling.

Looking for the red, white, and blue at a recycling plant.

I remembered that nearby Kuhl Street intersected Gore and headed in that direction because the original route of the Dixie Highway through Orlando followed Kuhl Avenue briefly before rejoining Orange Avenue further south. The Dixie Highway was a system of roads that connected the South to the Midwest in the early days of the automobile, before state and federal roads used a numbering system to identify their routes. The Western alignment of the Dixie Highway went from Chicago to Miami, going north and south through Orlando, mostly by way of Edgewater Drive and Orange Avenue. I have been been working with the Polk County History Center on an exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Dixie Highway Association, so I've been driving as much of the original road as possible. I was thrilled to find the short stretch between Gore and Lake Lucerne still paved in bricks, perhaps the original bricks driven over by Model Ts and Stanley Steamers almost a century ago. This unexpected discovery was the first of many on this Independence Day and I realized there was a connection between the Dixie Highway and freedom.  The age of the automobile brought more independence to Americans than ever before, as a vacation in Florida was now possible to a whole new class of people. Whereas before steamboats and train cars brought the American elite to places of leisure like Palm Beach, the advent of the automobile and the Dixie Highway opened the way for the middle class to visit the Sunshine State. And they've been arriving in cars by the millions ever since.

Could these bricks date back to the days of the Dixie Highway?

Wonderful Midcentury architecture on Lake Lucerne.

I headed to downtown where I had worked for almost a decade – a place where I'd witnessed enormous change. When I started working there soon after I moved to Central Florida, the soul of old Orlando still lingered. Places like Mac Meiner's BBQ,  Chastains, and the beloved Ronnie's Restaurant were still serving Orlando natives. Even Sam Behr's Shoe Store still existed on Church Street. But downtown was pretty humble outside of the Church Street Station attraction where I worked. So to find relics of the prior age feels like being an urban archaeologist, discovering pieces of a bygone age. Just by the looks of new construction near downtown, the great recession appears to be ending.

A boutique hotel moved into the old Orlando Utilities Building
but left these wonderful remnants from the past behind.

Citrus icon Dr. Phillip Phillips' legacy lives on in Orlando through the philanthropic organization of the same name.  My hope is that this building bearing his name someday finds new life.

WDBO dates back to 1924 and is said to stand for "Way Down by Orlando."
It would be sad to see this wonderful Art Deco building fall by the wayside.

I rode to a Mediterranean Revival property I knew was at risk of being torn down to make way for a high rise on Lake Eola. The charming home turned office building is a relic of an earlier age when private houses existed on the shores of Orlando's favorite park. Historic preservation is on my mind these days as communities in Florida are faced with difficult questions of growth and property rights versus quality of life and community character. Sadly we seem to lose more and more historic buildings with character every day.

It's unlikely this 1920s home will be moved.

Return to College Park

Tana Porter recently published an excellent book about the history of College Park, see it here. 

Drive-in worship, every Sunday at 8:15!

The expansion of I-4 led to these young cypress trees being cut down. 

It's unclear who painted the stumps red, but the effect is that the trees bleed when cut down. 

On the opposite side of Lake Ivanhoe, noble cypress await their fate.

This residents are rallying around this patch of live oaks.

To protest the cutting of these trees, e-mail loreen.bobo@dot.st.fl.us

I headed to College Park, a neighborhood where much of my early adult life had been spent. College Park seems to be ground zero for questions of growth and preservation. When I moved there, Edgewater Drive still had service stations with mechanics, a drugstore with a soda fountain, and lots of mom and pop businesses. College Park was originally developed during the land boom of the 1920s. Many of the houses on the street where I lived were built during the time Florida's population started to skyrocket immediately following World War II. My tiny bungalow had no central air, marvelous oak floors, and a mature orange tree in the backyard. I had elderly neighbors next door and there was a school crossing guard at the corner who waved at every car that went by. It felt like living in a small town.

While living in College Park, I had no idea the main commercial road through the neighborhood
was once the Dixie Highway.

When I moved away almost a decade later, most of the elderly neighbors who lived near me were replaced by young couples. Today the spot where the gas station used to be, has become the location of a multi-story condominium building. Many of the mom and pop businesses have been replaced with hipster hangouts. I felt conflicted as I rode down Edgewater Drive; a rush of good memories flooded over me. Perhaps middle age is where you start to feel like you're not a hipster anymore, but you're not an old timer either. You're stuck in the middle.

A very different downtown College Park: "Juice" bikes, a Midcentury Modern
furniture store, and a multi-story condo.

The battle between growth and quality of life is being fought here.

Riding along the edge of Lake Ivanhoe, remembering my favorite houses, where I fished with my Little Brother, where I had a picnic with my family, I felt a range of very powerful emotions fueled by returning to the places where those memories were made. I went to the old apartment where I used to live, peddled down streets I remembered well, and noted what had changed and what had endured. Would my memories still survive if these places had been torn down? If my old pink apartment ceased to exist, would a new building still inspire recollection and introspection? Memories of my Dad during a memorable Christmas at the pink apartments came rushing back. Now that my Dad is gone, those memories are priceless. But does a physical place have the power to preserve memories, or is that just nostalgia on my part?

One of my favorite historic homes on Lake Ivanhoe.

A Midcentury Modern beauty.

Fabulous flamingo on this home's front door.

From a broader perspective, as more people are attracted to a neighborhood and start to remake it with larger, more contemporary houses, does the neighborhood lose the charm that originally attracted them to it? As I rode my bike down entire streets stocked with brand new houses, I wondered if this was the same place at all. So I headed the opposite direction to see if my old house still survived.

What's more Florida than pink apartments? I lived here before buying a home in College Park.

Sadly they put a picnic table in the middle of the shuffleboard court.
Even sadder is the fact that I never played shuffleboard when I lived there.

Wonderful nod to history where a pineapple plantation and a park with a
waterslide called "Joyland" once existed on the shores of Lake Ivanhoe.

The Howard Atha House is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Jack Kerouac lived in College Park. His home now is a place
for writers and poets to stay as artists in residence.

Home by noted local architect James Gamble Rogers.

This beauty was recently in the news when a small plane crashed into their garage.

When I bought my house, my Dad questioned my choice. It was on a busy street and he thought my decision making process may have been overly influenced by the attractive young lady living there with her husband and young son. But when I sold it a decade later and made a healthy profit, I could tell my father was proud of me. The house had been turned into a rental property so I was nervous as I approached.

Because it was a busy street, it appeared that much of the changes that had engulfed the rest of College Park had escaped my old street. Most of the modest homes remained unchanged, a fact that made me very happy. As I neared my house I saw my old neighbor Marty. Marty was actually a mechanic who worked in one of the service stations that used to be on Edgewater. When the garage closed he became a caregiver to my elderly neighbor. Buoyed again by the stroke of good fortune of running into an old neighbor, I pressed on to my house to find that it looked pretty good. It looked like who ever lived there loved the place, and that made me even happier.

My former neighbor Marty and one of his creations

As I passed back through downtown, documenting which pieces of the past had changed and noting those that have survived, I sought out places that I had written about in previous blogs to check on how they've held up (I really need to do this urban bike ride thing more often than once a year).

This art deco home, one of my College Park faves, is currently for sale.

This former church and synagogue was on the the Florida Trust's most threatened list.
Today it is being converted into condos!

I'm not sure what the future holds for this building, a former armory
near the city's "Creative Village" project.

Inside this glass box lies the former Orlando Municipal Auditorium, a building with great local  historical significance. With the opening of the new Performing Arts Center, will this be preserved?

An all-too-common sight in Florida.

I steered my bike to Pine Green, a remarkable home created by Central Florida artist/builder Sam Stoltz. My lucky streak continued as the owners happened to be working in their yard and they gave me a quick tour of the property. I'm thrilled when caring folks buy a historic property and preserve it for future generations to enjoy.

I never noticed how this Sam Stoltz creation looks like a face!

The current owners recently met with the former owners of the home and
discovered it was originally named "Piney Green", not "Pine Green"!

My Freedom Rides are normally about just spontaneously peddling around and snapping photos. But today, everything I saw seemed to connect to themes of change, freedom, and the power of place. As a fan of historic preservation I seek out places like Staunton, Virginia. My wife and I recently vacationed there because of the historic architecture and character of the town. It crushes me when places in Florida like the Bellevue Biltmore are demolished. To me, these structures are more than wood and nails, they are living memories with a soul that should be preserved.

In the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, historic Staunton, Virginia
proved to be a wonderful destination for our summer vacation.

But we tend to live in a world of contrasts. Perhaps true freedom is the fact that we have two seemingly polar opposites, the urge to grow and the urge to preserve, and that we have the power to chose which force wins? Growth seems to be inevitable in Florida, even Ponce de Leon tried to acquire beachfront property. The Calusa Indians, in an effort to preserve their lifestyle, ended the Spaniard's quest, but ultimately succumbed to the Europeans. Growth won out. Maybe nothing has changed in Florida in 500 years? The question is, can we grow without harming other living things while respecting the history made by those who came before us?

Maybe I am just feeling fifty, reliving my glory days, but not so sure about what the future holds. Maybe true freedom lives somewhere in that uncertainty.

A sculpture garden and tribute to lost love

"Cut from various megalithic stones, many weighing several tons. He spent over 28 years cutting stone and building Coral Castle after being jilted by his 16-year-old fiancee Agnes Scuffs just one day before the wedding. Originally built in Florida City and called Rock Gate Park [shown in this image below], it was later moved to Homestead around 1936. Coral Castle was added to the National Register of historic places in 1984." -caption from images from the Florida State Archives

State Archives of Florida

Images from Ed's self-published writings

The Coral Castle had been on my "list" of must-see places to visit in Florida for a very long time. So when I realized a trip to the Keys would pass right by it, I brought my whole family to see this amazing site. The marketing material says this about "Florida's Stonehenge":

One tiny man, obsessed with his love for a young girl, labored for 28 years to build a coral rock monument to her. Incredibly, he carved and moved over 1,100 tons of rock without human assistance. Did he know the secrets of the Great Pyramids? Did he have superhuman powers? Visit the Coral Castle and discover one of the world's most incredible wonders.

The story behind the castle begins when Edward Leedskalinin got left at the altar by his 16 year old bride to be. Ed wrote later "a girl is to a fellow the best thing in this world, but to have the best one second hand, is humiliating." He never got over Agnes so he came to South Florida and poured his energy into carving coral and reshaping the landscape into what has become one of Florida's most interesting attractions.

State Archives of Florida

While I don't care to speculate as to how Ed created his masterpiece, I will say it is a very impressive monument to one's mans broken heart. Having seen it on television and read about it in books, I found it smaller than I had imagined but more colorful and beautiful. The current owners have carefully landscaped the old place and put down mulch to keep it looking spiffy. The images I'd seen made the sculptures look dingy and bleak; perhaps it was the brilliant December blue sky that seemed to make the garden-like setting sparkle. Or maybe it was just the good energy of my family having made it through another Christmas and enjoying the moment of being on a road trip with people we love. Sorry Ed never got to know the feeling.

Mother Ephemera poses outside the Coral Castle Gate

Much of the equipment used to build the Coral Castle was made from old auto parts

Ed spent the last half of his life studying magnetism and electricity

Florida shaped rock

A guide told us this sculpture represented Ed's Cosmology

Coral Castle as it looked in the past, from the State Archives of Florida

Current view with added mulch and landscaping

Many of Ed's sculptures resemble arm chairs; in the background the building where Ed lived with no electricity or plumbing

Ed's "telescope"

Mother Ephemera showing Ed's sundial, which was accurate

The famous rock gate is now gated off. The guide told us it still moves a little, but with great effort. After being examined by scientists, they were baffled at how Ed created it and were never quite able to re-construct it as it was in Ed's day. Image from the State Archives of Florida.