Doyle in NYC has a jewelry auction coming up tomorrow. From a Palm Beach collector, it strikes me as very South Florida looking. I remember working in the Castillo de San Marcos fee both. As park rangers, no one liked working in the fee booth but it was required duty for a least an hour a day.
Entry fee was .50 cents - A true bargain in the National Park Service but one day I heard this guy complain, " Geez, I pay my taxes and the government's hitting me up for fifty cents?" He stood in sock-less alligator Gucci loafers with the red and green canvas under the bit. Bleach blonde hair and over sized Porsche sunglasses on his head with a Corum signal flag watch on his wrist.
He and his wife get to the fee booth window where he throws a dollar at me. I push it back to him, "That's alright, sir. No charge." He cocks his head, "No charge." "That's right, sir. I heard you complaining and so I figure you're having some tough times. Not to worry -- I'll pick it up." What unfolded is another story but I do believe it was documented in the Ranger Log.
Michael Bastian said in an interview that it was important nowadays to wear a nice watch since everyone dressed so poorly or how else could you judge a man. That seemed pretty shallow to me -- Until I remembered that day in the fee booth.
Castillo de San Marcos Ranger Log Book Summer 1982
Castillo de San Marcos Ranger Log Book Summer 1983
You had to work as as 'Seasonal' ranger in order to get a full time position. These were usually at parks where visitation was heavy during Summer. I did three seasons during college at the Castillo de San Marcos in St Augustine. After the Army, it was the only job I had where time off was spent with the people I worked with. Odd that the two lowest paying jobs were the happiest jobs -- The soundtrack of that Summer of 1983 didn't hurt.
The college girl friend posing topless for my best friend. Similar feelings resurfaced years later when a girlfriend, who had refused my intimate advances for months, returned from a week long business trip with her first full Brazilian claiming it was for hygienic purposes.
Andrew Dillon, Photo courtesy of Flagler CollegeAlumniAssociation
We called him Drew-- but only behind his back. My English professor had an insane cackling laugh. Uncontrolled, but bright and honest. People who laugh with restraint are not to be trusted. He was a poet, mostly. Volkswagen Breakdown and other Poems.
Had a tiny Olivetti on his desk when he talked me out of taking grammar and explained the etymology of 'fuck' when I used it in his presence. "It means to beat or wail upon," he said. "Old German. Walked by a man painting the Markland house - Suppose he screwed up - He leaned back from his work and said, 'Fucked without a kiss.'
A Manhattan physician's son, born and raised on Park Avenue, he lived the good life. He passed around a first folio of Shakespeare to my class and made sure we held the pages up to the light to see the watermarks. He was tall, thin and ass-less with Waspy good looks and a bearing that bordered on queer to cultural morons. Christ, I adored the motherfucker.
But he didn't adore me. He didn't even remember me at a 10 year re-union until he connected me to my sister and said, "She was an amazing writer. (Snapping his finger) Now I remember! You were in the Army! Yes? I remember you.Your writing was covered in camouflage."
"Peace, perturbed spirit!"
He did tell me I didn't need to know grammar to write and those who did know grammar couldn't write. He was my guide through: Survey of English Lit I & II, Milton, Chaucer and Shakespeare. He'd laugh with that ribald cackle, "Horns! Horns! He was a cuckold..." Then he explained what a cuckold was. He explained what Richard III was. He explained what the Carpenter's Wife in Canterbury Tales was. He explained why Hamlet was driving me crazy while my parent's divorced.
Rumpled corduroy shirt and white wine swilling,
"Fuck you, (hope I got the grammar right) Drew..."
Now these are Black & Red jackets every UGA football fan should have in his closet. Finding black and red apparel in natural fiber is no easy task. I remember Florida - Georgia games in the '80s being awash in flammable black and red polyester contrasted against Hog Town's bright blue and orange cotton.
Fashion Week in NYC was and remains Tartan-ed up like a Robbie Burn's dinner in Glasgow. Tartan's "fookin'" everywhere. I'm backed up on Fashion Week pieces so you'll see lots more plaid on this blog in the coming week. Designers tend take the classic goods, raise them to idolatry levels, then regicide the royal cloth about the time it lands in Ft Wayne.
I think tweed will replace tartan but not your typical somber Harris. Color is too damned important. If nothing else has been proven in the last five years of menswear hoo-ha it is this; dudes like color. What we used to call 'loud.' But these are sport coats and are not to be worn in an office unless you sell radio advertising in Cincinnati. These jackets go with dark grey or black flannel trousers and will speak Shakespeare folios of your unmitigated taste. Just make sure the pattern matching is up to snuff and you stay out of Alachua County.
Lincolnville Historical District, St Augustine, FL, 1980
During college I'd ride weekend nights with a couple buddies who were still with the sheriffs department. I'm not sure if I was just bored or if I thought it was a viable career. I brought my Olympus OM-1 with bulk loaded Tri-X for a photography independent study. I failed. I think it was because of my captions. I remember, "Screams from the meat wagon pierced the night." I'm not making that mistake again.
He allegedly murdered his wife in front of their five year old daughter. In that county, crime is the family silver passed down generation to generation. Always linked to drugs. Cocaine and heroin then. Meth today. Mention a family name at an oyster roast and heads will shake followed by stories of petty theft, burglary, assault... Cursed, if you believe in that sortta thing...and I do.
I'm still disturbed by the images of this man. He's a symbol of what can't be saved. Born to parents hanging on by the skin of their teeth. His daughter is 36 now. You wonder, then slam that door shut. It's an exhausting circle of round and round.
Smith & Wesson Model 19, Spring 1976, St John's County, FL
There was a small pond circled by thin pines that screened us from passing traffic on I-95. Cpt Williams was leaning on the hood of his unmarked car when we pulled up on the rutted clay road. Another plain clothes deputy, a sergeant, sat in the car with his door open and listened to the radio for Williams.
No one but Williams and the county sheriff knew our names. Two recent graduates of the Police Standards course with long hair and who were, for the most part, unknown in the county. We'd hang out in bars, light up a joint under our table and wait to get thrown out.
We'd show up the next night and the bouncer who threw us out would call us crazy fucking bastards, apologize, 'cause he was just doing his job, and buy us a couple beers. We'd tell the bouncer we had some stuff to sell -- most of it stolen. Conversation would ensue and I learned at an early age that most criminals are amazingly stupid.
The sergeant stayed in the car while my partner and I reported to Williams. The three of us stood a couple feet from the cars. My partner was telling Williams we needed some more pot when I pushed my hands in my pockets and sheepishly looked out at the pond.
I saw what looked like a tree branch -- Except it was moving -- At us -- Fast. I pointed at it and Williams, being from the area, shouted, "Water Moccasin!" I drew the Model 19 from a rough suede holster clipped to the inside of the back of my jeans, aimed and fired once. The snake disappeared... along with my hearing.
I heard Williams yell, "HO-LY SHIT!" over the ringing in my ears. "What the hell load you got in that thing?" Looking out at the pond for the snake, I turn to Williams, "158 grain, semi jacketed, 357 hollow point," and add, "Did I hit it?" Williams slaps me on the back, "You didn't hit it but you probably gave it a fucking heart attack."
Lesson learned: Snake shot. First two rounds in every deputy's wheel gun -- back in the day.
The red station wagon was almost 15 years old the day it ran a stop sign on a narrow county road that followed the St. John's River northwest of St Augustine. Most of the homes on the river were mobile while the families living in them were not.
The sheriff's car idled under hanging Spanish moss and was unseen by the driver of the red wagon due to three gas pumps belonging to a Gulf station owned by a thick short man named Jimmy and his German Shepherd.
Behind the steering wheel Tanner complained how long it was taking to get dentures and how his wife enjoyed his lack of teeth when the red wagon rolled through the stop sign. Tanner slapped the column shift in drive with one hand and flicked on the lightbar with another.
Gravel shoots at gas pumps as tires grab asphalt and the Gran Fury pulls up fast behind the red wagon which pulls over immediately. Tanner parks behind the wagon with half a car width hanging out on the road and gums, "Take this one. I got my quota for the month."
The passenger door opens and a black corfam shoe settles into soft shoulder sand. Four more steps and it's on asphalt between the cars. A high rise holster unsnaps freeing the hammer of a four inch S&W Model 19 like it was a hand in a girl's blouse.
Three children, the oldest around 10, quietly stare at the sheriff's Plymouth from a rear rumble seat. Sam Brown leather squeaks between steps of corfam. Four more kids in the rear seat look straight ahead. High water Farah pants, t-shirted button downs and Sunday dresses do little to hide anxiety.
Behind the driver's door edge, Ray Bans are removed from under a green straw Stetson the sheriff forces his deputies to wear. The driver is black and in his 40s with salt and pepper hair. "You ran the stop sign back there." The driver cranes his neck to look back. "Yes sir, Sheriff."
"I'm not the sheriff. I'm the sheriff's deputy." The driver looks at the deputy's gold name tag above a matching Cross pen and pencil tucked into the white shirt pocket. "Yes sir, Deputy." The wife flicks open the glove box and roots through receipts, match books, brochures, while the driver leans toward a kid, four or five, sitting between them.
The driver pulls a hand made whipstich wallet from his back pocket and leans back toward his door pulling out his driver's license. 44 years old and six foot one, Mr LaSalle's wife, not without relief, hands her husband the registration. Taking the registration the deputy asks, "Mr LaSalle, are all these children yours?" LaSalle squints at the deputy, "Yes sir, Deputy. I've about fucked myself out of a seat."
The red wagon pulled away. The deputy returned to the air conditioned Gran Fury. He told Tanner what Mr LaSalle said. "That's a good one," laughed Tanner. "You let 'em go when they tell you something like that." I quit -- because most of 'em were not 'good ones' and, in the years since, I've learned there are many ways to fuck yourself out of a seat.
I was a work grant student in the college PR department. Freshman year I photographed the graduation ceremony above. I graduated in 1984 but no one took a picture of me. I always thought it had to do with my white bucks.
Shortly before graduation, a memo was sent to seniors with instructions for what to wear with black robes. For men, it was dark colored pants and dark or black shoes. I wore white trousers and white bucks.
I remember thinking, "What are they gonna do? Take the dashes out of my social security number. Happy graduation. Special dispensation for white buck wearing prior to Memorial Day.
In 1982, GM was a word. "Geeyem." Like someone from Georgia says, "Jim." This one was a Buick deuce and a quarter. A white hunk of fat Detroit steel that made a trip one Spring Break from St Augustine to Daytona Beach with four friends.
Troyer drove the chariot. Golden haired and Aryan, none of us in the car that night knew he was gay. Some of us still don't. A cold case of canned Schaffer shared the back seat with Fusco and Beaudoin. None of us knew Fusco would wind up a screenwriter and producer -- although none of us would've bet against him. Movie star looks but amazingly cheap...he was pre-ordained for Hollywood success.
Beaudoin sat next to Fusco chasing raisins from a generic one pound box with beer. Brillo headed and bearded, the war in El Salvador was excuse for six hours of his indignant Boston accented argument that the Monroe Doctrine was the ultimate evil.
I'm riding shotgun and have to take a leak. Troyer offers to pull over on a stretch of darker-than-the-inside-of-a-goat, I-95. "No need." I say. Wise old man of the car, I explain how I pissed in cans during Army convoys while, "you fuckers were starting ninth grade." I open a beer can with a P38 on my key chain and pull down the fly on 30/30 khakis. I stick my dick in the can careful to avoid the sharp edges.
Success as I fill the can but seconds later feel warm pee covering my khakis. "No problem unless you piss more than 12 ounces," I say and fling the can out the window not knowing the back window is down. Not remembering all the windows are down in the white Detroit slab-o-steel Troyer's mom should be driving.
"Fuck, Tinseth!" Fusco screams as my nephron unit (thanks, Dr. Lardner) formation strikes him head and chest. Beaudoin, slow to catch on, thinks its raining for at least five seconds before a handful of piss-misted raisins are digested. Troyer, of course, laughs.
I spend the rest of the trip holding khakis out the car window at 70mph in an attempt to dry the large stain on my crotch. My friends. And they have remained friends... are tolerant. Like friends who get pissed on always are.
Where do these things come from? Actually, this one came from the Strand Bookstore but they're everywhere. Used bookstores, thrift shops, hospital consignment stores, attics and basements. Some stink of mildew or cigarette smoke but I don't care -- I love them. That non-slick patina has a homemade quality that's simple and honest.
Unique among the Life, Look and Time magazines are regional publications like Palm Beach Life. Most advertising is local and looks it. Format is simple and photography mediocre, but those small budgets result in unique images that almost 50 years later have held up better than national magazines of the era.
And then there are those rich crackers. It's always fun to look at the box they came in.
Graphic designer and friend of 37 years, David Belmonte, remembers the filming of the '60s television show, "Route 66" in St Augustine, FL. The episode, "This is Going to Hurt Me More Than it Hurts You" starred Soupy Sales and featured a pie fight in my college dining room.
If, from the title of this post you thought that the famous U.S. highway went through my hometown, you’d be forgiven. No, the Mother Road unfolded west. Gloriously West. From Chicago to The Coast. But Route 66, the television show went everywhere, including south by southeast, for at least part of a broadcast season. And ultimately snaked its way over to my neck of the coastal woods, St. Augustine, Florida. It was the early 1960s. It was very cool. And I was there.
Sometime in the warm fall of 1963, and shortly after our family moved there, the show series made a filming stop. It happened at about the same time as the assassination of John F. Kennedy. With that exception, the early 1960s was a rather quiet time. And to be honest, I actually liked it that way.
It was to be my only peek, however brief, at our nation that, for the most part, was still unified. And that also meant everyone was unified around the television watching Route 66 on its appointed night. Tellingly, it was also as if our culture was on the eve of great fracture, while on the show, the central characters were trying to keep it all stitched together with an asphalt thread.
Never mind that we were too young to always get the plots. They were going places! The actors weren’t locked into some stage set, so the show had a much more realistic look and feel to it. We’d see establishing shots of them rolling into towns from then very empty highways.
When Tod (Martin Milner) and Linc (Glenn Corbett replacing George Maharis) drove into our own town onscreen, past the conquistador statues with their swords held high in welcome, we shouted with recognition. They were actually driving on the same concrete roads we drove on! How cool was that? And it only got better as scenes of a pre-boutique, pre-Disney era St. Augustine flickered by.
When the Route 66 film company came to town, we all wanted to get a glimpse of the two stars, somehow resembling better versions of our average selves in that peculiar way that only Hollywood can conjure up. It was announced that a public press conference/public greeting would be held at the hospital where they had been filming. We headed to the lot next to the side of the building where a sizable crowd had gathered.
There were lights on stands, lots and lots of cables and big moving vans of equipment, on the sides of each were emblazoned the show’s name. Standing in the middle of it all were Milner and McCord. They smiled and waved and answered a few questions. They were trim, pressed and polished.
Local society women wearing whipped-up do’s and their Sunday best pushed close and flirted and asked for autographs. Men in dark suits nervously shuffled, trying not to look embarrassed at being fans of the show. It was the first time ever that I saw news cameras and reporters.
But what everyone wanted to see was The Car. Especially with the two actors in it. A Corvette, any Corvette would have been so rare in a small town in those days that it might as well have been a UFO. The Car wasn’t at the press conference, and I was very bummed. My memory tells me that during filming we would catch glimpses of their ‘63 or new model ‘64 Sting Ray skimming around town, with or without film crew in pursuit.
I can’t square that in my mind because what I would have seen was a tan Corvette, not red, not blue. (A tan version was used later in the series because it reflected less contrast on black and white film.) I still want to remember seeing it somewhere, though. Maybe around the central square, cruising under the live oaks hung with Spanish moss, so bright and otherworldly it would have looked as if it was lit by its own sun. So did I ever see it? I don’t remember.
While they were filming at the hospital, a friend of the family was cast as an extra. Her part was to walk out of one room, head down the hall, and walk back into another room. For a while the whole town sort of felt like we were at the center of the TV universe. Then it was over and the film company was gone.
When the highly anticipated St. Augustine episode finally aired we were of course excited, but also a little puzzled that the writers decided to go campy with it. Something about idle yachting types and Soupy Sales and pie throwing. Why had they chosen such a silly plot? Surely there were other more interesting ideas to be explored.
It seemed out of character for both the show and our sublime city. But as the episode played out, it actually managed to work okay, with a sprinkling of hero shots of “the ancient city” throughout. We eventually spotted our friend in her scene, barely recognizable with her back to the camera, walking away. More shouting and pointing at the TV set. Everyone was happy, and it generated a lot of local buzz.
So what of Route 66’s influence, if any, on style? The show occupied its pop culture spot at the very zenith of trad. At the precipice of a giant cultural shift, clothing style may have gone arguably downhill from there. But if you view trad style through the prism of Mad Men, it’s no wonder each generation puts its stamp on couture, having followed for years the fashion dictates-—read conformity—of its parents. In the show the two actors often wore slim jeans-cut chinos. And white socks with black loafers. Or boots. And cropped canvas jackets. Did Tod and Linc wear sunglasses? Maybe. Hats, never.
This much I know: It was Tod and Linc whom Tintin had in mind twenty years after the show ended when he was allowed by the owner of a venerable St. Augustine men’s shop to explore the back stockroom for authentic trad wear. Tintin let me in on his find with a big treasure-finding grin. He’d discovered several shelves of original 1960s madras plaid shirts from exactly that Route 66 era. Tags, cardboard, tissue and cello wrap: all original.
Interestingly, the Route 66 theme music was not the “Get Your Kicks On Route 66” song written by Bobbie Troup that pops up every now and then in your head, but was in fact a lilting piano theme by Nelson Riddle. And that theme was very “of the era,” especially compared to TV themes that came later like Lalo Schifrin’s more urgent “Mission Impossible.” Distopian times called for strident themes, and we had not yet arrived.
For Tintin, with his depth of experience with clothing and style, this blog site is self-explanatory. We can explore and take subtle style cues from those earlier days. And chuckle to ourselves, smug in the knowledge that an unnerving number of men today dress like they’re about to mow the lawn. Or just did. Even at restaurants—a vulgar notion that never would have occurred to most men of Tod or Linc’s era, the early 1960s. The trad sixties.
Etched forever in my memory is an old yet modern TV show about two sharp young men and a cool car shimmering on a hot road and heading to our little corner in this vast and confident nation. David Belmonte
I was just kidding back there. I mean really, who wants to wander around St Augustine in 110% humidity chasing a white ball with a little crocodile on their chest?
But the journals show a more festive attitude once the seasonal staff arrived.
Even the photography was festive
It wasn't a Summer internship at The New Yorker but it beat waiting on tables. Three mind frying Summers are documented in Ranger Logs archived in climate controlled and acid free storage somewhere in Northeastern Florida. An NPS curator was kind enough to scan what turned out to be the best days of my life.
Buried in some of the most god awful handwriting are the frustrations of dealing with thousands of visitors a day in a very small space with temps as high as 107. Mr Carlson from TV's, WKRP is afforded VIP coverage but, as always happens, it is the everyday that stands out with each ranger contributing his or her own point of view and penmanship.
A ranger nicknamed, Whitey is addressed as such by a black ranger to the astonishment of a southern Georgia family. A Japanese father asks a ranger for directions to I-95. A pig tailed man in a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt walks by and offers, "Y'all didn't have no trouble finding Pearl Harbor."
It was like working in a giant fish bowl with visitors from all over the world converging with Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia day trippers. All of it captured in a beautiful three volume set complete with photographs and illustrations. Contact me for a limited edition copy or screenplay.
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