Super Bowl XLIX

  by Alec Newell

 



 

Super Bowl XLIX: Football Mascots and Logos

Before there were Super Bowls, Jumbotrons, professional cheerleaders, wardrobe malfunctions, and million dollar players who prayed or danced obscenely in the end zone, there was the game of football.  Whether you favor the Boston Patriots and their flaccid footballs, or the Seattle Seahawks with their on-field temper tantrums, it's becoming increasingly difficult to get excited about any of the Super Bowl match-ups these days.  As football  descends deeper and deeper into the realm of performance spectacle, it has begun to look more like professional wrestling than a legitimate sporting contest.

So how do you pick a favorite?  Most fans are bonded to their favorite teams through some notion of regional identification or brand loyalty.  After that, reasons to favor a team become as arbitrary as the betting selections of novice aficionados at the local horse track.  If you based your selection on team mascots or the uniform colors this year, Seattle was probably your team.   There was nothing too imaginative about the name change from Boston Patriots to New England Patriots.  There is no catchy alliteration in the name and nothing sexy or terrifying enough in the team's logo to get the blood racing.  As to the Patriot's team colors, there is nothing new or imaginative there either.

On the other hand, the Seahawks have a logo that could have been inspired by a Native American tribal mask or an Intuit totem pole - a  brilliant stroke of politically correct marketing when compared to a team like the Redskins.   But what is a Seattle Seahawk?  Some mythical creature like the Thunder Bird or a Phoenix?  Or something as arbitrary and obscure as a Cleveland Brown, a Nittany Lion, or a Green Bay Packer?  Turns out it's none of the above.  A sea hawk is  another name for an osprey, the same bird that doubles as the local mascot for the University of North Florida.

Unlike the Detroit Lions, Tennessee Titans, or the Jacksonville Jaguars, it seems like a team's name or mascot should reflect some kind of regional identity.  How is a Jaguar any more descriptive of Jacksonville than say a giraffe or a rhinoceros?  At least there are still very real sea hawks indigenous to the Seattle area, and the logo has an authentic association with tribes native to the North West Coast of this continent.

PS:  If you bet long green on the Seahawks because you like their uniforms, you just lost.  The final score was New England Patriots - 28,  Seattle Seahawks - 24.

 

A.G. Penman's Record Tarpon

A. G. Penman's Record Tarpon: The Rest of the Story

by Alec Newell

Penman's trophy tarpon on display at the Beaches Museum
photo by Newell



 Penman (right) with 172 pound
7 foot 9 inch, record tarpon
courtesy: Beaches Museum

Canadian born Arthur G. Penman (1882-1966) moved to Florida in the 1920s, became a US citizen, and in the 1940 census is listed as living on Florida Boulevard in a house that he had probably built for himself.  Penman has been called the Beaches "first pioneer developer." He was also an avid golfer and fisherman, but most Beaches residents will recognize him as the man for whom Penman Road is named.

 

As a youngster in the early 1960s, I remember visiting the old Jacksonville Beach City Hall building and being impressed by the enormous mounted tarpon that hung on the wall there.  I didn't know it at the time but that fish was, and may still be, the largest tarpon ever caught in the St. Johns River.  Also on that wall, below the fish, was a plaque that bore a familiar name, Penman.

 

Penman Memorial Trophy
photo by Newell

The term "fish story" has become a synonym for exaggeration and puffery.  That same 7-foot 9-inch mounted tarpon, now on display in the Beaches Museum, still bears mute testimony to the fish's impressive size.  The International Game Fish Association has pages and pages of rules for determining what is a fairly caught record game fish.  The fish's weight and the fact A.G. Penman was holding the rod when the fish was hooked, has never been disputed, but even Official Record catches are not entirely immune to omissions and embellishments.






February issue, 1954

In February 1954, Motor Boating Magazine carried an account of the story which did not inflate the fish's weight, but did take considerable liberties in reporting the tackle used and fighting time for the catch.  The following information appeared on page 117 of that issue; the "...171-pound, 14-ounce tarpon was caught October 14, 1949 by A.G. Penman," (true, except for the date) "on 15-pound test line," (it was officially 36-pound test line) "using a 2/0 reel" (officially a 4/0 reel) "and a 4-ounce tip." (officially a 6-ounce rod tip) Refer back to information on the engraved plaque (see photo).  "It took him 5 and a half hours to boat his prize." (a total fabrication)  But the best part of this fish story was still yet to be written, or told.
 

Official statistics for Penman's trophy catch
photo by Newell

 

A.G. Penman
courtesy: Beaches Museum

About 1964 or 1965, the old Jacksonville Beach City Hall building was torn down and replaced.  Penman's tarpon was moved, for a while, to the Beaches Chamber of Commerce before coming to the Beaches Museum in about 2006.  I had all but forgotten the fish until early 2012, when Charlie Hamaker published Cane Pole Wisdom - Volume II.  In it he relates the following story as told to him by the late J.C. Ross, a veteran angler and longtime resident of Mill Cove, where the fish was caught.

"Well, I guess it's okay to tell the story now since they've all passed away. Phillip Hahn had taken Arthur Penman and his friend for a day of fishing on Mill Cove.  Everyone knew the Cove was loaded with big tarpon. Phillip took Arthur and his friend trolling in an area known as Coon Point, the banks drop off real steep in an area between two sand bars, probably 12 feet deep or deeper. As they passed between the two sandbars the tarpon struck.  It came out of the water, made one huge jump and landed on the sand bar. Phillip got the boat beached on the sand bar...got out...and beat it to death with a window-sash weight."

And that's the rest of the story.





The Arthur G. Penman Memorial Trophy
"In tribute to one of America's most famous tarpon anglers"
photo by Newell

 

 

Jacksonville's Bridges

 

The Bridges of Duval County

 

by Alec Newell





The Main Street Bridge against the Jacksonville skyline

Henry Holland Buckman

There are only two of the world's great rivers that flow north, the Nile is one and the St. Johns River is the other.   As the St. Johns flows into Duval County it passes the first of the eight bridges that span the river on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.  The Buckman Bridge, built in 1970, connects Mandarin to Orange Park, and is named for Jacksonville lawyer and State Legislator Henry Holland Buckman (1858-1914).  At its west end, the bridge lands at the north-south boundary between Clay and Duval County.   As the river moves through Jacksonville, it flows past seven more bridges on its way to the Mayport  Jetties.  Can you name them?  If you said the Fuller Warren, the  Acosta, the Main Street, the Isaiah D. Hart,  the Mathews, and the Dames Point Bridges, you'd almost be right.
 

Crews replacing the single track swing bridge with the double tracked "bascule lift" Florida East Coast 
Railway Bridge, taken from the original Acosta Bridge circa 1925
 

The first bridge to span the St Johns river at Jacksonville was the Florida East Coast Railway Bridge.   Built by Henry Flagler in 1889, it was a single track swing bridge that allowed direct rail access from Jacksonville to Southside and the beaches beyond.   That bridge was replaced in 1925 by a double tracked "bascule lift" bridge that still operates.  It runs closely parallel to the west side of the Acosta bridge, and since it carries no automobile traffic, many people forget that it's even there.  Until 1921, all automobile traffic that crossed the river near Jacksonville had to go by ferry.

Original Acosta Bridge (foreground) FEC Railway Bridge (middle ground)
Fuller Warren Bridge (in the distance)

 

 

The St. Elmo W. Acosta home circa 1885

Jacksonville's first major bridge built for pedestrian and automobile traffic was named for St. Elmo W. Acosta (1875 -1947).  Informally known as Chic Acosta, he had been a City Commissioner, a State Legislator, and is still remembered as one of Jacksonville's first "green" politicians, and an opponent of women's suffrage.  The home that he and his family lived in at Empire Point is now part of the Episcopal High School Campus, and is currently used for classrooms and studio space by the Fine Arts Department there.
 

The Acosta house as part of the Episcopal High School Campus

By July of 1941 Jacksonville had its second automobile bridge.  Commonly known as the Main Street Bridge, or simply called the "blue bridge" by some; it is officially neither.  In 1957 the bridge was named as a tribute to Jacksonville's only 18 year, seven term Mayor.  There is a seldom noticed sign over the south entrance of the structure to indicate the span's official name, the John T. Alsop Jr. Bridge.

 

 

Governor Fuller Warren

The original Fuller Warren Bridge was completed in 1954, and named for Florida's 30th Governor, who had also served as both a State Representative and as a member of the Jacksonville City Council.  For a time, the Fuller Warren was one of Jacksonville's three toll bridges.  The tolls were lifted in 1988 during Mayor Tom Hazouri's administration, and in 2002 the original bridge was replaced by an eight lane prestressed concrete span of the same name.
 

Another one of Jacksonville's (former) toll bridges connects the Arlington Expressway to Downtown Jacksonville.  It was built in 1953 and named for John E. Mathews, a Florida State Legislator who had also served as Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme court.  In 1984 the bridge was painted maroon red to celebrate the Jacksonville Bulls who were then members of the now defunct U.S. Football League.

John E. Mathews Bridge

The Isaiah D. Hart Bridge completed in 1968, also called the Green Monster by some commuters, was named for the Patriot War veteran and plantation owner Isaiah David Hart (1792-1861) who is credited with founding Jacksonville in 1822.  Several of Jacksonville's downtown streets are named for his children:  Julia, Laura, and Ocean, which is named for Ossian B. Hart, who would become Florida's 10th Governor in 1873.

The Isiah D.Hart Bridge from North Florida Shipyards



The Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge to Dames Point

Napoleon Bonaparte Broward

The newest and probably the most visually impressive span, commonly known as the Dames Point Bridge, is officially the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge;  it is named for Florida's 19th Governor.  Broward (1857-1910), who was orphaned at twelve, decided on a maritime career, and came up through the ranks as a tug boat operator, riverboat captain, and bar pilot.  He served a stint as Jacksonville's sheriff but left that office to become a gun runner during the Spanish American War.  At that war's end, he returned to a political career that culminated in a Florida Governorship.  Broward's old home still stands facing the St. Johns River, near the entrance to the Kingsley Plantation on Ft. George Island.  The address is 9953 Heckscher  Drive, 9.3 miles east of the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward  Bridge.

Home of Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward
9953 Heckscher Drive, Ft. George Island



Florida-Georgia Weekend 2014

 

 

Florida-Georgia Weekend 2014:  Halloween Night

by

Alec Newell

   

 

Anyone remotely familiar with the annual Florida-Georgia classic will tell you that the intense rivalry associated with that game always makes it an odds makers' nightmare to call.   No matter how the season seems to be going for either team,  anything can happen.  Upsets seem to be the rule rather than the exception, and yet, they always seem to leave the fans and the pundits stunned when they occur.

With the Gators fresh off of a Homecoming loss to Missouri, and a tepid performance in the conference standings, UF fans were already grumbling about head coach Will Muschamp's job, and the broadcast sports gurus were predicting that Muschamp would be fired if, and more probably when Florida lost to Georgia.
 

Georgia by contrast, had already beaten everyone on their schedule except South Carolina, and according to Bull Dog  fans, were well on their way to a South East Conference Championship.  And so it all seemed that Halloween night before the big game.

My wife received a call from her old college (UF) roommate with an invitation to meet up with the roommate and her husband's entourage of Bull Dog fans for a pre game dinner at a restaurant in Fernandina.  When we arrived my wife and her former roommate were the only two decked out in Gator garb.   I was the only one in the party of twelve not in costume (Georgia or Florida).

After a round or two of drinks and some polite table chat, the roommate's husband asked me, "Well, who do you like in tomorrow's game?"

I explained that I had technically been born a Gator, and while most of my family (including my wife and in-laws) were all Florida graduates or fans, I had finished up at UNF and wasn't betting on the game.

The man sitting next to the roommate's husband leaned over and asked, "What did he say?"

Roommate's husband:  "He says he's the smartest one in his family."

P.S.  The final score:  Florida 38 - Georgia 20
   

American Beach Roots

 

American Beach Roots: Kingsley, Sammis, and Lewis

by Alec Newell



Strawberry Plantation House at Clifton Point - photo by Newell

 

Photo by Newell

The extended family of Zephaniah Kingsley, Anna Jai, and their descendants have been major players  in shaping the history of Northeast Florida during three colonial periods, American territorial times, Florida's early statehood, and on into the 20th Century.  Between Lake George and the St. Mary's River, the fingerprints they left seem to be everywhere.  Most of us are familiar with the story of how the slave trader Zepheniah Kingsley bought a 13 year old "African princess"  Anna Madgigine Jai in Cuba, and brought her back to his Laurel Grove Plantation in what is now Orange Park, Florida.  The couple produced four children, and Zephaniah never waivered in his acknowledgement of Anna as his wife.

Headstone next to Anna Kingsley's
 unmarked grave - photo by Newell

Later Anna, as a freed woman of color, would own her own slaves, plantation property, and live at various other family residences along the Lower St. Johns River.  These properties included: Mandarin (later owned by Harriet Beecher Stowe),  Kingsley Plantation (Ft. George Island), Chesterfield (now part of the Jacksonville University Campus), Floral Bluff (where the Arlington Road meets the river), and Strawberry Plantation (now Arlington Bluff or Clifton Point) where Anna is buried.  Probably less well known, is the Kingsley connection to the Afro-American Life Insurance Company and American Beach.

In 1830, Zepheniah  married his youngest daughter, Mary Elizabeth Kingsley, to "Colonel" or "Captain" John S. Sammis, a white New York shipbuilder with practical experience in milling lumber.  At the time of his marriage Sammis had not only been chief overseer at Kingsley's White Oak Plantation, but had also been managing planting, lumber production, cotton ginning, and a grits milling operation for the Richard Family who owned Strawberry Mills and the 6,000 acre Strawberry Plantation at what is now Clifton Point.  The mills were some of the first water operated machines of their kind in the area and were powered by same Strawberry Creek that crosses under Cesery Blvd. and the Arlington Road today.



The red star indicates the location of John Sammis' plantation house - photo by Newell





A. L. Lewis 1865-1947

John Sammis acquired Strawberry Plantation and the mills from the Richard family following the death of Francis Richard Jr. in 1839.  Surviving headstones at the Clifton Cemetery indicate that members of the mixed-race, extended  Kingsley families (Baxter and Sammis) were buried there from 1841 until 1870.  In 1850 John Sammis had a large plantation house built on the property that is still in use today as a private residence.  The Clifton Cemetery is not far from that house, and Anna Kingsley lies in an unmarked grave next to the headstone of Emile V. Sammis, her grandson.  Many of the original grave markers were made of cedar or cypress and have long since returned to the elements.  In 1884 Mary Francis Sammis, the octaroon granddaughter of John Sammis and Mary Kingsley Sammis, married Abraham Lincoln Lewis.  Lewis, the son of former slaves, would become a founding President of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company and Florida's first black millionaire.

Motto:  "Recreation and Relaxation Without Humiliation"

Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, access to public beaches by "persons of color" had been severely limited.  In 1935, A.L. Lewis bought a 200 acre tract of ocean front land on the south end of Amelia Island, that would become American Beach.   Lewis wanted to not only provide recreational perks for his black employees, but to also establish a private, all black, beach-front community where African Americans could afford to buy land and build homes.  In the years that followed, the community flourished.  It quickly became a prime recreational destination.  In time, it also became a unique retirement settlement and a magnet  for black celebrities and entertainers like Cab Calloway, Zora Neal Hurston, Ray Charles, Hank Aaron, Joe Louis, Ossie Davis, and James Brown.

Next year the community will be celebrating its 80th anniversary.  The current residents of American Beach are understandably proud of their unbroken connection to the cultural legacy which A. L. Lewis had originally envisioned for them.



Afro-American Life Insurance Company
101 East Union St. - photo by Newell

 

Hurricane Dora

50 Years Ago: Hurricane Dora Remembered

by Alec Newell



10th Street and Oceanfront Atlantic Beach, in the wake of Hurricane Dora

In September of 1964, I was 15 years old.  My family lived on 12th Street in Atlantic Beach.  We had experienced hurricanes before, but Dora would leave us with our most memorable impressions.  During a lull in that storm our whole family decided to walk down to the beach to see for ourselves what was happening.  There was an eight foot high curved seawall along the beach that had been designed to redirect the force of a storm surge back onto itself, but it had not been designed to withstand the kind of pounding we witnessed that day.  Waves were surging over the seawall and the force of the current was washing away the sand behind it.   As the erosion accelerated, it exposed the heavy metal cables that anchored the seawall back to the ocean front yards it was supposed to be protecting.

The Bull House



At the foot of 11th Street, between the Old Bull House and the house just south of it, there was a 20 ft. high palm tree growing above the level of the seawall.  Several waves surged over that tree forcing the palm fronds at the top of that tree back down over its trunk.  The waves were a heavy dark grey that matched the color of the sky and there was a strong current moving debris in the surf north with a force I'd never seen before.  I remember seeing another full grown palm tree with bright green fronds float by us at an amazing clip indicating an even more serious erosion problem somewhere to the south of us.

 

Atlantic Beach Hotel pool with covered promenade, before Dora

We walked south another block to the foot of 10th Street to get a better look at the Atlantic Beach Hotel and its pier which were also taking a beating.  The hotel had a giant swimming pool that was flanked by a two story frame building  and a stucco masonry bathhouse, just south of where we were standing.  In front of the swimming pool there was a wide veranda with a planked promenade and a row of heavy Adirondack beach chairs that faced the ocean.

 

Atlantic Beach Hotel from the air, after Dora 1964

As waves crashed over the seawall, we watched the roof of the veranda collapse. Surging waves pushed floating debris from the veranda and some of the Adirondack chairs back into the swimming pool.  What didn't settle in the pool was dragged back over the seawall and washed out to sea when the waves retreated.  The pilings under the pier began to wobble, lean, then fail, taking whole sections of lumber into the heavy surf.  Just weeks before, some of the boys who regularly surfed the Atlantic Beach Pier had been out testing their mettle in the giant waves that had accompanied Hurricane Cleo earlier that season, but no one went out during Dora.

Atlantic Beach Hotel from the beach 1964

Being a teenager and not a property owner, I remember being mostly exhilarated by the event.  My mother had filled white plastic bleach bottles with drinking water; the bathtub had been filled with water for washing dishes and flushing toilets.  We had a battery operated transistor radio and flashlights. Our concrete block house felt secure against the wind and rain, and we played cards or board games at night by the light of a Coleman lantern that was normally used for night fishing in better weather.  The whole experience was like being on an extended time-out from school and the real world.

The damage to our house was minimal.  We lost a few roofing shingles, and there were downed palm fronds and tree limbs all over our yard, but we had experienced no real flooding.  Standing water covered most of the yard and all of 12th Street, giving the visual impression that our house sat on a small island surrounded by a vast moat with palm trees growing out of it.  We had been lucky.

Damage along Old A-1-A in South Ponte Vedra Beach



It wasn't until days later, riding around in a car, that we began to appreciate how much real damage the hurricane had inflicted on other parts of the Beach.  Trees and power lines were down everywhere, sea walls had been breached and homes and businesses were severely damaged or gone.  Some ocean front home owners had had junked cars towed to their homes and rolled into the trenches behind their seawalls in an effort to slow the erosion which was undermining their house foundations.  It was days before the storm water began to  recede, weeks before the mountains of yard trash could be removed, months  to repair, and years to replace some of the damaged buildings.  President Lyndon B. Johnson and his entourage personally toured the Jacksonville Beaches and declared Northeast Florida a national disaster area.  The property damage left in the wake of Hurricane Dora was estimated to be 280 million dollars in 1964, or the equivalent of 2.07 billion dollars in today's money.


 

Florida Lobster








Photo by Newell

 

 Showing My Age

by

Alec Newell

 

Back in late March of this year, after what seemed like an endless winter, I fished about 30 miles off-shore, near Blackmar's Reef, with a young crew that included Matt Evitt, Mike Conte, and divers Tim Cullen and Mike Shipe.  We had a great day, with about a dozen pink snappers, our bag limit of B-liners (vermillion snapper) to 19 inches, a very nice haul of large spiny lobsters, a sheephead, several triggerfish, a large mangrove snapper, half a dozen large red snapper that, of course, had to be thrown back, and some lion fish that I let the divers clean.

 

There are some huge mounted langousta or spiny lobsters on the wall of the Marine Science Center in Mayport, but not being a scuba diver, I tend to forget how big the lobsters here actually get.  I used to free dive for "bugs" or spiny lobsters in the Keys, but the last time I was there in 1972,  you could still order sea turtle steaks from the menu at Sid and Roxy's Green Turtle Inn on Islamorada.  According to Tennessee Williams' Memoirs, the turtle steaks and drinks there were excellent;  he looked forward to eating sea turtle, and (mostly) drinking there whenever he was staying at his house in Key West.

I never ate at the Green Turtle, but remember the restaurant, with its chalkboard menu out front, as a landmark when I stayed at Marathon.  We'd fish and dive Marathon for lobster by day, then head down to Key West to drink at Sloppy Joe's Bar at night.  I remember seeing old eight by ten inch black and white photographs, on Sloppy Joe's walls,  of  1930's and 40's era celebrities.  One was of a very nicely dressed Johnny Weissmuller perched atop a  barstool, wearing a double breasted tropical suit, with an open necked sport shirt.  He is mugging grandly for the camera but his unfocused gaze betrays his extreme intoxication.  The picture offered an entirely new perspective on the childhood image I had of Tarzan.

photo by Newell

Sloppy Joe's always reminded me of Pete's Bar.  Ernest Hemingway had hoisted a few in both places, but he is more often associated with Sloppy Joe's, where he'd left some personal affects and a trunk full of old manuscripts parked in a back room of the bar.  Shortly after his death, the trunk was opened and found to contain an unfinished manuscript for what would later become Islands in the Stream.

Hemingway's fourth wife, Mary, had the manuscript edited, added to, and posthumously published (1970).  The book was later adapted to a movie starring George C. Scott (1977) and became the inspiration for a Bee Gees' song (1983) that was originally performed by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.  Islands in the Stream became a block buster enterprise which earned a financial bonanza for the Hemingway estate.

But I'm not here to count the Hemingways' money or to digress over Tennessee Williams' culinary habits; this is a fish story, or rather a lobster story, and we all know what fish stories are about: "mine's bigger than yours is," right?  So I'll just cut to the chase, and since a picture's worth a thousand words, here they are.

Photo by Newell