HISTORICAL REENACTORS

Last weekend, Fort King George held a historic reenactment day. My guy and I really enjoy going to these and talking to the reenactors. We had a lot of people there including women in colonial dress, men in colonial dress, men in English soldier dress, men in Spanish soldier dress, men in kilts, one monk, and one native American as he would have dressed in Colonial times.

Franciscan Monk:

American Indian starting fire with a bow starter:

American Indian with a blow gun:

Women dressed in colonial garb talking to onlookers:

Scotsmen:

English soldiers:

Woman demonstrating how apron can be used to carry items, including infants:

Man sitting on bed:

All in all, an instructive and entertaining day!

WALK ON THE BEACH

We went over to the beach to walk yesterday morning. There weren't a lot of people but there were some pretty shells like these:

And evidently a swarm of jelly fish had been caught by the tide because there were a lot of dead ones on the sand. We had to watch where we stepped. Here's one:

And of course, there was a car carrier in the distance. The tiny specks at the bottom are people walking on the beach at the edge of the water:

Our beach has changed considerably since we started coming here fifteen years ago.  Then, the ocean was about ten foot from the end of the boardwalk and low tide meant just a short walk to the water. No more. Now there's a little trek to get to the water even at high tide.

There was also a long sandbar out in the water that was visible at low tide. As the years passed, the terrain changed. The sandbar lengthened. The currents between the sandbar and the beach turned into a river. Then the river narrowed. Now the sandbar is gone and all that remains of the currents are a couple of tidal pools. Sand has filled in the rest. This is a pool as we come off the boardwalk. The ocean is at the bottom of the sky beginning from the left. You can barely see it on the horizon, and it ends at the dark line beginning abour two-thirds across which is where the King and Prince hotel curves out toward the water:

And this tidal pool is further up the beach. The water once ran through it and down to the first pool above. You can't see the ocean at all in this picture because it's to the photographer's left:

As a result of the sands shifting, the houses that once sat close (in some cases, too close) to the water, find themselves a fair distance from the ocean. Dunes have taken over what was once a river and then a tidal pool. Now only a shallow trench lets high-tide water into the pools that are left. I took this photo standing on the beach and you can see how far the dunes extend:

Nature certainly brings a lot of changes!

LAGONDA CLASSIC CAR

Going into the grocery store, we spied this classic car sitting in front. We and several others took pix and guessed what it was. A Jaguar? An Aston Martin? No one knew.

As I went inside, an elderly man came out and headed for it so of course, I turned around and followed him. He spoke with a British accent and told us the car had belonged to his father. Tags on it suggested he had brought it over from England which explained the steering wheel being on the right side (wrong side for us Americans!).

According to him, the car is a 1950 Lagonda. Lagonda was a sports car manufacturer in the UK bought by Aston Martin. This model has an engine made by Bentley. As he left the parking lot, it put-putted away!

A beautiful car!

SPRING HAS SPRUNG?

The island is blooming like crazy! It makes it look like spring is here and it isn't even Easter! In the northern part of the state, it's still snowing. I almost feel guilty to be enjoying this weather!

Some photos of azaleas, a rose, and lemon buds on our tiny Meyers Lemon tree.

This last photo is of a wood stork that found its way to the lagoon that flows past our subdivision. I hope he's a sign of spring like the flowers. Although it could be he's been delivering a baby nearby!

RADIO STATION BLUES

When we first came down here in 2004, I discovered an oldies radio station that I loved. WWEZ, "The Island's Easy" radio station.

They played old music. Really old music. Not just sixties and later. No, they played music popular in the forties through the eighties. (And later, the nineties.) Occasionally, they threw in some classical and jazz and Broadway, but mostly it was old favorites. Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, Crying in the Chapel, To Know Him is to Love Him, Rum and Coca Cola, Chariots of Fire, Tennessee Waltz, Old Cape Cod...

They also had the usual filler stuff:  a few minutes of national news, the local weather, local shows like The Sports Chicks, and pet adoption shows like Christie's Critters. They also aired things of interest to the AARP generation regarding finances, technology, et cetera. But their main draw was the music.

Alas, they are kaput.

They began in 2002, and chose to remain a non-profit operation, relying on public contributions. That meant no advertising. Although local businesses could give a certain amount of money and receive in return an acknowledgement on the air, that wasn't enough to keep the station afloat. Due to financial problems, they went off the air. Yesterday was their last day.

This was where they used to broadcast from but now it looks abandoned and forlorn.

Goodbye, old friend! You had a good run and gave me many hours of enjoyment.

I am so sad. It's like finding a bra that fits but when you go back to buy another one, they don't make it any more. I want to cry!

VISIT TO JEKYLL ISLAND

We had visitors this week and went to Sapelo Island one day and Jekyll Island another day. Friends and relatives always seem to enjoy both places.

On Jekyll we went to the Turtle Center where several cold stunned turtles had been brought in. Not from Maine or New York or even North Carolina waters, though. From Florida, the sunshine state!

And as always we enjoyed seeing some of the old houses that were summer homes of the Vanderbilts and other notables around the turn of the century. That's 1900, not 2000.

Here's the Crane Cottage...some cottage!

And the Cherokee Cottage...ah, that's more like it!

And the Jekyll Island Hotel...oh, look! Croquet players!

Those folks knew how to have fun!

CRIME ITEMS

Just a couple of things I found interesting last week.

In the local paper, a woman got arrested. Seems her daughter got into a fight with another girl at school and the woman went and got her daughter from school. Instead of going home, they waited outside the school for the other girl's mother to come out. Then the woman attacked the other mother.

Some role model, huh? And we wonder why the kids are like they are!

Besides the usual women/men fighting women/men items, the crime blotter reported the theft of a carton of beer. A man had it in the back of his pickup and it fell out. Before he cuold get out to recover it, someone swooped in, picked it up, and ran off.The driver didn't have a description of any suspects, the beer was never recovered, and no one was arrested.

Just fell out, eh? All by itself?  I'm wondering if he drank the beer and didn't want to admit it to his wife!

Then, as we were going up I-75 to north Georgia, traffic stopped about a mile from the High Falls exit. I mean, stopped! After a few minutes this GBI truck (made like a Brinks truck or SWAT team vehicle) came roaring up the middle of the interstate, siren blasting, and kept going. We began to inch along until, after nearly an hour, we made it to the exit and got off.

The holdup? Turns out they'd caught a mobile meth lab. Seems the driver fell asleep and ran the car off the road. So the HazMat people were out in force, doing whatever they do for several hours. Both people in the car were taken into custody.

So the driver fell asleep? While running a meth lab on Interstate 75? I would have thought he would have plenty of worries--and drugs--to keep him awake! And why I-75? Why not a barely-traveled road in the country somewhere? And a car? Couldn't he at least afford a van? He and his partner could have taken turns napping!

People are just plain crazy, aren't they?