8:35 p.m. Jan. 31
Daytona Beach, Fla.--I could do this all night.
I'm sitting at a yellow and red Stuckey's rest stop in Scottsmoor, Fla., about 30 miles south of Daytona Beach. The vintage Stuckey's is halfway between I-95 and US 1 on Stuckway Road, of course. The Stuckey's and BP gas station are adjacent to the Crystal Lake RV Park where we are spending the night. There's live alligators in that lake. I think my road partner Angelo went out to buy a machete.
For the alligators?
Or maybe I'm getting on his nerves.
I had forgotten about all that great Stuckey's stuff like log rolls and goo goo rolls. But this Stuckey's has free Wi-Fi, which is why I'm here. Faith Hill is singing "The Way You Love Me" on a loud country radio station. Night manager Tapan Patel and his family are my congenial hosts, steering me towards the Mountain Dew. A thin tanned man from the RV park walks in to buy a pack of cigs. I believe he is the ghost of Fred Neil. A group of two young men and two young women have stopped for gas. They piled out of their silver Jeep van to use the washrooms. I'm the only person in the Stuckey's dining area. One woman takes a $3.99 jade and sterling silver necklace and dangles it like the string of a far away kite. She does not buy it. She looks at me and I look bad. We left Marietta around 8 a.m. and got into Daytona Beach at what seems like 3:99 p.m.
When you're on the road that long, you search for perspective.......
I stopped in Daytona Beach to see Doc Graham, a local Negro League veteran who barnstormed with history maker Jackie Robinson. Graham, 78, was an infielder with the Jacksonville Eagles and Newark Eagles. During segragation, Daytona Beach was the most tolerant city in Florida.
Robinson was cheered in Daytona Beach when he was jeered everywhere else. In March, 1946 Daytona Beach hosted the first integrated game in modern professional baseball history when Robinson's Montreal Royals met the Brooklyn Dodgers in a Spring Training matchup. Remember, segragation was a law in 1946.
Daytona Beach was the first in Florida to have black policemen. It was one of the first cities in America to have bus transportation for blacks when every other city only had bus transportation for whites.
In her memoir "Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait," his widow Rachel Robinson wrote, "Compared to the adjacent towns Daytona Beach stood out as kind of a political oasis. Its more liberal environment could be traced to organizations of Negro voters, its economic base in tourism and baseball. We moved freely in downtown Daytona Beach and we were welcomed into the ballpark."
Seeds of acceptance were planted by Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune.
In 1904 she founded the Daytona Library and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. She was able to obtain funding from Northern industrialists who vacationed around Daytona Beach. Major contributors included James Gamble of Procter & Gamble. Bethune's friends included Eleanor Roosevelt and writer Zora Neale Hurston, who in 1945 had her houseboat, Sun Tan, docked in Daytona Beach. Today the Bethune-Cookman College is on the Florida Black Heritage Trail.
"It's all because of Mary Bethune that Daytona was different," said Graham, who was born in Jacksonville. "We couldn't go across the bridge to the beach, but she made it possible."
I asked Graham the trendy question of the season, the significance of two African-Americans coaching against each other for the first time in Super Bowl XL1. "It's wonderful, but I don't look at them as black coaches," Graham said. "I look at them as professional coaches who happen to have the best teams."
Graham said he discussed football with Robinson, who in the early 1940s starred for the UCLA football team. Robinson was the first athlete in UCLA history to letter in four different sports (football, basketball, baseball and track). He also played football for the Honolulu Bears. "It's important for the kids to know this," Graham said. "It is all about the kids."
This kid is getting tired and they're getting ready to kick me out of Stuckey's. They close at 11 p.m. and since we're in the middle of nowhere, it does seem a little creepy late at night. But some stories are worth driving the extra mile to share.
11:20 PM Jan. 30
Marietta, Ga.-----We are on day three of a long and winding RV trip from Chicago to Miami to join the rumble for Super Bowl XV1. Our dusty home has been named the Rabid Bear. Although our RV is decorated with Bears pennants and posters, not one Colts fan has given us the finger on our spin down I-65 and now I-75. We've had a few thumbs up from Bears fans.
The media has all kinds of tricks up its sleeve, but this one is unique.
Right now its about 25 degrees outside at the Brookwood RV Park just north of Atlanta. There's just me and my pal Angelo Varias on this trip. He brought along a VHS of "The Benny Goodman Story" starring Steve Allen and drummer Gene Krupa. We just finished watching snippets of that.
I don't think Dan Patrick spent Tuesday night on South Beach this way.
We are also solicting roadside tips on how to make the rest of our journey (and our trip back north) more compelling.......
......There are two important things to know when driving a 31-foot RV. Remember all the space behind you when you make a turn. Your RV clearly has to clear everything. And when you come to a stop, break early and allow about three times as much space as you would in a car.
Lexicon is also essential. We are not in a motor home. In 1976 the Department of Housing and Urban Development defined manufactured homes as residences and no longer vehicles. Mobility was no longer their function; being a residence was their main purpose.
In 2006 the RV industry had its best sales year in three decades.
"Baby boomers are coming into the prime buying age," said Kevin Broom, spokesperson for the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association in Weston, Va. in an interview before we left Chicago on Sunday. . "The fastest growing group in terms of RV ownership is under 35. Young people are interested in Sports Utility RVs (that transport motorycles, canoes, etc.)
Our loaned 2007 Fleetwood Tioga RV retails for $69,995. We are not talking on cell phones as we drive. Fleetwood Enterprises was founded in 1950 by John Crean, who died last month at age 81. Broom said the Fleetwood RVs are popular with NASCAR drivers traveling the circuit with friends and families. Football analyst John Madden is afraid of flying. He travels in a 45-foot Cruiser IV, manufactured by Motor Coach Industries in Schaumburg, just outside of Chicago.
Maybe we will see the MaddenCruiser in Miami.
But now we have to get some shut-eye for tomorrow. It is an eight-hour drive to our next stop in Daytona Beach. I will try to write tomorrow, but our Daytona campground has a shuffle board court.
7:24 p.m. Jan. 15---The snow was falling like Super Bowl confetti this afternoon as I drove from the West Side of Chicago to Evanston--I guess that counts as a road trip.
During an early afternoon segment on sports talk WSCR-AM in Chicago two hosts declared that this Sunday's NFC Championship game between the Bears and the New Orleans Saints means nothing to the cultural welfare of New Orleans. "Its just a game," said Dan, with his Howdy Doody partner typically mimicking his statement. "Nothing will change the fact that New Orleans will become the Atlantic City of the South." These guys are always bitter pills to swallow. Dan and Terry took sports talk to a real low a couple of years ago when they made fun of the fact that Chicago Cubs great Ron Santo had lost both his legs to diabetes. Real funny stuff. This tells you about their negative frame of mind.
The positive culture of sports can be found outside their studio door. The 1990s success of Michael Jordan and the Bulls shifted the stereotype of Chicago from 1930s gangsters to a contemporary air of showtime typically seen in Los Angeles and New York. The Bulls still lead the NBA in attendance, which is amazing for a 22-17 team. Chicago is ramping up its bid for the 2016 Olympics by pointing out that it has a NFL franchise -unlike its bidding rival Los Angeles. And the fact that Chicago has two full-time sports talk radio stations that employ hundreds of people says that Sunday's match-up might be a little more than "just a game," just in a business sense.
This is what I know about New Orleans and its beloved Saints.....
1. The Saints were awarded an NFL franchise on Nov. 1, 1966.
New Orleans was hardly a rainbow gumbo in 1966 and 1967, when the Saints began play. The Detroit-New Orleans Stars of baseball's Negro Leagues did not even disband until 1961. Professional football united people in the Gulf Coast region.
The Saints were much more than a game.
"Bringing pro football to the City of New Orleans in the 1960s was an accomplishment beyond the economic impact of a professional franchise," said Dr. Norman Francis, president of Xavier University in a 1991 Saints yearbook I picked up at the Superdome. "Integration was very much an issue in the South. The league had to be satisfied that its black athletes would be accepted in our community." Francis was a member of the Saints' initial ownership syndicate. As racial conflicts of the mid-1960s divided other American cities, New Orleanians worked together to bring the Saints into the NFL fold.
2. The Saints are the Cubs of the NFL.
Sunday's game would be a feel good story beyond the obvious circumstances of Katrina. The Saints have always been my second favorite NFL team to the Bears. This is the 'Aints first trip to a championship game. In 1991 the Saints President/General Manager was Jim Finks. In 1984 Finks was the Cubs president when they won the N.L. East. The Saints even had its own version of the Cubs 1960s College of Coaches. In 1972 former Apollo astronaut Dick Gordon (not the former Bears receiver) was named Executive Vice-President of the Saints. He had no football experience. His "mission" was to instill military efficiency in the front office. Of course, his mission failed.
3. The Saints are the only major sport in New Orleans.
In the 2004 NFL season that preceded Katrina, New Orleans' 23.5 rating was the second highest market for the Fox network -only Milwaukee scored higher. The Saints are simply a way of life. In 1983 New Orleans soul legend Aaron Neville recorded the single "Who Dat?" (The History of the Saints)," a hip-hop version of "When The Saints Go Marching In." In 1985 a bunch of Bears players who couldn't sing and dance recorded "The Super Bowl Shuffle."
The NBA's New Orleans Hornets are still playing most home games in Oklahoma City and baseball's Zephyrs are a member of the Pacific Coast League---believe it or not. The Saints have always been the only major sport in New Orleans. Before Archie Manning made his mark in New Orleans, Saints fans embraced grungy quarterback Billy "Whiskey" Kilmer, who loved to hang out at The Old Absinthe House, my favorite dive on Bourbon Street. The great 6'8" Bears defensive end Doug Atkins ended his career as a Saint and Guido Merkens tried to jump start his career as a Saint. The Saints even once had a player named Remi Prudhomme.
4. I've been to New Orleans twice since Hurricane Katrina. The first visit was three months after the storm and I returned in April, 2006 for the 37th Annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Due to hotel and transportation limitations, Jazz Fest '06 was pretty much a local affair.
I saw Gulf Coast residents respond to music with a ragged collage of smiles and tears. If a song could take them somewhere else for a few moments, it was more than "just a song." If Saturday night's resolve of the Saints' Deuce McAllister dragging a bunch of players into the end zone becomes a willful metaphor for just one fan, then it is more than "just a game."
In January, 1986 I spent a week in New Orleans doing color stories for the Sun-Times when the Bears played New England in Super Bowl XX. I was dispatched to Louisiana at the last minute and did not have a place to stay. I was supposed to crash on the floor of some sportswriter in suburban New Orleans. Most of Team Sun Times had already landed: the gentleman columnist Ray Sons, lead writer Ron Rapoport, sportswriters Toni Ginnetti and Dan Pompei. My pal Ernie Tucker was sent down on the City of New Orleans train with a bunch of drunken Bears fans. I got off the plane and went straight to my first story, a sit-down with Mustapha, the mellow assistant curator of the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum. He was designing tiny Patriot and Bears voodoo dolls when I dropped in.
After the interview Mustapha said he knew of an extra room in a small French Quarter hotel. I will never forget walking down sunny Bourbon Street with Mustapha. I wore some type of lumpy jean jacket and carried a Radio Shack computer. Mustapha was dressed in a black pinstriped suit with a matching fedora accented by a bright yellow plume. Even by mid-day Bourbon Street standards, we looked weird in a Midnight Cowboy way. But he found time to close up shop and lend a helping hand. New Orleans is still full of such surprises, which is why its still early to make a call on the city's future. No one would have bet that the Saints would be in this year's NFC championship game. They lost 13 games last season.
In sports, despair begets hope, pain grows into solace. I think of myself as a hard core sports fan and try to keep things in perspective; like not calling sports talk shows and maintaining this "just a game" deal. But it is the transcending moments of humanity that endure; the triumphs of Ron Santo, the social conscience of Muhammad Ali, the comforting smile of Buck O'Neil.
After the Saints victory on Saturday, New Orleans head coach Sean Payton walked around the Superdome and shook hands with fans. Of course that's a small form of connection that cynics might mock. But I'll remember that scene. Connections lead to community, which New Orleans is still struggling to find. And, outside the Gulf Coast, America continues to become an impersonal landscape of text messages, computers and downloads. A game is something we can still identify. A game is who we are. And in its best moments it is who we can be.
[Originally published Jan. 2, 2005, edited for blogosphere.
Updates and comments are encouraged, I will try to return before Opening Day 2007.]
KEY WEST, Fla. -- It wasn't so long ago that extreme travel was something for everyone. During the 1960s America's roadside attractions were promoted by being the biggest, tallest and always rolling under a bridge of sighs. Just pull over and size it up.
The Southernmost Hotel is that kind of place.
Located on the far south end of Key West, the hotel is the closest you can get to sleeping in Cuba......
....I began staying at the Southernmost in the late 1970s when it was still the funky Southernmost Motel (in U.S.A). It had a queasy aqua/Sea World motif and rooms featured rickety hand-operated screen windows. I always felt I was in a Sam Shepard play when I stayed at the Southernmost. I chose the place just because of its name. How cool was it to stay at the "Southernmost Motel in U.S.A."? (I've also stayed at the tallest hotel in America, the 73-story Renaissance Center, built in 1977 in downtown Detroit.)
The Southernmost Motel's 1963 brochure reinforced the far away image. Check out this text: "Rooms constantly caressed by soft, invigorating Trade Winds. Every vacation moment is memorable with the satisfaction that comes from gracious living in the Tropics."
Some 25 years since my first visit, the little motel has grown into a fancier Southernmost Hotel & Resorts, controlling 194 rooms. It has changed, just like Key West. The hotel complex is beautiful, surrounded by lush tropical foliage and Bahamian white balconies. The hotel exterior is painted in a
laid-back beige and Key Lime green. Current ownership consists of four partners from Detroit -- of course. In 1985-86 they combined the 53-room Southernmost Motel and the former 44-room Southeast Ocean Inn. In 1989 they added a three-story wing with 30 rooms.
The Southernmost Hotel features two heated swimming pools, a tiki bar that is open daily until 11 p.m. and a poolside conference room. Always a popular stop for roadies, the hotel even features the only permanent motorcycle washing station in Key West. The motel supplies soap, towels, washrags and a hose. Highway 1 (a k a The Overseas Highway) is a stunning drive out of Miami, but by the time you arrive in Key West, you need a makeover.
In 1985 the Detroit ownership also purchased The Sun n' Surf Motel (motor inn), which is now Southernmost On the Beach. The 28-unit Sun n' Surf was built in 1954 along the Atlantic Ocean for a cost between $75,000 and $80,000, according to the Key West Citizen.
Before Key West exploded into the tourist destination it is today, the south end of the island was a popular destination for gay clients. During the 1970s, eternally cheery comic Paul Lynde drank in the bar of the recently razed Santa Maria Motel, a block away from the Southernmost. Today, the hotel is a also home for bands performing at the nearby Green Parrot, 601 Whitehead (305-294-6133), the best tavern in Key West.
"Somewhere I have a picture of Tennessee Williams on our beach here," said Southernmost Hotel general manager Matthew Babich. "He used to stay at the original Southermost Motel. Ex-Boston Red Sox Fred Lynn has stayed here a few times."
*****
And the Southernmost Hotel always will have the Chicken Store across the road.
The Chicken Store opened in February 2000 in a former tanning salon at 1229 Duval, just north of the Southernmost Hotel. The storefront shop is a home for relocated roosters and injured and orphaned
chickens. When I visited the Chicken Store in October, owner-founder Katha Sheehan had an inventory of nearly 40 chicks.
The Chicken Store has been a bone of contention for some residents because of early morning territorial cock-a-doodle-doos. The noise doesn't bother Babich and it's only bothered me on my last-call walk home from the Green Parrot. (In true Key West style, the Chicken Store is next door to the Scrub Club, which offers erotic modeling, fantasy role playing and other extreme pastimes for men at 1221 Duval.)
"If you have problems with them crowing at night chickens, not Scrub Club customers, we offer free ear plugs," Sheehan said. "One thing that gets them going are people retiring from the bars driving by with the boom box going in their car. That wakes them up. This is one of the noisiest towns I've ever lived in and chickens are the least of it. We don't have large features to break up sound and since Hurricane George we lost a lot of our big ficus trees. They're not likely to be replanted since they're yard hogs."
Sheehan was lugging around a big bag of chicken scratch when I just dropped in to see what condition her chickens were in. "This started when I was a volunteer at the local animal shelter," she
said. "I was working with dogs but I noticed they received calls about nuisance chickens, orphaned chicks, injured chickens. And it always was, 'We don't do chickens.' But to me chickens seemed a
very significant part of wild-domestic animals here."
The Key West "gypsy chicken" is a descendent of the first fighting gamecocks brought to the Florida Keys (first pegged "Isle of Bones") by the original Spanish who arrived by galleon with tools and livestock on board as well as Bahamian settlers who became the first Conchs. These fowl later interbred with a stream of bantam chickens brought to Key West from Cuba (occasionally on homemade rafts). And the feisty Cuban cockfighting chicken El Gallo Blanco was so famous, local lore has it that Key West
residents met his boat when it arrived from Havana. Today there are an estimated 2,000 chickens on the tiny 2-by-4-mile island.
"Chickens do us a great favor," Sheehan said. "There's a lot of bugs in the tropics and chickens eat their fair share of bugs. You can't have a better friend than one that's out there eating cockroaches and termites almost day and night. Chickens are omnivores. They'll eat anything from rocks to beef. They eat rocks for their gizzards. It helps their digestion. They don't paint themselves into any evolutionary corner. They always keep their options open. They'll try anything once."
Sheehan knows her chickens. When she was 18, she worked in the chicken section of a kibbutz (communal farm) during a six-month stay in Israel. In 1999 she was certified by the state of Florida
as an animal control officer for the Florida Keys SPCA (Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals.) While working at the shelter, she specialized in Key West gypsy chickens. In 2000 she
opened the store to finance the effort to take care of the chickens.
Sheehan is from Honolulu. She first visited Key West in 1970 before embarking on an extreme car trip from the Southernmost city in America to Seattle. Sheehan met her husband, Roy Stone, in Austin,
Texas, in 1982. His family had property in Key West. Sheehan and Stone were married July 1, 1983, and moved to Key West the day after their marriage. Sheehan loves her city as much as her chickens. Key West is the type of place where natives and animals always put their best foot forward. Sheehan smiled as her chickens scampered around snarfing up her chicken scratch.
"Most of these chicks are rescued," she said over a chorus of cackles. "But we do have a few permanent chickens that are blind or disabled. They really are not adoptable. There's no charge to
adopt chickens, but applicants are carefully screened. We did find a home for one blind one as an artist's model. Blind ones can be beautiful, but they don't move around a lot so they're good for
modeling.
"They're all individuals. The most wonderful revelation for me is that there's as many different chicken personalities as human personalities. There are chickens that are intelligent and responsible and there are chickens that are reckless and hell-bent on self-destruction. There's all kinds of relationships. Most of the hens are serial monogamists, but some of them sleep around. You can tell because their chicks are all different colors."
The Chicken Store has excellent folk art, mugs, T-shirts and greeting cards that support Sheehan's efforts and her three-person staff. Visitors are encouraged to wander around with the chickens and take pictures. "You can go into the Chicken Lounge and interact with them," she said. "Feed them, talk to them, hear them. They are very bright. They are a beautiful adornment to Key West. They give it that special grace and Caribbean feel."
IF YOU GO
The Chicken Store is at 1229 Duval ; (305-294-0070, www.thechickenstore.com, a great Web site that even includes chicken jokes: Why did the chicken cross the basketball court? He heard the referee
calling fowls.).
> The Southernmost Hotel is at 1319 Duval. (800-354-4455); www.southernmostresorts.com
