I’d Woo History if I Could

Warmth engulfs me. Wraps around me like a blanket when I’m already too warm to need a blanket, sticking to my skin. A breeze churns the air leaving me with the feeling of someone breathing on my neck, but all over my body, rather than a refreshing reminder of coolness.

The cobblestone I sit on, jagged like a twelve-year-old’s teeth before braces, is more than cobblestone. Or it was, once. According to the plaque standing in front of the structure, which resembles the Parthenon, a distant half cousin twice removed, it was a slave market.

A woman in her late forties stands in front of the plaque. She reads over it carefully from under her paisley print visor, holding her hands behind her back, leaning forward ever so slightly, attempting to soak in the plaque. When she finishes reading, she smiles a “Gee, well isn’t that neat” smile. I think maybe it’s supposed to be a smile of appreciation, of attempted understanding. She moseys on forward through the market, her bright white sneakers scuffing against the cobblestone. Against the cobblestone where people were sold as if they were vacuums or washing machines or sponges or mops or garbage bags.

I feel an unfortunate kinship to this woman. When I first visited St. Augustine in the fourth grade, I remember walking into Ponce Hall. Looking up that gargantuan staircase with its wide rails of dark wood wrapping up into the second floor balcony like two thick brown vines, I remember thinking I was in a palace. The feeling persisted as I walked into the cafeteria, staring up at the painted ceilings, in awe. The feeling persisted, in fact, all across the town.

Now here I sit. On top of the ghosts of human bondage. It’s horrible. I can never comprehend the pure abomination of the time. Never ever.

No matter how often I’ve had that feeling, that desire to know how beautiful or how terrible something was, that woman and I are still the same. We both lean in, close, with some sort of desire to absorb the history, but we can’t. Not really, anyhow. We will both just smile, nod, then walk away.

Slaves sold in the market couldn’t walk away. Glorious and awful inhabitants of the Ponce de Leon Hotel didn’t walk away. Soldiers at the Fort did not walk away.

Everywhere in St. Augustine I can look at the bones of some great happening. Even if I can imagine how it looked when it had skin and hair and sparkling eyes, I can’t have a conversation with it or go to the movies with it or take it out to dinner.

But I would like to.

Grandpa God

As a young Catholic, I found it odd that I attended Episcopal school. My parents had originally enrolled me at the Catholic school of course, but the one-hour commute proved to be more trouble than it was worth. Looking back, I don’t really think my parents were trying to steep me in a religious education as much as keep me away from “public school.” The bad place where kids wielded knives instead of pencils.

We frequented the Catholic Church on Sundays. I began taking Communion on Wednesdays in the Episcopal Church during an elongated school chapel time. During my many years of this strange religious cross-dressing, I noticed a multitude of differences between the churches. The churches themselves that is, more so than the ceremonies. The observations I made then strikingly resemble the ones made yesterday as I visited the Florida’s oldest Episcopal and Catholic churches located in St. Augustine.

I felt a strange discomfort upon entering the Episcopal Church. A musty aroma hit me as I walked through the doors. It smelled like when I open an old library book and the pages smell a very specifically old yellow way. I coughed.

My school church was similar, both sleek in design. By sleek, I almost mean Spartan. Their designs concentrated on straight lines. For decoration they relied on stained glass and little else. If this is the traditional fashion of Episcopalian churches, I am at a loss. How could King Henry VIII, a man who dripped with excesses like a melting candle, create something so plain?

Even the stained glass, the only decoration, is plain. The artists who crafted these panels utilized basic square, circle, triangle shapes to make Jesuses and Marys creating unflattering likenesses. Much like something a small child’s stick figure drawing, but slightly more elaborate.

I guess maybe plain isn’t even the word I’m looking for still. Walking into the Episcopalian church made me feel like I had walked into my grandmother’s living room. While possibly, the style it retained, would have been en vogue during the seventies, it was now outdated. Though many a memory of prayer could be seen in the worn down pew cushions, it looked decrepit in the way lived in things do.

A church should not feel like a living room. No matter how accessible God, or the Almighty or whatever deity imaginable, can be there’s a line. If God is my grandfather, the type of man that inspires a respectful fear deep within my bones but love simultaneously, I cannot see him walking around the house with his bathrobe half open, junk all hanging out and maintain said respect. But seeing Grandpa God’s junk seemed very possible if not inevitable in the Episcopal Church.

Perhaps it was the paint by numbers stained glass combined with the pew cushions.

Suddenly it hit me. The stained glass looked like Tarot cards. I spent elementary through high school puzzling over why the stained glass in our school church bothered me so much. It looked like Tarot cards.

What a strange hypocrisy.

The stained glass at my Catholic Church looked so different from the Tarot style glass. The artists who created those panels made mosaic sized tiles from the glass before fusing it together. The main stained glass pieces in the St. Augustine Catholic Church were quite similar. Each panel seemed to be done in portraiture.

Everything about the Catholic Church appeared more detailed. Detailed is the polite word. Gaudy, is what I really mean. Gaudy in the way King Henry would have respected.

Three gold statues hung above the altar, like mermaids on a ship’s bow. There is a mosaic of The Last Supper adorning the wall in a side prayer room. The floor tiles contain a knot shaped pattern within each of them. I want to say the knot looks like a Celtic knot, but I think it’s probably less Celtic and more Spanish. The whole church feels Spanish.

Aside from being terra cotta colored, in that Spanish way, the ceilings echoed all noises. Until I saw the height of the Catholic Church’s ceilings I had failed to realize how low the Episcopal Church’s had been.

Grandpa God would never walk through these aisles in a bathrobe. He would never walk through these aisles in anything other than a suit. Even then, he wouldn’t walk, he would do some form of pious marching. He would look me sternly in the eye when I did something wrong, but pat my back while scolding me so I knew he still loved me.

I guess that’s what I need in a church, if I ever needed a church. A stern Grandpa God.

Packing for Life

At 1:30 on a quite morning, I sit in front of a suitcase overflowing with clothes and books and toiletries like a frat house overflows with students during a party. And I wonder how many of these “necessities” I’ll really use during my week in Paris.

Surely the nail polish. I will find time for a manicure.

The lotions, too. Foot lotion, hand lotion, body lotion, face moisturizer. One should hardly be forced to rough it in Paris.

And those books! All four of them, all about Paris: two tour guides to “literary Paris,” and two pieces of literature itself, crafted by the American Expatriates I’m studying. Somehow, after a day at the Louvre, a night at the theatre, I know I’ll have the energy to read Miss Gertrude Stein’s mammoth The Making of Americans.

Really, though, my extra shirts might come in handy. Especially the sleeveless ones. Especially since the weather forecast calls for temperatures in the fifties.

Then there are the Band Aids, which I’ll need for two pairs of shoes because they might cause blisters, and then there are the other four pairs of shoes in case they do.

Naturally, I have a notebook. A writer cannot travel without a notebook . . . and a journal, and a voice recorder, and a. . . .

Yet, in spite of the fact that I am taking more possessions than many third-world citizens own, when I wake up and head out to the airport, my suitcase will close easily.

I am a hermit crab and it is my shell, chosen because it’s the biggest I can carry even if it isn’t the brightest. I am a rat and it is my nest, with shiny objects winking at haphazard angles. I am a catalog and it is my pages, advertising everything I know I can’t stand leaving behind.

So it must close.

Even after I add my own pillow and blanket.

Even after I find a few more cobwebbed corners of my life to haul overseas.

Wishful Thinking

I sit near an old well in the middle of the downtown plaza of St. Augustine. Although I’ve passed this well countless times in my eleven years of residence in this city, I don’t think I ever noticed it. It was just another decoration in a tourist laden downtown park. But now I pause long enough to give the well a second look. I read its bronze plaque – something I never do as a resident of this historic town. In days past the well belonged to the Spanish. Then it was buried and eventually rebuilt. The well’s plaque titles the structure “public well.” This name seems hollow and lacking for such a quaint little well. I prefer to think of it as a wishing well.

 

The well looks the way I always pictured a wishing well to look. It has a stately, weather-worn stone base. It has a tall angular wooden roof. Spanish moss and stray sticks and leaves litter the roof, making the well look like it belongs in a forest rather than this well-groomed, frequently visited plaza. An old wooden bucket suspended with rope hangs over the well.

 

Yet, as I approach the well I realize it falls short. I look into it and my daydreams are disappointed. The well does not contain a dark, bottomless opening. Instead, it is filled with dirt. The well’s mystique has been lost and it has blended into a dull reality. Now I merely see a picturesque monument to be enjoyed by tourists.

But then again, maybe not. As I take a last disappointed glance at the well’s shallow dirt bottom, I notice a penny. Maybe the penny fell there by accident or coincidence. But maybe someone else imagined the well was special. I see them closing their eyes, tossing in their penny, and making a wish. Only, they would have to plug their ears so they didn’t hear the anti-climactic thud as the penny hit the dirt. They could imagine the faint, hollow splash of the penny as it fell to the bottom.

 

Yet, the penny is not the only object I see. Next to the penny I see an old cigarette butt. Once again, I feel that my imaginings have been intruded upon and broken. I wonder who did it? A homeless person? A tourist? A college student? I run through all of the usual suspects in my head. Whoever it was must not have taken the time to dream about the well or even admire it. They did not respect the structure as an object of fleeting fancy or even as a “public well.” For them the word “public” must have been an invitation to carelessly trash the well. But I doubt they read the plaque at all.

 

As I step away and sit down again, I realize I now have an ideal view. The well is perfect. I cannot see its dirt bottom. I cannot see the penny lying there that never had a chance to reach the well’s true bottom. I cannot see the cigarette butt so carelessly left there. I cannot even see the plaque. Once again, the well is an enchanted structure from another time and place. It is no longer an illusion shattered. Rather, it is a wealth of possibilities.

 

I get up and turn to leave. Now I must stop daydreaming and return to my own reality of school and my job. My mind turns from its childish fantasy as I begin to think about the details of my day. Yet as I walk away, my thoughts briefly return to the well. I half-hope that I really could go back and buy a wish or two with my spare change.

Unsightly / Unsighted

The country is spattered with memorials just as the roads are spotted with the torn carcasses of road kill.

 

In a shady park in St. Augustine, Florida, a half dozen memorials huddle together between King and Cordova and Cathedral Place and A1A. I can’t number the times I passed the William Wing Loring Memorial as I walked to college classes or ambled down the street to a nearby pub. The memorial, a skinny obelisk, stretches prominently above an intersection where cars and horse-drawn carriages idle. Piercing through the trees and skirted in a sidewalk of coquina shells and concrete, its somber reverence drowns in the loudspeakers of St. Augustine’s trolley train tours.

 

Just across King Street, the Cordova Café’s spiraled column imitates the memorial’s upward thrust. It jabs at the wrought iron scrolls lacing the building’s “Free Wi-Fi” signs. Tourists and locals hum at the café’s outdoor tables with cavernous umbrellas kept close by order of the handwritten signs tacked to each umbrella’s stem.

 

On the other side of Cordova Street, Flagler College crumbles elegantly under terra cotta tiles.

 

“And this,” intones a trolley guide, his voice piped through rattling speakers to half the city and five tourists captive on his tram’s benches, “is Flagler College, formerly the Ponce de Leon Hotel. A hundred years ago, rich northerners would winter at the hotel, built by Henry Flagler in. . . .”

 

Caddy-corner across the intersection, the Lightner Museum rests on its haunches, assured of its daily stream of visitors, the families and the elderly and the young couples strolling over from the Riply’s Believe It Or Not Museum down by Castillo de San Marcos, the Spanish fort hovering over the Intracoastal Waterway since the 1600s.

 

Of course the fort, the museums, the gift shops are more interesting to the groups of school children who pile out of their buses in school-issued matching shirts. In this town, visitors pay to chase ghosts from one Indian graveyard to the next. Memorials only pay homage to the real dead.

 

Maybe the tourists are just scared out of the park by the scraggly bearded men sleeping on the benches, bundled into thick layers of jackets against the balmy Florida spring.

 

So as I sit looking at tourists, only two stop to look at the memorial honoring a man from St. Augustine who served three armies – U.S., Confederate, and Egyptian. They are a couple, he in his sixties, she in her fifties, dressed crisply in polo shirts, their hands cramped around thick stacks of brochures and maps.

Behind them, school children stomp down the sidewalk.

 

“Oh, look,” the man says. He pauses, gazing at the unfamiliar Egyptian flag etched into the pale stone.

 

“Yes,” she agrees, her sunglasses skimming the memorial’s note of thanks to the Daughters of the Confederacy.

She digs into her oversized purse as she steps out from a magnolia tree’s shade. He glances at the U.S. flag, shakes his head at the Confederate flag. Within ninety seconds, they have crossed the street, their feet aimed purposefully for the Lightner Museum’s gardens.

 

A local couple rushes past the ugly brown water meter angled behind the monument, their steps as hurried as a mockingbird’s garbled song overhead. The overweight woman pants to keep up with her fit companion. A baggy-clothed teenager with an angry glare sulks past. A butterfly wobbles around the orange flowers clustered limply at the monument’s base.

 

This memorial is unremarkable, just another piece of carved stone in a city of carved stone. Like the field surrounded by fields I drove through at Christmas, when I visited my boyfriend’s family in Virginia. Except for the weighty history cut into the William Wing Loring Memorial, it is only another column, no different from the column supporting the weight of the Café Cordova. Except for the metal plaque near the roadside, the field was simply another field edged in a zig-zagging split rail fence, five minutes from our destination.

 

But I lurched when I read the name of a man who left one country’s army to fight against it with another. And I felt my stomach clench like a gear locking into place when I saw the sign just outside little Haymarket, Virginia, that gave a name to the field: Manassas – and the little creek trickling through its darkness: Bull Run.

 

“This is Manassas?” I half-wailed, gripping my door handle to support the news that we drove over the bones and blood of such history.

 

“Yup,” my boyfriend said, and flicked on the car’s high beams.

 

And the tourists of St. Augustine stop beside the William Wing Loring Memorial to check their maps, carefully step around history like a car avoiding roadkill.

Finding Empty Sanctuary

The tile floors, flourishes of blue and red atop the base gold, repeat footsteps like echoes of hollow applause. Seeping through the well-chilled air, a seventeenth century mass floats ghostlike from speakers mounted near the ceiling. Just under the speakers, stained glass windows cling to the walls. They hover high above the tallest visitors’ heads so that the figures shining in the glass look down on the cathedral’s patrons, as far away as saints enthroned in heaven.

The oldest parish in the country, in St. Augustine, Florida, has a grand, Spanish cathedral, a grand piano the size of a car, a grand sanctuary filled with curious tourists and the cool emptiness air conditioning alone can’t achieve.

God’s name is carved into the butted rafters, in Latin. Deo, Deo, Deo. God, God, God.

Jesus, still dying on the cross, hangs his head in one corner of the great room.

The Blessed Virgin presides over a lace-draped alter in another corner. Her figure barely smiles, a Mona Lisa too holy to be happy. Above the figure, a wall hanging represents Mary surrounded by gilt angels and fleur de lis, symbolic of the Trinity and Gabriel and the Annunciation at once. Gentle smoke wafts before Mary’s eyes, smoke from a hundred candles stacked like the keys of a sprawling xylophone on the tables around Mary’s alter. Her painted eyes should water from all that smoke.

Beside a donation box, a placard reads: “Candles. Large: $5. Small: $2. Your candle will continue to offer bright witness to your prayer long after you go your way.”

Under Mary’s gaze, a couple pushing a squeaky stroller park themselves directly between the candles’ tables, the baby faced straight at the little alter. They stare at the sign for a moment, then at the figure of Mary, then, absently, at the candles.

Lifting a long-stemmed match like a xylophone mallet, the woman dips its end into a flame flickering above a small candle’s cross-etched jar. She rests the flame on an unlit wick. The fire emits a restrained, unmusical hiss.

“We should light one,” the woman says, once the new wick takes and glows to reverent life.

Plucking another match from the plastic box, she lights a second $2 candle. Mary’s expression remains vague.

“We’ll make our donation up front,” the woman says, to Mary as much as to her husband. She edges the stroller away from the alter.

Her husband follows obediently, turning his back on the witnesses to the prayers they didn’t pause to pray.

Do Not Enter Sanctuary

The sound of the bells’ dance echoes above the line of red tiled buildings surrounding a copula, the rising façade of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, from the top of whose stucco walls, a rounded pinnacle houses the bells which roost like birds in their crevices. Across the plaza, the steeple of the Episcopal parish, like the head of a pen, peaks above the oak trees swaying in the wind. Between the chatter of wide-eyed tourists, a solemnity holds on to a certain historic atmosphere of reverence, which, like the buildings, has become characteristic of the town.

St. Augustine, the product of Spanish conquest, inherited the inquisition. Its founders arrived with the conviction that the only trustworthy individuals were those who went to confession. The Mission of Nombre de Dios set about converting the natives who never asked for salvation while the Catholic Church saw to the colonists’ mandatory devotion to faith. Today, a lavishly furnished Cathedral stands where the continent’s first parish once stood, the result of tithes and offerings, money paid, as the Church once claimed, to assure one’s place in the grace of the Lord.

Upon entering the heavy oak doors, leaving behind the Florida heat, my senses encounter a staleness resonating off the plaster walls and worn wood of the pews. The vaulted ceiling, with its crimson tapestry, gives the rafters a black, scorched appearance. I feel small. Reverberating from the towering walls, chanting of the ghosts of monks passing centuries in penitence makes my heart rise and suddenly the feeling of isolation. I shrink into one of the pews, a golden bust of the crucifix stares down at me, not with warmth of compassion, but a hollowness that comes with manufactured items. Framing it, gold spiraled columns stand behind an altar of marble. Here, many sought peace and guidance; I only felt my heart choking me.

In an alcove, a shrine to a praying saint, candles flicker in a line, lit with the hope that maybe, as long as a candle burns in their name and the offering is paid, the souls of the departed may continue on to eternal bliss, as if they could not reach it by their own light. My aunts come to light candles for my grandmother, for whom the priest, standing over her grave, prayed for forgiveness, prayed that God may understand that she tried her best to save the souls of her protestant children.

Across the entrance to the altar, a sign hangs from a brass chain with words chiseled into it as if written in stone: “Do not enter sanctuary.”

Who may enter then? Who is worthy? A boy around my age once approached me on the street and asked, “Do you know about the Bible?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Jesus?”

“Yes.”

“Do you accept him as your lord and savior?”

“No, I have my own beliefs.”

“Then you are comfortable with going to hell,” he said.

“How do you know that is where I will go?”

“Only those who accept Christ enter Heaven.”

The conversation continued on to questions of why I refused Christianity. When I explained that I followed Buddhism, he asked, “What is Buddha doing for you, he’s dead?” I fought hard not to inform him of another historic obituary he should have been familiar with, and, in retrospect, I should have.

He only saw things in shades defined by a book composed by the hands of men some centuries after the passing of his savior. If I lied, I am thus a liar. If I used the Lords name in vain, blasphemous. Thought a woman looked attractive, adulterous, at least according to another group of Christian crusaders, who, though the Bible decries “thou shalt not judge,” found pleasure in labeling others’ sins. Their justification: the word of God taken out of context and, might I say, a poor familiarity with the dictionary.

So who deserves salvation? Those who come to church every Sunday and put something in the offering bowl certainly look better to those who throw their theology at passerbies and who cannot fathom the existence of a good person outside their congregation. In a country founded by those who sought religious freedom, people are still judged by those who claim not to judge and, with best intentions, fail to acknowledge that a soul is in one’s own keeping.

Though the mission has become a cemetery at peace with squirrels who watch from the roots of trees as a blue heron waits for its dinner and the Cathedral now only sees a congregation of the willing, the spirit of religious fervor set by the Spanish continues. The Crusades never found their end. The candles in the alcove flicker as the door of the cathedral opens with a breath of wind that ceases with a muffled click.

Overlooking the Confederate Monument

Unearthed like a long forgotten relic in a grove of live oaks and pine trees sagging under Spanish moss, it towers over the heads of a couple, middle-aged, taking a picture because it’s there. This relic of the Civil War attempts to tell its own time; a narrow shadow spilling onto the ground signifies noon. An inscription: “They have crossed the river.” It goes on to report that men like Archibauld Gould and Francis Baya now “rest under the shade of the trees,” a comfort to mourners long past whose pain history forgot, replacing them with names.

With arms akimbo, the couple shifts their weight from foot to foot with eyes surveying the canopy of green leaves and the tattered grey color of the moss. The monument to their left, which lost their attention to the sky, tells a story but the wife only glanced to see that it had writing. The husband checks his watch, whispered something to his spouse, and then together they walk back toward the street. From where I sit, leaning against a canon fixed on a coquina base, the monument seems to grow into the sky, like a steeple which had no church. I must admit, I never really looked at this obelisk until today. Its faded façade, which sprouts moss around its corners, seems unimpressive since its height remains concealed by the trees.

Two names on the list jump from the blank marble. Brothers, Henry and Louis, both Bridiers, have their names engraved next to each other, never to part company. I can imagine the lonely messenger waiting by the door to tell a mother that her second has gone as well, probably a family friend, who’d later witness a family destroyed by grief. What monument tells their story? There is only the reminder of a name already forgotten. It means nothing to the couple which wandered off for a new restaurant to try, unaware of the true meaning of the cause for which these men died. Like so many things in St. Augustine, its purpose has been traded for aesthetic value, becoming one more attraction in a town thriving off of attractiveness. The Confederacy died more than a century before; this couple saw this, reminded of the war but not its cause or that of the soldiers.

Why does this monument fail to truly honor these men? Only its façade is concrete, the values the town erected it for left with the tides of time. Maybe it’s that the reasons for war are always artificial and pass with time; remembering and honoring the dead over a century later a vain justification for their loss.

Favorite Place

My favorite place is Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The weather is not perfect. In fact, sometimes in May it drops to fifty degrees. The people are not the most polite. Do not let the nickname ‘city of brotherly love’ fool you. The team is not always the best; 1980 was the last time Tug McGraw jumped up and down on the pitcher’s mound, celebrating the World Series Championship. In case you’re keeping score at home, I was not born yet at this time. Indeed, all of these aspects cumulate to make this rugged little ball park the haven that it has been for me since its inception three short seasons ago. If you were to sit behind home plate, this is what you would see. You would see Pat Burrell standing 30 feet in front of a miraculous brick wall. Above this wall, you would see the most poignantly placed red, green, and yellow flowers that add a whole lot of grace to a team with a whole little bit of it themselves. Beyond this wall that has broken at least one center fielders nose you will see something much larger than a score, a nose, or a franchise in general. You will see the most glorious view of the Philadelphia skyline a person can buy for only $13. You will see the memories of, yes, Thomas Jefferson signing the Declaration of Independence at City Hall. You will then come back down to Earth and see the team that, despite falling short but so close of something beautiful, I’m thinking a championship, for over five years has stuck together and formed a magical bond. You will see my childhood, growing up in these streets that are missing the tangible beauties of other historic cities such as Boston and their trumped on Red Sox yet are abundant with the pride that makes me call it home.

The Horse Well

The first thing I feel as I approach this seemingly ancient horse-well is the mid-afternon the humidity. It may be eight-five degrees temperature-wise, but that eight-five degrees is different when you’re not in Florida. Somewhere a bird enjoying this same heat is making noises, but it is not a chirping. He’s somewhere between a squawk and a chirp. His friend is chirping, however. He’s hitting an A-Sharp, I think.

The hanging stop light causes the sound of dulling engines. It’s calming, yes, but unnerving. The cars slow toward a peace, but the busyness they create unsettles me.

I don’t even know what this monument I look at is supposed to be, really. This quote makes me laugh, “Was kind to all animals.” Like anyone can even know that. Did someone watch his every encounter with an animal? Anyway, it’s sad that someone who cared enough to keep the horses thirst quenched can’t even get a well glanced upon once a century. My vision, albeit is terrible, cannot make out more than a few words. The text, which attempts to be a dark brown, is more a corroded version of white. No, that doesn’t make sense, I know.

Unfortunately, humans do not chirp, and the trolley-tour voice interrupts me. It could not be any more stereotypically boring. There was a time when there were horses pulling these people around, not manufactured machines destroying the entire planet. Perhaps this well was a gas station of sorts, for horses. No wonder this well hasn’t been glanced at in so long. We are, indeed, so very far removed from the days of horseback. So, back to this plaque. How did turn white? Maybe all of these birds decided to defecate on it the same day and the rain has missed it ever since. The awful stone upon which the plaque lays is arguably more grody. In an attempt to have that look of Caucasian-tone, curb-style off-white, it actually has more brown, red, and green than anything else. The green of course being mold, but where did the red and brown come from? I get the immediate sense if this monument would be hosed down just once it’d look one hell of a lot nicer.

The tourists look lost. Surprisingly, they were not pointing. There’s a first time for everything. This tour guide is even worse than the first. I imagine Walt Disney sounded somewhat as drearily droll as this fellow.

As mid-afternoon hits, it feels as if someone is gently spraying my ribs and lower back with a super soaker. The sweat is slowly dribbling down these aforementioned spots; leaving Reese’s Cup shaped circles as evidence.

Despite my allergies, I notice a terrible smell. My nose is bothered by the scent of the way hot feels combined with dozens of car’s exhaust pipes.

Amidst this rather ancient looking monument, the brightest colors are the red, yellow, and green of the stop lights. Everything else is just Earthy. Brown, beige, grass green, brick red, copper red, stone black. Rustic would be the word. The colors are as old and worn as old William Howland’s horse well itself.

It must be lunch time. The engines roar into ‘D’ and talk radio zooms by just a moment later. Even more tourists are out and about now. They must be sweating. I can hear their sandals squishing. Their feet are clammy with moisture. It’s a shame the clouds are so fluffy today; I always hope for the thin, wispy ones so I can watch the bullets of rain falling on the mid-life crisis bearing yuppie’s map of the historic city. I wonder if this well fills up when it rains. Maybe there is a drain, because it’s empty. Maybe there’s a huge hole in the front just like the nasty one in the back because, obviously, no one bothers to tend this sweet little monument.

My shirt is officially soaked. The heat combined with the irritation of the car salesman disguised as a tour guide is causing enough frustration to make me sweat off that five pounds I’ve been trying to lose.

Even the ants are a rustic red. I hope they aren’t fire ants; that would hurt. I bet the birds are brown. I don’t know, though, I can’t see them, but it’s all I can imagine when I hear their chirp-squawk in front of this Earth-borne monument. Even the construction worker’s orange helmets look five hundred years old—oldest hard hat city in America.