Day Forty Nine: defuniak springs, edith, speared

I woke up earlier than I wanted so I went downstairs to eat breakfast and found Susan, Hewes, and Paul. I joined them for another meal before they left.

I took a few more pictures before saying goodbye.

From mark on a bike 08 3

From mark on a bike 08 3

Hewes and Susan ride a tandem....

From mark on a bike 08 3

Back upstairs, I blogged a while then fell asleep until noon.

DeFuniak Springs is an old town built around a small, almost perfectly-round lake which is fed by a spring. The name of the street circling the lake is, appropriately, Circle Drive.

Circle Drive is lined with many ancient trees and a large number of historic homes. I picked up a brochure which had a walking tour around the lake and a description of all of the homes. Some of the houses have interesting features... double wrap-around verandas, reverse mansard eaves, petronite construction, three-story square bay, and one even has an octagonal shape. I don't even know what some of those words mean.







This tree is the eighth largest magnolia in Florida. It has a spreading crown of 78 feet, is 60 feet tall, and has a trunk circumference of just under 14 feet. It's over a hundred years old.

From mark on a bike 08 3

From mark on a bike 08 3

The public library is the second oldest in Florida, with St. Augustine being the only one that's older.

From mark on a bike 08 3

On the way back I stopped for some barbecue then went back to my room.

That evening I ordered some pizza and had it delivered to the hotel. While I was waiting for it to be delivered the woman at the desk struck up a conversation with me.

Her name is Edith. She's 80 years old and her daughter owns the hotel and the restaurant (Bogey's). Edith was born in Scotland, but has been in America since her early twenties.

From mark on a bike 08 3

She told me a lot of stories about her childhood, such as how she and her friend used to "borrow" bikes from the miners so they could ride into town.

In 1949 she enlisted in the military for four years, after which she moved to London for two years. A friend of hers moved to Boston and used to write her letters and send pictures about how wonderful the States were so she decided to move here. Her parents wouldn't let her come until AFTER the war because a German submarine had sunk a boat with civilians on it.

After moving here, she never saw her friend in Boston.

Upon her arrival in America, she worked as a nanny for a Jewish family in New York. She despised the parents and their bratty children, and left after six months by marrying her first husband, a Merchant Marine. He had actually heard of the small town where she grew up, and that was all it took for her to fall in love.

From New York, she moved to Florida, then Tulsa, New Jersy, and finally California. Edith told me she didn't see a dead person until she was 70.

At one point in her young working career she worked for a guy in the mafia, but made me promise never to repeat his name. I did a google search and found no mention of anyone with that name connected to the mafia. I did, however, find a minor league baseball pitcher (bats left, throws left), a columnist who writes about sports cars, and a professional photographer in Phoenix.

So far, I haven't met anyone who doesn't have an opinion on the election and Edith is no exception. She eventually got around to talking about Obama. She said she's afraid of him because of his friends. "My mother used to tell me, 'You can always tell what kind of person someone is by the friends they keep.'" I was never able to ascertain which friends she was talking about, just that they're Muslim.

Then, as an afterthought, her eyes got wide and she said, "You're not Muslim, are you?" Without waiting for an answer she said, "My daughter is always telling me not to talk about religion or politics, and I always tell her I won't." Then she gave me one of those disarming smiles she's been using on people for eighty years. She added that, at eighty years old, she feels entitled to talk about whatever she wants. If she says something silly or wrong, she just tells people she has Alzheimer's.

Just minutes before my pizza arrived Edith taught me a new word, "spearing." It's obtaining information about someone just by chatting, and she said she's pretty good at it. She said she's never met someone she didn't like, and they seem to open up to her. If she sits next to someone on a plane, for example, by the end of the trip she'll know just about everything there is to know about them.

After she told me what it meant, she paused, narrowed her eyes, and said, "You're from Idaho, aren't you?"

"Iowa."

"Right! I KNEW it!"

Yup, I guess I've been speared.


2.98 miles
5.2 average
23.6 maximum
0:34:18 time
2423.8 total