Day 21 -- Thursday, May 21

Yesterday was an interstate day. I spent the morning and early afternoon wandering the beautiful, historic streets of Savannah and found myself with quite a long way to go to my next stop, St. Augustine, Fl., but not so much time to get there. So I cruised down I-95 to the oldest city in North America (and don't you think they let you forget it, either). In addition to the Fountain of Youth (surprisingly, I had the restraint and will power to resist giving them my four dollars admission; I'm a little over budget, at present, and am looking for ways to cut corners), I did, after a good night's sleep at the St. Augustine Youth Hostel, manage to see the Oldest House in the U.S., the Oldest Store museum, the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse, an Old-time (though apparently not the oldest ) Drugstore and many, many Old People. I also caught a rather dilapidated reproduction of an ancient Moorish castle from Spain, featuring the withered foot of an Egyptian mummy (now you know why I didn't spend my hard-earned dollars on the Fountain of Youth).

The don't-miss attraction in St. Augustine, however, is the Tragedy in U.S. History Museum, a small yet sordid collection of things connected, however vaguely, with the odd tragic event in the U.S. of A. Such as? President Kennedy's car; no, not the one he was being chauffeured in that fateful day in Dallas in 1963. This is just a car he liked to tool around in.

We also get to see the furniture from the room Oswald was living in when he shot the President: a bed, a dressing table. Riveting stuff, this. And newspaper clippings, lots of newspaper clippings. Most are about the assassination and its aftermath, but there are some - well, I'm just not sure why they're there. The ambulance that carried Oswald to the hospital after he was shot is also found here. Why? Because we, the American people, demanded it!

A xeroxed copy of Elvis' will is displayed, page by page, in a glass case. In the same room, a leather jacket that was probably worn by James Dean before he moved to Hollywood is also encased in glass; beside it, a disclaimer warns that the museum isn't positive he wore it but they're pretty sure. I appreciate their honesty but now, I'll always wonder: Did he or didn't he? It's a haunting question.

Finally, in the back yard (oh yes, the museum is in someone's house), there's a bunch of, well, stuff: a passle of implements that could be animal traps or farm tools (I wasn't really certain), a couple of roughly life-sized plastic cows and horses and another pair of automobiles. The first is the Buick convertible in which Jayne Mansfield lost her life (and, sadly, her head) and the second, the car that was seen in the Warren Beatty film, Bonnie and Clyde, when Mr. Barrow and Ms. Parker (and said car) are riddled with bullets during an ambush by the Texas Rangers (this was, of course, before the Rangers acquired Nolan Ryan). Odd, but it seems to me that a curator of a museum of tragedy would, if he or she had wanted something connected with Mr. Beatty's work, have chosen some relic from Ishtar.

The Tragedy in U.S. History Museum is a slimy, low-class operation that shouldn't be missed. But allow some extra time in your schedule when you go; you may feel the need for a shower immediately after.



Continue on the American Odyssey.
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