Tag: oddities

Exploring the Florida Keys

Key Largo was gorgeous. In the morning when I packed up I took my sweet time reorganizing the Jeep and then stopped at The Shell Store. This place had shells of every kind and color in enormous buckets as well as any kind of tourist memorabilia you could ask for. I ended up buying a little turtle made out of various tiny sea shells for a dollar. It’s cute.

I continued onward discussing whether or not to take a glass bottomed boat tour. I should probably mention that besides being afraid of large boney fish I have always said I wouldn’t get on a sea-going boat, not even if I were paid… but having continuously dipped my feet in the warm waters I somehow felt more relaxed about the idea… and besides there were wild corals here, I hadn’t gotten to see any of those. I decided to go for it, but first I’d drive to Key West, the farthest of the islands. I passed Duck Key and Cow Key and Ramrod Key and all the darn keys, stopping at two beaches. One was rocky and amazing, covered in fossilized coral rocks (far to big to pick up and drag off unfortunately) and another beach which smelled really bad and consisted of 50% seaweed and 50% trash and debris. This place was almost as bad as the Wristcutter’s [a Love Story] beach! It was really bad… I was quite put off by it and the rest of Key West. The island was so full of people and cramped, such a tourist trap. It advertised it was the birthplace of the Sloppy Joe and had pubs and bars every two buildings, hotels the rest. I only stopped when I came upon a strange site… what appeared to be a brick ruin. It was what I came for… and there, sitting snidely across from a horse-drawn hearse and in front of oodles of fan mail was Robert the Doll himself, three feet worth of plushie terror. He was ADORABLE. I probably should explain… You see Robert is probably the original haunted doll. He was said to be made by an angry servant of the Otto family who practiced voodoo. He was named after the little boy (later renowned artist) he was given to and apparently held such a powerful grip on the growing lad that he never abandoned the doll, claiming that “Robert did it!” whenever anything bad would happen. The doll was said to pace, to glower out the window at children, to make evil giggles, to throw around furniture and to haunt people… You name it this doll does it! I can’t say I know the work of his owner, Robert Eugene Otto, but I have been delighted by his doll since I was ten or so. As per custom I asked the doll if I could take a photo and did so, taking the chance we could be cursed… We bought a magnet at the gift shop and perused the place. They had a whole collection of Edward Gorey stuff including The Hapless Child, perhaps because of the child-terrorizing doll in it. They even had a book on his home, the Elephant House, bizarre considering he was a Massachusetts resident, not Florida… Then again they had a book on Hemmingway’s cats, yet another Massachusetts thing. Who knows! Still, anyone adoring Gorey has got my attention.

Sooo… after that I hit the next glass bottomed boat place I could find. It was 1:35 and I literally missed it by five minutes. I decided not to wait around, to find another. I didn’t find another until I was back in Key Largo, seventy something miles away, and I was fortunate enough to just get in on time to take the last boat tour of the day. I filed onto the boat annnnd… was told there’d be a delay…  The woman next to us looked on horrified, as if we’d just struck an ice burg here in the harbor. Our captain came up soon after and said she thought they’d fixed the problem. Then the motors started going and two seconds later we hear screaming from down under, two men yelling, “SHIT! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!” Our captain started to stamp violently on the deck, signaling ever-so-delicately to stop shouting, you’re freaking out the tourists. We were told something else was broke and we’d have to be refunded. I left… without seeing to corals and shipwreck promised, without being able to have the chance to glimpse a casual shark or dolphin. Sad, very sad. Could it be Robert?

I left and decided I should at the very least get a good piece of pie out of this trip, Key Lime Pie… I was dubious. Except for one occasion all the lemon meringue pies I ever had were ghastly terrible, I figured lime pie would be the same… I ordered the prettiest piece of pie I’ve ever seen, decorated with swirls of whipped cream and sauce. It was actually really good! And the ice cold water that went with it was a luxury I hadn’t realized I’d missed quite so much. I drank like a camel in an oasis.

The only other memorable part of the drive was when I saw some deer aside the road, four does grazing. I didn’t realize until later they were endangered Key Deer. How cool is that? I saw something endangered alive and running around… like the feral chickens roaming the streets of Key West I couldn’t explain.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

 

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Air Boat Ride in the Everglades – Florida

I decided I should really hit the Everglades and take a look around. I’d yet to see any alligators in Florida and I thought I might see one on an airboat tour. Keren told me about the Miccosukee Indian Village. I travelled from her house to the Miccosukee Casino, the closest thing my GPS could offer. I’d had a hell of a time trying to get the GPS to recognize the address and now I was at the Casino and there was a gas station offering airboat rides. I was adamant I needed to travel further out of the city and into the swamp, that the Miccosukee probably lived in the middle of nowhere, where I wanted to be! I was right; I drove past at least eight other airboat places until I started hitting all the Miccosukee shops and their air boat tours. I was just in time for their last boat out. I forked over $32. As I waited I saw the mother of all alligators swim by, easily twice the size the Carolina ones. He or she was HUGE but swam by too fast to take a good photo. There were a few baby ones near the shore as well as an assortment of odd birds.

I got onto the boat with several other tourists, including an adorable old German woman who seemed super excited. I don’t know what she was saying but it amused me how happy she seemed. Almost everyone was wearing hats, hats that all went flying when the boat was turned on. My bandana stayed on my head almost until the very end. Bobby pins are amazing. The boat was ungodly loud and the other passengers all seemed to have earplugs but I didn’t mind it so much. For some odd reason I’d entered some sort of Zen state and was fine with everything, completely relaxed. Life was good.

I saw lots of birds, cranes and little duck like creatures who were stout and didn’t run too fast when they saw the boat headed at them. I boated past many many birds until I ended up at a mock Indian Village in the middle of the swamp. The whole place was on stilts. I don’t know how anyone managed to build it but there was only one woman there selling beadwork and various Miccosukee made jewelry. I took some time to stare at the water off the sides of the village. There were all sorts of odd little creatures, mostly tiny fish and storks. Then I saw a fish that was maybe eight inches long for a split second. It darted off into the muck so fast that all it left behind was a trail of mud clouds. It was likely a baby gar. I’m still vibrantly freaked out by large boney fish… alligator gar are one of the biggest growing in the US.

So ten minutes loitering and I was back on the boat. I sat quietly and just enjoyed the ride. I went into what I can only call an alligator nursery. Here alligators up to half grown ones were swimming around in a swarm. Some were sunning themselves. Many darted away from the boat coming at them while still others hit the bottom of the boat rushing by when it was lying still. Those suckers were strong! The driver riled them up as much as he could to drive more of them to the surface for photos. They seemed mildly annoyed. There were signs everywhere not to try petting the alligators as if this was a common concern with them being so damn fluffy and cuddly! Funny enough our driver didn’t yell at anyone attempting to do just this. He was a real laid back guy, probably figured if the dumb white boy gets his arm gnawed off by a pissed lizard it’s their own damn fault.

I was still so incredibly chill. I was lathered in a tube of sun block and despite the fact it was one hundred degrees that day I was still so happy to be there. Life just made sense here. I was with my kin – hundreds of baby aquatic lizards. I could be their queen!

When I returned I loitered on the bridge overlooking a canal that was full of life. I were very happy to see an absolutely enormous alligator snapping turtle emerge from the deep, break the surface of the water, and retreat back into the darkness. I wasn;t expecting that! I got a photo too.

On the way out I desperately needed the bathroom so I stopped at the nearest convenience store. It was empty and quiet and had no bathroom. I tried buying some ice cream just to avoid being awkward but it turns out the freezers had croaked and the candy ice cream bars were soup.

Onward I went until I found a gas station, which I know is not a great pit stop. I was wearing my long hippie skirt which very quickly got completely sopping wet with the flood of water on the bathroom floor I didn’t notice. I came out not so happy. I was two buildings away from the Jeep and Ruud was again distracted, loitering on the swamp banks taking photos of an alligator who was panting for some reason, or at least it had its mouth open. To make matters worse I had just discovered Aunt Rosie had come to me three days before her usual arrival. I was abruptly snapped out of my relaxed haze and was instantaneously cranky. I changed my skirt in the car, in an unladylike manner as we were driving. Better.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

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Tidepooling in Key Largo Florida

Initially I put a pin in Key West (on the map) as a joke, because that’s where Robert the Doll lives, but seeing as I have been such a devoted fan of this infamous haunted doll I decided what the Hell, I might as well!

I had already had a very long day when I arrived in Key Largo. It was getting dark and I wanted to find a place to sleep so I could enjoy driving through the islands in daylight. So I found a campground here, by luck, as an internet search prior to leaving that morning revealed most were full and not taking any more people without at least a day’s reservation. The office was closed but some friendly RVers told us that the manager would be around in the morning to collect any fees we were unable to give them during the previous day, as there were spots still available. The campground itself seemed a tiny village of RVs shoved into a series of mini streets, with one other tenting couple beyond a fence where the tent plots were. The spaces for tents were just large enough to contain our tent but not large enough to properly secure the ropes down. It was also on sand but it was accommodated with electricity and water. Unbeknownst to me I was also right next to a little stretch of beach. It was rocky, mind you, and beyond the rocks were gnarls of sea weed but for me that’s the best beach I could ask for. I scoured it in search of shells and life that evening before the sun went down, that night after I did the laundry at 11PM or so, and again the next morning. There was fragments of coral skeletons everywhere, scattered about like common rocks and pebbles. There were also a few tiny shells here and there and one big crab in a burrow that initially looked like a ginormous spider.

And then of course there were star fish. The buggar was as big as my palm and oddly colored. I picked it up but not long after it started oozing orange goo as it tried to ankle it out of my hand. You see, this is why star fish creep me out. They are sooo alien. I put it back before finding a tiny sea anemone, a whole school of the brightest teeny tiny snails you could ask for. There was even a conch-like snail the size of my thumb I also picked up for some reason.

I picked it up and was fine with it when it was sitting still but when it started to ooze out of its shell like a cow tongue trying to come out… well I kind of tweaked a bit and flipped back into the water. I was more comfortable with the hermit crab I found adorned with a fantastically beautiful shell that seemed five sizes too big for it. Of course to make the wildlife all the more amazing there was a swarm of little throat-bobbing lizards skittering up and down the trees giving us that whole Jurassic Park feel. I loved the lizards… as corny as that sounds.

I watched the sun go down sitting on a dock, surrounded on all sides by bath warm sea water gently lapping by. The sunset itself was gorgeous, the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen and I got some fantastic photos of that, I’m happy to say.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

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Coral Castle – Miami Florida

The Coral Castle is one of those quasi-obscure tourist attractions that didn’t start out as one. I had heard about it on a documentary when I was child and always wanted to check it out. Basically it’s a castle created by a five foot tall one hundred pound man. That’s not that interesting. The interesting part of this story is the fact he built the castle in the 1920’s with no modern technology or equipment and since he worked on it in the dead of night he also had no witnesses. Some of the stones used to create the outer walls are as much as 30,000 pounds and no one has any idea how he managed this feat on his own. Some people blame aliens. Because that’s clearly what I’d do if I were visiting earth for the first time – I’d appear to one random old man and tell him to build me a castle in the dead of night!

The castle itself is beautiful. He managed to carve moons, stars, and other planetary shapes all around the place, not an easy thing to do in the particular stone he was using which is actually coral. There are three moving stones on the premises, a rocking chair and huge door and a triangular gate that weighs 6,000 pounds and can be pushed by any visitor who wants to try it. I of course decided to try it and believe or not it didn’t take much effort at all, the whole thing just slid as easy as could be (and I am not that strong!)

Of course when you look around you realize this was made as this man’s home. He had a tool shed and a bedroom in a structure that looks very normal and house like (other than the materials it’s made out of ) and then he made all sorts of open air rooms out and about. There were living spaces, a table shaped like a heart, writing desks, a repentance closet with another chair, a bunch of little pools, a bathtub, a drinking well, a kitchen, and a bedroom, complete with adult and child sized beds, including a crib, which freaked me the hell right out, especially knowing he didn’t have any real children – just the ones he imagined up. Apparently there were five of those…

Of course the most interesting part of this whole thing was the fact the man who created it was completely fucking crackers. He had a crush on some heiress, who probably didn’t know of his existence, and he believed she was sending him messages through a newspaper comic. He also was a recluse, pretty much only dealing with people when they came to his little castle and paid ten cents to look around. He must have done this little tour a lot though because by the time he died he managed to amass several thousand dollars. It gave me a lot to go over in my mind. I have yet to figure out why a creative and super intelligent mind is so often disturbed.

The place was small but amazing if you’re one to ponder. The little automated tours were long-winded and boring but the rest was cool. It was also covered in lizards, both native and not and it took every ounce of my willpower not to try and catch one. When I was a kid I spent so many hours learning to catch everything I could… chickens, turtles, frogs, wild birds, you name it. A lizard would have been fun… but I captured them in photos instead. They were adorable and fast.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


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Isabel the “Sea Serpent” – Virginia

It was still only two o’clock or so when I made the decision to continue driving. There was a rumor that a driftwood sea serpent was lurking around here so I had to find it. I found the serpent, took the usual tourist photos standing in front of it and then enjoyed the beach a bit. The ocean was angry and the waves were crashing down the shore hard. There was even one hapless guy, who against all regulations on the many signs, swam out into the waves and started surfing. He made two waves before I lost interest and left. I found a few shells here and there but nothing overly interesting. The only thing here I did not find on Cape Cod or Maine were dozens and dozens of mermaid purses. These are the hard spiked eggs of skates, small rays that live off the coast. It also pains me a bit to see those because they obviously were spat into the world with much pain and distress…. Seems a waste to have so many wash up to shore!

There was a huge fiddler crab here which needed only a little coaxing to scamper down the beach. I nudged its legs with my foot and it went scuttling over the sand like no one’s business. Fast little sucker! And when he stopped he puffed up like a rooster and made threatening gestures with his claws. I took lots of photos and one video, eventually protecting him from three loose dogs before moving onward.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

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Angel Oak – South Carolina

Angel Oak is apparently a giant tree, the oldest in the state or some such. I went there expecting another kitschy little tourist attractions but I was quite happily surprised. It was hidden on a dirt road, guarded on each side by arching trees. I swear it could have been a scene out of a fairy tale had I been driving a horse and buggy. The tree itself was enormous indeed, fat and stout, with branches hitting the ground from its own weight. Some were propped up, other branches were held in place by cable. Still, despite the fact it couldn’t deal with its own enormity, the tree itself was beautiful and nestled in a really sweet patch of woods to boot. It surprisingly had a lot of people wandering in and out and a small gift shop as well. I took a few photos, perused the gift store, and asked an elderly couple to take my photo in front of the tree. I am afraid my pallid skin and Yankee accent was a dead give always that I was not from the area. The locals are chatty and friendly.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

 

 

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The Italian Market – Philadelphia PA

Katherine and I walked down a little ethnic street market near Pat’s after this. They were selling everything here from cheap dollar store crap to live pigeons and fruit I’ve never seen in my life (sadly unlabeled, though I think one was a pawpaw.) The most bizarre part of this was all the street signs advertising various meats… instead of reading “fresh pork” they had cartoonish paintings of pigs wielding meat cleavers or smiling. There was something slightly off with that… I only found one sign with three melancholy animals sadly looking downwards. One looked suspiciously like a poodle though I guess it was supposed to be a sheep.

It was a nice walk with interesting people, different things to pick at. There was even a place selling old vinyls for a buck a piece. Neither of us felt like carrying anything so we merely poked at them a bit. It was a good way to get rid of our cheese steaks too. By the time we were done walking our little lunch was riding safely in our bellies.

We walked a little bit from here to reach the subway which we were on and off of all day. Somewhere along the route we ran into a woman walking a dog that I swear was a cross between a pit bull and a Jack Russell. Ugliest little thing I have ever seen! But he seemed well behaved. The people on the other hand… most were friendly and docile but there was one guy yelling at his little 3-4ish year old son for crying. “If you keep crying you’re going to bed!” Kid was crying about his leg hurting, he just wanted to be picked up for Christ’s sake, you’re right in front of your place of residence, just pick the damn thing up! I’m bad with kids but even I knew this one… small children make for crappy walking companions, expect to have to carry them. I suppose bad parenting is everywhere. Got into a discussion about how people who would be good parents never seem to be able to have children or don’t want any. I know I sure don’t want any, especially after going to the Mutter Museum and seeing what happens with other little bundles of joy who happen to be genetic fuck-ups. I know my family’s genetics are completely wonky, why tempt Murphy?

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


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Mutter Museum – Philadelphia PA

I had a friend living in Pennsylvania who offered to show me around Philadelphia so I took her up on the offer. I got up early and drove to Philly where I found her text messaging me in front of the station. Traffic forced me away from her before I could yell out the window and I spent the next three rounds circling the block to regain contact. She jumped in and I set off to find parking, which was really easy.

Katherine had planned a visit to the Mutter Museum, which is a museum of biological oddities, originally intended to educate physicians-to-be. It’s not real obvious from the side walk but Katherine had been there before. We walked in, paid our admission, put on our little visitor tags and continued on. I had wanted to visit the Mutter Museum since I was 11 or 12 and saw a segment on TV about it. Here you could see a plaster death cast of the first famous Siamese twins, Chang and Ang (I’m hoping I remembered that right.) Also was their pickled uni-liver. Other things I had already known about was a ginormous bowel from someone who literally died of constipation, the skeleton of a giant and a dwarf, and a bunch of drawers full of things surgically removed from people who had swallowed them. Who knew safety pins and campaign buttons were that tasty! It said most specimens were extracted from people under fifteen years of age. Well let’s hope so! I can’t imagine at sixteen little Johnny’s friends are egging him on to eat big sweater buttons.

The museum was full of other things that were just as fascinating. There were skeletons of Siamese twins, all babies, the rib cage of a woman who warped her bones wearing a corset, many pickled babies with birth deformities. There were spines bent and fused at odd angles from people with kyphosis. That scared the hell out of me, having the condition myself I hope I don’t end up that way!

There were castings of things that could happen to your eyes… gruesome things… like a splinter to the eye, cancerous growths, extreme conjunctivitis. Even more horrifying was a collection of antiquated gynecological tools that would send any sane woman screaming for the hills and what I can only describe as a baby scooping spoon. They also had surgical tools, embalming tools, and a brain slicer, which looked disturbingly similar to a bagel slicer. One poor man had a cast done of his face with a weird horn-like growth jutting out of it. There was a skeleton of some poor teenager whose muscles and ligaments turned to bone and fused him in this horribly awkward position. Then there was the case full of skulls. I’m not sure what the intent of the display was but each skull had its ethnicity and manner of death labeled. We were horrified to find a thirteen year old who had committed suicide “after a discovered theft.” What kind of theft would warrant that reaction?! The wording to many of these were trite and outdated and in some ways even comical. One read, “Hydrocephalic imbecile.” Another read something like, “Attempted suicide, lived for 15 more years but was never cured of melancholy.” My favorite was, “At 70 attempted suicide, died 10 years later at age 80.” I wondered why attempt suicide at 70? Hell, he’d been lucky to live that long in the first place…. Still the bone structure was different depending on age and to some degree ethnicity. There weren’t many women, there were a lot of suicides, one murder, several executed prisoners, really the people whose bodies were not cared for after death during the time.

I saw just how much the human body can put up with… bones broken and fused in awkward ways, a ninety pound ovarian tumor, bottles of tape worms, a skull and a femur suffering bullet wounds and the most shocking of all were the syphilitic skulls, one didn’t even have a face anymore, it was completely eaten away. How anyone could have lived that long with such a horrific condition I don’t know. At the end was a special exhibit, a soap mummy and a bunch of presidential stuff… including a presidential tumor! And a piece of John Wilkes Booth. Just a bit yucky…

Then there was an art exhibit… I mean how could you top the fetal dance macbres that were already in the display cases out with the actual human specimens? Well! There was a great deal for abstract art using wigs and old medical supplies and hypodermics… there was also a comic, in a brilliant pink, describing in vivid detail human menstruation. I couldn’t read it… quite frankly I don’t want to know my own cycles in quite so much detail… This was the entrance to the gift shop, which was a hoot. It was tiny but hilarious, a book case flaunting titles like, “1001 Ways You Can Die.” There were more poster, pens that looked like hypodermics, two-headed gingerbread men cookie cutters, and a bin full of germ-inspired plushies. A magnet found it’s way home with me, how could I not get a souvenir?

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


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And so it Begins!

Ever since I was a tween I dreamed about going across the entire United States and soaking in everything it had to offer. I had grown up in a bubble – and as nice as that bubble was I wanted to know what else was out there besides the trees and stone walls of New Hampshire. Was it really like visiting another planet out West? Where the people the same all over? Was there anything that united this society besides the idea of country? As much as I longed to know the answer I kept my dreams to myself until at the age of 25 an opportunity arose and I figured it’s now or never.

Suddenly my freakish encyclopedic knowledge was actually useful! I picked lots of destinations – everything I had ever wanted to see from the geysers of Yellowstone, to the fossils of Butte National Monument, to the charismatic Robert the Doll in Key West. I was going to do it all.

A map was procured, one of those big pastel maps of the United States you see hanging in history and geography classes in every public school. Pins were stuck into desirable destinations like some sort of 2-D voodoo doll and then the waiting… the ungodly anxious waiting as the weather slowly creaked from one bone frigid season to something a little more livable. It begins!

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

 

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