Peacocks and Poppycock in Tourist Town

There was no masculine show of wiles. No strutting. No flexing. Just the everyday sort of preening, to keep the mites off. The peacocks were ashamed of their bedraggled state. Until molting is over, they will remain the bird version of a man embarrassed at the gym. The peahens were making soft trilling noises to each other. They seemed happy about it.

A handsome gentleman, even without his strut.

This afternoon was a good day to play tourist with the peacocks. The peacocks live at the Fountain of Youth, and for all I know they are the same peacocks that arrived there via the Spanish four hundred years ago. The Fountain of Youth opens up its gates to us free of charge every September, so we have a bit of a tradition. Some women get plastic surgery, some of us drink from a fountain. Just a matter of preference.

A grainy picture for a grainy bit of history. Despite what the tourist attraction says, Ponce de Leon probably was not looking for the Fountain of Youth - he was looking for gold and power.

The heat was only moderately stifling as we wondered beneath the branches of very old oak trees and cedar, winding our way to the fountain. Before us stood the makings of history. The short but feisty Juan Ponce de Leon was having a light conversation with the natives. Other natives looked on from their village, thinking the man deluded, no doubt. No one lives forever. The man thinks he’s found the fountain of youth? Nonsense. Ironically, the man started a trend that would bring the extreme opposite of the fountain of youth to the natives. After being ravaged by smallpox, what remained of the native Timucuans fled to Cuba with the Spanish, to avoid becoming slaves to the British.

Every time I look at this picture all I see is a stream of urine and a collection cup.

But let’s not dwell on the sad things. Let’s have a bit of this magic water. Hmmm, tastes like…city water. Do I feel any younger? No. The tot drank quite a bit though, so I’m hoping she won’t turn into a newborn tonight, or worse, have diarrhea.

We wondered the sleepy park’s walkways. Past the burial grounds, around the gardens. There is a magic to September in Tourist Town. In September, the tourists leave. There reclines Florida—the real one—all her showmanship gone. Just blue skies with thunder rumbles in the distance, year-round green foliage, sand between the toes even when far from the beach, the high pitched shriek of a hawk, the rustle of palm fronds, a salty smell.

Impressive palmettos, their uses are endless.

We found the Indian village. A woman dressed in period clothing stood there, idle, waiting for us. She was mine. "What is this, a primitive arrow? There were bison in Florida? How did the Indians off an alligator?" Meanwhile the boy was handling every artifact on display around the fire at the center of the village. "These sharks teeth aren’t sharp, how do they hurt people?" The boy wanted to know. I love explaining things like that. Finally, we let the poor woman be.

Onward, we stopped at the blacksmith. “There will be a canon firing in two minutes,” the man said. An earth-shaking crack of thunder seemed to jar the confused blue sky. “That wasn’t it,” the man added. We watched the man’s piece of iron turn orange-hot, while it started to rain. We hunkered down closer to the stall as the tot began to provide us with a soundtrack. “Rain, rain go away! Come again another day!” And on, as the blacksmith with the heavy southern accent and the kind eyes encouraged her. “Keep going, keep going, I think the song is working!”

The rain stopped. We walked out over the waterway, where the fiddler crabs were scurrying, and the breeze was whipping through my hair. “What do you do if you fall in?” I said as I eyed the vague rope railings.

“Float!” The children said.

“Right, but most importantly: Don’t fall in.”

We concluded our trip with a Cuban sandwich underneath a sunshade with a friendly squirrel. The poor dear, we may have single-handedly given her heart disease. I watched the couple of cars in the parking lot and the trolley flick past, mostly empty. The sun was hanging low. The air was entirely cooled by the rain shower, or maybe it was our soaked clothing that had the effect. A calmness was suspended in the air, something native to the land, mixing with the heavy feeling of history about the place.

"This is why we live in Tourist Town," I said aloud.