Editor’s Note: This winter, Greenfield Recorder sports columnist Chip Ainsworth has been traveling the southern part of the United States. This is the third in a series of Saturday columns about his travel experiences.
The Florida Turnpike goes through the state’s heartland, and whoever coined it “The Less Stressway” should be picking up litter. The boring two-lane toll road is clogged with tractor trailers and motor homes, and the tolls from Stuart to I-75 totaled almost $12.
North of Orlando, the land transitions from coconut trees and trimmed hedges to swamp oak and Spanish moss. State roads jut north through “tweener towns” where airboats and pickups are parked in the driveways. Citra proclaims itself the “Home of the Pineapple Orange” and truckloads of fruit picked from nearby groves barrel up Route 301 past Tuff Times Traders and Lucky Duck Gaming. At the Orange Store, honeybells and ruby grapefruits were stacked in red mesh bags near the highway to tempt passing motorists.
There, I filled out a shipping form and paid $55 for a box of oranges to be shipped north before driving back toward the interstate. West of Citra, I passed the entrance to Ocala Poker & Jai-Alai, turned around and parked on the cracked asphalt lot.
The lobby was clean and the worn carpeting was vacuumed, but it wasn’t what visitflorida.com claimed is a gorgeous facility with big screen plasma TVs, a premier jai alai team and table side massages for $1 per minute.
It is “unique,” I’ll give it that, and better than hanging out at Circle K playing scratch tickets, but it’s nothing more than an anachronistic relic. Exercise riders from nearby horse farms sat at fold-out tables peering at small screens and strode across the linoleum floor to bet simulcast races from Gulfstream Park and Aqueduct.
Near the snack bar I spotted a retiree watching races on an old TV with bad reception and asked him, “Where do they play the jai alai matches?”
He pointed to a cordoned-off area a few feet from his table. “Over there. Take a look,” he said, waving off my concern about the “keep out” sign tacked to the drape. I tentatively pulled back the curtain and looked into the darkness toward what appeared to be a squash court.
Simply put, jai alai is a game of catch between two infielders who throw a ball against a wall and whoever drops the ball first loses. The gloves are called cestas, and the ball travels at about 100 mph.
“It’s been closed about four years,” he said. “The place was booming from what I’ve been told, but I never came here. Now they have one match a year that’s a sham to keep the OTB license.”
He was in his mid-60s, with a ruddy complexion and a baseball cap over turtle-framed glasses. A pack of Marlboro Lights, two pens and a program were next to his laptop.
The more we talked, the more I realized he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill degenerate horse player. To the contrary, he probably owned the black Mercedes with the New York plates in the parking lot.
He said that his name was Jay Baer and that his family had owned the largest Benjamin Moore paint store in Buffalo.
“Now I work in mental health as an addiction counselor, and live in a quiet little redneck town called Starke,” he said.
He told me his sister lives in Gilsum, N.H., which is north of Keene. His eyes widened when I told him I live in Northfield.
“Isn’t that near that little racetrack over near Brattleboro?” he asked. “I used to go and bet there off-track all the time.”
“Yeah, Hinsdale,” I said. “They offered a million dollars to Elvis if he showed up on the fourth of July.”
“Yeah!” he exclaimed. “That’s where they started the dime super!”
Small world, especially in the diminishing realm of off-track betting, and on the way out I wondered who’d won the jai alai match.
Angels Diner in Palatka claims to be Florida’s oldest diner, and I drove over to check it out. It’s located 50 miles east of Gainesville on Route 20, not far from St. Augustine.
The sign over the sidewalk on the main drag reads “Angels Diner, Open since 1932.” Apparently the name has a celestial connotation or it would have an apostrophe.
The faded aluminum siding was topped by aqua-green canvas and flanked by an open air roof where cars parked for curbside service.
I dropped four quarters into a vending machine and grabbed a copy of the local newspaper, then went inside and noticed two customers with cell phone holsters clipped to their belts.
Angels is a collision of pink tables and window trim, green counter tops, black underboards with a white ceiling, and a black-and-white checkerboard floor.
Old 45 records were tacked on the wall, including Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-a-Lula” and Jo Stafford’s “Jambalaya” penned by Hank Williams.
I took a table in the back, and a teenage waitress handed me a laminated menu. When she returned to take my order I asked, “The menu says famous people have eaten here, who does that include?”
She giggled and said, “I’ve only been here six months. The band Alabama has been here. I know that for sure.”
An editorial in the Palatka Daily News urged the City Commission to revive the annual Blue Crab Festival that was cancelled last Memorial Day. The airshow was that weekend, and the community college’s baseball season was set to start.
Loosely translated, Palatka means “river crossing,” and the city had been a major trading hub until Henry Flagler’s railroad replaced riverboats. Now it’s a sleepy town of about 10,000 people who have a median income of less than $21,000. Trip Advisor puts the Hi Level Liquors and Alibi Lounge on its list of the top 10 places to visit.
A middle-aged couple entered the diner and took the table across from me. She ordered a cheeseburger and wanted it cooked “As rare as you possibly can make it.”
When her husband ordered the chicken livers, the waitress nodded my way and said, “He got the last one.”
Lucky me, they tasted like barn droppings rolled in Rice Krispies. Now I had to finish them or he’d be resentful.
I asked them if they lived in town and they nodded. A baseball player-turned-author named Pat Jordan had written about pitching in Palatka. Jordan had been a Milwaukee Braves bonus baby, and his book “A False Spring” detailed his travails in the minor leagues.
“One night when he was pitching, an outfielder ran in, grabbed a bat and went back out and killed a rattlesnake,” I said.
The husband pointed to his wife and said, “She ran over one at the end of the driveway, a four-footer.”
“Were you scared?” I asked.
“Nah,” she replied. “I’m used to ‘em.”
“Pygmy rattlers,” he said.
The only thing for dessert was peanut pie, which wouldn’t sit well with chicken livers, so I paid the check and left.
Online reviews give Angels four-and-a-half stars, but really? The food was bad, service was slow and worst of all it doesn’t have a juke box.
Maybe it had broken and that’s why all the 45s were on the wall. Whatever the reason, the next time you’re in Palatka, turn on the radio and keep driving.
Chip Ainsworth is a freelance writer whose Keeping Score column is a regular feature on the Greenfield Recorder’s Saturday sports page.