Return to the Peacock Inn P. Crockett

THEY are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:

I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

                --Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900

The Last Days of the Peacock Inn P. Crockett

So long, old friend I never really had a chance to know...

Is it foolishness to feel for an old house, a simple one, really, even falling apart at the seams?  A building that was once a home, but had quite obviously been given up on long since? Houses, exactly as those who build them, are held together only by the attentive care, sustained efforts, and generous time of those who might care, and there is no hiding its lack.

Is it ridiculous to wish to simply acknowledge it that it had once been very much loved, and feel the need to express to the house (as if it had ears, or (for that matter) were even still here) a sense of gratitude that it had loved in return?  To remind it that, in the deepest and truest sense, it once had a place in a world that was rapidly changing?   To simply bear witness, and declare, “I remember?”

Abandoned houses are done, because we consider ourselves through with them.  And they go without a protest, returning to the Earth from which they first took shape or under the focused might of a wrecking ball.  And I can only imagine their spirit calmly whispering, all the while, “Thank you, for I have been given to serve,” knowing in some mysterious “house wisdom” that this will always remain true.  No matter what. Always.

For all that we fancy ourselves, for all that we are or will ever know, having a place in such a way may well be the one and only thing that ever has really meant anything, or ever will.

THE PROPS assist the House

Until the House is built

And then the Props withdraw

And adequate, erect,

The House supports itself

And cease to recollect

The Auger and the Carpenter--

Just such a retrospect

Hath the perfected Life--

A past of Plank and Nail

And slowness then the Scaffolds drop

Affirming it a Soul. 


     Emily Dickinson

The property immediately across the street, now green lawn and steps leading graciously to nowhere.

Just beneath the thriving, hustling surface of today’s Coconut Grove, in fact all around for any who take the time to see, are remains.  Not simply architectural remnants, stubborn stone and mortar and brick, but evidence.  Of an era now forever gone, of a way of life that we can scarcely imagine, try how we might.
From where this house once proudly stood, an excellent vista of open bay could be enjoyed, and its cooling breezes savored even in the most relentless waves of summer’s heat. One can still make out a sliver of the blue water, just over the rooftop beyond.

Is it madness that some part of me devoutly hopes that there may be a Heaven for old houses?  Homes that stood faithful and strong for as long as they were needed, and able?  Piece together a well-built roof, walls, floors, and doors all fashioned from fine Dade County Pine, and an abundance of large windows (with panes now melting slowly downward, for glass itself is less a stable thing, like stone, than a sort of celestial hourglass, the molten sands forming its smooth surface always in motion, slow and certain, towards the end of time), and you sometimes have something more than a house.  Even if the whole of it had not once been part and parcel of the first hotel in Dade County, thus playing a prominent part in a most notable and singular history.

An old house that once gave families comfort and shelter from the assault of howling hurricane winds that came out of the blue, and as well, helped them through the ravages more harsh (yet equally unforeseeable, or even imaginable) of human tragedy and its resonating aftermath of excruciating loss.

There are times when one has lost all: received that dreaded call in the middle of the dark night from the Highway Patrol, attended faithfully and with full devotion one who will always hold their hearts but now lays dying, all the way through to their final breath.  The journey can be epic, yet its final end disarming.  Even anticlimactic.  Quite suddenly, and most gently, the one that has meant the world to them finally takes one last breath, and is gone.

IN such times, the familiar roof over one’s head can keep a spirit grounded, maybe offer gentle support in resisting that call from above, amplified in heart badly broken, to just let go, because it’s suddenly so awfully heavy down here, to simply slip loose of those clunky and graceless chains at last and float on up, upwards into the Great Big Blue above.

It is true that in the fullness of time we must all answer that final call, but how we experience each loss boils essentially down to a question of timing.  There comes a time when there can be no greater blessing, and before that time there seems no tragedy greater or more wrong. Many times, it’s somewhere in between.

Events must happen in their turn, we come to believe, or they make no sense. Consequently, many a stone is thrown in utter desperation at the mocking Heavens, and hard, bearing the burning question, “Is it too DAMNED much to ask, to at least have let it make some sense?Well, IS IT?? HUH?”

Yet the Heavens throw back no stones. The cries are indeed heard, and heard as prayer most urgent. The Higher Realm knows only compassion, but its answer comes in whisper too soft for mortal ear.  There must be a reason.

The Artist’s Home at Night    P. Crockett

In its deepest sense, home is wherever our hearts tell us that we really should be, the place that is good and right to call “ours.” Where (hopefully) we are needed, and others rely upon us.  Robert Frost said: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”

So, where is home? None can know truly know the answer to that most sacred of questions, but each of us alone.  If you can reply without doubt or hesitation, realize that you are blessed.  For many of us, it is the ultimate question to grow into, to come to understand in the living.  And that’s for ourselves.  For those that we love, or would love, all we can ask for is the clarity and courage to recognize and communicate our wishes and feelings, and for the grace to hope.

If we are to speak of home, it seems imperative to remember the growing number of our friends and neighbors that have either already lost theirs in the “perfect storm” of foreclosure actions sweeping the country, or who even now stand trembling on the precipice. They need more than our prayers and good wishes alone. Though the thought itself be painful, we must stop to realize that it could be any of us, next. Is there no organized voice to speak clearly and with sufficient authority to be heard at last, ENOUGH?  Is there a point beyond which the People will not be pushed?

A subject for another posting.  I will say only that there is clearly something wrong with this picture, in a “night is day and up is down” sort of way, and that despite all distractions and smoke screens fanned by this industry or that, it is not the People who are primarily at fault here.

Yet we are the ones suffering.

Now. Would you join me on a brief visit?  Just a couple of stops. First, Mandeville, Louisiana.

 Little Flower P. Crockett

“Little Flower Villa,” a true classic in a  historic Louisiana town, before the storm.   Beautifully tended and well- loved by my cousin Charlie Roberts and his family, the property unfortunately sat on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain across from New Orleans, where it met with the utter devastation of Katrina’s storm surge.  (The view across the street is below.) I’ve not met this cousin (technically a second cousin; his Mom being first cousin to mine and yet closer than many sisters, one of a true-blue “steel magnolia meets Ya-Ya sisterhood” unholy alliance who periodically get together and raise Hell!) but somehow nevertheless feel a strong connection.  As I felt him stand in utter desolation with his huge heart badly broken (as if life had been without sufficient challenges before the storm!), grappling with the huge practical issues of where to send the boys to school and whether or not to rebuild, I felt to do this painting for him.  Upon request, he sent me a cd with pictures from “before.”

I conspired to “surprise” him with the delivery of the painting.  Just a few minutes after opening up the wooden crate he called me, crying, and left a message I will always treasure.

Lake Pontchartrain

Now, back to Coconut Grove.

 Cocoanut Grove Homestead 1880  P. Crockett

 Back in 1993 I painted this fine old home across the street from the old Peacock property, and just north of the empty lot with the steps leading only to memory.  It is situated atop the silver bluff on one of those great old lots fronting Bayshore Drive, running the entire distance through to Tigertail Avenue.  I had the great life experience there of being received with gracious hospitality by the property’s owner, Marshall Connally.  Her great-grandfather had built the family home in 1880, and at the time I met Marshall was living there, taking care of her elderly, ill mother.

It was a hot day, and she offered me cold iced tea while we sat on the expansive porch and chatted.  It turned out to be one of those simple moments that, before you know it, add up to the greater part of a life’s real treasure.

The view was amazing.  It was a magical experience; time itself seemed to grow sleepy in traversing the long swath of emerald lawn stretching way down to the street in the distance, and curled up to catch a little nap.   Even the clouds seemed a bit sun-dazed, for the moment overcome by the celestial ennui of just drifting.

I casually brushed the icy glass against the sweat on my forehead as I listened to Marshall hold forth, leaning back in a lounge chair, feet up.  She set about sharing with me a bounty of great stories about the house and its family, in a casual and earnest tone.  The property had never been anything but proud, comfortable, and solid, its walls made of huge, thick slabs of solid coral rock quarried locally and then hewn by hand before being lifted into place, according to the design of her Grandfather’s father.

The luxuriant green avenue and its towering palms all conspire together to pull one gently back in time, to the sweeter moments of life in an era now long forgotten.  All of it boggles the mind: how very green the world had once been, and expansive, and how much room there had been for everybody.  A world in which I have to imagine there seemed less need for hurry. There was always time enough to drop whatever one might be doing and “visit” with guests in the welcoming shade of the monumental front porch, always open to the Bay’s breezes.

I learned several years ago that Marshall had passed on, in her 50’s (or so it seemed) and relatively young.  I am grateful that I had a chance to meet her; she gave to me a great gift.

Her mother had quite certainly preceded her.  Ever since, the house has sat empty.  Even its its porch waits, silent.  No cold iced tea is served, and there is no casual gossip. Or laughter.

Just for now, I like to think.

Just for now.

Finally, it’s just a couple of neighborhoods over and a little back in time, to visit my dear long, long-time friend Vicki de la Torre at the truly grand Old Spanish mansion that she and her sisters and brothers all grew up calling home.  Occupying an entire block along date-palm lined South Miami Avenue, the property always felt a wonderful world of its own, its expanse of buildings, hidden gardens, and romantically decaying fountains and benches all fitting together as poetry.  The “castle” was gracefully surrounded by a low wall, built of coral rock and inset with iron scrollwork, and guarded by two majestic stone lions.

After the divorce the home had to be sold, a hapless victim of the real cost in today’s dollars of maintaining the finest dreams of Yesterday. The children were heartbroken.  The new owner, fearing the imposition of a historic designation that would have encumbered his right to destroy, lost no time in seeing the place utterly demolished.  The pool has long since been filled in, and virtually every sign of what had once been, removed.  Only the wall and rusting iron remains, and the fine lions.  Even they have at last begun to crumble, the plaster breaking away and exposing to the corrosive elements the rebar that has for so many years held up their tails at a suitably proud angle.

Vicki now lives with her family in California, and a few years ago commissioned these paintings from two old, badly faded photographs.  This one is called Vicki’s Inner Child at Home.

Here is Vicki, close up.  (Actually, as it turns out, her older sister Chris.

That’s all right, it works for both of them.)

Finally, a view of the “back” view of the house, which actually faced the broad avenue.  This house most certainly did not have any "ugly side."  The way the sunlight poured through those windows into the monumental living room, so high above, was a simple glory to behold.

Vicki’s Home              P. Crockett

Now, safely back where we began, I must get back to my life, and leave you to yours.  Before you go anywhere, though, I want to thank you most sincerely for your companionship upon this little jaunt.

Take a moment to think about the people and places you might have come to love, and the dreams you hold most dear, for yourself and for them.  Now is always an excellent time to cherish, for burnishing to its finest glow that most sacred to you.  The practice requires no reason.  It partakes of the reason that we are here, meaning (in practical terms) that it will provide you with a reason.

And it occurs to me to say: should you find yourself put to a choice, allow love to pass reason. If it’s really love—and that’s where the discernment comes in—it will never, ever let you down.  Despite all the hype, the voice of reason sometimes makes little real sense.

Wherever you are, is the best place to start.  (Yes, that includes you.) Each breath, until our last (and quite possibly thereafter) can truly be seen as a new beginning.

If we believe it!

See you--

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Road to Cocoanut Grove, 1910's Stereopticon Image

ALONG the way of one of our recent garage sale excursions, I had the pleasure of meeting noted Coconut Grove artist Carol Garvin at her wonderful home there. (Her work can be seen at http://www.cgarvin.com/openframe.html ) She had decided to let go of a number of treasures, including a number of old books once owned by the Munroe family (one of whom built the still-standing Barnacle homestead on the shores of the Bay), and a more recent, wonderful document:

SITTING down with it and turning its pages was wonderful, and strange.

Having been there for at least part of that era, it struck me that the vibrant, eccentric, and proud "village" so vividly brought back to life through the mosaic of stories, photos, and advertisements in that large brown magazine is now gone. Almost every bit of it. A sense of quirkiness, pride in community and individuality, and an unabashed need to live and feel and experience "larger than life," were all conveyed with pellucid clarity in what was said, and what was not. The pictures and words spoke of an era that now seems nearly as unreachable and distant as that of the once open streets of cobbled Pompeii, before the molten rivers and mountains of hot ash spewed by Mount Vesuvius swallowed it all up within its shadow.

As I thumbed through page after oversized page of articles and exuberant advertisement for every manner of innovative and unique craftsmanship and creative expression: theater, cuisine and fashion,  jewelry and floral arrangement, and so on, I could not help but be struck by the thought, with no small wonder, "My God. My God. It would be a full 10 years until the sickness came." These young people, captured in their bold and brave and (generally) good spirit, quickening in the very prime of their art, were never going to sicken and die. And neither were their friends one after another, like bowling pins racked up badly out of order.

The horizon was as bright, bold, and inviting as that of the blue bay itself, at its most lyrical. In that sense, and many others, it was such an innocent time.

Yet innocence, I suppose, is a relative term that takes on meaning only in strict relationship to the lessons of its contrapuntal "shadow," experience. And we, all of us, adult and child alike, are becoming experienced. Like it or not.

(And by itself, that is not necessarily a bad thing. Not at all. But it is most certainly an invitation to the great o'er-looming question now hitting us all right in the face (and often very hard) collectively and alone: what are we to do with it, and where are we to go from here? Oh yeah, and how?

For some reason I cannot know, yet trust absolutely, I have hope.)

Coconut Grove 1970
(Click to view larger; return by back-arrow.)

Downtown, Close-Up

Perhaps I should clarify that I did not sit down to write another elegaic piece about AIDS and its long shadow. Been there, done that, am living it, and grateful to be alive.

I write more of a universal human experience confronted by anyone who sticks around long enough, and in South Florida it needn't be that long, at all: the fading into history of yet another golden era. As so poetically expressed by Robert Frost, Nothing Golden Can Stay.

I have to see that the Grove of that era was a "moment," one so exquisitely vibrant and alive that it did not seem so. And perhaps that is why, for all of its canned "festiveness," the Cocowalk mega-complex always touches me with a light but definite sense of sadness. Every time I go there, after all of these years.

This is how we often learn that we have really loved: we find ourselves mourning, to greater or lesser degree, and looking back. I believe there might be a better way.

Miami River, and Egret

I write of one era, and yet: I've heard from the old timers how the real peak of the Grove was in the '50's, (Oh, Paul, my God! You should've been there! It really was something to see.") when the "beat poets" took up residence and still more artists came, of all kinds, and a vibrant, cultured, and tolerant (real) community came to thrive in a most unlikely slice of tangled subtropical forest along the shores of Biscayne Bay.

And looking back further still, I have heard tales told by the even "older timers," who grew up when the Seminole Indians still came in from the Everglades by cypress canoe to trade, and before all this damned pavement, when the water was unimaginably clear and the Earth still breathed fresh and deep. And, it was not yet too crowded to prevent the sharing of the ample forest with roaming panther, fox, black bear, and any number of other creatures that had arrived here well before any man. Since the dawn of time, after all, none of these species had known of (or been even able to imagine) any other that would have the motivation and means to lay claim to all of it, land and sea and sky above, all for itself.

They, God bless them, were innocent.

Tenochtitlan, seat of the Aztec Empire (current site of Mexico City), November 1519, a thriving city in many respects absolutely unequaled in contemporary Europe. Cortez and his men would arrive on the 22nd day of the following month.

Strange, the way this line of contemplation hits me. There's no quality of the morbid to it; we are already grieving, yet we might not know exactly why. Every challenge I have yet encountered, no matter its seriousness or magnitude, is easier and most usefully faced in the light. Also, we cannot help but realize that the transience of our experience here is at once the most unimaginable burden we carry, and abiding sweetness that gets us through it.

And if the cities will come and go, perhaps we might set our sights on leaving behind, at the least, the finest and most golden treasure we possibly can. And quite possibly that treasure has nothing at all to do with gold of the cold metal kind.

Carpe diem. If you've got love in your heart, it is your greatest gift. Share it, all you can. Just because.

And I will aim to do the same.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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In which my dear friends Eric and Katy Raits find themselves as Seminole, wandering free in a dream of Rousseau's, without end.

With due appreciation to:

Henri Rousseau, Femme se promenant dans une foret exotique or (translated loosely) Woman Taking Her Stroll in an Exotic Forest 1905

And the following photographs taken in the South Florida area long ago:

Here is Niki Butcher's photo journal of a day she and her husband, Clyde, spent with the wild ones in the Florida Everglades, loose with their cameras: http://photojournalclydeniki.blogspot.com/2008/03/snakes-and-orchids.html

Katy and Eric's excellent photographs of the vanishing wild can be seen at www.gladesphotos.com

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Ingraham Highway, Cocoanut Grove, 1880's

Some of my greatest adventures happen when I venture outside into the world armed with my easel, palette, and paintbrush.

Several years back I came across this wonderful wreck of an old Coconut Grove home on a corner of increasingly busy Tigertail Avenue, and felt immediately drawn to paint there. I loved it all the more because it so obviously didn't belong among the new "nouveaux" McMansions popping up like some regrettable fungus, everywhere. Its state of "wild grace" spoke volumes about what the Grove had once been, and was now being lost, a little bit and everyday, forever. The year was 1993.

I thought the place deserted, but it was not.

The painting is called "Welcome to the Peacock Inn," and here's why. In the middle of my second session, an old man as disheveled and inspired as the ground he walked upon suddenly appeared out of nowhere, only a few feet away, a large square bandage covering his nose and big 'ol shotgun at the ready. He stood his ground, glaring at me menacingly. "This is a first," I thought, my heart pounding like a drum. I raised the paintbrush in my hand and said something like "Don't shoot, I'm only an artist."

He immediately responded, "Don't be alarmed. I just carry the weapon for self-protection," and proceeded to approach and graciously introduced himself. "Sorry about that," he offered, "I didn't mean to make you nervous." "No, it's all right. I understand," I told him, knowing the neighborhood, and also feeling grateful that I would apparently have more time to live!

And so we fell in to conversation. Despite the awkward introduction, he turned out to be a dear old man with a big heart, heavy laden with memories. As my Grandfather used to say, "his best days were behind him." And he knew it. He asked if I'd like an iced tea and the day was indeed still and hot, and I said I would very much, thank you, and we talked for a while before he courteously excused himself so that I might once again proceed with my painting, in earnest.

I have always loved old people, and the way they have time for you, and the way they can sometimes feel on fire to pass along incandescent memories of a once-golden horizon now grown small, and cold. This man, now my host, relished an opportunity to speak with a much more recent Miami native about the "old Grove," and to explain how different things used to be. As it turns out, he and his wife of many, many years lived in a small house toward the back of the jungled property, with far too many cats. His wife was "a Peacock," he explained, meaning a member of one of the earliest and most prominent pioneer families to have undertaken the task of "settling" the wild, heavily forested slice of land along Biscayne Bay they came to call Cocoanut Grove.

Before the City of Miami even existed, pioneer Charles Peacock, recently arrived from England along with his wife Isabella and their three sons, settled in Coconut Grove and in 1882 opened the Bay View House, later called the Peacock Inn, the first hotel in the area. Set in an absolutely pristine hardwood hammock (or forest) alongside the crystal clear and fish-filled waters of Biscayne Bay, the comforts of the Inn attracted a wide variety of visitors from all over the world, including scientists, authors, and nobility. The place was something of a human "rainbow," with black workers that had relocated from the Islands and come to help build the place and then work there (in the process establishing a once-fine neighborhood in the area), Seminole Indians casually dropping by to trade, and a mosaic of others.

Mrs. Cypress Charlie Photo by Kirk Munroe Ca. 1880

The Peacock Inn, Turn of the Century

More than a few who came to visit wound up making the Grove their home, including yacht designer and wrecker Ralph Munroe whose home, The Barnacle, is now a state historic site; homesteader Flora McFarlane, Coconut Grove's first schoolteacher and founder of the Housekeeper's Club (now The Woman's Club of Coconut Grove); and author Kirk Munroe.

The Billy Family Photo by Kirk Munroe Ca. 1880

So, my host proceeded to explain that when the time had come to demolish the aging wooden building (as seems so inevitably called for by the ravenous and insatiable hunger of "progress"), he and his wife had prevailed upon the crew to salvage at least part of this building they must have come to love. And so it had been destroyed with some measure of care, and portions of it used to craft a home. The place had been built of famous "Dade County pine" harvested in the area, after all (and first-growth, to boot), an extremely fine quality of lumber that was not only absolutely beautiful, but also (and this is important) so dense as to be nearly "termite proof." (A typical "victim of its own success," the fine wood can no longer be found for sale, new. Only recycled, if you're lucky.)

The Peacock Inn, Glory Days

Also, with that area as popular with boaters as it was, young men came to build the boats. And they knew craftsmanship as it had been taught to them, a way of life with an aspiration toward excellence running right through the heart of it. No cutting corners, period. So one can imagine the Inn was built well. And yet: to me, it seems a given that the place was held together not so much by nails and mortar, as by love. Or, put another way, hospitality.

Bay View House (Peacock Inn) and the Community Trail (Coconut Grove : Miami, Fla.), ca. 1885. Dinner Key is in the background.

Credit: Ralph Munroe Collection, Historical Museum of Southern Florida.

(Just imagine it: having been out on the wild bay fishing, or off in the tangled forest, you have made your way back to the Inn and the light is fading near day's end. You are tired, hungry, and alive. The Earth is as young and as clean as it will be ever again, though you cannot know this.

But the wildness of the place is very real: of course there are the mosquitos and the no-see-ums, and the rattler and water moccasin, and then the bears and the roaming panther, and God only knows what else. So the warm golden light you see pouring from the windows of the old Inn means something, and if you've approached from inland it must be awfully nice to once again lay eyes upon the great deep blue expanse of bay, and to stop for just a moment and feel the cool salt breeze on your face, even in the dead of summer.

And at the same time the gentle hum of conversation and laughter floating out from within promises another evening of easy communion, a sharing of good hearty food and drink (if you're lucky), before laying down to dream.)

Wainwright Hammock P. Crockett 1993

So "progress" had inevitably come calling, and there this family had stood, caught in a singular moment on one of the inumerable and relentless grinding cusps of history, the "fault lines" between past and present, and thus future, that in some ways define this area. They watched an epic and yet everyday event: a curtain that others could not even see was falling down forever all around them, erasing all they had known and once held precious.

What "progress" fails to ever mention or make clear is its cost: that forevermore we will wonder where exactly we have come from, and grandchildren, unless they are very lucky indeed, might never be able to even begin to comprehend what daily life might have been like for their grandparents when they were young here. Is that not of utmost importance, somehow? This I feel, more than understand.

"Drinking Cocoanut Water"

So the family had moved the fragments of what had been to the site, an early and inspired recycling piecing together a home in which they might carry on. But even that had been many years past. Now it was all gracefully (but completely) falling apart, being inexorably reclaimed by nature despite its stubborn endurance. I believe that pained him. "It looks like it must have been an excellent house," I said. "Oh, it was,"
he agreed. He fixed his eyes upon the broken glass of an upstairs window, as if a child he loved were still there waiting for him to come home from work, face pressed against the glass. For a moment it was easy to imagine the sound of a ringing dinner bell, to catch just the muted outlines of the soundtrack of a family living out one of its days, to smell the smoke wafting on up through the coral rock chimney.

"Wish you couldv'e seen it, in the day." "Wow," I said, "me too."

One hears all kinds of stories about Miami, some of which are actually true. As it turns out, this one was. And not only was this fading glory in Coconut Grove part of the Inn, it was part of its very heart center. Here is a photo of the Inn recording a celebration of Christmas, 1886, with "all residents of Bay Biscayne present":

I wound up completing three paintings on the site, and am still occasionally recognized at some garage sales, etc. as "that guy who was out sitting by the side of the road painting that old house," for Tigertail Avenue is heavily traveled. Yet even the wonderful wreck I painted is now several years gone and but another memory, a generic McMansion (with even a tiny kidney-shaped pool squeezed in) having taken its place, crowded on to what once had been the front half of a luxurious expanse of land. Gone.

The Painting Site, Today

And in the passing years I'm sure my kind host and his wife have also both ascended to their heavenly reward, for in many sad ways they no longer belonged here. Hopefully they frolick once again, young and laughing and overfilled with the sheer promise of it all, in virgin forest fronting the most beautiful blue and crystal-clear bay you can imagine, forever.

God bless and keep them both. May they rest in peace.

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