By Christine Tibbetts
TIFTON
February 21, 2008 02:57 pm
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“It’s a business doing pleasure with you,” declares leather craftsman Dan Holiday, whether you shop or not in his studio on America’s oldest street in St. Augustine.
He’s all about the pleasure part, shaping vegetable-tanned leather into soft handbags or sharkskin into belts, and meeting people walking on the brick street built in 1565.
Horses clomp by too, with carriage drivers telling their passengers tales of this Florida city founded by the Spanish, invaded by the British and chosen by Minorcan people fleeing New Smyrna in 1777. Florida became America’s 27th state in 1845.
That carriage ride is fun, but making friends with Holiday and his neighbors on this two-block street requires strolling. Carefully. This is an old street, really old, so can’t be expected to be smooth and even.
Aviles (Aah ve lis is the way to say it) keeps to itself between bustling, touristy King Street and community-quiet Bridge Street that no longer leads to a bridge but sports a Catholic school. You could miss these bricks and their artisans if too caught up in the other spectacular sights of St. Augustine.
Spending all day, and then popping back in the next day is a better plan.
Quiet might be what some Aviles Street residents prefer; seems the best time to catch the retired nuns is 7 a.m. en route to mass at the Cathedral-Basilica on the next block.
I didn’t get to Mass on my February visit to St. Augustine, but I heard harps.
Eavesdropping outside the window of Harp Ways where harpist Mary Jane Ballou was either practicing or teaching a lesson — knowing I was standing on an ancient street listing to ancient music seeping from a not-so-well-insulated old building — connected me to many centuries.
Tourism does that when I poke around, and when I stand still and just listen. Here, a holiday can even turn into a hobby by purchasing a 26-string beginner harp called a Harpsicle starting at $295, arranging some lessons on the historic street (first one’s free) and creating enchanting music for the rest of your life. All because of taking a vacation and strolling slowly.
That same kind of slow walking’s also a good idea for the first stroll in a pair of Dan Holiday’s custom sandals. They’re slippery in the beginning.
“Go outside and get some grit in your soles on those brick streets,” he instructed after fitting my size 10 quad A bony feet. “Then come back in and we’ll adjust them again.”
That’s when I discovered the harp, treading carefully along the same street Sir Francis Drake walked five centuries ago. Wonder if he had sandals or boots? Holiday makes boots too, and 18th century style shoes for re-enactors.
The sandals will be enough for me. Never had custom shoes before, and certainly never had someone trace my feet on a manila file folder, muttering as he moved the pencil.
“When did you break that toe?” Didn’t know I had, but certainly recall some big pain meeting up with rungs of rocking chairs. He shaped the straps on my sandals to support that toe and built an arch to hold up the part that always hurts.
These shoes are mine. Only mine. So was lunch on Aviles Street. Traveling companion G.W. Tibbetts wouldn’t eat with me. He preferred the sports bar on the next street, overlooking the Matanzas River and featuring hundreds of microbrews and international beers, plus beef.
Polish barley soup and pierogies stuffed with sauerkraut and mushrooms or spinach was my plan. Grace and Dariusz Dzierlatka have been cooking the food of their homeland for 12 yeas on Aviles Street, adding in the flavors they learned living in Greece after leaving Poland.
They call their shop Gaufre’s & Goods and the horse and carriage drivers point it out as a place for European pastries. That’s only the icing on the cake.
The pyzy I ordered just to try one is shredded potato shaped like an egg and stuffed with meat. The pierogies, Dariusz explained, are made with a pasta-type dough, very different from the shredded potato.
Six of those, one pyzy and the soup didn’t leave room to try the other Gaufre specialty: stuffed cabbage. I did order half a waffle, not a whole, and topped with blueberries, sliced strawberries and a sprinkling of banana slices.
This is a European waffle, the walk-about kind you can hold in your hand without it flopping. Aviles is a street for walking.
When you go, ask for a pipe and hope to be lucky. This is insider’s dessert information.
“As a boy, I spent my pennies in the bakeries on pipes. You can get them in Poland but are not likely to find them even in Polish bakeries in Chicago or New York,” Dariusz said. “They are very hard to make.”
My pipe was a delicate affair, light rolled pastry filled with an airy crème and suspended in a triangle of parchment paper, too fine for bare fingers.
Worley Faver recommended Grace’s Polish cooking when I knew it was time to pull away from his fine pottery making to get some lunch.
He’s a sixth-generation St. Augustine resident, something not too unusual, he assured me. “Take a look at this photography,” he pointed out on the wall next to his potter’s wheel.
“Harry Hellas who did these photos is seventh-generation St. Augustine.”
All along Aviles Street, and throughout this Florida city, I kept adjusting my thinking about travel to other continents being necessary to connect with older images and experiences than America offers.
Faver says he builds his pottery the old-fashioned way. “I keep my tools really simple, as an old potter would. These are coil pots. I never throw a pot. And I don’t use glazes.”
They look like leather, I thought, and while he didn’t agree he said other people say that too.
Faver adds the techniques of pre-14th century Anasazi Indians to his 16th-century pottery studio, his favorite tools a smooth stone for polishing the clay and a walnut for texturing.
“I talk to my pieces. They tell me a story and I name them,” Faver says. He’ll talk to you too, and share the personalities of these works.
Georgia red clay is the medium and Faver’s concession to the modern era is his kiln, used only he says because hunting and gathering materials for the right kind of fire doesn’t fare well in this society.
If a map would help him find that wood, Faver could get one two doors up at Bouvier’s Antique Maps & Prints.
John Bouvier specializes in Florida and Caribbean maps, but delights in his array of vintage railroad, Biblical, Roman era, geological, city and battle maps too.
“People who collect maps usually want a specific geographical point, “Bouvier said. “New England people like New England maps.
“Sometimes people like a particular map maker or maps with mistakes.”
Bouvier has been collecting maps himself for a long time, and selling them on Aviles Street for 10 years. One of his personal favorites is a 1784 rendition of Iwo Jima.
Shoppers also like the illuminated manuscripts he has, many framed and ready to enjoy. They also like the watercolors in Rob Connaway’s gallery right next door, especially scenes of St. Augustine.
Art to hang fills the walls of Bill and Laura Puckett’s’ gallery, the Aviles Street Gallery. He’s a watercolorist too, and his paintings of the Sautee Nacoochee, Ga., old general store told me he’s true to his subject because I’ve been there.
Two dozen artists exhibit in this gallery, residents and long-term visitors.
Artists have mattered to St. Augustine visitors since Henry Flagler built the sumptuous Ponce de Leon Hotel in 1888 and invited painters to live and work the three months his posh northern guests wintered at the hotel.
You can stay in shorter stretches than they did, and pack a lot into those days. Aviles Street is only two blocks of St. Augustine’s good times.
When you go:
St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches
Visitors and Convention Bureau
www.Getaway4Florida.com
800-653-2489
800-418-7529
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Photos
G.W. Tibbetts/The Tifton Gazette