10/05/2016
The BRIDGE/MARKER celebration is on October 17th at 6:00 pm.
Chandler's Tourist Camp
Stories sometimes come layered like a wedding cake marrying together many different parts. This marker did.
The year before Dad’s passing he called me to bring home his music, songs he had long ago written for Mother. I came with the music and he filled me with more stories like how he traveled from Rhode Island to Tallahassee. He recalled how he first stopped at the Ben Bridges ball field and signed up to teach Little League. I thought; Really! Not Cascades? "No, Ben Bridges Ball field", he said. But where was it now? What had become of it? All these questions led me to the RA Gray Library to research and unravel a fascinating local history of baseball, the Dixie Highway, Tin Can Tourists and local auto camps, motels, and hotels. The Chandler’s Tourist Camp marker, placed Sept 21, 2016 at Cascades Crossing, off Adams Street and FAMU WAY, shares a multi-layered local history. The marker celebrates one man’s vision for automobile accommodations in Tallahassee, the beginning of Florida’s Automobile Tourism on the Dixie Highway in Florida, Lake Ella and the crossroads of the Old Spanish Trail, and the long parallel roads leading south to Miami Beach. Layered in this story is a deliciously sweet piece of my memory, the Ben Bridges Ball Field, that was Dad’s Field of Dreams, and where he came to start a family. From our modest house behind a barn on the Dixie Highway, at the edge of Southwood Plantation, across from cow fields, in a small pasture with a creek, surrounded by oaks, crepe myrtle and magnolias we shared a red dirt road with the flashing neon lights of the Dixie Motel where my first memories of trucks, cars, Southern waves and friendly faces, and the noise and humming of life pulsed.
DADS SONGS ON CD AVAILABLE FOR $20.00.
Musicians: Danny Stillwood, Acoustic Guitar; Scott Campbell, Electric Guitar; Debbie Berlinger, Drums; Mark Patton,Upright Bass; Kevin Robertson, Mandolin.
ONE GIRL INC
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Deborah Desilets sings Harvey Desilets's Songs
Work in progress
LOVE ME FOREVER
http://soundcloud.com/daffodil007/believe-me-14/s-Ddq6P
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http://soundcloud.com/daffodil007/love-me-forever-1/s-xm9ME
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