If Those Jail Bars Could Talk

Wayne Wood is the current premier historian of Jacksonville, Florida at this time.  It is said that he has large terra cotta stones displayed in his yard from a public school that was demolished some years ago. It makes me wonder what D. Frederick Davis had in his Jacksonville yard? Hummmm? Davis wrote the book Jacksonville and Vicinity in 1925.

I feel that way about history too.  Somehow stones, blocks metal cans, hubcaps and the like find their way either in my yard or on my Parent’s property.  For example, in my own yard, there are the actual steel bars from the E. Bay Street Duval County Jail that was built in 1956 and demolished in 2012.  

While the bars are not displayed but rather have grass and ferns growing around them, they are truly authentic, large and heavy. Those bars could be the actual ones that held the likes of the Revered, Dr. Martin Luther King when he spent time in lock-up in 1964. His stay in Duval County was historic and noted in the history books. 

When the jail was being demolished,  I stopped by and asked a crane operator if I could have one of the bars hanging from the building. He told me they were extremely heavy being solid steel but if I’d go get a trailer, he would load it.  And I did… Within a short time, I had gone home, connected my trailer and returned to East Bay Street where he slowly and carefully lowered the heavy bars onto the axils. The old trailer tires thinned out on the riverfront pavement. The trailer and bars made it home. The load was so heavy a rope was tied to the bars and the truck driven off leaving the jail bar beside a tree where it remains today.In 2012, it actually needed up leaning by a tree but the tree is long gone.

The Monson Motel of St. Augustine, Florida was demolished in 2003.  Somewhere in my photographs, there is an image of the Motor Lodge and pool where Dr. King was arrested on June 11, 1964. He and a group tried to eat at the newly established bay-front motel just down from the fort.  The manager refused their entry. King was arrested and taken to the St. John’s county jail.    He was  later moved to the Duval County jail and locked behind bars because there were safety concerns.

If those bars could talk we would have yet another premier historian….

See you tomorrow,

Nan