Santos

In 1882 John A. Cole and his family (black Americans) returned to the US from a village called Santos in Brazil where their plan to start a new life following the American Civil War did not work out. On their return they purchased land east of todays CR328/301 crossroads where they farmed and harvested timber - and called it Santos.

By 1887 the Santos population was 47, the Florida Transit and Peninsula Railroad had arrived and business was "booming". By 1890 they had a railroad stop, lime rock mining and farming industries, two general stores, a Masonic Lodge, a post office, a barber shop and a moss gin where Spanish moss was processed for stuffing furniture and mattresses.

The Felder Well (now dry) was their water source and community center. Two schools taught kindergarten through 8th grade and spiritual needs were met by three churches and non-spiritual needs by Agnes Collins' two "juke joints" where you could find moonshine and music.

Allen Kendrick, a young teen in the 1930s depression era said people in Santos "didn't suffer for lack of employment, just wages. They didn't pay you hardly nothing, but you sure could work,"

The canal required a half mile wide strip of land to be cleared

The Santos community was dispersed in the mid 1930's when the federal government appropriated the land it occupied for the Cross Florida Ship Canal. Its homes, stores, churches, businesses, industries and jobs were eliminated by clearing, dredging and construction. The fate of many small communities that got in the way of the Ditch of Dreams.

The "Crusher" cleared trees, the undergrowth and probably the communities in its path.

For information on the route and Santos today click here:

Putting on a tire.

I can't remember how many times I've changed tires for people on club rides. I'd rather not do it but if there's one thing worse than getting my hands dirty it's watching people waste time struggling over a flat tire.

Most of you can get the tire off, check for what caused the flat and put the new tube in. The grief comes with the struggle to get that last few inches of tire back on the rim when your thumbs just aren't strong enough.

Let's make it easy. Hold the wheel on the ground with the valve at the bottom. Start putting the tire on at the top of the wheel opposite the valve and work down toward the valve pushing the sides down as you go. When you get to the hard bit then spit on your fingers and rub them under the tire bead. The tire will pop on easily.

With the valve at the bottom push down on each side of the tire.
A little spittle under the last part will make it even easier.

If you have a CO2 pump to inflate your tires but have never used one then buy a pump - it'll still work after the inflator has popped off the valve and frozen your hand. If you must use a CO2 inflator then buy a Red Zeppelin which screws onto the valve - never pops off.

Don't throw your inner tube away. Repair kits are cheap. So take it home and fix it - or give it to me.

Allan Broadribb
Check out all my articles on www.2tiredtales.com.

Wood you believe this?

Powered by the steam engines of the industrial revolution the earliest large scale industry in Florida was timber. Florida was heavily forested with huge ancient trees and there were sawmills everywhere which cut boards for export to the north and local construction.

The Goethe Sawmill at Bamboo

In places we often ride around there was the Waterman Sawmill at Moss Bluff which opened in 1876, the Stanton Sawmill 1861 (Lake Weir on the site of Kiwanis Beach), Hesters Sawmill (south of Lady Lake), and the Goethe Sawmill (c1900) at Bamboo (where the Rohan Recreation Center now stands). There were also mills in Wildwood and Leesburg.

The circular saw was invented in 1850

All the towns we ride by were built with wood. It was used for factories, farm buildings, houses, furniture, railroad cars, wagons, fences, barrels and crates. Wood was burned to power the steam engines to generate electricity, pump water and the sawmills themselves. About the only thing you can't do with wood is eat it - sure you can grow fruit - but it's not the same thing!

Huge pine logs - not what we see in the Ocala Forest now.

Fortunately, in 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Ocala National Forest into existence and since then the Florida Forest Service has been formed to make sure that forests, which still cover 50% of the state, are protected and the timber industry sustainable.

Strava

I wish I'd kept a log of my rides when I was a junior rider - it would be nice to look at them today. Back then some riders did keep ride logs with locations, maps and distances but being young and foolish I never did. It would not only be nice to look at those rides but it would also be a reminder of those I rode with. Many of the roads I rode in the south of England don't even exist anymore - they are buried under motorways - most of the people I rode with are probably buried too! 

What we had back then in the 1960's were paper maps to plan rides and a Lucas Cyclometer. The cyclometer was an analog distance computer bolted on the front axle with a pin attached to one of the spokes which clicked on a star wheel, sort of like the wheel magnet used today but with a mechanical read out. You just had to live with the tick-tick-tick while riding. If you were really into planning rides you could buy a map wheel which gave you an approximate distance when you rolled it along the route on your map. I only know about this because someone in the club had one. 

A Lucas Cyclometer and a map Wheel

Nowadays my Garmin, Strava and Ridewith GPS take care of all this stuff for me - and then some. It's hard to believe the first Garmin Edge and Strava were only launched 13 years ago. Now I can create a route anywhere in the world, follow it on my Garmin while riding and afterward see the result on Strava - wow!

I especially like Strava because I have a log of my rides in which I can see the routes and even illustrate them if I wish. I can also see who I have been riding with and keep in touch with with friends I have made riding at home and in Europe. It is the only social network I belong to! As for the rest of the features it's nice to see the mileage and elevation I have completed in a year. Oops! - I forgot, Strava won't tell you that but a handy Chrome extension for Strava called Elevate will!

Allan Broadribb

The Parson Brown Orange

John Carney, you'll remember from the last club snoozeletter, bought the Carney Island property in 1875 which he gambled would be good to grow oranges as he had already seen some sour citrus growing there. He first cleared the heavy lumber and floated it across the lake to be sold for construction. Then all he had to do was find some good citrus cuttings. This turned out to be a problem as there was nowhere to buy any, no nursery, no Home Depot.

Carney learned the Reverend N.L. Brown near Webster had five different mature orange trees. One of these turned out to be sweet, prolific and produced early fruit. Carney purchased it for $80 and as he wasn't taking it with him, just buying the propagation rights, paid Mrs Brown, the reverends wife, $10 a year to make sure nobody would take cuttings or steal fruit for the seed.

Parson Brown Oranges

Carney cut back his sour trees and for several years grafted his new cuttings onto them, a process that would produce fruit more quickly than planting seed. Eventually he had twenty five acres of Parson Brown oranges, as he named them, and they became the most popular orange in Florida. The biggest trees could produce thousands of large sweet oranges to be harvested as early as October putting them in the groceries in time for Christmas.

A case of Lake Weirs famous Parson Brown oranges
packaged by the Carney Investment Co.

You can see Parson Brown trees on the north side of Sunset Harbor Road by Lake Weir. The fruit is big and sweet but it's seediness led to a loss of popularity in the 1920s when further genetic modification led to seedless varieties on smaller trees making them easier to harvest.

A prequel to this story: around 1860 a young family, their names long forgotten, decided to relocate from New Orleans to Florida with the idea of growing oranges. They brought with them Chinese citrus saplings which they had bought off a ship in New Orleans. On their journey they stayed one night with Rev Brown who refused payment but the travelers gave him a gift of five of their saplings which became the trees that Carney went to see.

By the way, Parson Brown used the $80 to buy sheep.