| | Beer Can Island | |
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Betty Fasig Five Star Member
Number of posts : 4334 Registration date : 2008-06-12 Age : 81 Location : Duette, Florida
| Subject: Beer Can Island Sat Sep 19, 2009 4:05 pm | |
| Beer Can Island is just a ways past Bird Island once you get past the point that the Alafia River turns brackish. It is in the Bay. It take an hour and a half at idle speed to get there if the water is calm. It is a man made island dredged up from the bottom of the Gulf to make inlets for the big phosphate ships to travel. My son, Jeff, loves old bones and fossils, small and large. Off we went, me sick as a dog, with his two dogs, Pogo and Gracie, to Beer Can Island. We walked around at high tide. The stuff you find there is from another time. Petrified teeth, shells of old and ancient turtles, and a few really spectacular things. He has found a mastedon tooth that is huge and so many horse, camel, whale, shark and you name it petrified bones and teeth. I found a Mammoth vertebrae. It is huge and spectacular. How small man is in comparison. Love, Betty |
| | | thehairymob Four Star Member
Number of posts : 890 Registration date : 2008-05-05 Age : 56 Location : Scotland
| Subject: Re: Beer Can Island Sun Sep 20, 2009 8:00 am | |
| At least you had a good time even if the ride out wasn't very pleasant. So what did you do with the small man you found? |
| | | alice Five Star Member
Number of posts : 15672 Registration date : 2008-10-22 Age : 76 Location : Redmond, WA
| Subject: Re: Beer Can Island Sun Sep 20, 2009 9:00 am | |
| Betty,
We need to get together--I'd love you for a roommate in a hospital.
Hope you are better soon--hope I am too.
Love ya,
Alice |
| | | Dick Stodghill Five Star Member
Number of posts : 3795 Registration date : 2008-05-04 Age : 98 Location : Akron, Ohio
| Subject: Re: Beer Can Island Sun Sep 20, 2009 10:06 am | |
| Sounds like a really weird place. Good place to dump the body of a murder victim. For some reason it reminds me of the ossuary at Verdun, France. It contains the bones of 150,000 unidentified French and German soldiers killed during the Battle of Verdun in the First World War. The windows are at ground level. You go from one to the next, bend down and peer in. At one you see 150,000 skulls, then at the next 300,000 thigh bones and on and on and on. |
| | | Betty Fasig Five Star Member
Number of posts : 4334 Registration date : 2008-06-12 Age : 81 Location : Duette, Florida
| Subject: Re: Beer Can Island Sun Sep 20, 2009 12:46 pm | |
| Dear Alice, I hope you are feeling better soon. I am close to well, and now David has it. He does a miserable sick. Dick, Beer Can Island is so named because of all the beer that has been enjoyed there. No one leaves trash on that little island. On a weekend, it is wall to wall boats. Mostly family outings complete with dogs. I doubt that anyone other than my family looks for the bones. In fact, bones probably never cross their minds at all until Jeff, my son, has found some lovely bone that is 20,000 years old from an extinct animal the size of a Wooly Mammoth and shows it to anyone who will look at it in wonder. He has a tooth that measures 6 inches. The mammoth stood about 10 feet high and weigh eight tons. I wish you could have seen his eyes light up when I dug the vertebrae out of the sandy bottom. There were only three other boats on the island that day because of the high tide and the day being a weekday, but they all got to look at my find. It was a nice day. Love, Betty |
| | | Betty Fasig Five Star Member
Number of posts : 4334 Registration date : 2008-06-12 Age : 81 Location : Duette, Florida
| Subject: Re: Beer Can Island Sun Sep 20, 2009 2:34 pm | |
| Dear Billy, I have a lot of shells and bones and little pieces combed from beaches by my family. I keep them in blue jars, woven wire boxes, lovely glass globes and ancient bottles that used to be filled with milk or special liquors. They adorn my library shelves like ornaments.
I do not know if anyone remembers when one could buy preserved roses in a glass globe. I have found two of these globes at places like Goodwill stores that were donated and thrown out from some older persons leavings. The lid's unscrew and out the roses go and the liquid. They are the perfect thing to display the shells that the baby grands have brought me on beach trips.
They have grown up to have children of their own. But when they come to visit me, they go through my library like a trip from their past and mine.
All these shells are old bones. Old bones testify to the lives that they lived.
I can see in my mind the ossuary at Verdun, and hear the testimony of the bones. They are not silent.
The old bones of Beer Can Island are telling their story, too. Not too many listen.
Love, Betty |
| | | thehairymob Four Star Member
Number of posts : 890 Registration date : 2008-05-05 Age : 56 Location : Scotland
| Subject: Re: Beer Can Island Mon Sep 21, 2009 8:58 am | |
| I remember reading about the battles that took place over Verdun. The French only had one road in and the Germans held the ground on three fronts but still the French refused to retreat. And so the battle raged for months. To this day the scars on the land can still be seen for the air or so I have heard. I don't think that I can really understand the depth of suffering that took place there though. I think unless you have been through that kind of thing, how could you? I do feel great sadness for all those that suffered through conflict. |
| | | alj Five Star Member
Number of posts : 9633 Registration date : 2008-12-05 Age : 80 Location : San Antonio
| Subject: Re: Beer Can Island Mon Sep 21, 2009 10:31 am | |
| I just want to go there.
Ann |
| | | thehairymob Four Star Member
Number of posts : 890 Registration date : 2008-05-05 Age : 56 Location : Scotland
| Subject: Re: Beer Can Island Mon Sep 21, 2009 10:34 am | |
| So would I. I would also like to visit the Somme and other places where history was so painfully made. |
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