Tag Archives: Fairfield

Harry Crews’s Childhood Nightmare Northside

Posted on May 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the direction buttons at the top of the page:

The novelist Harry Crews chronicled how Jacksonville imported desperation from half the state of Georgia. It offered hope, but required human sacrifice. First coming to Jax when his stepfather-uncle aimed a rifle at his mother’s head, Harry lived in half a dozen houses across the Northside, all of which his family called “the Springfield Section.” When Harper Lee read Crews’s second novel, she said William Faulkner had come back to life.

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Tagged " E.E. Cummings, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, Abraham Joseph, Andrew Jackson High School, Bacon County Georgia, Biography of Harry Crews, Blood Bone and Marrow, Drew Mansion, Erskine Caldwell, Fairfield, Florida Gothic, Franklin Street Baptist Church, Grit Lit, Harper Lee, Harry Crews, Historic Springfield Jacksonville, Hoyett Crews, Jacksonville Northside, jax psycho geo, Jeeter Lester, Junior Lister, King Edward Cigars, Klutho Apartments, Klutho House, Leland Lister, Myrtice Crews, Naked in Garden Hills, New Springfield, North Jacksonville, Okefenokee Swamp, Paschal Crews, Phoenix, Phoenix Avenue, Public School no. 8, Ray Crews, Scar Lover, Southern Gothic, Springfield, Swisher and Son, Ted Geltner, Tim Gilmore, Tobacco Road, University of Florida, white flight, William Faulkner

Walking the Vanished Old Panama Road

Posted on April 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the direction buttons at the top of the page:

The Old Panama Road disappeared beneath the Northside of the city 120 years ago. This story tracks it. It heads north from the murder of Marie Gato, past Club Steppin’ Out, through the diary of a black Civil War soldier reading Lord Byron, a Spanish American War camp teeming with Typhoid Fever and the burning of a sawmill the size of a small town.

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Tagged Alexander St. Clair-Abrams, Andrew Robinson Elementary School, Austin Mann, Austin S. Mann, Bloxham Avenue, Buffalo Avenue, Buffalo Food Store, Camp Bloxham, Charles F. Sibbald, Childe Harold, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Club Steppin' Out, Confederacy, Confederate States of America, Covid-19, Cyrus Brown, E.L. Smith Candy, Eddie Pitzer, Edward Pitzer, El Modelo, Everett Hotel, Evergreen Cemetery, Fairfield, First Coast Automotive, G.W. Wetmore, Gabriel Hidalgo Gato, George W. Clark, Henry John Klutho, Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission, Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage, James Berry, jax psycho geo, Jim Crow, Joel McEachin, John Bigger, José Alejandro Huau, Jose Marti, Lord Byron, Lycurgis Bigger, manatee, Marie Louise Gato, North Springfield, Old Panama Road, Panama Florida, Panama Mills, Panama Park, Panama Park School, Panama Park Track, Pitzer and Bigger, Relaxx Inn, Sanborn Fire Insurance, Sebald Lane, Silver Street, Spanish moss, Springfield, Tim Gilmore, Trout River, Typhoid Fever, United States Colored Troops, USCT, We’re for Jesus House of Prayer, William Dunnington Bloxham

Ending 2017 by Looking Back at the Crooms and Mahmoud Murals

Posted on December 30, 2017 | Leave a comment

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Most of the talk of Connell Crooms, standing 150 feet tall on one cement silo, and Sara Mahmoud, standing back to back with him on the silo adjoining, concerns unity and solidarity, but Connell mentions the “power of irony.”

Van Helten turned these concrete ciphers into pillars of unity and community. The mural festival that brought him to town, ArtRepublic, alienated and angered much of the city’s art community, but Van Helten successfully soaked up the city and gave it back.

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Tagged cement silos, Commodore Point, Connell Crooms, Edward Said, Fairfield, Guido Van Helten, Jacksonville, jaxpsychogeo, Lafarge North America, Orientalism, Sara Mahmoud, Tim Gilmore

Two Christmas Stories

Posted on December 24, 2017 | Leave a comment

Read one JaxPsychoGeo Christmas story, and get the other free.

Click below for the story of the James E. Merrill House.

And is the toy gun that lies on the child’s bed really Arthur’s? Was it too a Christmas present? And is it really Arthur’s bed? Did Arthur lie here looking through the window onto the sleeping-porch on the second-story back of the house in his last year, his eighth year, 1906?

And / Or … Click below… “Oh ho ho / Who wouldn’t go? / Up on the housetop, click, click, click, / Down through the chimney” to old St. Nick’s Lounge on Atlantic Boulevard?

“May we invite you to enjoy our hospitality?”

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Tagged Curry Thomas Hardware, East Jacksonville, Fairfield, Ginger Greene, Great Fire of 1901, Helen Merrill, Jacksonville, Jacksonville Historical Society, James Campbell Merrill, James E. Merrill, James Eugene Merrill, jaxpsychogeo, Merrill House, Merrill-Stevens, Mudville Grille, Richard Bowers, Saint Nicholas, St. Nicholas Lounge and Package Store, St. Nick's Lounge, Tim Gilmore, W.B. Dawson

New Story: Detroit in Jacksonville over the River

Posted on May 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

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The Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant reminds Nick Thompson of his native Detroit. It’s a city he’s been away from for more than half his life, but he’s kept in touch from afar.

So this is where Albert Kahn’s windows have gone.

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Tagged Albert Kahn, East Jacksonville, Fairfield, Ford Assembly Plant, Ford Motor Company, Ford Motor Plant Jacksonville, Nick Thompson, Talleyrand Avenue, Tim Gilmore