March 24, 2011 The Eds did it…

Best - green theme always diesel.

Bad!  Station advertises diesel.

Also bad, in a station advertising diesel.

Good, but would prefer green hose for certainty.

First off, a note about our Ed. In a rush to get to the restroom, Ed grabbed the green hose at the gas station and pumped unknowingly 10 gallons of regular gasoline (nice price, which is what attracted him) into his diesel truck. Susan spotted it while Ed was in the restroom. Usually the green hose is diesel, but we all know (and can forget when in a hurry) that sometimes the green hose will be gasoline. It took an hour to get a tow truck and the driver, a native Cuban, spoke halting English. The lesson, which Ed gladly shares, is to check twice and pump once. (We know another that has made the same mistake. Our time will come.) This is clearly an area for nationally mandated standards, particularly with diesel passenger cards gaining in popularity.

And now another Ed, this one from Latvia. As the story goes, the day before their wedding, the girl he called “sweet sixteen” declared him too old (he was 26, she was 16) and left. Ed wandered the world moping and eventually settled in Florida City compelled to quarry huge blocks of coral to construct things in memory of his “sweet sixteen”. Like a 5000 pound “Feast of Love” table. Like a bedroom set made from tons of coral, and including a 155 pound rocking cradle for the baby he would never have. When the area’s magnetism didn’t seem quite right, or the essence seemed to be waning, or the subdividers were getting too close, whatever – he decided to move everything to Homestead and continue building what became his castle.

This pool-shaped hole was Ed's quarry.  Note the lush landscape on nearly zero topsoil.

This revolving stone is balanced on a Model T axle.

The insurance gecko watches from above.

A small hole in the wall lines up with the large hole in the obelisk to point at Polaris.

Ed's clock (Standard Time only).

Who knows.

Inside Ed's coral walls.

The Repentance corner.

By now you may be writing him off as a crackpot, somebody that should be featured in Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not, perhaps to be pitied. No-no. Well, maybe just “no”. Ed, in common with the Egyptians, the Mayans, the builders of Stonehenge, and the builders of countless other respected sites – smartly included a celestial observatory. A stone sundial that can tell Standard Time within a few minutes. An obelisk with a hole in it and stone viewfinder that always point to the North Star. And he experimented with magnetism and electricity. A genius, you see.

Ed’s Coral Castle, quoting from the tour guide, “has been featured in publications such as Reader’s Digest and National Enquirer.” Ed was 5-foot tall and 125 (or 120, in another account) pounds. He worked alone using simple hand tools (including block-and-tackle) to quarry the stone on site, carve it, and erect it. The largest stone weighs 29 tons, and a couple blocks are balanced well enough (on Model-T axles) that they can be turned with a (very strong) finger.

Ed started these constructions probably in the 1920s and completed them around 1940. He died of cancer in 1951. No record of the number of crushed toes and fingers.