Tour Guide (iv)

The last week of March is the crest of the spring season, but Tuesday is the low point of the week, so Thom wasn’t surprised that the trains were running light and that there had only been a couple of dozen walk-ins for information.

A little before noon a small group rode up to the station's entrance on bicycles. Thom recognized the matching aqua blue bikes as being from the Sea House, a bed and breakfast on Bay St., one of the few places that offered bikes to guests. After carefully locking their bikes and coming in, the couple which seemed to be in charge of making all the arrangements walked up to the counter.

"Good morning," Thom said.

"Hi," the woman said, and without stopping "We want one of those sightseeing trains tours, the one that stops at places and lets you get on and off." She giggled a little as she pretended to act business like. She was imitating her dad at the entrance to some theme park, being specific with the college age ticket vendor about which parks he wanted to visit and which he did not.

"You've come to the right place," Thom folded the Miami Herald, the other paper he read every day, stepped down from his chair back stool, swivel, and stood across the counter from the couple who were bent over a bright yellow and green map of the historic district dotted with advertising for restaurants, museums, gift shops and churches offering tours.

"We have a variety of packages available, all which include the train tour and Kahn’s Museum of the Incredible and a variety of other museums and attractions depending on your schedule and interests. How much time do you have today?"

It was the same opening pitch Thom gave every day, many times an hour, yet he was able to do it with just enough sincerity as to engage his customers. Invariably they would look up at him, willing to buy what he's selling.

The women looked at him and told him they were all public defenders in the fifth judicial circuit and were in town attending a required continuing education class. The session included some group immersion, so the class was small; all housed in the same B&B, the Sea House, and the seminar was held in the living room over a coffee table instead of a conference table. This was their free day and most just wanted to play tourist, “as a group” the couple said in unison.

“So that will be eight people, right?” Thom asked the couple.

The women turned around to the others who were browsing the brochure rack and called to one who was standing by the window.

“Beth, are you going with us on the tour?”

The woman who was standing alone, looking out the station’s window and toward the Castillo answered with a polite charm.

“No, I want to take a walk, but we’ll meet for lunch, okay?” she asked, indirectly to the whole group.

The women turned back to Thom and said, “There will be seven of us,” and then added “where do you suggest we have lunch?”

As Thom processed her credit card he gave another rote but freshly delivered standard reply when asked for recommendations: "While it would not be fair to favor one restaurant over another...St. Augustine has many fine restaurants...catering to a wide variety of tastes...and budgets...I am certain you will soon have your very own new favorite place.”

Just as Thom finished and before there could be a follow-up question, a train pulled up and the group were off exchanging shouts back to Beth “See you at lunch. We’ll call you.” to which she waved, “okay.”

The train pulled away ringing its bell and silence fell over the room. Beth walked towards the counter and asked “So, where is a good place to eat?”

"Corner Cadiz," Thom answered without hesitation. "Good simple luncheon food done well with a bit of flair, they can go Southern or Mediterranean or Thai, the ice tea is a special recipe which includes red clover and hibiscus, the whole flower, not cut, and the bread is baked daily by the owner’s brother-in-law, but I can’t say any of that officially, you know...have to be fair to all and all that.”

Then he added, “Is there any other information I might help you with”

She had reached the counter but stood back from it, planted squarely on both feet.

“Yes there is. If you were me, how would you spend your day in St. Augustine?”

Tour Guide (iii)

The chair where Thom sat and read the Record with his morning coffee, the only chair in his one room apartment, was exactly twelve minutes from the chair back stool, swivel, at his counter-top desk at the train station. He had to be ready to answer any tourist’s questions and hopefully sell a ticket by eight-thirty, so he’d leave his apartment by a quarter after eight. Plenty of time. He even had his choice of routes: walk up along the Bayfront which took a little longer; walk the back way along Cordova St. all the way which was a little faster and usually quieter; or the shortest and most uninteresting route, straight up St. George St.

It is estimated that six million people visit St. Augustine each year and that half of them walk along St. George St. during their visit. Everyone strolls and stares into store windows or buys an ice cream or stops for a beer and a pizza or spends time studying useless objects that seem artful in the setting of a St. George St. shop. It is the route taken the least by Thom as he walks to the station six mornings a week.

From the time he unlocks the door of the station until he is ready to answer the first question, give the first directions, and sell the first a ticket is just a couple of minutes, but he never has to do any of those things that quickly. First train stops by at nine, and few tourists are stirring before ten. After that the day starts to build up to the mid afternoon peak when tourists start to shift the summer day into the summer night and the trains slowly empty until the last rolls by at a quarter after five and by five thirty the station is dark.

The hours in between unlocking and locking the front door are filled with the routine of addressing the four questions a tourist asks: what, where, when, and how much.

On occasion a tourist will ask why. Those are the moments that divide a day, small strokes of light that split the day into sections of darkness. These are not the why questions that come from questioning process or costs or rules. There are the why questions that come from the desire to know more and to be assured that the experience is significant enough to merit the investment of time.

Even though he seldom got to share his knowledge, Thom knew the city’s history far beyond the dates dividing its periods, the names of its five distinct architectural styles, and the difference between coquina and tabby. Thom knew why the town was there and had been there so long. He saw the threads that made up the city’s fabric, and he saw it in context of what had gone on before, generations before, along these very same street corners he passed each day.

Tour Guide (ii)

The senior management of Khan’s Museums of the Incredible, all from Orlando and Atlanta, visited last spring; they saw all the satellite ticket sales kiosks and the fours train stations which had gift shops and snack bars, as wasteful. They closed all the kiosks and eliminated the train stations except for the one near the City Gate. That was where Thom worked.

There are two types of sightseeing train drivers, or tour guides in general. There are those who are there for the moment, working a season or two, then moving on back to college or another job or another town. Thom referred to them as Passers, as in those who are just passing by, or passing through. But even though there is a lot of turnover among guides, there are a few who stay forever. Usually they have already experienced what Passers are currently experiencing, and this is where they landed when they were tired of moving. Thom called these the Settlers.

The scenario is not unlike a western town in a 1950’s not very good film. The stranger rides into town. If he’s young and a troublemaker, he’ll likely tell the bartender in the saloon that he’s just passing through. But if he is trail tired, seen too many gunfights won and nearly lost, he’ll likely tell to matron who runs the upstairs at the saloon that he’s thinking of settlin' down and maybe Wet Rock will be his home from now on.

Thom saw himself as neither a Passer nor a Settler. He had stayed long enough certainly not to be a Passer, and by doing so had been promoted off the trains and into a station, now the only surviving station. But he knew he would not be in that chair back stool, swivel, forever. He knew it because he spent so much time thinking about not being there.

But for the time being, this was certainly the best of all possible lives in St. Augustine.

Tour Guide (i)

Thom was the only operator outside the museum now. Had been for almost two weeks. From his familiar chair back stool, swivel, he had the view he’d had for a decade: He could see the Castillo in the distance, and to the right a good view down St. George Street. All the other outside guys had been bought into the main office or put out on the streets making sales calls.

Tours Reale sightseeing trains had been a locally owned business until a year ago when Khan’s Museums of the Incredible bought the company. Fred Towery started the motorized tours in 1946 using surplus WWII jeeps, painted gold with red trim, to pull two canopied trailers with benches for 12 on each. It was the newest way to see the Oldest City.

Fred worked in a motor pool of the US Army at the Frankfurt airport in the early days after occupation. His unit was given the task of devising a way to move small groups of congressmen and officers and journalists through the rubble of the city on a tour. They took a jeep chassis, build a floor above the wheel wells, added four benches, each seating three, and added a medal canopy. After getting the nod, his team built three more, could join them together in tandem as needed and move easily in and around the narrow streets cluttered with rubble of bombed out Frankfurt.

When Fred saw his handiwork at work, he imagined it on the streets of his home town. The bigger cars of the 1940’s were having a hard time on St. Augustine’s narrow 16th century streets already. What would it be like in the post war years when business was bound to be good? There would probably be bigger cars and certainly more of them.

He developed the whole business plan before he left Germany and the Army so that when he got home he knew what he was going to do: give tourists a way to see the entire city without driving themselves, and provide all the museums with customer delivery, he called it. He called the business Tours Reale because he thought it looked Spanish, and by saying it with a slight accent--tours re-ale--it gained some credibility, sounded like Spanish for the real tour.

Over the years the jeeps were replaced with tram tractors configured to look like a train engines, the trailers were made more comfortable, build lower to the ground, could accommodate more rides, and throughout all the changes the original colors, gold and red, were kept.

Fred pretty much ran the business and until he died. That was in 2000 and that’s when Khan’s made an offer to the family to purchase the business. The company already operated the largest attraction in the city and adding a customer delivery system made sense. Tours Reale became Khan’s Tours Reale, but the company would forever be known as it always had been known as: the gold trains.