Friday, August 31, 2012

Field trip and dolls

Sometimes the most exotic and different things are located in your back yard, so to speak. My hubby and I are celebrating the 41st year of the first time we ever laid eyes on each other. So we took a field trip, by that I mean, we continued our on-going journey into "Old Florida". In Bartow, the county seat of Polk County, we found a great museum in the old county courthouse. There was a lot of information there about the Seminoles. These pictures above are from a display of the little dolls the Seminoles made.

Here's a picture of a boy's Seminole dress:

 And below a little settler boy's coat:

Here is a picture of some Florida "crackers" cooking some sugar cane syrup

It was really hot in the 90's when we visited. We saw lots of photos of the first "pioneers" of Florida and I wondered how they managed with no AC, running water, toilets or even good bathing suits.

Long before people lived in Florida, the Bartow museum noted that huge crocodiles did:
But I digress from dolls.  The only other two places I saw about dolls were:


There was some interesting architecture and a beautiful campus at Florida Southern College. Hence, the picture of the  Frank LLoyd Wright dolls. I learned that girls during World War II built the whole library there using a lot of complicated concrete and mostly by hand. The girls were students and were working for their tuition. How about that! This is what was the library then and a pic of the inside of the old "reading room".

  But alas, I never got to visit this cute shop below in Mulberry  because they were closed: I hope I can go back. They are relocating soon somewhere.

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