| TRAVELS OF DURSMIRG VOLUME IV THE ROGUES OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND OTHER SOCIAL MISFITS Chapter 18 |
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TOWN PEOPLE
Eddie Mussallem; Sells his huge motel to the Pakistanis;
Eddie was a life long St. Augustine resident, a local business man that dressed for success with a touch of class and
had been mayor of the ancient city.
A very friendly and congenial to all kind of person by nature, Eddie was a civic minded pillar of the community and
an astute trusting individual who loved to sport fish offshore with his own private scrupulously maintained sport
fishing boat that he docked at the city Yacht Pier.
Eddie’s meticulously kept successful motel complex was a model for the city and one of the largest and most
prestigious on Highway 1 in St. Augustine.
He also was the owner and operator of several other tourist related business around St. Augustine like the Zorayda
Castle, a Moorish style tourist museum. Eddie was well established and was no newcomer to Florida business.
Well, some Pakistanis came to town with an offer to buy Eddie’s prestigious motel complex and they offered a deal
that Eddie thought was just too good to be true and had to accept.
The next thing that Eddie got was a brutally expensive education from some very sharp and cunning con artists.
As soon as the papers were signed on this owner financed deal the deception began in earnest. The movable
assets of the motel and restaurant were sold-off and none of the bills got paid like taxes, license fees, insurance
premiums and etc.
Well, of course no monthly mortgage payments were forthcoming either.
The obvious solution at this point in time was to foreclose, cut his losses on the mortgage and reclaim what
remained of the assets and business.
This wasn’t going to be so easy. First the buyers had a New York corporation and the foreclosure proceedings
would need to be transacted in New York State…which smacked of pre-meditated first degree fraud.
The cost of this protracted foreclosure plus the time of over a year with no income and debts mounting every day
must have been very close to the total value of the entire business in losses. So, in less than one year the business
was plundered and looted.
Florida can be a very dangerous place to do business even for a man of Eddie Mussallem’s years of experience.
Eddie Mussallem wasn’t the first or only one to get snookered in Florida where even the Mexicans have to come to
take lessons in corruption and deceptive business practices. My wife Jane and I have had our run in with confidence
men and swindlers that were so polished and slick that you just had to trust them, we did and it cost us thousands of
dollars.
Our lessons cost us plenty but at least we didn’t get the financial ride that poor Eddie Mussallem received, he got his
property back but his business was nearly ruined.
STEVE XYNIDIS/FATHER TOM; Owners and operators of the Spanish Landing Restaurant one of the one-hundred
or so local restaurants and eating establishments in and around St. Augustine in the 1960s,70s and 80s.
Jane and I always maintained that we knew more places not to eat in St. Augustine than we did to eat.
Well, the Spanish Landing restaurant featuring authentic Greek dishes prepared in the old country style and
tradition to the bona fide Xynidis traditional family methods and meticulous standards was one of the few St.
Augustine restaurants on the most recommended list.
The quaint stand alone Spanish fashioned stucco building that was home to the Spanish Landing Restaurant was
roofed in red barrel tile and shaded by towering ancient pecan trees that nestled the structure in an attractive
pleasantly eye catching old world setting.
In the early morning hours of cold blustery fall days the restaurant grounds would be covered with heaps of pecans
that St. Augustine’s early birds would collect competing with the over whelmed squirrels.
Uniquely situated directly across the street from the tourist attraction called the Old Spanish Mission with its
expansive park-like grounds that extended off to the waterfront, the Spanish Landing Restaurant had a one of a
kind location.
The view across the street from the restaurant was fabulously filled with aged palms, aromatic cedar and oak trees
draped in festoons of wispy Spanish moss scented with briny sea breezes.
This distinctive dining establishment that fronted San Marco Avenue was one of the very few places in St. Augustine
for excellence in dining that you would feel good about recommending to your very best friends.
In fact the father and son team of Tom and Steve Xynidis gave a real dining experience. They catered to their clients
with a special personal touch of direct owner participation making it the very best place for ethnic dining in the St.
Augustine area.
Granted there were definitely more ostentatious and more extravagant dining places in the area but for excellence
and personal attention to detail plus the little extras that made your meal a long remembered and joyous experience
the Spanish Landing was a must.
Tom, the father, had been in the restaurant business all of his life. He was late to marry and keeping with his true
Greek traditions went back to Greece to find himself a much younger wife and then began his family after
establishing his business. Of his three sons only Steve took up the restaurant trade as his father’s partner.
Tom was the brother to Harry Xynides, (Uncle Harry) the unscrupulously cheap and crafty boatyard owner and they
were absolutely the opposite in every way when it came to doing ethical business.
Tom was a good business man and a fine honest reputable good hearted person that went the extra mile to give out
more than he took in.
Any neighborhood children that came looking for work were taken in, trained and paid a fair wage.
I still remember the first time that Jane and I sold fresh seafood from our shrimp boat to Tom. We had agreed to the
price for the shrimp beforehand and when I delivered the fresh catch directly to him from our boat that was docked
only four blocks away over on Dufferin Street Tom hedged on the transaction but I wouldn’t budge, a deal was a
deal and that was that.
Tom knew the quality of our catch was unsurpassed for freshness and cleanliness and he had a good deal even if
he would have paid a much higher price so he paid our agreed price and I then threw in a nice fresh caught flounder
as a thank you.
After that initial business transaction we never had any more wrangling over price and we both mutually had each
others trust and respect. I always made sure that Tom had his extra fish as a token of a friendly and trusting deal
concluded.
Tom was from the old school of gentlemanly business dealings where a man’s word was his bond and business
deals could be sealed with a hand shake.
As you can imagine Jane and I felt extremely privileged to have such a wonderful and friendly place so very close to
our home to come for our special dining occasions.
If we happened to be the first clients of the evening you could rest assured that we would be seated in a window
seat overlooking the beautiful park grounds of the old Mission across the street.
Old Tom had some kind of a superstition or perhaps it was just good business sense because when I questioned
him about it he said; “when prospective customers drive by looking for a place to dine they always stop at the places
that already have some customers”. The reasoning was that people naturally assume that if other people are
already patronizing the spot it must be a good place to stop…Tom was most likely right about that and many other
little business subtleties he picked up over the years.
When the meal was over we would always be joined by one of the family members for congenial conversation. This
was part of what made this place so pleasant and memorable.
If we ordered wine with the dinner you could rest assured that a gift of an after dinner drink would follow. Greek
ouzo liquor and Retsina wine were the typical after dinner treats.
Retsina was an acquired taste and few non-Greek people liked it upon their first taste because it had such a
distinctive aroma and powerful flavor of pine pitch. Retsina is Greek wine that was actually aged in fresh pinewood
barrels and assumed that dominant potent penetrating essence of those resins.
I still remember one evening bringing our very good friends Bob and Emily Burn to the Spanish Landing for dinner
and sure enough after dinner Steve Xynidis brought us each a complimentary glass of Retsina wine. Jane and I
expectantly waited for a reaction from our friends Bob and Emily because we knew that this was their very first
experience with Retsina wine.
Finally we asked; well? Bob said it tastes like Brunswick, Georgia smells. Again we asked, well? And then Bob said; “I
kind of like the smell of Brunswick”.
(Brunswick, Georgia is an industrial seacoast town that has a multitude of wood processing plants that process
mostly pine trees into a variety of extracted products.)
It is interesting that such a small town as St. Augustine could have such an incredibly fabulous restaurant as this.
One of the secrets of the success of this culinary palace was that it so happened that Tom’s nephew’s wife
Katherine Gaetanos was an internationally acclaimed and prize winning Greek chef with years of experience and
she was responsible for many of the specialty dishes including the classic Greek desserts.
Katherine would come in several mornings a week and artfully and masterfully perform her culinary magic in the
kitchen of the Spanish Landing so all was ready and at its optimum peak of exquisiteness when customers began to
arrive.
Richard Boone/ Paladin: The famous and very distinctive TV actor from the series; “Have Gun Will Travel” retired
to St. Augustine where he taught drama classes at Flagler College as a diversion.
Ex-TV-gunslinger Paladin was a regular at local fund raisers and art shows where he was a big financial supporter.
Unmistakable Richard with his distinctive features and tall stature made him a stand out in any crowd. but now it was
hard to visualize this elder man in his former role of Paladin playing the gun slinging good guy sheriff in the weekly
TV series when the passing years had physically finished off his virile physic and made him go to pot.
Richard Boone the retired actor was a lot bigger man than I had imagined him to be but the years had taken their toll
on this distinguished former TV tough-guy.
Always an invincible pillar of the community, a hero who miraculously and courageously stood up to the worst blood
thirsty villains against all odds on the TV set had actually gotten older just like the rest of us had.
I somehow hated to have my good memories wiped away by the sight of my childhood hero with a protruding potbelly
that took him out of character on the streets of St. Augustine where he was able to be himself not powdered and
pampered for the TV set.
“Paladin” accepted little old St. Augustine and St. Augustine accepted him with little fan-fare and that I am sure was
exactly the kind of place this famous person was looking for…and here we all met.
Another social misfit came to roost in little old out-of-the-loop St. Augustine.
Without fail you would see Richard Boone here patronizing with his purchases the semi annual art fair held in the
central park located between King Street and Cathedral Street. These art fairs were a big tourist draw and
consistently attracted the finest artisans from the entire country. The event planners made sure that the artists
represented presented a wide variety of art forms with no duplication.
Check out the stack of cannon balls that is missing several pieces. In all the years Jane and I frequented St.
Augustine that partial stack was never restored.
Benny Nealson was one of the Ancient City’s neighborhood fixtures.
Congenial, cajoling and personable this small town business owner in addition was a small town crony-catering
politician.
There just wasn’t a whole lot of money in selling tourist trinkets.
Benny Nealson’s St. George Street business was named Tixie’s Men’s Store and tourist shop…like the rest of St.
Augustine’s home owned conservative shopping establishments of the early 1970s it was low-key and there was
absolutely no glitter or glitz.
In the early 1970s the aromas of coconut scented suntan oil and fragrantly fresh horse droppings commingled with a
musty moldy scent of old wooden buildings that gave St. George Street a certain aura of nostalgic uniqueness.
Like a charming old-fashioned movie set from days gone by, rustic unhurried little old St. George Street was still
paved with red bricks that had perceptively settled from years of steady traffic. Frequented by leisurely paced horse
drawn carriages that clattered with the clip-clop of their hooves that echoed through town, they were filled with
curious gawking photo snapping tourists rediscovering St. Augustine.
In spite of St. George Streets narrowness auto traffic and on street parking was still permitted making it especially
slow going.
These strolling out of town tourists invariably j-walked narrow little St. George Street obliviously with absolute
impunity. Somehow they had the impression that they were in a virtual Disneyland experience and not stepping out
into vehicle traffic.
One of Benny Nealson’s notoriously famous acts while he was on the St. Augustine city council was his political
cronyism that was polished and honed to the Florida down-south standard.
To guarantee exclusivity with no competition clever Kenny made sure that his crony buddy got all of the available
horse carriage licenses.
(There were only a few licenses issued and the crony got them all).
When an application came in for additional licenses that would mean some competition in the horse carriage
business the new applicant wanted his license but Kenny flatly denied the request stating that the city only would
issue a certain number of these licenses and; “that was capitalism”! (That was capitalism Kenny style anyway.)
No more had to be said on this subject because one and all knew that Kenny was politically for sale.
A tragic incident took place when Benny Nealson’s daughter was brutally murdered by a person she had refused a
date the night before.
It turned out that this guy was driving his pickup truck on St. Augustine Beach without a license since he couldn’t
pass the drivers test with his terribly impaired vision; he had eye glasses as thick as the bottoms of Coke bottles.
With deliberate action this denied and disgruntled admirer had to drive his truck into the ocean surf in order to run
down Kenny’s daughter and murder her at St. Augustine Beach.
No action of any kind was ever taken in this apparently deliberate homicide.
This was St. Augustine and St. Johns County where our dear old friend George Tappin always used to state; “If you
want to commit murder, do it here
next chapter
Eddie Mussallem; Sells his huge motel to the Pakistanis;
Eddie was a life long St. Augustine resident, a local business man that dressed for success with a touch of class and
had been mayor of the ancient city.
A very friendly and congenial to all kind of person by nature, Eddie was a civic minded pillar of the community and
an astute trusting individual who loved to sport fish offshore with his own private scrupulously maintained sport
fishing boat that he docked at the city Yacht Pier.
Eddie’s meticulously kept successful motel complex was a model for the city and one of the largest and most
prestigious on Highway 1 in St. Augustine.
He also was the owner and operator of several other tourist related business around St. Augustine like the Zorayda
Castle, a Moorish style tourist museum. Eddie was well established and was no newcomer to Florida business.
Well, some Pakistanis came to town with an offer to buy Eddie’s prestigious motel complex and they offered a deal
that Eddie thought was just too good to be true and had to accept.
The next thing that Eddie got was a brutally expensive education from some very sharp and cunning con artists.
As soon as the papers were signed on this owner financed deal the deception began in earnest. The movable
assets of the motel and restaurant were sold-off and none of the bills got paid like taxes, license fees, insurance
premiums and etc.
Well, of course no monthly mortgage payments were forthcoming either.
The obvious solution at this point in time was to foreclose, cut his losses on the mortgage and reclaim what
remained of the assets and business.
This wasn’t going to be so easy. First the buyers had a New York corporation and the foreclosure proceedings
would need to be transacted in New York State…which smacked of pre-meditated first degree fraud.
The cost of this protracted foreclosure plus the time of over a year with no income and debts mounting every day
must have been very close to the total value of the entire business in losses. So, in less than one year the business
was plundered and looted.
Florida can be a very dangerous place to do business even for a man of Eddie Mussallem’s years of experience.
Eddie Mussallem wasn’t the first or only one to get snookered in Florida where even the Mexicans have to come to
take lessons in corruption and deceptive business practices. My wife Jane and I have had our run in with confidence
men and swindlers that were so polished and slick that you just had to trust them, we did and it cost us thousands of
dollars.
Our lessons cost us plenty but at least we didn’t get the financial ride that poor Eddie Mussallem received, he got his
property back but his business was nearly ruined.
STEVE XYNIDIS/FATHER TOM; Owners and operators of the Spanish Landing Restaurant one of the one-hundred
or so local restaurants and eating establishments in and around St. Augustine in the 1960s,70s and 80s.
Jane and I always maintained that we knew more places not to eat in St. Augustine than we did to eat.
Well, the Spanish Landing restaurant featuring authentic Greek dishes prepared in the old country style and
tradition to the bona fide Xynidis traditional family methods and meticulous standards was one of the few St.
Augustine restaurants on the most recommended list.
The quaint stand alone Spanish fashioned stucco building that was home to the Spanish Landing Restaurant was
roofed in red barrel tile and shaded by towering ancient pecan trees that nestled the structure in an attractive
pleasantly eye catching old world setting.
In the early morning hours of cold blustery fall days the restaurant grounds would be covered with heaps of pecans
that St. Augustine’s early birds would collect competing with the over whelmed squirrels.
Uniquely situated directly across the street from the tourist attraction called the Old Spanish Mission with its
expansive park-like grounds that extended off to the waterfront, the Spanish Landing Restaurant had a one of a
kind location.
The view across the street from the restaurant was fabulously filled with aged palms, aromatic cedar and oak trees
draped in festoons of wispy Spanish moss scented with briny sea breezes.
This distinctive dining establishment that fronted San Marco Avenue was one of the very few places in St. Augustine
for excellence in dining that you would feel good about recommending to your very best friends.
In fact the father and son team of Tom and Steve Xynidis gave a real dining experience. They catered to their clients
with a special personal touch of direct owner participation making it the very best place for ethnic dining in the St.
Augustine area.
Granted there were definitely more ostentatious and more extravagant dining places in the area but for excellence
and personal attention to detail plus the little extras that made your meal a long remembered and joyous experience
the Spanish Landing was a must.
Tom, the father, had been in the restaurant business all of his life. He was late to marry and keeping with his true
Greek traditions went back to Greece to find himself a much younger wife and then began his family after
establishing his business. Of his three sons only Steve took up the restaurant trade as his father’s partner.
Tom was the brother to Harry Xynides, (Uncle Harry) the unscrupulously cheap and crafty boatyard owner and they
were absolutely the opposite in every way when it came to doing ethical business.
Tom was a good business man and a fine honest reputable good hearted person that went the extra mile to give out
more than he took in.
Any neighborhood children that came looking for work were taken in, trained and paid a fair wage.
I still remember the first time that Jane and I sold fresh seafood from our shrimp boat to Tom. We had agreed to the
price for the shrimp beforehand and when I delivered the fresh catch directly to him from our boat that was docked
only four blocks away over on Dufferin Street Tom hedged on the transaction but I wouldn’t budge, a deal was a
deal and that was that.
Tom knew the quality of our catch was unsurpassed for freshness and cleanliness and he had a good deal even if
he would have paid a much higher price so he paid our agreed price and I then threw in a nice fresh caught flounder
as a thank you.
After that initial business transaction we never had any more wrangling over price and we both mutually had each
others trust and respect. I always made sure that Tom had his extra fish as a token of a friendly and trusting deal
concluded.
Tom was from the old school of gentlemanly business dealings where a man’s word was his bond and business
deals could be sealed with a hand shake.
As you can imagine Jane and I felt extremely privileged to have such a wonderful and friendly place so very close to
our home to come for our special dining occasions.
If we happened to be the first clients of the evening you could rest assured that we would be seated in a window
seat overlooking the beautiful park grounds of the old Mission across the street.
Old Tom had some kind of a superstition or perhaps it was just good business sense because when I questioned
him about it he said; “when prospective customers drive by looking for a place to dine they always stop at the places
that already have some customers”. The reasoning was that people naturally assume that if other people are
already patronizing the spot it must be a good place to stop…Tom was most likely right about that and many other
little business subtleties he picked up over the years.
When the meal was over we would always be joined by one of the family members for congenial conversation. This
was part of what made this place so pleasant and memorable.
If we ordered wine with the dinner you could rest assured that a gift of an after dinner drink would follow. Greek
ouzo liquor and Retsina wine were the typical after dinner treats.
Retsina was an acquired taste and few non-Greek people liked it upon their first taste because it had such a
distinctive aroma and powerful flavor of pine pitch. Retsina is Greek wine that was actually aged in fresh pinewood
barrels and assumed that dominant potent penetrating essence of those resins.
I still remember one evening bringing our very good friends Bob and Emily Burn to the Spanish Landing for dinner
and sure enough after dinner Steve Xynidis brought us each a complimentary glass of Retsina wine. Jane and I
expectantly waited for a reaction from our friends Bob and Emily because we knew that this was their very first
experience with Retsina wine.
Finally we asked; well? Bob said it tastes like Brunswick, Georgia smells. Again we asked, well? And then Bob said; “I
kind of like the smell of Brunswick”.
(Brunswick, Georgia is an industrial seacoast town that has a multitude of wood processing plants that process
mostly pine trees into a variety of extracted products.)
It is interesting that such a small town as St. Augustine could have such an incredibly fabulous restaurant as this.
One of the secrets of the success of this culinary palace was that it so happened that Tom’s nephew’s wife
Katherine Gaetanos was an internationally acclaimed and prize winning Greek chef with years of experience and
she was responsible for many of the specialty dishes including the classic Greek desserts.
Katherine would come in several mornings a week and artfully and masterfully perform her culinary magic in the
kitchen of the Spanish Landing so all was ready and at its optimum peak of exquisiteness when customers began to
arrive.
Richard Boone/ Paladin: The famous and very distinctive TV actor from the series; “Have Gun Will Travel” retired
to St. Augustine where he taught drama classes at Flagler College as a diversion.
Ex-TV-gunslinger Paladin was a regular at local fund raisers and art shows where he was a big financial supporter.
Unmistakable Richard with his distinctive features and tall stature made him a stand out in any crowd. but now it was
hard to visualize this elder man in his former role of Paladin playing the gun slinging good guy sheriff in the weekly
TV series when the passing years had physically finished off his virile physic and made him go to pot.
Richard Boone the retired actor was a lot bigger man than I had imagined him to be but the years had taken their toll
on this distinguished former TV tough-guy.
Always an invincible pillar of the community, a hero who miraculously and courageously stood up to the worst blood
thirsty villains against all odds on the TV set had actually gotten older just like the rest of us had.
I somehow hated to have my good memories wiped away by the sight of my childhood hero with a protruding potbelly
that took him out of character on the streets of St. Augustine where he was able to be himself not powdered and
pampered for the TV set.
“Paladin” accepted little old St. Augustine and St. Augustine accepted him with little fan-fare and that I am sure was
exactly the kind of place this famous person was looking for…and here we all met.
Another social misfit came to roost in little old out-of-the-loop St. Augustine.
Without fail you would see Richard Boone here patronizing with his purchases the semi annual art fair held in the
central park located between King Street and Cathedral Street. These art fairs were a big tourist draw and
consistently attracted the finest artisans from the entire country. The event planners made sure that the artists
represented presented a wide variety of art forms with no duplication.
Check out the stack of cannon balls that is missing several pieces. In all the years Jane and I frequented St.
Augustine that partial stack was never restored.
Benny Nealson was one of the Ancient City’s neighborhood fixtures.
Congenial, cajoling and personable this small town business owner in addition was a small town crony-catering
politician.
There just wasn’t a whole lot of money in selling tourist trinkets.
Benny Nealson’s St. George Street business was named Tixie’s Men’s Store and tourist shop…like the rest of St.
Augustine’s home owned conservative shopping establishments of the early 1970s it was low-key and there was
absolutely no glitter or glitz.
In the early 1970s the aromas of coconut scented suntan oil and fragrantly fresh horse droppings commingled with a
musty moldy scent of old wooden buildings that gave St. George Street a certain aura of nostalgic uniqueness.
Like a charming old-fashioned movie set from days gone by, rustic unhurried little old St. George Street was still
paved with red bricks that had perceptively settled from years of steady traffic. Frequented by leisurely paced horse
drawn carriages that clattered with the clip-clop of their hooves that echoed through town, they were filled with
curious gawking photo snapping tourists rediscovering St. Augustine.
In spite of St. George Streets narrowness auto traffic and on street parking was still permitted making it especially
slow going.
These strolling out of town tourists invariably j-walked narrow little St. George Street obliviously with absolute
impunity. Somehow they had the impression that they were in a virtual Disneyland experience and not stepping out
into vehicle traffic.
One of Benny Nealson’s notoriously famous acts while he was on the St. Augustine city council was his political
cronyism that was polished and honed to the Florida down-south standard.
To guarantee exclusivity with no competition clever Kenny made sure that his crony buddy got all of the available
horse carriage licenses.
(There were only a few licenses issued and the crony got them all).
When an application came in for additional licenses that would mean some competition in the horse carriage
business the new applicant wanted his license but Kenny flatly denied the request stating that the city only would
issue a certain number of these licenses and; “that was capitalism”! (That was capitalism Kenny style anyway.)
No more had to be said on this subject because one and all knew that Kenny was politically for sale.
A tragic incident took place when Benny Nealson’s daughter was brutally murdered by a person she had refused a
date the night before.
It turned out that this guy was driving his pickup truck on St. Augustine Beach without a license since he couldn’t
pass the drivers test with his terribly impaired vision; he had eye glasses as thick as the bottoms of Coke bottles.
With deliberate action this denied and disgruntled admirer had to drive his truck into the ocean surf in order to run
down Kenny’s daughter and murder her at St. Augustine Beach.
No action of any kind was ever taken in this apparently deliberate homicide.
This was St. Augustine and St. Johns County where our dear old friend George Tappin always used to state; “If you
want to commit murder, do it here
next chapter
This is Richard Boone/ Paladin: The
famous gunslinger from the TV
series; “Have Gun Will Travel in
his youthful slim and trim
years…he was a very big man.
famous gunslinger from the TV
series; “Have Gun Will Travel in
his youthful slim and trim
years…he was a very big man.