Breakfast in Saint Augustine

My brother Russ and I are slowly making our way south from Jacksonville, Florida on a Friday morning early in April. Around 10:30 we both start thinking about a little breakfast so we start looking for the places that sell breakfast sandwiches. We are on or near the A1A and fairly close to the Atlantic Ocean, just south of Saint Augustine, renowned for the Spanish landing here sometime in the early 16th century, but a tourist town now, always crowded with elementary and middle school children on a day trip. It is difficult to see any significant mark left by the Spaniards.

We can't find a Hardee's or a MacDonald's or a Denny's or any of the others and we are starting to get desperate, when what should appear to our dazzled eyes but the Dunes Cracker House, a place that has that indeterminate, slightly worn and sometimes a little shabby, at least on the outside look of the 1930s and 1940s that you always saw in the movies of those days. They had a sign out front, "Open for Breakfast." Oddly, there were only about 4 customers in the whole place, though the bar didn't open until later in the afternoon. This may be a sign of the hard times people were talking about.

It was supposedly built sometime late in the 19th century and the bathroom fixtures would seem to go along with that. Pleasant french doors with slowly moving fans on a day that didn't have a lot of early humidity and some very nice if eccentric waitresses together with a good eggs, home fries, toast and sausage breakfast, and a really excellent omelet with coffee for $15! for the two of them.

We thought that was a pretty good deal, especially after paying the same for a beer and a bratwurst at most of the ballparks we had been attending for the past two weeks. I say most because Lakeland, where the Detroit Tigers train not only had $16 decent seats, compared to $20-25 for seats in the others, but hot dogs for $3.50.

It was definitely worth a stop and an interesting example of finding something really good while looking for something else.