Last summer, my partner and I spent a couple of weeks in Florida. We loved St. Augustine, loathed Miami, and I spent a lot of time either soaking in the pool or making friends with the hotel bartender while my partner and her son enjoyed the Orlando theme parks. One morning my partner, who is a very spontaneous travel companion, woke me up at what I call "zero dark thirty" (it was probably around seven, the crack of dawn in vacation time) to excitedly announce we were going to make a pilgrimage to something called "The Coral Castle," which my partner recalled from the old "Ripley's Believe It or Not" column that used to be featured in the "funny pages" of local newspapers.
Several hours later, we arrived at the gates of this marvelous monstrosity:
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| Prepare to be amazed. |
Edward Leedskalnin was a Latvian immigrant at the turn of the last century who, like many MGTOW, was disappointed in love. When the gal he'd set his cap for permanently and irrevocably "friend-zoned" him, he made his way to Southern Florida, where he devoted the rest of his life to building a "coral rock" Taj Mahal in order to win her affections. He worked tirelessly, mostly at night and behind a tall wall, so the townsfolk of Homestead couldn't see exactly what, or how, he was doing it, but he managed to heave great blocks of coral into place all by himself. He included within this compound all the amenities his lady love would require, too, including a bath tub, his'n'her thrones, and even a creepy little chamber in which he planned to "discipline" their future offspring. Not a detail was overlooked, and not a surface could one sit on without risking serious abrasions.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, Ed died a bachelor, but his monument endures and and draws thousands of visitors to the pleasant, sleepy hamlet of Homestead, Florida: a testament to the awesome feats a single, ordinary man can achieve when He Goes His Own Way.
