Overview

Jacksonville has long been a mecca for car enthusiasts and collectors, due in part to the city's unique automotive history. Bystanders gazed in wonder as John Einig drove Florida's very first steam-powered horseless carriage through the streets in 1889. Fred Gilbert opened the first automobile dealership in 1903, just before the city's first automobile parade, and people were soon clamoring to buy cars of their own. Claude Nolan, whose local dealership has been in business for well over a century, gained fame for racing his Cadillac against an airplane at the Jacksonville Fairgrounds. NASCAR held races at the Jacksonville Speedway in the '50s and '60s. Author Dorothy K. Fletcher explores the rich history and memories of car culture in the River City.

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9781540236814

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.. .a 140-page paean to those happy days, still celebrated at select events throughout the year but no longer part of our lived reality in the new millennium. The volume is meticulously documented and filled with dozens of photos, of cars and dealerships and factories. Folio Weekly

Author Information

In 2007, Dorothy K. Fletcher retired after thirty-five years of teaching English in Jacksonville, Florida. At that time, she began her writing career in earnest. Already her poetry had appeared in seventy-eight literary journals, and her articles had appeared in the Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville Magazine, Small Press Review, the Christian Science Monitor and Rider Magazine. She also had three books published: The Week of Dream Horses, The Cruelest Months and Zen Fishing and Other Southern Pleasures. She began a monthly column for the Florida Times-Union called By the Wayside, and that became the basis for the first of four histories she has written about her beloved city, Jacksonville, Florida. By the Wayside received a 2011 Jacksonville Historical Preservation Award from the Jacksonville Historic Commission of the City of Jacksonville. After that book, she wrote Growing Up Jacksonville, Lost Restaurants of Jacksonville and, most recently, Historic Jacksonville Theatre Palaces, Drive-ins and Movie Houses, which was a silver medal winner at the FABA Convention in August 2016. Presently, she and her husband, Hardy, reside in the San Jose area, near their children and grandchildren, and whenever they can, they go traveling.

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