The Island Gilded Age

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​The Island Gilded Age

...Continued from yesterday:
       On Wednesday afternoon, after our tour of St. Simons Island (see yesterday's post,  https://www.ailantha.com/blog/st-simons-island-shrimp-boats-live-oaks-and-a-bird-convention), we returned to Jekyll Island and headed for the historic district where in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the ultra-wealthy captains of American industry built for themselves an exclusive retreat that they called the Jekyll Island Club. The area is now a state park open to the public and site of the Jekyll Island Club Resort (see post from 2/16/2024, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/the-jekyll-island-club).

       We walked for a little while around the resort grounds, where we saw some magnificent old live oaks hung with Spanish moss and other plant life (see yesterday's post),

...alongside other beautiful indigenous trees.

     We then walked to the clubhouse/hotel,

...where we took a tour of the reconstructed spaces where the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Morgans,  and other elites of the American Gilded Age once roamed,

...dined,

...(or maybe just popped in for a nosh),

...convened,

...read,

...and otherwise hung out.

        
​       That evening Mike and Dayna took us to Tribuzio's Grille, where many of the Jekyll Island locals come together on Wednesday evenings,

...to meet, eat, and participate in the Wednesday night Trivia tournaments.

     Here we met up with some old friends from college who are also part-time residents of the island and Trivia night regulars. They introduced us to some new friends, and soon Tom and I took our first fling at a Trivia night.

​      Our team did pretty well on the first two rounds,

...then we kind of plotzed on round three. But it was lots of fun, anyway, and one does pick up a good amount of interesting new (if trivial)  information.
       ​ As we sat around the table and played in this room full of our fellow trivialistas, I found myself musing over what those old gilt-edge aristocrats who used to be the sole inhabitants of this charming island off the coast of Georgia would have thought if during their time they could have looked into a crystal ball and seen one hundred and twenty years into the future all of us commoners enjoying life on this piece of earth that they likely believed would belong to them and their scions forever.

     To be continued...