<Announcer> A production of South Carolina ETV.

♪ > This is St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565 by Don Pedro Menendez de Villiers for his King, Philip II of Spain.

And it's the location for this edition of 27:Fifty .

Hi, I'm Jim Welch and we're at Castillo de San Marco in St. Augustine, built in 1672 to help protect the Spanish holdings in the area.

Our story begins much earlier, though, in 1492 with Christopher Columbus's encounters with the New World.

As we celebrate the 500th anniversary, the quincentennial of his explorations, let's talk about early Spanish settlements here and further up the coast in South Carolina at a place called Chicora.

The settlement is Santa Elena and Varian Brandon of the South Carolina ETV network spent some time with the archeologists and brings us this story.

> Early French and Spanish history appears in South Carolina textbooks for classroom use in junior high and high school as only a few paragraphs, and the real history in those textbooks starts with the founding of Charles Towne in 1670.

But there were, there were French and Spanish settlements here on Parris Island in the 1560's, over 100 years before Charles Towne was settled.

♪ <Stan> Joe Judge of the National Geographic Magazine, was interested in doing an article which came out in 1985 on the Spanish presence in the South East, and that's, I think it came out March ‘85.

I believe that's the year.

But he wanted to know whether or not Santa Elena was a French fort and site, as had been thought by Major Osterhout, who did some digging there in 1923 and or whether it was Spanish as Al Manucy of the Park Service had said in 1959, I believe.

> The town of Santa Elena, founded in 1566 by Pedro Menendez in an effort to keep the French from coming back and taking over this part of the world, which have traditionally been claimed by the Spanish as theirs.

<Stan> And we found the remains of the town of Santa Elena, the Spanish town itself.

So that, that was exciting.

And the first hole we dug, we found about 50 some pieces of Spanish pottery and other objects of Spanish occupation.

So we knew it wasn't French.

And this is a clenched fist, a triple called a figa.

They felt like at the time that if you wore these on your costume, sewn around at various places, that it would repel the evil eye.

And they also thought it would stop bullets.

This is the shell.

The shell is of the patron saint of Spain, St. James.

<Chester> Well, this large area that we've opened up this year is in the center of the town of Santa Elena.

Stan South, the archeologist who's been working here since 1979, knew that there was evidence of Spanish houses in this area because of testing that he did all the way back in 1979.

<Stan> The first thing we did here when we opened this area was to take a Gradall, a machine with a five foot wide bucket, and remove this, the dirt, the top soil from this area in ten foot units.

And then we stored that dirt in piles, 41 piles.

And since then, we've been sifting the artifacts out of those piles.

We've snitted down or cut down this area.

And we first saw this big feature of different color of soil here at this high level here, about six inches higher than where we are now.

But we wanted to get a better, clearer picture of it.

So we cut down this little inset here so that we could see the difference between this dark soil and the subsoil here.

The subsoil here is the yellow, kind of a yellow sand.

And this fill, this darkness, indicates that something, a hole has been dug here, this big eight foot hole in the past.

So we want to explore that and see what it is.

<Chester> So what we do is we expose those, scrape over the surface and define them very carefully, outline them and then map them, and then come back and dig into the ones that we think will give us some information on the Spanish period.

There are many, many numbered features, as we call them, the stains on the ground of different sizes and shapes.

And we excavate only a portion of those because we don't have time or money to do all of them.

> But ostensibly, we're trying to teach people about the past, and it's an excellent way of doing it.

It's a lot.

You can show slideshows all day long, but until people see you actually out here digging holes as deep as you can go they may not really appreciate what we're doing.

> Well, on this site, Stanley and Chester have hired me as a site interpreter, and by the site interpreter, that means that I am the person that greets the public and leads tours through the site.

<Carl> One of the main thrusts of the project this year is as an educational project, which is different than a lot of archeological projects.

And that's pretty interesting because we get to see the public a lot and explain to them what we're doing so that maybe they can understand a little better.

<Site Interpreter> We've also invited school groups from across the state to come and share in the experience with us.

And we've had, I'm not sure how many kids.

We've had almost 1200 visitors in the six weeks that we've been here.

<Chester> There was a church here when Menendez came, he brought missionaries with him.

They had a very difficult time with the Indians.

The first missionary that came here eventually decided it would be impossible to missionize the Indians, because they didn't stay put long enough.

<Stan> So we know that once we get into the church area at Santa Elena, then we will be able to find similar evidence of religious practices in Santa Elena.

As it is, we only dug in the town and in the forts, and we've only found one crucifix.

And that's the main evidence of religion.

It's just a small cross with Christ in relief, his body and relief on the side.

<Chester> Archeology is a very expensive process, and with the funds that are available for us to come out and work during the single year, we're only able to open up an area 50 by 70 feet at the most as we've done this year, and do all of the work of clearing it and doing the mapping and plotting of all of the features and things in the soil and then excavating the ones that seem to be important.

And as it is now, even in this area, we're not able to excavate all of the different things.

We're selecting the ones that seem most important and of the ones we are excavating, we're only doing half of each one.

<Carl> A lot of people have the idea that archeology is Indiana Jones, you know, finding gold coins and things like that.

And then they come out here and see us gettin' hot and sweaty and dirty and laying on our bellies on the ground, digging as deep as we can.

And they see that it's a different matter.

<Site Interpreter> I don't really care if they remember my name a year from now, but hopefully they'll remember the message I gave them and hopefully, you know, in the future there will be a finer appreciation for historic preservation.

<Jim> In 1587, Sir Francis Drake attacked and burned Saint Augustine, resulting in the consolidation of Spanish forces in this area.

Some years later, Castillo de San Marco was built to help protect the area from invasions from a new settlement in South Carolina by the English at Charleston.

The fort was built by slaves, soldiers and residents of the city.

The outer walls 12 feet thick at the base and tapering to seven feet at the top were built of coquina blocks quarried on nearby Anastasia Island and ferried to the site.

The cost of San Marcos Castle, as it was called, was estimated at millions of dollars, a sum that prompted the King of Spain to exclaim, “Its curtains and bastions must be made of solid silver.” Just across the street from the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument is the old town of St Augustine.

This street of St. George has shops, restaurants and historic sites, and next to the street the oldest Catholic parish in the United States, the parish of St. Augustine.

It dates from a celebration of mass by Juan Menendez and his men in September 8th, 1565.

Stained glass windows in the church have been a source of joy and inspiration for past generations.

Kentucky artist Ellsworth Strickler has been working with stained glass as a hobby, but it's now become a passion.

He hopes his legacy of works will be enjoyed for generations to come.

His story was first seen on Main Street, a WKYU production for Bowling Green, Kentucky.

♪ > It means something to the entire parish.

They pick these windows to stress the events of their life.

For example, one of them is Joe Russell as he picked Abraham and his son.

Joe lost his son.

And they pick different scenes, which corresponds to their families.

> Just if some time when you're in church, and you look up at a window and you go, I really like those colors together.

That's going to give me a high, whether it's my window or not, because this is what I want to do.

Glass.

(hammering sound) I don't believe if you're an artist, money has to ever enter into it.

I know there are things like starvation and rent that get in the way, but I think that's where your needs have to go along with your creative ability.

If art is more important than a new porsche, then you better stick with what's important to you.

<Ellsworth> I guess everything that I do, I feel like that if I used my hand, I did it myself.

Now I'm going to imagine that this line runs off over here.

In the wintertime, you absolutely find jobs that are not related to farming to do.

And I saw a piece of stained glass, and I said, “Well, I wish I knew where I could get the stuff.

I believe that I could do that.” And that's, that's the way the whole thing started, is when you do a church window, and you think, well, people in 50 years or so will look at this and say, "I wonder what that guy was like that did those windows."

Take this one.

(chipping sound) <Marvin> I guess all my life I've thought of some phase of art as being my calling.

I guess it satisfies in me the desire to make, to create form and to work with color, and in a way that I wasn't able to do with painting.

I'm also interested in the story that's behind what I'm trying to show.

It's really a unique opportunity for me to, as a Christian, as a person in the church, to be working with Church art.

<Joyce> People are more interested in things that you do with your hands, like they've never been interested before, because so many things are made by machines.

I can't possibly imagine a time when handmade art will be out of vogue because it does two things.

One, it's beautiful.

Two, it reinforces the idea that people are more important than machines.

So I don't think there is such a thing as a dying out.

I think if, God forbid, all three of us were to go tomorrow, there would be three more people ready to take our place because they're needed.

<Jim> The old schoolhouse on St. George Street is a one story clapboard structure of hand-hewn red cedar planks with a coquina chimney and a dormer window.

It was built in 1778 and is the oldest wooden schoolhouse in the United States.

So much of our country has changed since the Europeans came here to clear and cut and burn to make room for cities and more people.

So many of our plants and animals native to this country have been destroyed in the process and still others are on the edge of extinction.

Such is the case of the Attwater's prairie chicken, not exactly a household name and found only in Texas.

We'll have that story from KUHT in Houston.

The Attwater prairie chicken.

(chicken squawking) <Narrator> The Attwater's prairie chicken, Texas's most endangered bird.

Get a good look at it now since its entire population may be extinct by 1998.

> The Attwater's prairie chicken is a race of the heath hen and it is the only endemic endangered species in Texas.

That means that it's found nowhere else, only in Texas.

<Narrator> The Attwater's prairie chicken is best known for its booming.

That's the low frequency call it makes as it performs this song and dance in prelude to its mating ritual.

> Some folks say that the dance that was done by the Plains Indians was taken directly from the Attwater's prairie chicken.

Every spring, the male Attwater's prairie chickens, to appeal to the female Attwater's prairie chickens put on a display known as booming.

And what they will do is they will boom on these cleared areas of short grass, short cover known as leks or booming grounds.

About daybreak every morning, the males will appear on the booming grounds.

It's too dark to even see them, and they'll start their various calling to attract the females in order to entice other males to approach the booming ground also.

When the males all congregate on there, they'll display for one another as well as the females.

The height of the display will come when a female actually is in sight of the booming ground, and the males know that they have somebody that's watching them.

And it's kind of like a Sadie Hawkins dance.

The female will come and choose whoever she likes, and they will mate right on the lek.

And then she'll go off within a very short distance of the lek booming ground, and she will nest there.

So their whole life revolves around these areas called booming grounds.

<Narrator> In 1972, the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service established the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge to restore critical habitat for this endangered species.

This 8000 acre refuge is located about 50 miles west of Houston between Sealy and Eagle Lake.

The refuge is open from sunrise to sunset, 365 days a year.

During the booming season from February to the end of May, this observation blind is open to the public.

It's situated about 150 yards away from the booming grounds.

So bring your binoculars or telescope for a close up view.

Take a walk through the two foot trails or drive the five mile auto tour loop for a panoramic view of untouched native prairie habitat in all its splendor.

At the turn of the century, the Attwater's prairie chicken could be seen over a 7 million acre range stretching from the Mississippi River Delta to as far south as Corpus Christi, Texas.

The bird is now extinct in Louisiana and has disappeared east of the Trinity River.

To date, sightings have been reported in only seven Texas counties.

In the early 1900s, there were around a million Attwater prairie chickens.

In 1984, that number had dropped dramatically to around only 1600.

As of March 1991, the total world population figure was only 482, 70 of which are living on the refuge.

This refuge located in our community, houses the world's only managed population.

Urbanization, industrial expansion and conversion of prairie to large scale croplands are major factors in the sharp decline of prairie chicken numbers.

Possible solutions to this dilemma: more land, both public and private, for managed populations.

> We've identified additional refuge sites in Victoria County, and we have a congressman who is sponsoring legislation for the purchase of that land right now, and it's public support that makes things like that become a reality.

We're also beginning a private lands initiative in which we are encouraging private landowners to manage habitat for prairie chickens on their private land.

This encouragement to the private landowner can come in the form of monetary incentives through the Agriculture Department, perhaps, it can come through tax incentives.

There's all kinds of possibilities.

<Narrator> The plight of the Attwater's prairie chicken is of global concern.

This ten member group from England made this refuge their first stop on a two week tour of Texas in the Gulf Coast.

> This is one of the birds I came to see, of course, and I was delighted to see it.

And I've seen those beautiful killdeer and all sorts of things I wanted on my world list for years now.

And there they were, definitive views, you know, only a few feet away, and quite remarkable.

> Watching the prairie chickens is sad in a way, because every time I look at them, every year you come, there are fewer.

They're coming to the point where they may not be viable, unless something really serious is done to try to reverse the trend, to create habitat maybe, and to protect what habitat exists.

Otherwise, you know, they could be gone.

<Jim> St. Augustine was one of the very few walled cities that ever existed in colonial North America.

The only opening in the city defenses was a Puerta de Tierra, today called the “City Gates”, and they still stand guard outside the old town.

This is Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in St. Augustine, Florida.

Thousands of tourists come here each year, along with the other sites to see in the area, a most unforgettable place, and perhaps the spot that we might introduce you to our next story.

Howard Finster in Summerville, Georgia, is a most unforgettable character.

He calls himself a man of vision, and his vision can be seen all around the house.

Judge for yourself whether Howard's work should be here in the museum through this story provided by Georgia Public Television.

<Howard> God has taken me and lifted me up and he gave me the kind of art that the people love.

That's not Howard Finster's art.

That's art from wisdom, from another world, from God, like following a blueprint.

<Narrator> Howard Finster is Summerville, Georgia's self-proclaimed Man of Visions.

He plunged into the art world in 1971 at the age of 55, beginning construction on his Paradise Garden.

Discouraged one night after a 30 year career as a Baptist preacher and bicycle repairman, he started looking for a way to get his message across.

<Howard> That night in a service, as I called out over my audience, as they quietly sat and listened to me, I said, “How many of you people remember "what I preached on this morning at 11:00?

"Hold your hand up, all of you that remember what I preached on at 11:00 this morning."

You know, one man had hold his hand up out of that whole congregation!

They forgot my message from one service to another, and I thought to myself, Lord, they like me.

They've kept me here 15 years and three months.

I'm a good pastor, but they're not listening to me, God.

And I come home.

I give the church up and I come home and I sit down there and I think to myself, I've got to build us a garden.

I built that garden, and I started, I started putting my messages down with tractor enamel, and two of ‘em went in the Library of Congress.

One went in the governor's office in California.

And if they forget that message today, it's a-hangin' there in the morning.

And people ain't gonna pay $500 for a message and hang it up there and do away with it.

It's gonna be there from now ‘til Jesus comes.

<Narrator> Five years later, while repairing a bicycle, Howard discovered his talent for painting through a vision.

<Howard> One day I dipped my finger in white paint to rub it on that place and patch that bicycle.

And I looked on my finger, and in that paint was a human face, right on the ball of my finger.

And my fingers are round, just like a face too.

And then I looked at my finger.

There's a face looking out of my finger into my face in that paint.

And there's a warm feeling just splashed all over me, said, “Paint sacred art.” And I said to that feeling, I said, “I can't do that.

I know professionals can, but not me.” And then it come to me again, it says “Howard, how do you know you can't?” And then the thought come to me, “How DO I know I can't?” <Narrator> Howard found that he could.

He paints almost exclusively with tractor enamel on plywood, metal and plexiglass.

In the past seven years, he's turned out nearly 3800 paintings, selling for up to $4,000 apiece.

His art has been shown in some of the nation's most prestigious galleries and in international exhibits.

Such fame has brought a steady stream of welcome visitors to his Worlds Folk Art Church and Garden in Summerville.

<Howard> Everybody's welcome to come to the garden.

The garden is for people to come and enjoy.

Like down there while ago, that lady right over there, she must've eat a gallon of muscadine.

I never seen - she enjoyed them!

I bet you she gonna eat a meal.

There ain‘t nothin' she enjoys more than those muscadines, just pickin' ‘em off of the vine.

And I've seen babies, you know, pick their first fruit down there off of them vines.

That's a beautifulest picture I've ever seen in my life.

You see, just a little kid been living around plain folk all of his life and don't even know where muscadine come from, and see him pick his first one off of the vine.

And then I had the apples, I had all kinds of grapes.

I had raspberries, black raspberries, and the people and the birds eat some things.

That's what I planted them for.

This is where I, when I went a full time artist, I molded in my bicycle tools, to show the world that I'd quit fixin' bicycles.

And uh, I just molded my tools here, and the walks, and down here it said, you can't read it all, but it said, uh, “Howard's joining the art world,” molded in his tools here.

I done this little one here, down in Florida on a vacation.

I done these out on the beach looking out over the ocean.

Got 'em on a table with a paste knife and teaspoon.

This here is an old fashioned baseball player, that's my wife, and that's my wife on this.

And this is an Italian here, and this is an apeman.

And this here is a German, German soldier.

And this is one of the earlier baseball players.

And this is a baseball player.

<Narrator> The garden's strange beauty hasn't gone unnoticed outside the art community.

Howard appeared on "The Tonight Show" in 1983, and R.E.M., an Athens, Georgia rock group, made a music video here.

R.E.M.

's singers come here and they went through my garden.

They loved it.

They visited it.

They like to come here when they get wore out, get back from England or somewhere, they just want to get in Paradise Garden and get down under some trees, lay down and rest, and they come.

And so they had me make an album cover for them.

And it's out on a record now and people are sending it in to me to autograph it.

I'll make up songs.

I made up about 100 lyrics.

I'll probably sing with this banjo.

(banjo strumming) ♪ This old world ♪ ♪ All of its glory ♪ (continues singing and strumming) ♪ This old world ♪ ♪ All of its glory ♪ ♪ This old world ♪ ♪ This old world gonna pass away.

♪ (banjo strumming continues) <Jim> Howard Finster of Summerville, Georgia, a most unforgettable character.

He marches to the beat of a different drummer.

Well, we're back where we started our visit to St. Augustine, Florida, at the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument.

We hope you enjoyed it and will join us again next time on 27:Fifty .

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