Waiting for Agnes by Joe Bullard - Paperback 2000
by Joe Bullard
$399 · Offered by eBay
Coral Castle sits on Key West Highway in Homestead, Florida. It was built by a Latvian immigrant with a fourth grade education named Ed Leedskalnin. Jilted on the eve of his wedding in 1912to Agnes Scuffs, the only girl he ever loved, Ed was crushed by her rejection (which she never completely explained to him) and he came to south Florida after traveling around Canada, Texas and California. Ed was found at night, passed out on a dirt road by a passerby in 1918. Ed was later diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis. The attending doctor told Ed, "Your body is eaten up with tuberculosis--I don't even know how you've made it this far--you have four months to live--maybe six months if you're lucky." Ed stayed in the home of Herman Harmless where he regained some of his strength. He expressed a desire for some land, a local farmer felt sorry for him and gave him some worthless land that was covered by one inch of top soil and underneath this was four thousand feet of solid coral. The man told Ed the land "was worthless unless you want to farm coral rocks. This was exactly what Ed planned to farm. Ed went to a junkyard and fashioned his own tools from discarded automobile parts. Ed only worked from midnight to sunrise so no one ever could see how he cut and moved huge blocks of jagged coral (Ed's largest stone weighed 30 tons) and formed them into today's Coral Castle. This book describes in detail why Ed left his home in Latvia (one of the Baltic States near Russia) came to Florida a
- Publisher: Bullard JR., Jo!e
- Year: 2000
- Binding: Hardcover
- ISBN: 9780967313306
- Condition: Very Good
Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.