Solace in San Antonio

Take a seat on the porch and sit a spell in the lovely village of San Antonio. The houses are old, the food is delicious and the stores are old-fashioned.

By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 22, 2001

In 1995, fourth-generation Tampa natives Anne and Ted Stephens bought an 82-year-old, 7,000-square-foot former railroad hotel north of the tiny village of San Antonio, Fla., with plans to turn it into their family home.

[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer] The Blue Room of the St. Charles Inn Bed and Breakfast shows the old-fashioned comforts of flowers, lace and antiques.

After all, when Stephens isn't on the job as a captain with Tampa Fire and Rescue, he restores old homes. His dad, Jim, 74, also loves home restorations. And grandfather Willie Stephens, 100, of New Port Richey was a builder and carpenter in his day.

"We didn't buy this to make a bed and breakfast," said Mrs. Stephens, who left her job as an obstetrics nurse 13 years ago to raise her two sons, Tacy, 13, and Hunter, 11.

"But friends in Bushnell convinced us to turn it into a B&B," Mrs. Stephens said. For nearly five years, all the Stephenses (except grandfather) pitched in to redo the sadly neglected, but solidly built structure.

They found hidden fireplaces, hard-as-stone plaster, windows with original, wavy panes of glass, heart-of-pine floors and three large porches that simply invite people to sit down and rock a while.

In October 1999, after nearly five years of work -- "We haven't hired out anything; we have done it all ourselves," Mrs. Stephens said -- the couple flung open the doors to the finely refurbished St. Charles Bed and Breakfast on Curley Road.

"Just by word of mouth, people come from all over -- England, France, Germany, Canada and all over the U.S.," Mrs. Stephens said. "We're full nearly every weekend; sometimes people stay all week long."

Many of the guests return to celebrate anniversaries of weddings that happened at the hotel 50 years or more ago. One mother brought her 16-year-old daughter and a slew of friends for a big slumber party. Recently, the refurbished St. Charles was the site of its first wedding under the ownership of the Stephens.

"We had the ceremony outside, with the bride and groom on the porch and the guests in the front yard," Mrs. Stephens said. There have been countless bridal showers, birthdays, second honeymoons and people just wanting to get away from it all.

The bed and breakfast offers three rooms for guests; the rest of the house is where the Stephens family lives. There's also a large parlor with a small television set that is rarely turned on, tables for card games and checkers and a jigsaw puzzle in progress. The music room is across the hall.

The Country Room, done in red, has twin beds, with a nightstand made from three well-worn suitcases Ted Stephens' aunt used when she was on a girls' baseball league in the early 1940s. The Blue Room has a queen-sized brass bed and white wicker chairs. Those two rooms share a bath and go for $70 a night each, including a country breakfast of fruit, quiche, eggs and bread made by Mrs. Stephens.

The Camellia Suite has a bedroom, sitting room and bath and is $110 a night.

All three rooms are handy to an outside porch where you can watch the sparse traffic going by on Curley Road.

"No pets -- you can share ours," says the B&B's brochure, a reference to the household cats Frisky, 11, Tabby, 12, and the home's latest addition, tiny Lucky, a stray that Stephens rescued from the middle of a Tampa highway.

Mrs. Stephens believes in pampering her guests. She irons all the sheets and linens, provides heavy white terry cloth robes and slippers in each room and puts candles and bubble bath in each bathroom. For those celebrating special occasions, she serves coffee in bed on a tray bedecked with flowers from her own gardens.

Guests have breakfast in a vivid russet dining room on Currier and Ives dishes given to Mrs. Stephens by her maternal grandmother. Through the wavy glass panes, they can see any number of butterfly gardens, bird houses and bird baths.

The St. Charles Bed and Breakfast is at 12503 Curley Road, San Antonio. Reservations are required. Call (352) 588-4130.

When in San Antonio

So what is there to do in San Antonio besides relax?

Pancho's Villa Mexican Restaurant is a m-u-s-t

There's also San Ann Market, a spotless little grocery store with a deli that serves Boar's Head sandwiches and offers fairly priced wines such as Fetzer and Glen Ellen, up to a Woodbridge and some Rosemount Estate. You can eat inside or out on a brick patio under the green umbrellas. There's fresh produce and homemade potato bread and oatmeal bread for picnics, as well as the usual grocery store fare. Open until 9 p.m. seven days a week.

For shoppers, there is the recently opened Park Place on Main Street facing the San Antonio Plaza. A dozen vendors offer a variety of items in the Quigley-Bradshaw Home, which, at 117 years is the oldest house in San Antonio. Owners Betty Burke, Bruce Calvert and Winnie Burke lovingly restored the place. For sale are vintage clothes, beaded handbags, paper dolls, costumes, glassware, books, cast iron items (I couldn't resist the tuxedo cat bookends), old dishes, costume jewelry, and enough other stuff to keep a browser busy for hours. It's open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and some Sundays.

Across from Pancho's Villa is Camellia Designs (open 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Tues.-Sat.), offering cutwork linen, gardening gloves and implements, baby and toddler clothes, decorator items and small custom items. Owner Beth Reynolds-Tillack is a third-generation San Ann resident.

Don't miss the street dances from 7:30 to 11 p.m. June 29 and July 27. "Kids, adults and dogs all come," Ms. Reynolds-Tillack said. The Nashville Express country/classic rock band will play.

Take in St. Joe

As long as you're this close, go to Katy's Country Corner in nearby St. Joe. Katy's has anything you want made from kumquats, as well as locally made crafts, embroidered linens, aprons, quilts, cooking sauces, pickled okra, garlic and watermelon rind, wild mayhaw jelly, ribbon cane table syrup and, always, a slice of kumquat pie and coffee or tea for $3.50.

Katy's will be featured in Southern Living in January, as will the annual Kumquat Festival, coming up at the end of January.

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