St. Augustine was born of the sea, cursed by the sea, caressed and plundered, made, destroyed, and reborn on the bosom of great waters . . .
These florid phrases of the St. Augustine Historical Society, designed to lure tourists to the nation’s oldest city, have a curious pertinence this winter. Words like “cursed” and “plundered” and “destroyed” have come to apply not to what the sea has done to the Ancient City, but to what its inhabitants have done to themselves. After months of racial disorder, St. Augustine today is an exhausted little town, with worn-out people and a crippled…