By L.A. MAXWELL
Tribune Staff Writer

AUBURNDALE - Carl Allen serves up a big portion of local history with every meal at the Polk County restaurant he has run for 28 years.
Allen's Historical Cafe is just eight blocks from the house where Allen was born 70 years ago. The cafe features native Florida foods served amid hundreds of thousands of antiques and artifacts on display throughout the restaurant.
"You won't find anything on the menu that wasn't caught, netted, raised, grown or hatched in this state," Allen said.
A handwritten menu bears out his statement by offering catfish, perch, grouper, flounder, shrimp, mullet, rabbit and quail.
For the more adventuresome, Allen also suggests alligator, armadillo, softshell turtle, shark and rattlesnake.
"I kill and clean the rattlesnake myself so I know it's fresh," said Allen, as he sat back and sipped iced tea from a mason jar," and I fry it in oil I don't use for nothin' else because it needs to be cooked slow and not so hot."
Allen said he doesn't know of any other restaurant in Florida that serves rattlesnake. "If there is one, I ain't heard about it, and I know there's no place that's served it as long as I have," he said.
Rattlesnake and another Florida staple, swamp cabbage, have been on the menu since the cafe opened in 1960.

Bits of Florida's past
Allen's pride in his Florida heritage is as evident as his food is authentic. The cafe holds a museum-size collection of tools, utensils, arrowheads, dolls, pottery, photographs, drawings and other bits of Central Florida's past.
"I collect the past, and the more I do it, the more interesting it has become," he said. Allen said he was about 10 years old when he found his first treasures while digging in dirt not far from his home.
"I found three pieces of metal that looked like they could've been tools, and I brought them home to show my folks," Allen said. "The joy of finding those artifacts set a little fire inside me, and it's kept burning to this day."
Allen has a large collection of old treadle sewing machine bases, and he has fashioned them into tables for three of the four rooms in the cafe.
The round wooden table tops feature photographs and lithographs with different historical themes. Confederates, gunfighters, Southern belles, cowboys and Indians stare up from the table tops.
Allen made the tables himself by setting down the artifacts and covering them with clear epoxy resin.
Allen said he is as obsessed with chasing the past as he is with preserving and sharing it.
He opens the back-room lounge three nights a week to local bluegrass artists. He also sponsors the Florida Bluegrass Championships in Auburndale every year, and he absorbs much of the cost so those interested in authentic Florida music can listen free of charge.

'Homey feeling'
Every Friday night at his cafe, he plays host to "The Oldywed Game" while the musicians take a break.
"We get people up here who've been married 30 or 40 years, and they love it," Allen said. I try to keep the questions clean and funny and ask men things like what was the worst meal their wives ever fixed that they lied and said was good and we give little prizes to the winners."
On April 24, Allen is planning the annual "Old Timers' Day." Once a year Allen invites all those who "remember when there were more cows and orange trees than tourists", to have a complimentary dinner on him.
Allen has more than 40 taped interviews he's done with longtime residents who lived through the "Panic" - what Allen said Florida Crackers call the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Five years ago Allen was named No. 1 Cracker by the state Sertoma Club. He's proud to be called a Cracker because he was one of that increasingly rare group who were born in Florida during the days when young men went on "cow hunts" riding "Cracker ponies."
He explained the name "Cracker" comes from the sound of whips being cracked by Florida cowboys who liked to show off when the first tourists arrived by train years ago.
Allen said he's writing a book about Florida pioneers that will have a little bit of every Cracker he's known in it. "I hope to call it 'Roots Grow Deep in My Sand,' " he said.
Allen said Crackers are fiercely loyal, honest, independent and hospitable. "Sometimes I think sincerity and friendliness got lost between the past and the here and now," he said. "I try to give this place a warm, welcome, homey feeling," Allen said. "I try to make it an invitation to people to stop by, stay awhile and come back another day."