Shades of the Past
Tampa, FL
April 6, 2019
We are not in Tampa often…
…or at least not often enough. Or at least not often enough during the pleasant “winter” months, when the wind chill dips into the 60s, cardigans emerge from lower drawers or top shelves, and ambient conditions don’t resemble the inside of a locked van in the Sahara at noon (but at least it’s a wet heat).
This week, the weather is perfect.
Temperatures are warm, the sun bright, the air light…moving at a gentle pace just sufficient to sway languid palms and rustle lazy Spanish moss.
We took advantage on the golf course Tuesday…and it took advantage of us. Duly humbled, we applied a Chardonnay balm to our swollen handicaps, and decided that the next day should feature a less emotionally taxing activity.
Like my son flying a small plane.
Alexander took to crystal-clear skies on Wednesday morning, piloting the Skycatcher southeast from Davis Island, over the bay to St. Petersburg, and relinquishing control to his instructor as they coasted safely back to Peter O’Knight field.
Brett joined us for a Tampa Bay Rays baseball game that afternoon. Neither team scored going into extra innings, so I decided to get a few bottles of water to tide us over till someone bothered to win.
Noticing all concessions were closed, I immediately returned to our seats and saw Brett standing over a large black woman seated in front of us, the back of her neck resting on the top of the seat, eyes closed, face directed to the stadium roof, and mouth agape like the passenger who falls asleep next to you on a transcontinental flight.
Only this woman did not seem capable of snoring.
“I don’t know if she’s breathing”, Brett exclaimed as he held his eyeglasses under her nose. Her open mouth moved sporadically, as if bobbing for invisible apples dangling above her in a pool of reclusive air.
He pressed her wrist in an unsuccessful search for a pulse, then checked with a remarkably poised boy of about ten, who we presumed was the grandson of the unconscious woman, to ensure he and the toddler on the woman’s lap had someone to watch or retrieve them. He told us he was on the phone with someone “nearby” who would get them shortly.
The woman, notwithstanding her elusive pulse, did appear to be alive. But for how long?
We don’t know…and probably never will.
By then the game had ended, paramedics arrived, began tending to the patient, and assured us they would look after the kids.
Brett having done all he could to care for the woman and comfort her grandchildren, the only thing for us to do was step aside, follow the flow out of the stadium, and return to our car.
We hopped onto I-275, drove north toward Tampa, and hit rush-hour traffic…which promptly hit us back. Fortunately, no one was injured in the collision.
After moving the cars off the highway and completing requisite post-accident procedures, we hailed an Uber back to Tampa, and joined my parents on the Palma Ceia terrace to end an eventful day over a delightfully therapeutic dinner accompanied by Canvasback wine.
I left Tampa for college thirty-three (!) years ago, returning once or twice annually, tho’ with less frequency the last couple years.
My parents have remained in the area, in three different houses within five square miles. They really should get out more.
A decade and a half ago, after stints in Tallahassee, Atlanta, DC, and China, my brother re-planted his roots in south Tampa soil…from which beautiful daughters have subsequently blossomed.
We had the pleasure of dining with all of them when we arrived Monday evening…and again on Thursday to celebrate the back-to-back birthdays of our beautiful nieces.
Despite the familiar faces, much in Tampa has changed since I gave up my Florida driver license three decades ago. I decided Thursday morning to have a look, to show my sons where their father grew up, and to see how much of it he still recognized.
We crossed the bridge onto Davis Island, past the hospital in which I was born, and toward the street on which I was raised.
For almost ten years Huron Avenue reverberated with the sounds and shenanigans common to any assemblage of rambunctious male pre-pubescents.
There, the ghosts began to speak.
The first shade to appear was the twelve year-old version of your reflective correspondent.
“Where have you been?”, he asked his older self, “and what became of us?”.
“We moved across town a year or so after your current age. We then finished high school, graduated from Georgia Tech, moved to San Francisco, married a wonderful woman, returned to Atlanta, and had the two terrific sons who are here with us now. What are you up to?”
“You know…the usual. Playing sports in ‘leagues’ we created with our friends, drawing intricate maps of the city, digging channels through the back yard so I can run water through them to create a system of ‘rivers’, writing and distributing ‘newspaper’ articles about all of it. Typical kid stuff.”
Unlike the mansions, estates, and compounds rising on the periphery of Davis Island, the homes dotting the interior remain mostly recognizable to my twelve year-old self.
“I see they enclosed the carport of our house, expanded our grandparents house on Lucerne, and remodeled or replaced several homes across and along Huron. Otherwise, the street does not feel too different. Of course, all the kids that used to run up and down the street…and in and out of each other’s houses…seem to have gone away.”
“Yes”, I told my innocent pre-teen spirit, “some sent further up river than others.”
My younger incarnation found it hard to believe his childhood best friend made the front page of the Tampa paper this week, sentenced to 15 years in the state hoosegow for bilking invalid children, mental defectives, and dependent widows of a couple million dollars entrusted to him as their estate attorney.
To most children, growing up can’t happen soon enough. They want to race through adolescence, attain independence, and run the show as an adult. They then realize that becoming an adult is a little like going to a nude beach: it sounds good…till you get there.
I was on the cusp of adulthood when I left Tampa. The next phantom to join us was the 17 year-old that now finds much of his native city unrecognizable.
A notable example is Harbour Island. An untamed wilderness known as Seddon Island when our teenager left town, it is now filled with high-end homes cheek-by-jowl with one another, and with high-end hotels…all just across a small bridge from downtown Tampa.
“This is incredible. None of this was here…Whoa! What is that?”
“A hockey arena,” I told my incredulous young predecessor.
“Hockey? In Florida? Tampa can’t even get a baseball team, but somehow managed to get a hockey team?”
“There is a baseball team too, but they play in St. Petersburg.”
“St Petersburg? Tampa finally gets a team and it’s in St. Petersburg? Why would anyone go all the way to St Petersburg for a baseball game? Must be a great ballpark…”
“Yeah, well…anyway…look over there…”, I suggested, gesturing toward a string of appealing edifices lining or rising from the waterfront.
Channelside lies to the east of Amalie Arena, and connects its satellite restaurants, hotels, and bars with the Cruise terminal and, further north by road or streetcar (another nostalgic ornament of more recent years), Ybor City.
Through my 17 year-old eyes, the area appeared to have been completely transformed. “Aside from working a few times at the old Rough Riders restaurant and a few art festivals at Ybor Square, I never came to this area. Why would I? But it looks much different now. And better.”
Ybor City is at the heart of Tampa’s Cuban heritage, where world-famous cigars were rolled and sandwiches pressed. The area deteriorated years ago, but revived the last couple decades to resemble something of a Spanish or Latin-tinged French Quarter, replete with iron balconies, an assortment of restaurants, and an abundance of bars in old brick buildings lining old brick streets.
Unlike New Orleans, Ybor City is relatively quiet before the sun sets, so we returned downtown…and then back to the house.
The following day, we ventured to another part of town that at 17 I wouldn’t have been caught dead in. Or, if I had been there, that is precisely how I would have been found.
As my mother and Jerry noted when we arrived yesterday for lunch at the Armature Works in the Tampa Heights neighborhood, the Hillsborough River offers tremendous potential for walking, biking, relaxing, or dining along what is finally becoming a beautiful urban waterfront.
An old industrial building that once served as a Tampa Electric Company streetcar barn, the Armature has been resuscitated into a conglomeration of dining options clustered in a manner reminiscent of Krog Street or Ponce City Market in Atlanta or The Ferry Building in San Francisco.
We grabbed our respective lunches, sat outside to enjoy another gorgeous day, and envisioned the current and prospective charms of the evolving riverfront just beyond a collection of construction equipment by which it is being crafted.
We have had a wonderful week reacquainting ourselves with Tampa, and re-connecting with ourselves. Today, we bid farewell to the phantoms, pack up the memories, and leave the place. As with Odysseus from Troy, Columbus from Palos, or Tom Hanks from that island, the winds have shifted, and it is time to go.
But we leave with an renewed appreciation for who we were and where we’re from.
And for what we have and where we are.
JD
