The Sun Guaranteed It
There was a promise built into growing up in St. Petersburg, and it wasn't written down anywhere. It was in the light. That wide, flat, impossible Florida light that came off the water and turned everything golden by four o'clock.
The Evening Independent made it official: if the sun didn't shine by press time, the paper was free. Think about that. An entire newspaper staked its revenue on the idea that the sun always showed up. And it almost always did.
You grew up under that guarantee. You didn't know any different. You thought every place in America had green benches lining the sidewalks downtown, old men playing checkers in Williams Park, and pelicans so bold they'd steal your bait right off the hook at the Million Dollar Pier.
"You didn't need a watch. You didn't need a calendar. The sun told you everything, and the town arranged itself around it."
Webb's City Had Everything
Before there were malls, before there were big box stores, there was Webb's City. "The World's Most Unusual Drug Store" — and they meant it. You could get your prescription filled, buy a lawn mower, watch the mermaids swim on the fourth floor, get a haircut, and eat lunch without ever walking back outside.
Your grandmother dragged you there for Christmas shopping. Your mother knew exactly which aisle had the best deals. And you — you were just trying to get to the dancing chicken or the mermaid show before someone decided it was time to look at shoes.
Maas Brothers was where you went when you wanted to feel fancy. Downtown, the real one, with the escalators that felt like a ride and the Estée Lauder counter where teenagers snuck samples. Christmas at Maas Brothers wasn't shopping. It was a pilgrimage. Central Plaza had Wolfie's, where the cheesecake was the only thing anyone ever talked about, and Rat's Hole, which sold t-shirts before t-shirts were a thing anyone took seriously.
Friday Nights Belonged to Everyone
The 28th Street Drive-In. The Garden Drive-In. The Circle R. The Mustang. You didn't go for the movie. You went because that's where Friday night happened. You piled into someone's car — too many of you, always too many — and you paid by the carload if you could get away with it.
Or maybe Friday night was Biff Burger. You knew which one was yours — 49th Street, or the one your crowd claimed. The special sauce was the thing. You'd sit on the hood and watch the cruise go by and not think about the fact that one day Biff Burger would be gone and you'd spend the rest of your life trying to explain to people what the special sauce tasted like.
If it was Saturday, you were at Gay Blades. The roller rink on 9th Street, where the sound system rattled your chest and the backward-skate-only sessions separated the real ones from everybody else. Some of you met your first boyfriend or girlfriend there. Some of you broke an arm there. Some of you did both on the same night.
"You could hear Sunshine Speedway from three neighborhoods away on a Saturday night. That sound was summer."
The Water Was Always There
Spa Beach. North Shore Pool — dime beach, because that's what it cost to get through the turnstile. Fort DeSoto before it cost anything, when the Australian pines still lined the roads and you picked up their acorns without knowing what they were.
You fished Coffee Pot Bayou for snook. You caught crawdads somewhere you weren't supposed to be. You jumped off the Bayway bridge because someone dared you, and you did it again because you liked the way it felt.
The Million Dollar Pier was the center of everything. You put a quarter in the telescope. You bought ice cream at the top. You watched the men fish for hours, not because you cared about fishing, but because there was nowhere else you needed to be. Years later, they'd replace it with something upside-down, and then replace that too, and you'd never stop calling the original one "the real Pier."
The Sounds You Carry
WLCY on the radio, because that's what everyone listened to. Dr. Paul Bearer on Saturday night, scaring you half to death from a TV station that looked like it broadcast from someone's garage. Captain Mac at the Pier, making you believe that everything in the bay was worth catching.
The Festival of States parade down Central Avenue every spring. You stood on the curb with a thousand other people and watched the bands go by, and it felt like the whole city had shown up, because it had.
And there was a sound you didn't notice until it was gone: the mosquito spray trucks. They came through the neighborhoods at dusk with those yellow flashing lights, fogging the streets, and kids on bikes rode through the cloud because nobody told them not to. That was just Tuesday.
The Places That Fed You
Ted Peters. Smoked mullet and smoked fish spread that people still drive across the state for, even now. If you grew up here, you didn't think of it as special. It was just where you went. It was just what fish tasted like.
Chattaway had the Christmas lights before Christmas lights were a competitive sport. Pepin's was where your parents took you on a night they wanted to feel like grown-ups. Aunt Hattie's was where your grandmother went after church. Coney Island was where you went when you had two dollars and wanted a chili dog that would ruin your shirt.
Clancy's after the drive-in. Triplett's for the ice cream. El Cap because someone's older brother said it was the place. Wolfie's for the cheesecake. Olsen's Drive-In because you could eat in the car and nobody cared about crumbs.
And Thrill Hill. It wasn't a restaurant. It wasn't a business. It was just a hill — a bump in the road, really — but you hit it fast enough in the right car and your stomach dropped, and for two seconds you were flying. Every single person from this town knows exactly which hill. That's all you have to say. Thrill Hill. They know.
"We weren't tourists in our own town. We were the town. Every shortcut, every back road, every place that closed too early — we knew them all."
Toytown and the Vinoy
You knew the smell of Toytown. Driving to Tampa, you held your nose because the dump on 62nd Avenue had a particular quality that announced itself a mile out. You didn't know what creosote was, but you could spell it by the time you were ten.
And the Vinoy. Before they fixed it up and made it beautiful again, it was the most magnificent ruin any of you had ever seen. Fenced off, overgrown, windows dark — and you drove around it at night looking for ghosts in the bell tower. Somebody always swore they saw something. You never did, but you went back anyway.
The Aquatarium on St. Pete Beach had dolphins that performed on schedule and a wonder you couldn't quite name. Sunken Gardens had a gift shop and the feeling of being somewhere else entirely. Gateway Mall had McCrory's, where you popped a balloon and paid whatever price was inside for an ice cream sundae.
You Still Say It
You still call it Bogie, not Boca Ciega. You still know which high school someone went to before they finish the sentence — Green Devils, Bogie Pirates, Dixie Rebels. You still know what SPJC means, and you know it's not called that anymore, but you'll never call it anything else.
You were born at Mound Park Hospital. Or your brother was. Or your mother was. Three generations, same building, same name you refuse to update.
You still flinch when someone mentions the Skyway, because you remember the one before this one. You still know which streets were pink and why. You still check the hose for lizards before you take a drink, even though you moved away thirty years ago.
All of it — Webb's City and the green benches and Gay Blades and Thrill Hill and the smell of Ted Peters and the sound of the speedway carrying across the neighborhood on a Saturday night — all of it is still in there. Every place, every sound, every taste. You didn't just grow up here. You grew up from here. And here never really left you.
