Things Change, Except When They Do Not

I did not think I would recognize my childhood home town of Tampa. It had to have changed by now. Right?

In fact the place was almost painfully familiar, some places eerily so. Walking through Tampa Lanes, the bowling on alley on Dale Mabry where I bowled in grade school, was like stepping back in time. Everything was the same, down to the token machines. This is a place that looked retro even when I used to go there in the 1980s. Two palatial video game rooms are filled with pinball machines and game consoles that look decades old. There may have been current games that I just did not notice but the newest game I saw was a MegaTouch device from 2007. Of particular fascination to my friend Phil was the fact that these game rooms, as vast as they are, are virtually always devoid of people. As a matter of fact there might have been as few as ten people in the entire 50-lane bowling alley when we were there.

The scorekeeping machines on the bowling lanes look like high-tech wizardry from the 1960s.

I cheated once on one of these things. My mother saw me do it. I don’t remember what I threw but it might have been a gutter. When I thought no one was looking I punched in that I threw a spare. My excuse, which I honestly think might have been legitimate, was that I did not remember what I threw. Someone else was supposed to be keeping score and, assuming that to be the situation, enough time passed that I let one throw from the routine of the game slip from my memory. So I just guessed, and gave myself a spare. My mother knew better, or seemed to.

Some things have changed, of course. I and Phil, my friend of 35 years, wandered around the UT (University of Tampa) campus. We have known each other since the 9th grade, via piano lessons from the same teacher at that University. She is retired now but we passed by her old studio in the new music building. I still call it the “new” building even though it was built in 1989. Before that her studio was in the old McKay Auditorium, which is now called the Sykes building. From what we could see it looks like the old auditorium space is completely gone, replaced by conference rooms and lecture halls. Phil, I, and a couple of others had a curious attraction to the catwalks above the auditorium. We climbed up through doors in the ceiling and ran around up there, looking down at the stage and the seats. It was fun, but possibly dangerous for so many of us to be up there all at once.

I had no intention of contacting her but before the trip I looked up my old piano teacher. The first thing that came up was a “Rate Your Professor” web site. She got a 1.8 rating out of a possible 10, with dozens of reviews saying “She is horrible!” and “Just awful!” But then a few comments added (helpfully, I think) that she was just too damn old to be doing this. I do not know her age but I can believe that. She was a fine teacher for Phil and me in the 1980s but she seemed old to us even back then. The reviews were from 2006 and 2007.

I found the reviews to be kind of amusing but Phil was offended — until I added the comments about her age. With that he, like I, actually believed them.

Plant Hall at UT is crowned by the famous minarets. Those structures are the unofficial symbol of Tampa in the same way the Unisphere is symbolic of Queens. I have been inside at least one of the minarets.

To me one of the more amazing qualities of UT — and Plant Hall in particular — is that anybody can just walk on in and wander around the place. That appears to remain as true today as it was 30 years ago. I was not looking for it but I did not notice even a semblance of security or surveillance cameras at Plant Hall.

In high school my friends and I made Plant Hall something of a destination, roaming its broad hallways and unlocked classrooms in the dark of night as if we lived there. In one of those classrooms a high school girlfriend and I had what was for both of us our first extended make-out session.

The science wing in particular is like something from a complex, hours-long dream. Spiral staircases mysteriously drain down to the lower floor. Beside the stairs are used, as handrails, pieces of rope thick enough that they look like they once hoisted ships’ anchors. The hallways of this building wind round and round into apparent infinity.

The room I remember as being the center of the science wing was, unfortunately, closed. It was cordoned off with a yellow “CAUTION” banner and the door was taped shut. My memory is that the room was a lecture hall, with seats that rose so steeply over the lectern that it was nauseating to look down at where the professors would have delivered their lessons. I also remember there being a large aquarium in one of the hallways of that building. If that memory is correct the aquarium has been removed. There is a curious curved mirror in an open area.

I could not help thinking that Phil and I were just not supposed to be there. Several doors had “HazMat” warnings on them, and we spotted a freezer in which some kind of dangerous-seeming substance was frozen at negative 69 degrees Celsius. The building, not just the science wing but all of its four spacious floors, was almost completely empty of people. Evidently we were there in a space of time between the last days of classes and graduation ceremonies.

I remembered a time when I and others were roaming Plant Hall late at night. It may have been the first time we did this, because I remember us all being a little nervous about it. We moved toward the end of one of the hallways, where a couple of windows led to what I think were fire escapes. One of those windows opened and through it stepped three shadowy people, a woman and two men. The woman was wearing a cape. One of the men was wearing some kind of helmet and carrying what appeared to be a staff. I don’t remember anything about the third individual. At one point the woman placed her hand on the back of one of the men’s head and kissed him for what seemed like a very long time.

Nervous as we were the three of us saw this strange tableau and agreed that we should turn away. Between the sartorial flourishes and how they were climbing through the windows these people just seemed crazy and even dangerous to us.

A few days later I was describing this incident to a friend named Beth. Beth and I attended after-school music classes at UT. As I described the details of the woman wearing a cape and guy with a crown her face lit up. “That was me!” She and two other guys had just come from some kind of costume party. They, like us, were utterly enamored with Plant Hall and its endless room for wandering.

Phil and I also spent some time in the Grand Salon, a concert hall which used to be called The Ballroom. The Steinway D on which Phil and I played our senior recitals is no longer there, replaced by what I think was a 7-foot Yamaha. An individual who I assume was a UT student was rehearsing on that piano. I could not identify what he was playing but at turns it sounded like Scriabin, but then became too diatonic. I can identify much of the standard piano repertoire but whatever music he was playing was lost on me.

My mother and I saw Michael Fardink play a concert in The Ballroom. We talked about that concert for years. He played Liszt’s “Norma” Fantasy, my mother’s all-time favorite piano piece which I would play in later days. But Fardink’s concert stayed with me for another reason besides “Norma”. Years later I noticed his name, handwritten, on the covers and first pages of a stack of piano music scores at The Strand bookstore in Manhattan in the early 1990s. It took me a long time to realize that these piano scores washed up at The Strand because Fardink had died. If I had realized this at the time I might have bought a couple of the scores, the lot of which comprised some of the most demanding music from the standard repertoire. I seem to remember Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto (“Rocky Three”, as it is known) Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, and Saint-Saëns 2nd concerto, among others. Finding such repertoire at the Strand that one time led me to think I should expect similar level music every time I went there. All I ever found since has been teaching materials and music for beginners. Fardink is buried in Chautauqua County, New York.

Used book stores and secondhand shops are like treadmills for the possessions of the dead. It took me a long time to wake up to the fact that entering these places is like walking through echoes of the deceased.

Worlds Collide.

In the annals of randomness this might not be the loudest collision of worlds. But it gave me goosebumps. Stephanie and Doug are friends of mine who moved from New York to Tampa a few years ago. Doug seems like a really good guy but I am more friends with Stephanie than him. So I contacted her a couple of weeks before my trip to see if they’d be able to meet up. I’ve never known anyone who moved to Tampa. We met at the Tampa Bay Brewing Company, in the Ybor City Historic District. Like a lot of cities craft beer breweries are popping up all over the place in Tampa.

Stephanie also invited a couple of her other friends from Tampa. One of them, Molly (not her real name), mentioned that she went to high school at the Academy of the Holy Names, the all-girls school on Bayshore Boulevard. I went to Jesuit High School, an all-boys school on Himes. The two schools were not officially related but they might as well have been. Molly mentioned her sisters’ names and my memory clicked. I asked “Are you Molly O’Flaherty?” She was. I never knew them but I certainly remembered her and her sisters. There were 5 O’Flaherty girls at The Academy, and two of them were Molly’s sisters. The other 2 were unrelated. I knew of these girls since grade school, and had a mad crush on one of them.

Connecting with grade school acquaintances from Tampa via someone I know only from New York was pretty surprising, as everyone present seemed to agree. In that context it was appropriate for me to tell a story I cannot tell often enough:

Years ago a friend of mine from college came to New York. He had never been here before. On his first night in The Big City he went to a party at somebody’s place. He met a woman, made some conversation, and asked “Where are you from?” She said “Tampa.” As a joke he said “So you must know a guy named Mark Thomas.” She replied “He lived right across the street from me.” They were both so shocked that they spent a minute or so verifying details of who I am so they could truly believe they were talking about the same Mark Thomas. That was Ann, and she was visiting New York with her brother Mike. I did not know those two very well but I briefly gave Mike piano lessons at some point.

There has to be a way to calculate the odds of something like that happening. A statistician could develop a formula based on likely travel destinations, population, age, individuals’ sociability, and I don’t know what else. As random as last week’s encounter with Molly was I think the meeting of my college friend and childhood neighbors was far louder a collision of worlds.

Conversation with Molly led to mention of a number of other people I knew or knew of from our shared grade school and high school years. Among them was Stacie Sierra, someone whose memory had entered my mind in recent weeks through some stream of consciousness related to my upcoming trip to Tampa. Stacie was killed in 1988 when a small plane piloted by her father fell apart in mid-air, crashing into a snake filled swamp in Molino, Florida. Stacie and I were friends, and if the possibility of us becoming anything more never came to pass then it was my own damn fault. Stacie was a Perfect Person, but even in high school I thought I should have an aversion to PPrfect people. I was never outright rude to her but I deflected her obvious interest in me with muted sarcasm, probably as some kind of gawky self-defense mechanism.

I learned of her passing from a Tampa Tribune story my mother mailed to me. She did not tell me ahead of time that she had sent this. It was truly stunning. I don’t know for how long I sat there in my college room, frozen in shock. The Tribune story, as best I can remember it, included the names of people I knew from as far back as the third grade. Poignantly, their names were appended with terms like “pall bearer” and “honor guard.” It was an early life lesson on how suddenly things happen, and how our roles in life can abruptly change.

I have not found the Tampa Tribune story but the press coverage I did find at newspapers.com is consistent my memory of how profound an impact her death had on those who knew her. She was saint-like.

And, wouldn’t you know it, I found this picture of her. I had saved it in my desk. She was the 1985 Homecoming Queen, as evidenced by the tiara on her head. I am not exactly sure why I have this picture, or how I obtained it. I’ll assume it came into my possession when I was an editor at the school newspaper, which would have published a photo or two of the Homecoming events.

Swimming Pool

I stayed with my sister, brother in law, and nephew at the house in which I grew up. A couple of incidents involving the swimming pool are worth recounting. One is happy, one is not.

I managed to save some ducklings from being trapped in the pool. There were ten of them and, as this photo shows, there is no easy way they could have gotten out of the pool on their own.

Unaware at the time that the collective term for a group of ducks is a “raft” I laid out a deflated raft and watched as the raft of ducks marched right up and on to safety.

The other pool-related incident did not have such a happy ending. One of the two dogs at the house was 17 years old. That is quite old. She was also deaf and blind. In a rare moment when no one was paying attention to her she fell into the swimming pool and drowned. One minute my brother in law and I were sitting around, talking about high school shenanigans. Next thing you know he’s on the ground, doing mouth to mouth on a dog that was pretty obviously gone. That pitiful creature did not have much time left anyway, but everybody wanted the end to come with a bit more dignity. Brother in law threw the dog over his shoulder and told my nephew to get a garbage bag. My sister said “He’s not garbage.” Next thing we knew the dog was in a freezer. Things happen fast.