Tampa: The Things I Thought I Knew

Last night I started looking through the pictures I took in Tampa back in May. All I can think when seeing some of these pictures is wow, that was a butt ugly part of Tampa. I mean, I hope that doesn’t offend anybody, but so much of the structures around there look like architectural roadkill. Now the subdivision where I grew up is actually OK for the most part on æsthetic merits. There are a number of ratty looking houses here or there but all in all it’s held up pretty well in the 40-something years since it was created. There is also a strikingly beautiful park and surrounding environs at the Hamner Fire Tower.

Beautilessness aside I find that a number of small, and I mean very small, questions have arisen regarding assumptions and what I thought were facts about where I grew up. It’s nothing to lose sleep over but it’s enough to make you think your entire life story is built on infinite little lies or mis-perceptions.

I grew up in a subdivision called North Pointe. Until I started writing this I thought the name of the place was a reference to West Point. This, I thought, explained why most of the street names in North Pointe had patriotic or American themes about them. Street names in North Pointe include Ambassador, Capitol, Constitution, Justice, etc.

Alas, the name of North Pointe is nothing more than a reference to its location in north Tampa. West Point does not end its name with an E, as does North Pointe, so the connection between the military academy and those patriotic street names is coincidental. Chalk it up to a clever real estate developer, I guess.

One street name that has now become a mystery to me again is Tish Court, a cul-de-sac that spurs off of Diplomat Drive near the lake (the name of the lake, by the way, is also a mystery). No one knew what Tish meant when the cul-de-sac was created, but my mother did some research and I swear she told me that Tish was the name of a supreme court justice. This made it extra clever that a “court” was named in honor of someone from the supreme court, and it more or less fit the theme of patriotic street names.

All this is wrong. There was no justice named Tish and that cul-de-sac is not even named Tish Court. It’s Tish Place. What in the hell “Tish” means, and more importantly what connection that name has to the patriotic theme of the other street names in North Pointe, has returned to mystery status.

(My mother once commented that if you rearrange its letters “Tish” spells “shit”. She used that word a lot. I don’t think I ever heard her say “fuck” but my dad sure did, at least later in life.)

Another street name that is not consistent with the spirit of the others in North Pointe is North Ola Avenue, which I always thought of as Nola Avenue. But unlike “Tish” Ola’s out-of-characterness is easy to explain. Ola is out of character with the others out of necessity, since it is a continuance of a street that existed before North Pointe was created.

But therein spawns another question: What does “Ola” mean? Since the day that street made its way into North Pointe I thought it was the name of a flower. It does not seem to be. Only thing I can find now is that Ola is the Spanish word for “hello”. Nothing wrong with that but in my experience of things I wanted Ola to be a flower or a plant because after our father left us he ended up living on a street named Oleander, which is the name of a toxic shrub. The Ola > Oleander connection seemed magically portentous in its way.

This picture shows where Diplomat meets Justice. I would have passed these signs over 100,000 times.

Something else I would have passed over 100,000 times was this sewer opening, near where Diplomat meets Justice.

What makes this sewer opening distinct among others to me is the kid who got trapped in there. It was something of a fashion for kids of a certain size to crawl into a sewer and reëmerge from another one a few blocks away. You had to be young or very small to get away with this, as the narrowness of the openings illustrate. Being able to do this was a testament of sorts to the fleetingness of youth.

One day I passed by this sewer and found dozens of people, mostly high school aged dudes, standing around. This in itself was unusual, as gatherings of neighborhood folk typically occurred in the houses, not on the streets. It’s hot as hell in Florida, after all. So to see all these people standing around seemingly in anticipation of… something… was very unusual.

They were waiting for a kid to emerge from the sewer. I overheard that he was 8, that he had done this maneuver countless times, but that he was also a bit of an asshole for keeping people upstairs waiting for him and making them think he had drowned or become trapped in the tunnel. “There he goes again” one dude said, his arms crossed. He was giving the kid a benefit of the doubt but it did not seem like anyone else was. In the few minutes during which I stopped to observe I saw someone retreat to their house to call the police or fire department or whoever the hell plucks 8-year olds from the sewers. My sense was that this dude was the kid’s brother but who the hell knows.

It was a unique moment for me. I knew a few neighbors but I never knew who idled and lived their days in most of the houses around me. Thinking of it now this moment felt like the cast of my stuffed animals had come to life.

Step outside of North Pointe and things start to get ugly. This isn’t so bad. In fact it is almost beautiful on account of the rhythmic spina bifida contours of the yellow lines. But it gets worse. This is North Boulevard.

Here’s where it gets ugly. Let’s stroll up North Boulevard, shall we?

More tomorrow. Iiiiiiii’m… going to sleep.