St. Petersburg, Florida

It was beautiful to drive up the boulevard onto Treasure Island, to watch the sun extinguish into the waters of the Gulf.  You were looking at the edge of the world, for all you knew, and what lay beyond could only be found by traveling to the next horizon in your boat of sails, pushed by a wind from the east.  We once rented a catamaran for an afternoon on a bit of rough day.  That part didn't frighten me, but all I could think of was the fin, the immense fin extending above the surface that I had seen while crossing over one of the nearby bay bridges.  It was lazily wending back and forth, searching for what I imagined would be tasty and go goosh in its mouth.  Me.  So while the catamaran plunged and shuddered, I hung on tight and prayed we wouldn't flip.

St. Pete itself was not flourishing in the seventies, there were strips of empty plazas and storefronts even as the main drag reflected a busier end of the economy.  It was loaded with elderly folks and my gosh, their elderly cars that lived as long as they without rust, unlike the metal shells we drove around in up North, where the roads are salted during winter storms.  I shopped for what groceries we could afford at the time at a place that sold Donald Duck orange juice and lemons as big as my whole hand.  We lived on eggs, and I dug clams for broth at the shoreline.  But nature-wise it was beyond compare for landlocked me, who had previously been to Chesapeake Bay in Scouts, but never close enough to examine what lived in those depths.

After a particularly harsh storm, a rainbow of sponges had been tossed onto the sand; finger sponges in purple, red and bright orange came home to dry on the back porch with hopes of color and shape retention.  We'll never know, because the plain truth was they stunk to the highest level of heaven and tossing them out became sensible even to me.  A fish jaw and some sort of spine went with them, but what was left was lovely clusters of cockle shells and whelks, jingles and calico scallops.  I was rich, and the neighborhood cats left those alone.

Forty years later, I wonder what part of the ocean is the same; if I walked those white sand beaches, would there be the same speckled stingrays where the waves rush; the starfish, the shells?  Nothing stays the same, ever.  The sun still descends, the stars still shine on water, the sharks feed at dawn and dusk, the dolphins arc in pods.  Shrimp that I pay $10 a pound for up here are used as bait down there.  The palms lean at crazy angles, their fronds sluzzing in the breeze.  Lizards run shilly-shally, and white egrets angle for frogs and fish.  I missed the seasons when living down there and looked back with little regret when we left, for I missed my mom at the time, and called her from the corner payphone with three dollars in quarters when I could.  Yes, I made up the word sluzzing.  Onomatopoeia, kids.

My shell dealer friend lives on the panhandle, further up from St. Pete in Northern Florida and loves it.  I should go and visit.  Until then you may have to listen about the ocean, it pulls at me so, like the moon itself tugs at the earth, causing the crust to bulge as well as the water.  Feel the movement as you sleep, no matter where you are in this rocking cradle of minerals, slumbering as innocent as any newborn.