Genuine Florida

Here’s a great brochure from the 1950s for the Naples Beach Hotel.

Here’s the ‘Driftwood Grill’ sign, as the restaurant is now called.
The neon sign is on the main drag as you spin through Williston.

A tradition for some 60 years, Dairy Belle still thrives as the best place in Riviera Beach for soft serve ice cream. It’s in a dicey neighborhood as so many other soft serve spots are in the state (Little Dairy Manor in Altamonte Springs and Goff’s in Orlando). However, the owner diligently provides a great product and great service that has them coming over from miles around. The fellows at the window above had been out in the Atlantic all day. They hit dry land and headed to the Dairy Belle.

Erstwhile Swampy stops at one the more fascinating architectural wonders in Florida, Top of the World, in Clearwater. The dozens of condo buildings throughout the sprawling property each has a unique construction. Each building has a location name as do the streets.

Just past the guard is the world as above. Beyond the world are the senior adult only community that is stuffed with amenities.

Probably the greatest of which is the construction of the multi-family homes. Built in 1947, these structures are pure concrete block and built for permanence. There’s probably not a hurricane that can come to disturb these buildings.

One of my fondest childhood memories was spending my hard-earned pennies on buying sea shells at the Silver Springs Shell Shop, an iconic gift shop across from the Sun Plaza Motel in Silver Springs. They had everything, from conchs to cowries to tiny jingle shells and shark’s teeth. Like most gift shops of the day, they also sold goofy trinkets like coconuts carved to look like monkey heads, tacky t-shirts, big beach towels, and stickers.

Alas, the Shell Shop is no more. For reasons known only to themselves, Florida DOT decided several years ago that they needed to plow it down to widen an intersection. Well, here it is two summers later, and they’ve yet to build the intersection, and the land stands empty. Why they couldn’t have left this perennial tourist icon alone is a mystery to me. And so it goes into the file of memories of places that aren’t there anymore. That’s me, buying a beach towel, on one of the last days the store was open in 2006.

It’s Florida’s tallest lighthouse. Completed in 1887, this beacon over Ponce Inlet soars 175 feet high, tapering to just 12 feet at the top. And if you’ve got vertigo … this isn’t the place to go. Take a tour through our photo gallery and read the rest of the story….

Gatorland in Orange County has gone through many changes over the years. One is above. That is the entire facility circa 1961 along South Orange Blossom Trail. Today it is more than three times as large. Another is that the admission was a donation in 1961. Today there is a charge and you get a ton more for your money.

Gatorland seems not to have faltered as an attraction,  as most of Florida’s other mid-size attractions have dealt with to one degree or the other. It has maintained itself and the business has stayed in the family, a trait that long standing healthy businesses can be traced back to.

I never met Gatorland’s creator, Owen Godwin. Learn more about him and Gatorland by clicking here. I did have many opportunities to talk to his brother Charlie and his wife. Charlie shared many stories of Gatorland. He and his wife were great folks.

Lakeland has a literal open-air museum of wonderful signs. Here’s another: Dick’s Auto Sales. Started in 1945, the dealership now sells used cars. There are quite a few signs on this area of Main Street alone to see. They will slowly appear here.

To cut a path across Florida to get ships through has been kicked around for centuries. The Cross Florida Barge Canal was as close as it got. You can read more here and in an article Sandra wrote about the Cross Florida Greenway’s history. It was eventually halted due to the hard work of many. Most specifically by Florida resident and environmental activist, Bill Partington. Bill’s efforts got President Richard Nixon to cancel the project despite efforts by Florida politicans and businessmen.

Above is from the 1960 publication ‘Florida, Today and Tomorrow’ by C.M. Gay. Obviously the reason this project ended is that it would have split the state in two (Though, those in North Florida might welcome that now). The dream was to get ships to have faster and cheaper access to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The problem was having what would had to have become Panama Canal type structures cutting through the limestone rock of our foundation across the state and the likely damage to our underground water supply.

Here Swampy visits Bradenton’s infamous Shake Pit. Since 1959 the Shake Pit has been serving Manatee County. What a great place to bring children to see what there fore mamas and papas experienced in Bradenton.

They serve soft serve and real ioce cream, along with burgers and hotdogs. You can order outside or go insiode and make use of the spinny chairs at the counter. The indoor area is very small, but that’s because most are odering ice cream to go.

There is a very good variety of shakes and nothing is better than stopping at the Shake Pit during a typical sweltering Florida day and cooling off with a shake!