Life as a Fish

My parents dropped me off on the Florida State University campus for the first time in the Fall of 1977. It was the following year I tried out for and joined, The Tarpon Club--a group of young women who donned swim suits and nose clips and dove into the water in the fabulous indoor pool at Montgomery Gym. Performances of The Tarpon Club involved music--both above and beneath the water--stage lighting and costumes. Audiences sat on bleachers above the pool for the best view. I had a blast and enjoyed pushing myself to hold my breath underwater while swimming the full distance of a large pool underwater. Most of the other moves weren't for the faint of heart, either. Try lying on your back and holding BOTH legs perpendicular to your body. Yeah. Not easy. 

The heaters mounted on the walls around the pool would blast on cold days in an attempt to heat the frigid air in the mid-1920s building. We'd change from our warm clothing to swimsuits and walk as fast as we could across the tile to get into the heated pool. The smell of old building and chlorine clung to all of us by the end of practice when we hauled ourselves out of the pool, eyes red from opening them underwater as we practiced our routines.

I had no idea how long the group had been in existence, I just liked the idea of jumping in the water and performing. Now, I hadn't been a couch potato as a kid, but the amount of athleticism required for this sport was way above anything I had attempted to that point. (Except, of course, the swim out into the ocean off of Juno Beach to earn my senior lifesaving certificate. In the years after Jaws, the movie, it was awfully scary.)

I only performed with the Tarpon Club one year, long enough to graduate from "Minnow," the term used for first year swimmers, to a full-fledged Tarpon with a silver pin to prove it. The show I swam in was "Say It In a Word." They re-used that title a decade or so later, although, I'm not sure if it had the same routines. One year really wasn't enough, but there were too many choices of things to do in college and I ended up heading in a different direction and with a finite amount of time for extracurricular activities and sigh, studying, I left the group. 

The Tarpon Club started when Florida State was still Florida State College for Women in the 1920s. Originally, the Life Saving Corp, the group evolved into The Tarpon Club in 1937 as the swimming demonstrations grew into performances. Tarpons performed in movies that were nationally aired. Members went on to swim with Esther Williams, famous for her swimming movies. And members became Weekee Wachee Mermaids, the dream career for thousands of little girls in Florida. The Tarpons won national awards and continued shows and competition until the group disbanded in 1994. 

Alums met in 2002 to celebrate the decades of swimming in Montgomery Gym pool. It was the last time, the pool would be open for a performance of any kind. In 2004, the old swimming pool was converted into a theater for the dance department.

I may have been an active member of The Tarpon Club for one year, but I can tell you it was an honor to swim in the Montgomery Gym pool and an honor to be included as part of an organization that existed on the FSU campus decades before synchronized swimming became an Olympic sport. 

I found this documentary on The Florida State University Web site. If you've got the time, watch it all the way through to see exactly what this group was about. And yeah, there are a couple glimpses of me in the pool, but I bet you can't spot me!

The Tarpon Club Traditions from FSCW to FSU (April, 2002)

Florida Needs More People Like Leah Schad

Leah Schad, 2002

A few days ago, Linda Schad, a friend of mine from high school days who knows my absolute favorite thing to write about is Florida and Florida history, messaged me with a link about her mother, Leah Schad. The comment that accompanied the message was “Your family built historic places in the county and my Mom worked at saving it.” Well, my family only built one house in Delray Beach (the Historic Hartman House), but the legacy of Leah Schad is one that will, hopefully, impact the entire South Florida area.

Ms. Schad worked on the Board of Directors of the South Florida Water Management District; was Chairman of the Florida Audubon Society and on the National Board for the Audubon Society. Known locally as the “grande dame of environmentalism,” she devoted her life to the preservation and conservation of our unique and fragile South Florida ecosystem.

The link Linda sent me led to a palmbeachpost.com article about an event held on November 22, 2014 in which a plaque in the memory of Ms. Schad was unveiled at the Nature Center at Okeeheelee Park in West Palm Beach. Why a plaque? Well, because in addition to being involved in the previously mentioned organizations, Ms. Schad was also an original member of the Okeeheelee Park Citizens Advisory Committee, and was a huge part of the development and design of the Nature Center that now sits snuggled near the northern boundary of Okeeheelee Park on Forest Hill Boulevard. It was her hands and heart that helped develop a wonderful Nature Center to truly highlight the beauty of our South Florida environment and to educate future generations about why its all so important.

The loss of Leah Schad in February of 2008 was heart wrenching for her family, but it was also a loss for Palm Beach County and South Florida. As someone who writes about little things in the history of Palm Beach County to try to bring a Florida that no longer exists alive to my readers, I hope you have the opportunity to tour the Nature Center and see what Leah Schad worked so hard to do—keep a part of our “old” Florida alive and educate future generations to respect our fragile environment before it, too, becomes something wistfully written about by people like me.

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Okeeheelee Park is located at 7715 Forest Hill Blvd., West Palm Beach, FL 33413 (one mile west of Jog Road).  The Nature Center can be reached at (561) 233-1400. Hours change seasonally, so check their website through Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation (CLICK HERE).

Black Friday or, um, Thursday?

1960s in Delray Beach, Florida

When my children were small, the hottest gift for Christmas was the Razor scooter. Remember those? Shiny chrome, four wheels and a handle bar? At four a.m. on a Black Friday in 1997 or so, my best friend and I were in the crowd at Walmart waiting for the plastic to be pulled off the crate of Razors. Walmart was offering them dirt cheap and only one per customer. Both of us got one and I paid her for hers so that both of my kids could have one under the tree Christmas morning.

There’s been a lot of yelling about Black Friday this year… and it’s not because everyone’s comparing the sales. This year, like last, Christmas displays in several stores went up before one piece of Halloween candy had been devoured. People complained. Most stores didn’t listen.

This year, like last, a lot of stores are proudly advertising that they won’t be closed for Thanksgiving. As far as I can see, that’s not sitting well with the public. A few paid attention to the public outcry last year and have proudly announced that their employees will be spending the day with their families and not stocking shelves.

When I was a child, everything was closed every Sunday except the occasional gas station and we survived. I remember flying back into the United States from Europe after our honeymoon and eating Thanksgiving at the hotel restaurant. I felt bad that the waitress was there and my new husband left a huge tip—to thank her for spending part of her holiday serving us.

Since this is the United States, everyone is free to shop or not. But for me? Won’t be shopping on Thanksgiving, regardless of the lengths retailers go to entice me. Some things are just more important than shopping.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and thank you for being a part of my blog. 

Carefree Days

          Although I grew up in North Palm Beach, we often drove south to catch movies. In the mid to late seventies when I was a teenager, there weren’t all that many movie theatres around. Never any of the mega-movie plexes you see now, if there were six separate screens in one building, it was huge!

          One of our favorites was in West Palm Beach along the east side of South Dixie Highway. My best friend and I drove south in her white Comet to catch the latest movies. One time we drove through the rain and flooded streets only to scream as the car decided it didn’t want to stop in the where we wanted to park and nearly hit the surrounding cement wall. Our destination? The Carefree Theatre.

       The Carefree Center, which opened in 1936, was an ice cream shop and a laundry when Elias Chalhub bought the property and expanded in into an entertainment mecca that included a bowling alley and soda fountain. The Carefree Theatre was built as an addition and first opened in 1947, decades before we slid through the parking lot in 1976. The theatre was big and cavernous. Those were the days when going to the movies meant a night of entertainment. No cell phones rang during the presentation and the guy in front of you wasn’t checking his cell for “important” text messages every couple of minutes. (Seriously? Is he a nuclear physicist the President is trying to contact to save the world? A brain surgeon on call?) We sat in the dark munching popcorn and dreaming of one day being movie stars.

          The site later became the Comedy Club where for a two-drink minimum, one could sit and laugh until one’s sides hurt. We always held off bathroom trips as long as we could because if we stood up to head to the restrooms, the comedian would attack and the entire room would turn to watch us, the victims, slink out of the room. Larry the Cable Guy was one of the locals who got his foot in the door to the comedy world through the club at the Carefree.

          In yet another incarnation, the site held live shows and concerts. Big names and movie festivals appeared until the hurricanes of 2004 (Charley, Jeanne and Ivan) when the roof of the building was so damaged, the building had to be closed. The building is still there—78 years after it was built, but no one goes in these days.

          When I find myself in a movie metroplex these days, I often take a minute or two to close my eyes and remember how it felt to sit in a padded chair in a large, dark room... the only light coming in fits and starts from the action on the screen that filled the wall at the front... the slight clacking sound that came out of the little square high on the wall behind us as the movie film ran through the projector. The smell of popcorn takes me back—at least until a cell phone rings.