Fifty years ago . . .

Fifty years ago this summer, a cream-colored Vista Cruiser station wagon, complete with faux wood panels, containing a husband, wife, and two squabbling children in the back seat, rolled across Tampa Bay and past the sign which announced "Entering Pinellas County."

The Sergent family had arrived, and St. Petersburg, Florida would never be the same. 

I was four going on five.  My sister had just turned eight.  I don't remember anything about the trip.  If we did what we usually did on a road trip back then--started at night so that my sister and I could sleep in the car--then that's probably why I don't remember it. 

I do remember, however, the places we stayed before we finally moved into the house we were renting. 

We stayed, in this order, at the Weary Traveler Motel and the Grey Gull Motel on Madeira Beach and at the Cadillac Motel at the corner of 38th Avenue and 34th Street North in St. Petersburg.  There's a Burger King there now, but the bank next door is still there (although now under different management) and Bert Smith's is still kitty-corner across the street.  When we first moved there, it was Bert Smith Oldsmobile; now, it's Bert Smith BMW. 

And even though I don't remember house-hunting, I do remember an Atlas Van Lines moving truck in front of the house that we moved into.  We rented that house for a few months before we bought it. 

My grandmother had to remind me that she did not make the trip with us.  She did not come to Florida until October (I guess to settle affairs).  I can't remember my grandmother actually arriving and me being glad to see her, but I do remember standing outside the old Tampa International Airport.  Years later, when I was 11 and taking my first commercial plane ride, I was surprised to see how much the airport had changed. 

When I visit St. Petersburg these days, my first thoughts are usually about how much things have changed over the years.  That was especially true on my last visit.  I didn't recognize my old high school, buildings existed along 34th Street that I'd never seen before, and while the public library is still there and hasn't changed on the outside, it's reorganized on the inside. 

I sometimes wonder if life would have been "better" if we'd stayed in Harlan County, Kentucky.  I guess that's normal to wonder when you hit my age, what would it have been like if we had . . . and the only fair answer I can give is, it would have been different. 

When we packed up the Vista Cruiser and drove 16 hours to St. Petersburg, life changed.  It changed us.  We changed St. Petersburg simply by the fact that we showed up. 

Here's a good question for me to ask, though:  Did we change it for the better? 

When we hit town, moved into the new house, started school, started work, whatever it was we did over the last 50 years, did we change things for the better?  Were the schools that my sister and I went to better because we were there?  When our teachers talked about us, did they remember us as decent students?  My father was a teacher at two junior highs and a high school.  Did they remember him as a good teacher?  (At least one of the girls who bullied me in school later told me, when we were both adults, "He was a wonderful teacher."  She also apologized to me for being a bully.)  My mother ended up running a day care; before that, she led my and my sister's Girl Scout troop.  Did they remember her fondly? 

I'd like to think that when that Vista Cruiser rolled into town 50 years ago, we ended up making a difference for the better.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.