True Tales From Sulphur Springs: Remembering The Little Museum

NOTE: I learned yesterday of the passing, in 2002, of Mike Mayfield, former director of the Hillsborough County Museum, the forerunner of the institution now known as Tampa's Museum Of Science & Industry, or MOSI. In some ways Mike was a tragic figure, and I'll devote a post to him and his ill-starred tenure as museum director at a later date. This reminiscence describes how I came to work at the little museum by the river, and what I found there.

1974 I applied for work at the Hillsborough County Museum in Tampa. My girlfriend preceded me there; she had a summer job teaching art to innercity kids. One day she mentioned that the Exhibits Department needed a temporary laborer, preferably one that could swing a hammer. I didn’t know beans about carpentry, but I was sick of driving a cab, so I gave it a shot.

For reasons I don’t recall, my interview took place on the museum grounds around midnight. It was pitch dark, and although we couldn’t actually see each other, the Exhibits Coordinator said I had an “amicable aura”, and I got the job. I kind of liked my title: “Journeyman Helper”.

The museum was on the north bank of the Hillsborough River in Sulphur Springs, a site now occupied by the county's Parks and Recreation Department. At that time there were ten buildings. Three had once been homes; the rest were portables, storage sheds, or renovated garages. About half had recently been converted to exhibit space. Appalachian quilts, antique toys, Native American artwork, and duck decoys from the Louisiana bayou were among the shows slated for the coming year, to be rented or borrowed from other museums or private collectors. For the next several months the staff struggled to meet a rigorous schedule of openings. When not building pedestals and display cases I policed the grounds, picking up trash with a pointed stick.

Just as my temporary job was ending, the Museum’s “Acting Curator of Collections” -the Property Control Clerk- resigned. I took a Civil Service exam, and took his place.

As the new Property Control Clerk/Acting Curator, my first task was to conduct a museum-wide inventory, to see what we had and how we were handling it.

Boxes of artifacts and ephemera were stashed in attics, in closets, and under buildings, exposed to the elements. Some of the most interesting, and oddest, pieces were on display, but most were stockpiled at another location, on the top floor of an old warehouse in what’s now the Channel District. Only a few items had been catalogued, by someone to whom English was at best a second language.

Most of the collections had no reliable provenance, only rumors and hearsay. A beaded buckskin wedding dress was purported to have belonged to a friend of Annie Oakley’s. My ornately carved desk was said to have once been John Ringling’s. Underneath my office in Building 7 were several grocery bags full of human bones, said to have been “salvaged” (plundered) from an Indian burial mound.

Conditions were worse -much worse- in our downtown warehouse. Objects were stacked on rickety shelves, or heaped on the floor. The place was an oven; a recording thermometer read 95 degrees at 6:00 AM. The relative humidity hovered at an arid 50 per cent, good for preserving dried fruit or beef jerky, but injurious to sensitive artifacts of wood, cloth, bone, and paper.

The inventory revealed an eclectic assemblage of thousands upon thousands of THINGS- fossils, curios, rocks, relics, antiques, and assorted objets d’art. There were stuffed animals, model trains, fake shrunken heads, handpainted Ukranian Easter eggs, old tools, a medieval Spanish breastplate, a massive amethyst geode, a matched pair of mastodon tusks. There were the original plans for the presidential palace of Nicaragua, ca. 1915, and boxes of butterflies collected in South America in the 1920s. There was a rich trove of American Indian artifacts, woven baskets, ceramic bowls, bows and arrows, lacrosse sticks, cradleboards, kachina dolls, and delicately stitched leather goods decorated with porcupine quills and tiny glass beads.

And there were other surprises -some of them downright alarming. Rummaging around, I found a liter of mercury, and a rusty can full of highly explosive ether. Next to that was some fused sand wrapped in a bit of lead foil. A scribbled note said it was from ground zero at an atomic bomb test site. I disposed of the ether, and stored the rest as safely I could.

I was acutely aware that I was embarassingly ignorant, and lacked the skills and education needed to manage such a potpourri. I requested training, and the museum obliged, sending me to the Smithsonian for classes in collections conservation, and the Florida State Museum for a lengthy seminar on the preservation of fossils. Most importantly, I was encouraged to network with other museum professionals across the country. Then we obtained a grant for a team of college students, from various disciplines, to catalogue and conserve the bulk of the permanent collections. Carolyn Byers, Peter Owens, Robert Peterson, Loretta Hennessey, Bruce Bollman, Bertram Crawford, and Robert Soler toiled diligently for a year, documenting tens of thousands of items, preserving arcane and puzzling bits and pieces of Tampa’s legacy. If not for their combined efforts, which largely went unrecognized, many irreplaceable objects would surely have been lost.

It was understood from the beginning that our work at the Hillsborough County Museum was in preparation for a bigger, more modern facility. In 1977 the new museum was finally approved. More personnel were added, and Mike Mayfield was replaced, without forewarning, with a new director. We broke ground on MOSI in 1979, and I was privileged to work -and play- there for many years.

But it’s my time at the little museum that holds meaning for me now. Recently I went back, after almost three decades, and strolled around the grounds. Three of the original buildings are gone, and the rest are mostly office space. Still, it looked much the same. How odd to think that an institution like MOSI could have its roots here, on this shaded riverbank, in a decaying neighborhood the city has forgotten.

True Tales From Sulphur Springs: The Death Of Al

When somebody hijacked my beatup old garbage cans the other day and dumped garbage all over the yard, it brought to mind the sad fate of my neighbor Al, and how after he died in his shabby Sulphur Springs bungalow, penniless and alone, somebody purloined one of his few possessions -his slop pail- which was full at the time.

As any longterm resident will tell you, Sulphur Springs isn’t what it used to be. When I moved here in the 1970’s, it was quiet and peaceful, and the rent was dirt cheap. They say Kerouac lived here once, although no one seems to know exactly where or when. I’m pretty sure he didn’t live in my house, which was a tiny shack in the shade of a magnificent live oak. I never liked the house much, cheap as it was, but I loved the tree, and spent a lot of quality time in and under it. Mrs. Dillon, who was ninety-five, lived next door. She passed away after a year or two and I acquired her place, which had a new roof and by Sulphur Springs standards was pretty cozy. I’ve lived here ever since.

Al lived across the street. He was about sixty, with skinny legs and a bloated belly. Another neighbor, Larry, looked after Al, and supplied him with beer, smokes, and surplus pastries from the Entenmann’s outlet on Hillsborough. Al had no electricity or water, and when he needed to bathe or drink he went over to Larry’s house, or mine if I wasn’t home, and filled a couple of gallon jugs from the tap outside.

Mrs. Dillon warned me about Al. “Don’t never give him no money”, she said. “Money goes through Al like soup through a goose.” She was right. Once he offered to mow my lawn and I naively paid him ahead of time. Weeks dragged by and the lawn remained uncut. Al made excuse after excuse. His lawnmower was busted. His back hurt. He needed gas. After a couple of months I gave up. I didn’t have much use for him after that.

Al was remarkably adept at maintaining a low profile. Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who circle these streets like hungry vultures, left him alone. His front yard, although perpetually weedy, was uncluttered and inconspicuous. There were no trash piles, abandoned appliances or cars on blocks, nothing to draw one’s attention. Most days he could be seen sitting on the steps. His clothes were always clean, his white hair was always neatly combed. After awhile I forgave him, kind of, for the lawn episode, and although we didn’t talk much, we were civil when we did.

One day I was taking a shower and I thought I heard Al yell my name. “Ah shit,” I thought, “I really don’t want to talk to you.” I shut off the water and listened, but heard nothing more. So I went about my business.

The following week Al was nowhere to be seen. Then one morning there was a stench in the air. It was faint at first, but pervasive and inescapable, growing worse as the day wore on. I turned on the AC and cranked the jalousies shut, trapping a number of big green flies. I thought something had died in the attic or there was a problem with the sewer. Around two in the afternoon Larry knocked on my front door. He seemed dazed. “Hey Jim“, he said. “Al’s dead.”

“I guess I should call the police.“ he mumbled, gesturing toward the house. “You don’t wanna go in there.”

We stood in my driveway and watched events unfold. First a firetruck came. Two firemen wearing some kind of scuba gear went inside. After a minute or two they left and a young cop went in. He stumbled out moments later and staggered to his car. Then the Medical Examiner arrived with his assistant. They looked like Jake and Elwood Blues. For them it was business as usual. As they toted Al down the steps in a body bag the postman, looking a little nonplussed, delivered his mail.

Larry opened what windows he could and let the cottage air out overnight. The next day I peeked inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes. In every corner, trash was heaped to the ceiling. One room was inundated with thousands of beer cans, another so packed with rubbish, mostly newspapers and empty Entenmann’s boxes, you couldn’t open the door. The bathroom was indescribably filthy. In the living room, where Al died, there was a hole in the ceiling big enough to drive a garbage truck through. It was the rainy season and everything was soaked. There was a waisthigh mound of soggy butts and ashes -it must have been years in the making- against one wall. Thumbtacked to another wall were a pair of Playboy centerfolds ca. 1973, Al’s only attempt at decor. Beneath them, stacked on a splintered cabinet, were about a hundred dogeared paperbacks, all westerns, mostly Louis L’Amours.

Al rode into the sunset on a spavined leatherette divan in the center of the room. Next to it there was a galvanized bucket filled with excrement. Larry made a little joke about it, about how glad he was Al hadn’t kicked it.

These are the things I saw, before the smell drove me outside.

Larry let the house air out another day. The next morning he stopped by with a bizarre update. “You ain’t gonna believe this,” he said. “Last night somebody stole that bucket.”

That sort of mischief, while not so unnerving as a drive-by, doesn’t bode well for any neighborhood. But I wasn’t really surprised. Like I said, Sulphur Springs isn’t what it used to be.

Al died hard. Felled, according to the Medical Examiner, by some sort of massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in Bushnell. He left the house to Larry. Not counting the paperbacks and the bucket, that was the extent of his legacy. Larry told me the last time Al worked was over thirty years ago, as a caddy. We decided he'd been dead for many years, he just hadn’t realized it.

-walkin' tree