Entranced, a newcomer chronicles her impressions

A woman recalls the alligator in Williams Park, green benches, blooming orange trees and an era of unlocked doors.

By SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELL
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 8, 2003

ST. PETERSBURG -- Florence Cole Heckman arrived here in 1915 and fell in love.

"That ride up Central (Avenue) was my first view of the loveliest, most enchanting city I had ever seen," she wrote in her memoirs. "There was no other city like it. Anywhere."

Heckman's first stay here lasted three years. She taught, played the piano publicly and managed her brother's garage. She returned in 1949 and later founded a church. Beginning in 1979, her reflections on early St. Petersburg were published weekly in the St. Petersburg Times.

Through her pen, Heckman re-experienced the hours she spent fishing from the Pier and relaxing on green benches. She detailed the austere days of World War I. Passion permeates her chronicles, which this column will explore today and next Wednesday.

Said journalist Dick Bothwell in 1979: "It was another world, St. Petersburg 60-some years back, as you'll see through Mrs. Heckman's memories. She easily re-creates living history."

Heckman was born in 1891 in Dover, N.H. After high school in 1908, she attended the University of New Hampshire and pursued English, history and psychology. At the Female Seminary of Petersburg, Va., she studied drama. She later graduated from New Haven College and taught music at the Appalachian Training School in Boone, N.C.

At age 25 in December 1915, Heckman came here to serve as bookkeeper of her brother Ralph's garage. "I saw Ralph waiting for me on the (Atlantic Coast Line) platform," she wrote. "I saw the Spanish-style building with disbelief. This elegant structure could not be a railroad station, but it was."

While traveling to Ralph's Ninth Street and Baum Avenue garage, Heckman became captivated with what she saw. "Orange and grapefruit trees bloomed in every yard, and every yard was carpeted by vivid green St. Augustine grass. Flowers were everywhere. Their fragrance and the salty tang of the bays made one instinctively breathe deeply. Over all were a sparkle and shine of dazzling light."

Heckman found lodging at the Mineola Boarding House, where she shared the bedroom of the landlady and her daughter. Boarding houses filled the town then; most catered to lower-middle-class tourists. She spent her free time absorbing the city, which had a population of 7,186 that rocketed to 50,000 in the winter.

"The drawl here was deep south," Heckman noted. "As a sort of protective coloring, I had to acquire it. Nobody here ever locked a door. That would have been unthinkable in New Hampshire. It says something for the sheer goodness of the city, that it could go to bed at night and sleep with its doors unlocked."

Heckman, who had traveled the East and Midwest, had never seen such wide avenues and lovely green benches. Central Avenue curio shops sold tiny benches attached to cardboard tags, which shoppers sent to their Northern friends. "Ah, the green benches!" she wrote. "(They) invited the visitor to sit outside in the sunshine or to rest after shopping."

Just off Central, in front of a Ninth Street market, an 8-foot alligator was fed beef kidneys while kept in a pit covered with chicken wire. "At Williams Park, there was another alligator in a pit," noted Heckman, who recalled that alligator purses sporting two feet with claws were the rage. "When he grabbed and ate a little dog, the city moved him somewhere else."

In 1916 Heckman began instructing at Southland Seminary, owned by developer H. Walter Fuller. Teaching was nearly impossible; supplies were limited and the noise of workers and cement mixers was unbearable.

"Everything was located temporarily upstairs, because the building was still unfinished," Heckman said. "I had three girls in one subject, half a dozen in another. In history, I had one boy and no textbook. When the seminary closed (in 1917), I went back to the Mineola Boarding House. It was like returning home."

In 1917, early morning fishing excursions to the Pier were popular. Heckman complained about the hour, but she spent one morning with her hook baited at 4 a.m. alongside her brother's teenage mechanic, Clarence.

"We flew down Central Avenue at 15 miles per hour," noted Heckman, who was working then at the Open Air School and playing piano at the Star Theater for about $6 a week. "My efforts at tossing out my line were uncoordinated, but it didn't matter. The water was actually bubbling and boiling with Spanish mackerel!

"They were so ravenous that the minute I succeeded in dropping my line (without wrapping it around Clarence's neck) I'd have a bite. He'd bait the hook again. It turned out to be my fishing party. After we caught a couple dozen, we took them home proud as punch."

-- Scott Taylor Hartzell can be reached at hartzel@msn.com.

Next week: Heckman manages Ralph's garage, and the "war to end all wars" rages.

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