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Now open, the tax collector's U.S. 19 office offers history with enlarged photos of decades past.
By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 3, 2003
NEW PORT RICHEY -- David DeCubellis leaned closer to the large portrait of two oxen pulling a wagon, stopped at Grand Boulevard and Nebraska Avenue.
"That's my dad," he said of the man in the big rimmed hat and overalls holding the reins. "We farmed with these oxen; we raised crops with them."
What DeCubellis pointed to was one of about three dozen historic black-and-white photographs blown up and framed by Tax Collector Mike Olson to adorn the walls of his new office on U.S. 19, opening Monday with driver's license services.
On Wednesday night, Olson held a reception for friends and family of many of the faces in the portraits fronting corner groceries, steepled churches and banks -- some buildings that no longer exist.
"He lost six to eight thousand dollars there," DeCubellis said of his father as he pointed to an adjacent portrait of First State Bank, taken circa 1925 with an old car out front with spoked wheels and a canopy top.
"That was big money," DeCubellis said of his father's loss during the Great Depression.
DeCubellis' father, Peter, rode the ox cart into town to the railroad station twice a year in the 1920s, '30s and '40s. There he'd pick up loads of groceries, flour and seed ordered from Jacksonville to take back to the 60-acre farm off what's now known as DeCubellis Road.
David DeCubellis, 79, has seen the picture before, but not in this 4- by 8-foot format.
"People have no idea how things used to be," he said proudly with a smile as a few dozen people milled around the spotless lobby.
Many of the guests with gray hair could be heard pointing out family members in some of the photos: "Here's my daddy, and here's my brother."
Some climbed on chairs to get an even better look at the enormous sepia portraits that showed detailed smiles and wisps of hair on loved ones, long viewed at dining room tables in tiny, aging pictures under a magnifying glass.
Olson's mother, 93-year-old Mittye Olson, made her way from picture to picture, including one of herself as a young girl on the porch of the house where she grew up.
She stopped at the portrait of the Citrus Packing House in Elfers, circa 1924.
"That's my mother," she said as she pointed to a woman who sat, arms crossed, in a long skirt and boots on a ledge in front of the packing house with several other serious-looking women and men dressed in sweaters, slacks and caps.
Cecil Raymond picked out several relatives standing and sitting on the front steps of the First Missionary Baptist Church in Elfers in a photo taken in April 1945.
"That one there is my daddy; that one there is my momma; and that is my sister," he said.
What about him?
"I was in the Pacific, on my way to China," said Raymond, 76, a former seaman in the Navy during World War II.
There's the old store, Zane Rankin's Grocery at the corner of Grand Boulevard and Gulf Drive, where Raymond and his friends used to hang out, he said.
"That there's been gone for a good spell," he said.
The pictures were "magnificent," Raymond said. "(Olson) couldn't have done a better job. It's history."
Olson obtained the originals of the photos displayed on Jeff Miller's Web site, www.fivay.org. Considering the new service of issuing drivers license in his office, Olson said, the pictures will help newcomers to the state learn a bit about Pasco's history.
"They are going to come to the office to change their tag and license, and going to get a Florida license. They already know the history and culture of their home towns," Olson said. "Now they are going to be able to find out things about their new community."
The oldest picture in the bunch is a shot of Baillie's Bluff around 1875, showing the sails and small boats of the Key West sponge fleet at rest inshore of Anclote Key.
Back in one corner, a portrait from 1947 shows the seven small Norfleet children poking their heads out of the windows of a bus labeled Pasco County Schools. Some are beaming. One boy is scowling.
"He's the sourpuss," yelled 62-year-old Verna Mae Sloan, laughing at her brother Joe Norfleet. Sloan is the smiling blond-haired girl in the picture.
She turned on another brother.
"Look at him, and tell me that's not the same haircut," she said of Wayne Norfleet. Indeed, it is. Short, coming to a point in front.
"That's me," said Wayne Norfleet, 64, referring to the boy in suspenders. "I never had hips to hold up my pants."
The Norfleets' father, James, drove students on the bus to Pierce Elementary and Gulf High School in New Port Richey. In another room, a portrait hangs of the Norfleet Fish Camp, an Aripeka landmark built in the early 1940s by their father.
The siblings all have recently returned to the area to retire.
The portrait of the children on the bus not only shares a little history of the area, Sloan said, it also shares a slice of family memories growing up in rural Florida.
"We had a happy childhood," she said.
-- Saundra Amrhein covers Pasco County government. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6244, or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6244. Her e-mail address is amrhein@sptimes.com .