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SHANNON TANHis tomatoes have made people happy for decades, but now the self-proclaimed "wandering gypsy" is ready to rest.
LARGO - After the tomato business went to pieces, Clyde Darling parked his broken-down 1982 Chevy van behind Georgette's Hair Shoppe.
Georgette didn't mind. She'd been buying tomatoes from Darling for 25 years.
They called him the "tomato man." He peddled his hand-picked tomatoes to dozens of beauty parlors in the Largo area.
Women would come in to get their hair done and buy a $1-pound-bag of tomatoes to take home. His tomatoes were special: big, red and delicious.
But lately, it was getting hard for Darling to find good tomatoes. The van he was living in broke down. His driver's license was expiring.
So Darling, 88, decided to retire. He slept in the back of his van at Georgette's. Walked to Willow's Diner for breakfast. Took the bus to Arby's for lunch. Browsed the magazines at Publix.
A Largo code enforcement officer came across Darling's leaking van. Instead of writing him a violation notice and moving on, he worked with a police officer to find Darling a home in Clearwater.
The customers on his route wondered what happened to their tomato man. Now and then, he'd run into them at Publix or his favorite greasy spoon. The other day, he heard that a customer passed away.
"I miss it," said Darling. "It wasn't so much a business as it was a family affair."
Customers told him he needed to raise his prices. He said no. They worried about him during the winter. If he failed to stop by, they were glad to find him at the dog track.
"They were the best customers a fella could ever have," Darling says.
When Dianne Medvedeff, the owner of Abracadabra Hair & Nail Salon, spotted an RV he might be interested in, she left a note on his van at Georgette's.
"The little stinker showed up here," she said. "He said, "This is exactly what I need.' It had a kitchen, bathroom, a shower. He'd been tickled to death if he could've got it."
Pete Jensen doesn't remember if he got a complaint about the leaking 1982 Chevy van filled with boxes.
Jensen, a Largo code enforcement officer, posted a violation notice. The next day, he came back.
"I wanted to talk to him, not shoo him on," said Jensen. Darling told him he hadn't slept in a bed in more than 50 years. He lived in a school bus with his mother, then in a GMC truck until it was stolen.
"Mr. Darling, you need to be safe," Officer Rayshall Poinsette told him. "Can we find you a place to live?"
She found him a bed at the Homeless Emergency Project, a charitable outreach of Everybody's Tabernacle in Clearwater. They packed up his clothes. His van was sold for $25. Poinsette even bought him a floral sheet set. Darling hadn't seen a doctor since leaving the service after World War II. The doctor at the shelter told him that other than arthritis and a heart murmur, he was in good shape.
He just needed new dentures.
Darling once had a beautiful set of dentures. He got them eight or nine years ago from a dentist in South Carolina. He figures he put them in a box and threw the box away.
Dental assistant Susan Arnold overheard Darling talking. She remembered a man who sold tomatoes to her parents at their Indian Rocks Beach grocery store, Archie's Market.
She called her mother. It had been more than 30 years, but Arnold's mother remembered him.
"He really took good care of us," said Dot Wilkinson, 69. "We had the best tomatoes. People would come from the mainland to buy our tomatoes and meat."
Twice a week, Darling would come by with his tomatoes. Wilkinson would buy a box on Tuesday and two on Fridays. Darling always made sure the second box of tomatoes wasn't quite as ripe.
He went through the boxes of tomatoes searching for blemishes. The ones with spots ended up in Wilkinson's kitchen as stewed tomatoes. Darling wouldn't charge her for those.
"He'd always say, "You're my favorite,"' she recalls. "We felt we were getting special treatment."
Darling owned an ice cream parlor, a hot dog stand, and two restaurants in Maine. He sold lobsters and shellfish with his father, who died of a heart attack in 1938.
In the 1960s, Darling and his mother visited Florida every year to sell fruit. One day, they stumbled upon a woman selling tomatoes in Cocoa Beach. He bought 13 boxes at $2 each.
He sold them for $8 a box to a guy at a roadside stand in Maryland. The following year, Darling went into the tomato business.
His mother would pick tomatoes and collect them in her apron. She was 89 when she died after a bad fall.
Darling has no brothers or sisters. He's never been married, but is fascinated by women.
He had a girlfriend several years ago. She drank a lot and punched Darling in the face. He refused to press charges and she fled.
"He came in with a bruise once, and then a black eye," said Deloris Gilbertson, 51, of National Barbers. "She's the only woman I've seen him with."
Gilbertson has been cutting his hair for 27 years. Sometimes he paid in tomatoes.
Darling supported her during a nasty divorce. He even went to the library to help her son with his biology homework. She invited him to her home for the holidays.
Gilbertson asks for Darling's new address. So does Medvedeff.
"He's met a lot of people," said Medvedeff, 55. "They all remember Clyde. Tell him I said hello and send him a big hug."
Darling slept on a plywood bed in the rear of a 1964 GMC truck outside Denny's on Missouri Avenue for years.
"Inside, empty fruit boxes are stacked to the ceiling," a 1986 Times article said. "There is space for only a hanging fruit scale and a 9-inch TV connected to the truck's battery."
He gets his mail and Social Security checks at a P.O. box. Thirty percent of his income goes for rent at the shelter. He used to store his clothes in a ministorage unit on Park Boulevard for $35 a month. It's been 30 or 40 years since he had a watch, so he tells time by the sun. Darling still calls himself a "wandering gypsy."
He's glad to have a home. "I get tired quick," he says, but hates staying inside all day long.
He takes the bus to Mamas Kitchen for pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream. For supper, Darling makes himself a peanut butter sandwich.
At the food pantry, he gives away his food to the people waiting in line. He keeps the canned salmon, peaches and tomatoes.
He owns a little piece of land in Brighton, Maine. When he visits, he parks his truck at the police station and sleeps there.
He doesn't plan on staying in Clearwater forever. He's got a cemetery plot in Falmouth, Maine, and a headstone with his name on it.
His father and mother are buried there. He imagines he'll wind up there, too.
- Staff writer Douglas R. Clifford contributed to this report. Shannon Tan can be reached at shtan@sptimes.com or 445-4174.