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Letter to the editor

Homes

Front porch: A little shop of memories

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published July 2, 2004

Finch Machine Shop on Platt Street is the kind of place I whiz by a couple of times a week and wonder about.

A converted three-car garage with a sign out front advertising lawn mower repair and tool sharpening, it looks old-fashioned, transplanted from another time. Tidy, appropriately suited in Truman-style green and white siding, it shares a yard with a small house, a garden and a collection of whirligigs, windsocks, wishing wells and a chorus of wind chimes.

The garage, with its tool benches, cubbyholes and rows of mowers awaiting tune-ups, smells inside like the old workroom in my grandparents' basement.

On a searing summer day, I stand in the cool dark of Finch's and drink it in, remembering.

Like the rest of South Tampa, this particular stretch of Platt could only be called upwardly mobile.

James Cecil Finch could have cared less. He opened the business in 1951 with hopes of attracting customers from the neighborhood. Finch, a Canadian who worked a stretch in the 1920s as a chauffeur in South Tampa, first took over another machine shop across the street. He moved to the current location a few years later when the people who owned the house and garage on the property agreed to sell.

"My mother thought we could get the whole business into the garage and live in the house," recalls Finch's daughter, Beverly Jones, 68.

Her husband, Alfred Jones, took over the machine shop business on May 19, 1962, three weeks after James Cecil Finch died.

He worked elsewhere then and knew nothing about making a blade sharper. Friends and neighbors from all over Tampa flocked to the little shop to teach him to use the equipment.

"They didn't want the shop to close," Alfred recalls. "I've been going at it ever since."

Sharpening saws, kitchen knives and yard clippers and fixing lawn mowers, Alfred, now 69, put two children through Bayshore Christian School. He doesn't really have any hobbies, just his work, something he loves.

He doesn't want to close the shop and retire, though sometimes Beverly thinks she might like that. They took their longest stretch of vacation ever this summer - three weeks in the mountains of North Carolina.

Bliss.

"We've been together, living and working, 24-7 all these years. Imagine that!" Beverly muses. "And it worked. We've made it work."

On Nov. 1, they plan to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary.

They still live in the three-bedroom house on the property; both the house and the shop are technically at 301 S Albany Ave.

Years ago, the Joneses bought the house next door on Albany and tore it down for a bigger yard. They don't hear the rumble of traffic on Platt anymore. "Can you imagine what this would cost now?" Beverly asks. "And no one would ever let you start a business like this. We're the last of the mom and pops. There used to be so many of us."

They're satisfied.

They've planted roses. Lemon trees. Hibiscus. They built a trellis and topped it with a weather vane.

Over the years, they've raised a couple of toy poodles, and the current one, Lady Bug, is Alfred's love, an energetic sprite he brings out for guests to cuddle.

These days, they've taken on an additional responsibility, caring for their disabled 2-year-old granddaughter during the day.

Business isn't quite as brisk as it used to be.

A cadre of loyal clients still bring mowers and garden tools by for sharpening. And local restaurants bring their knives to the Joneses for sharpening.

Still, there just aren't as many mowers to repair anymore.

"People just go to Home Depot and buy a new one," Alfred laments.

Or they hire a lawn service, Alfred says, something you didn't see in the old days.

"People mowed their lawns themselves."

Another place, Tampa was.

Another time.

[Last modified July 1, 2004, 11:25:16]