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ELIZABETH BETTENDORF"Honest John" earned a living as a traveling salesman, but made a life at Shady Oaks.
NORTH BON AIR - "Honest John" Skelton bought his two-bedroom house in a quiet West Tampa neighborhood one block north of Kennedy Boulevard in 1948. A traveling salesman who sold Wesson cooking oil and Snowdrift shortening, Skelton wanted a place within shouting distance of the main roads that was still a little bit "country."
He also wanted a home for his bride, Dorothy, a pretty soda fountain waitress he met at Dorsey's Drugstore in downtown Tampa.
He paid $7,800 for his no-frills house - only the second one built on this stretch of North A Street - and quickly transformed it with a dose of that old-fashioned, real-estate magic: Curb appeal.
"I built the driveway by hand, laid every brick and stone myself," recalls Skelton, now 93.
He had no choice, really. He didn't have the money to hire help and he loved to garden and tinker.
"I had a $42.42 a month house payment," he explains, "which left me with just $100 a month to feed my wife and little girl."
More than a half-century later, he's still dapper and funny with a flash of white hair and a salesman's toothpaste smile. He got the name "Honest John" after he appeared before a judge in the late 1920s for running a stop sign. He confessed to blowing through the intersection not just once - but whenever he felt like it.
"The judge just rolled back and belly laughed and said, "thank God there's an honest man left - no charge!' " Skelton recalls.
A polished raconteur, he leads his guests on a tour of his home and garden dressed in head-to-toe yellow - a color that extends from his patent-leather shoes to his western-style bow tie (his favorite fashion accessory inspired long ago by Colonel Sanders).
Despite a stroke two years ago, Skelton still lives in his house unassisted, making himself cheese grits and turkey bacon every morning and working in his beloved garden.
"For five days I've been on my knees pulling weeds," he confessed. "I filled 19 30-gallon bags."
Over the years, Skelton managed to pay the same mind to his house as he did to clinching a sale. He painted it the cleanest shade of laundry-white, gave it barn red shutters and a driveway to match.
He dug postholes for the 150-foot split-rail fence himself, planted citrus trees and built a large wishing well. He fashioned winding walking paths from mulch, hung bird feeders and cleared a court for horse-shoe pitching, which he calls "golf of the 1920s."
He built a workshop, added an old horseracing surrey and a 200-pound cement horse that appears to pull it. More horses - recycled supermarket promotions from his days as a salesman - prance throughout the yard.
Thanks to all the whirligigs and memorabilia, Skelton's half-acre property named Shady Oaks, thick with 68 trees, mostly water oaks and live oaks, has become part neighborhood museum, part thing of wonder to hundreds of school kids who traipse through it annually.
Skelton even built a bench outdoors for visitors to rest on, then added a TV dinner travel-tray, once a nifty accessory in his 1955 Studebaker.
"Just think," said daughter Eva Breese, 63, "this may have been one of the very first TV trays. He never throws anything away."
That includes lawn ornaments, which he adds to the tableau at every available opportunity. The menagerie includes everything from rabbits to squirrels to cardinals (his favorite). A rooster outfitted with a motion sensor crows when a person approaches the front door.
And if that isn't enough to shake off a bad mood, a sign in the front yard advises: Notice: Don't Worry This Is A Be Happy Zone.
In fact, signs extolling the virtues of happiness pop up at every turn in Skelton's yard. That's because in his days as a traveling salesman he was famous for both his cheerful countenance and handing out peppermint Lifesavers wherever he went. He pulled in top awards for salesmanship, once selling the Publix supermarket chain 11,220 cases of Wesson oil that had to be shipped on 11 freight cars.
"If you have nothing but happiness and your thoughts are good, you will do better things in life," Skelton explains, "and it makes your day more pleasant."
No doubt, the same philosophy applies to his yard.
The property hasn't changed much in the last half century, nor has the house, says Breese who grew up in the house and has since bought the one next door.
It looks virtually the same, she says, as it did in the post-World-War-II years when her father and her late mother bought it. In a scene that could have been ripped from the pages of a Truman-eraHouse Beautiful, the home still sports its original aluminum awnings. On the driveway, his 1986 black Mercury Grand Marquis (Skelton swore by the cachet of a black car) wears his trademark whitewall tires, an accessory he orders special from Tennessee.
Inside the house, a time capsule awaits: Skelton's paneled home office, where plaques for outstanding salesmanship adorn the walls, remains carefully preserved, though he uses it daily.
His black rotary dial telephone works like a charm, his old suitcase stands ready by the door, and he proudly shows guests the Firestone Radio he bought for his mother with wages from one of his first jobs.
In the living room, Breese, and Skelton's other daughter, Sandy Fantle, 52, open the blond wood console that houses a record player and TV screen the size of a frozen dinner box. The phonograph plays 78-speed albums, Breese said.
"This was our entertainment, sitting on the floor listening to Bing Crosby," adds Fantle.
Even the surrounding neighborhood remains suspended in time. The same neighbors or children of neighbors live across the street.
A minister who grew up on the street comes back to perform all funerals.
"It's different here than other places," Breese said, "because neighbors really know each other well."
And despite its central location close to downtown, houses tend to sell for under $200,000.
Skelton has no immediate plans of moving but knows he stands to make a well-deserved profit.
"After paying my taxes all these years, I'll be happy to get my money back," he said. "And I've sure loved working out there in the garden. Been a pleasure."