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In the shadow of the Giant

Al Tomaini no longer draws in the sideshow crowds with his 8-foot-plus frame, but his legacy lives at Giant's Camp restaurant in the able hands of Miss Margaret Ingram, whose biscuits are giant in size and flavor.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published October 12, 2005

Giant’s Camp, was founded by Al Tomaini, who at 8 feet 4 inches worked the carnival sideshow circuit as a giant. Before theme parks ruled this part of Florida, Giant’s Camp was a spot for tourists. [Times photos: Skip O’Rourke]

	At 6 a.m. six days a week, Margaret Ingram takes flour, shortening, milk and salt and makes a taste of heaven for customers. “I’ll eat anything she gives me,” says Willard Smith, 80. “But I’m especially partial to her biscuits and gravy.”
	There is no need for a biscuit cutter in Margaret Ingram’s kitchen. She shapes each one by hand. “To tell the truth, I never use recipes,” she says. “Everything is in my head by now. I just taste things as I go along.”

GIBSONTON - Everything is larger than life at Giant's Camp, an otherwise modest eatery on the Tamiami Trail in southern Hillsborough County. There's the size 22 sneaker allegedly worn by the late Al Tomaini. Then there are those biscuits, twice the size of hockey pucks but tasting more of the divine.

Margaret Ingram, chief cook, has been performing her biscuit wizardry going on four decades. "They're made from scratch," the tiny white-haired woman declares as she bustles around the hot kitchen in a cotton dress and gravy-stained apron.

In Gibsonton, long a hamlet for the "who's who" of America's carnival sideshow royalty, Miss Margaret, as she is known, is a bona fide star.

Over the decades she has cooked for thousands of weary travelers and residents who can tell you about her fried chicken, her dumplings, her black-eyed peas. But her biscuits, flaky, moist and perfect for dunking in a breakfast egg, are the draw for old-timers.

"I'll eat anything she gives me," says 80-year-old Willard Smith, a customer for half a century, perched at his favorite table by the window. "But I'm especially partial to her biscuits and gravy."

The dour carnival sideshow attraction known as the Lobster Boy, born with pincers instead of hands, was no stranger to Miss Margaret's cooking. Percilla the Monkey Girl, and her husband, Emmitt the Alligator Man, also were regulars at the lunch counter. Same goes for Melvin Burkhardt, the Human Blockhead, who pounded nails up his nose without damaging his taste buds.

Miss Margaret, 76, never got the chance to cook for the Giant, but her imagination runs wild at the thought. One platter of her biscuits probably would not have satisfied him.

"I hear he had a big appetite," Miss Margaret says during a lull in the kitchen. Tomaini weighed 356 pounds though apparently never had to diet. That's because the top of his skull scraped the sky at 8 feet 41/2 inches.

In 1940, he moved to Gibsonton, already a refuge for carnival folks, with his wife, who worked in the business, too. Born without legs, Jeanie was 2 feet 6. On the sideshow circuit she and Al billed themselves as "the world's strangest married couple."

In Florida before the theme parsk, their restaurant qualified as a tourist attraction to rival the greatest show if not on Earth at least in southern Hillsborough. Customers who supped on fried mullet in tomato gravy did some major gawking for dessert.

"I don't mind," the Giant liked to tell friends. "I'm peek-proof."

Al Tomaini was born in New Jersey in 1912 and suffered from a glandular problem that made him a giant. He met Jeanie at a fair in the Midwest, they eloped to Niagara Falls and performed throughout the country. In 1940 they migrated to Gibsonton for reasons that included snook, redfish and mullet.

Al liked fishing. He opened a business that catered to anglers on the Alafia River. Bait, boat and biscuits could have been his slogan. Al wasn't sure what to call his place until his friend, Frank Lentini, the famous Three-Legged Man, urged him to keep things simple. "Giant's Camp" was the sign he hung above his very high doorway.

The restaurant featured a tall ceiling to accommodate the proprietor, who often wore a huge cowboy hat and matching cowboy boots while riding herd at the cash register. Everything about him was enormous, even the monstrous ring decorating a finger. As customers paid for their meals, they often asked to try out the ring, so big it could have slid down a broomstick. Inevitably the most enamored patrons begged to purchase the ring.

"Oh, I could never part with this ring," the Giant always protested.

He usually allowed himself to be persuaded. As the customer bolted through the door, clutching the souvenir in triumph, the Giant calmly opened a box beneath the cash register. That's where he kept the stash he sold daily to impressionable tourists.

Yes, he was a carny, but he counted himself a solid citizen, too. As the fire chief, he arrived at blazes in a custom-made vehicle renovated to allow for his tree-trunk legs. Sometimes his best friend, chief of police Casper Balsam, dropped by Giant's Camp to discuss business.

They never saw eye to eye on anything.

Casper was only 3 feet tall.

The Giant was only 50 when he died in 1962, which means Miss Margaret never made his acquaintance. But sometimes she almost thinks she knew him. Jeanie, his widow, was a frequent visitor to the restaurant until her death, at age 83, in 1999. Photos of the Giant and Jeanie still hang on the walls. One of his celebrated rings is mounted next to the front door. And about that humongous sneaker on the counter: Tom Thumb would have been proud to call it home.

Miss Margaret started working at Giant's in the early 1970s. She knew her way around a kitchen, having learned to cook from watching her mother-in-law, Ethel Ingram, in Alabama. Like many older rural women, Ethel took pride in the culinary arts. "She and her husband were sharecroppers," Miss Margaret says. "What they grew is what they ate. If they couldn't eat it right then, they canned it. She made a good biscuit, too."

Miss Margaret bakes her biscuits six mornings a week starting at 6 sharp. "I don't think I have a secret, except I do a lot of kneading," she says. Self-rising flour, shortening, milk and salt are mixed together and shaped by hand on a buttered pan. Miss Margaret bakes everything in a 350-degree gas oven for about 10 minutes or however long it takes.

"To tell the truth, I never use recipes," she says. "Everything is in my head by now. I just taste things as I go along."

The thermometer next to the kitchen door says 92 degrees, but surely it must be 10 degrees off. Miss Margaret doesn't perspire; she's used to hot kitchens. Finished with the biscuits, she starts lunch. A turkey roasts in the oven and soon potatoes, corn and green beans will be percolating in enormous pots.

In the dining room, waitresses hover over customers like helicopters. A few words about the waitresses: Jeanie Tomaini, the Giant's wife, once joked that bad service and good food were the restaurant's trademark. But these days the service is usually prompt and polite. Count on being called "baby," "sweetie" or "darling" no matter your age or sex.

But they're steel magnolias, these waitresses. A few years ago, a grumpy newspaper columnist described a middle-aged waitress as looking worn around the edges. Harrumph! The newspaper from the wrong side of Tampa Bay was banned from the restaurant, then and forever.

"It was rude for that writer lady to say that," Miss Margaret says, and nobody dares argue, not even the blushing pencil pusher for the Brand X Mullet Wrapper.

As he chats with Miss Margaret in the doorway of the kitchen, a passing waitress called Margie stabs him gently in the rear end with a fork.

"No," Margie announces to the restaurant. "He ain't done yet."

- Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at 727 893-8727 or klink@sptimes.com

Giant's Camp restaurant, 9816 U.S. 41 S in Gibsonton, is open 24 hours a day. Closed Thanksgiving and Christmas. For information, call (813) 677-3500.

[Last modified October 11, 2005, 09:47:26]