Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Camp auctions off years of memories

Camp Keystone and Old McMicky's Farm are dismantled, leaving only the ghosts of summers past.

By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN
Published March 26, 2006

ODESSA - As a youngster, Wendy Turner attended Camp Keystone for 12 straight summers, canoeing on Crescent Lake at night as bats brushed past her hair.

This week she found out that her old childhood landmark would soon be nothing but a memory. Avalon Builders of Tampa had bought the land, and the camp's owners were putting everything from the rustic cabins to the salt and pepper shakers on the auction block.

Saturday, the 50-year-old sat tearfully in her Coral Gables home while, across the state, crowds of people began bidding on bits and pieces of her past.

With the closing of Camp Keystone and Old McMicky's Farm, the buyers snapped up plastic soup bowls, bread racks and refrigerators, Halloween ghosts and sleeping cots.

Nothing was off limits.

"If they want this brick right here because it's memorable, they just need to make an offer and they can have it," owner Janice Rodda said, patting the side of a building. "You want the roof? You want the windows? Everything goes."

Camp Keystone, which opened in 1946, and Old McMicky's Farm, started in 1991, sit on 48 acres of wilderness west of Gunn Highway on Crescent Road.

For half a century, kids from all over summered at Camp Keystone, sleeping in cabins, learning archery and singing around campfires. Starting in 1950, the best camper of each summer got his or her name written in permanent marker on a 10-foot high "Honor Board."

That board sold for $60 Saturday, purchased by a friend of Turner's as a surprise to her.

Turner, who was Wendy Stein back in 1971 when her name was entered on the Honor Board, was overwhelmed when her friend, Marni Pilafian, called her from her cell phone to give her the news.

Turner remembers 1971 well.

"It was the happiest summer of my life," she recalled. "I was an assistant counselor in a cabin of 5-year-old girls. They would fight over who could comb my hair, which was down to my waist."

Turner said she and her sisters lived for the summers, even returning as camp counselor.

"Camp was everything," she said. "It's very sad that kids aren't going to have the experience we did of an unspoiled Florida."

The camp began dying a slow death in the late 1990s, when parents started sending their kids to specialized camps, like band camp, computer camp and sports camp, said Rodda, the owner.

Rodda and her husband, meanwhile, were running a successful petting zoo on the land. Old McMicky's Farm introduced city kids to farm life.

About 40,000 Tampa Bay area schoolchildren would take field trips to the farm each year, some seeing goats and sheep for the first time in their lives.

But then Sept. 11 happened, followed by a season of brutal hurricanes.

Then another crisis hit - an E. coli scare.

Last year, an E. coli outbreak sickened people who petted farm animals at three fairs statewide. The outbreak was traced to infected sheep, goats and cows provided by Ag Venture Farm Shows of Plant City.

The illness scared people away from most petting zoos, including Old McMicky's.

"It was boom-boom-boom, all during our busy season," Rodda said, as people scurried past her to inspect boxes of miscellaneous items packed for auction.

Most of the people who showed up for the auction were like Cheryl Maxon of Zephyrhills. She came hoping to find a bargain. Maxon bought five picnic tables for $55 each.

"I'll probably keep a couple of them and sell the others," she said, as she kept an eye on the auctioneer.

One thing not included in the auction was the livestock. The Roddas are hoping to find land to reopen Old McMicky's Farm on a smaller scale.

"It was quite a neat place," said Wayne Brockhum, of Tampa, who won two wooden reindeers outfitted in Christmas lights to the delight of his 8-year-old, Alexandra. "The county is going to miss it."

[Last modified March 26, 2006, 00:25:14]