Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Time finally passes by iconic restaurant

* Opened by carnival workers, it closes after 60 years.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published October 7, 2006

[Times photo: Skip O'Rourke]

Tina Tomaini puts artwork of her grandfather Al Tomaini into her truck Friday. The artwork had hung for years in her grandparents’ Giant’s Camp Restaurant, which closed this week. The drawing of her grandfather with an airline stewardess was for an advertisement for Florida.

	[Special to the Times]
	Al and Jeanie Tomaini in their wedding day photo. They started Giant’s Camp in the 1940s.
	In the shadow of the Giant (10/12/05)

GIBSONTON - If ever there was a place where bearded women and three-legged men felt at home with fishermen and pass-through truckers, all feasting on homemade grits and biscuits, it was here, at Giants Camp restaurant.

At least for some 60 years.

But this week the managers closed the old stomping grounds for Lobster Boy and Monkey Girl, and a whole legion of locals and the curious.

The earth-colored stucco building near the Alafia River opened in the 1940s at the (large) hands of Al Tomaini, an 8-foot-4 man who wore size 22 shoes.

Al and his 2-foot-6 wife, Jeanie, billed as the "world's strangest married couple" on the carnival circuit, retired here six decades ago. Al loved to fish and Gibsonton was home to lots of carnival workers, so they opened a joint alongside the Tamiami Trail that catered to anglers and carnival families.

They rented out five shotgun cottages in back.

They've both been gone awhile. Al died in 1962; Jeanie in 1999.

On Friday, locals mourned a passing way of life with each crunch of tire on gravel.

A handwritten sign in the window read, simply, "Closed." The front door, blotched with flaking green paint, was locked, the restaurant dark, its cash register surrounded by boxes, newspapers, a discarded Atomic Fireball canister.

Doug Insua drove up for lunch. A regular, he got out of his truck and walked to the front door. No one had told him it was closing. He was just here last week.

"It's like coming home from school and finding your parents have moved," he said.

* * *

A little after noon, Tina Tomaini pulled into the lot. She's 39, granddaughter of the giant and his legless wife, and the owner of the property.

Born five years after her grandfather died, Tina never met him. But the restaurant shaped her life.

She grew up with the wait staff, rode ponies and bikes with the current managers, stood on a chair at the back counter while Margaret Ingram rolled her famous biscuits.

And on Wednesday, the day after Giants closed, she said she walked inside and the staff surrounded her, cautiously watching for her reaction.

She said she felt a warm sense of peace inside.

Then she broke down and sobbed.

She doesn't blame the managing couple - David and Terry Wallace - for going out of business. She knew that they'd been losing money. The old carnival customers are dying, she said. And their children are moving away.

Tina was no exception. She worked as a bakery manager for Publix for 10 years before she fell and needed back surgery. She lives in Clearwater.

And business never rebounded after the opening of Interstate 75.

Other changes are creeping down the highway. Amid the roadside signs for Live Bait and Court Jester Entertainment - Bikers Welcome, are newly minted developments.

And there's fierce competition from chain restaurants.

"Too many memories," she said, at times stroking the side of the building. "I don't know if I'd feel comfortable with someone else in here. Like someone working in your home."

* * *

"You going to have a garage sale?" Violet Rhoden asked, approaching Tina on Giants back porch.

Rhoden, 74, remembered Tina's grandfather, the Gibsonton volunteer fire chief in the 1950s.

"I used to work for General Motors," she said. "He ordered them trucks special 'cause he was so tall."

Tina looked down, choked up.

As they spoke, a Mustang and a truck pulled in. Four twentysomethings poured out.

"I'm sorry," Tina yelled over. "We're closed."

The foursome stood stock still.

A woman from the group, in capri pants and dark sunglasses, cocked her head to the side: "Why?"

"Just time for retiring." It was the easiest thing Tina could think to say.

She had come to visit the building and her memories, and her sister who lives nearby. To recall what to her was a normal childhood of warm friends that included dwarfs and people who pounded nails up their noses for a living.

From the restaurant, Tina salvaged a large framed photograph of her grandfather, which she placed in her back seat.

"This was my biggest concern," she said. "It's going in my home."

A minivan pulls in now. A guy in long shorts got out.

"They're closed," she said.

"For how long?" he asked.

"Permanently," she said.

His mouth hung open. "Why?"

When he left, Tina remembered that the restaurant closed only four times in its history: the deaths of her grandfather, grandmother and a previous manager. And when a truck crashed through a wall.

Offers are pouring in. She knows someday she'll probably sell and pay for her son's education. He's 17, and can swallow a sword, but wants to be an arborist.

More tires against gravel. A Saturn, its windows rolling down.

Tina walked over and leaned against the car.

"It's closed," she said.

[Last modified October 7, 2006, 00:35:46]