A road's sign stays, finally
Tobacco Road's first was painted on a board in 1946. It's lost many signs over the years.
By GAIL DIEDERICH, Times Correspondent
Published November 5, 2007
The big black car turned onto the dirt road, went about 100 yards, then sunk so deep in sand ruts the 16-year-old driver could not even open the door to get out.
Frustrated, Eddie Ragsdale muttered, "This has GOT to be Tobacco Road."
It was 1946 and Tobacco Road, a novel about southern dirt-poor sharecroppers by Erskine Caldwell, was causing a stir. A curious Ragsdale had gotten his hands on a copy of the book and as the car sunk, he recalled the dry, devastated, heavily rutted land detailed in the story.
A man, uprooting palmettos with a bulldozer, saw Ragsdale's predicament. He attached a chain and pulled the Ford car from the sand.
Later, after a day's work on his daddy's newly bought land, Ragsdale took a rough board and using black paint he printed "Tobacco Road."
"I drove to the end of that dirt road, stood on the fender of the car and I nailed that sign up on a big old pine tree," Ragsdale, 76, recalls.
That was more than 60 years ago. The pine, bigger now, still stands and the name has stuck. It's well known to those who travel in northwest Hillsborough County. Tobacco Road, now a few miles of asphalt, connects Van Dyke and Hutchison roads, a short distance off North Dale Mabry Highway.
In 1946 Mack and Lillian Ragsdale, their four boys and two girls, lived near highways 301 and 92 at Wilkins Road, to the east in Hillsborough County. Mack, known by friends as "Snuffy" from his snuff-dipping habit, was eager to get out in the country, so he found Lake LeClare near what is now Northdale.
"I asked Daddy if he dropped out of an airplane to find this place," Eddie Ragsdale says with a laugh. "It was so far out. There was nothing here."
Dale Mabry Highway ended miles to the south at Hillsborough Avenue. No Carrollwood, no Northdale, no Cheval and no businesses. Just cow pastures, orange groves and vegetable gardens. The main route to the tiny communities of Lutz and Land O'Lakes was U.S. 41.
"To get to Daddy's property you took 301 to Temple Terrace Highway, that to Gunn Highway and then to Casey Road - it was different then - and onto Ehrlich and then Hutchison," Ragsdale said. He can give the route with clarity.
Land was cheap then. The Ragsdales bought seven acres on the lake for $1,995.
"Daddy paid $135 down and $15 a month," Eddie Ragsdale says, noting that a handwritten receipt took care of the deal.
Recently, five acres nearby had a price tag of $1.3-million.
The area was thick with pine trees and palmettos. There was electricity but no telephone lines.
"Daddy worked for the railroad and he had to have a telephone so he bought the poles for the line to be strung," Ragsdale remembers, looking across Lake LeClare from the home he and Carol, his wife of 55 years, built four years ago.
When Mack and Lillian Ragsdale moved to Lake LeClare, Eddie stayed behind at the old place. He graduated from Brewster High School in a class of nine, then joined the U.S. Army and in 1952 left for Korea, returning home in 1955.
"My mother wrote me when I was in Korea and she would tell me my road sign had been taken down again," Eddie Ragsdale said, recalling the many times a Tobacco Road sign came up missing. Someone would replace it with another handmade sign and soon it would be gone.
"After I came back from Korea I started Brewster Vocational School on the GI Bill. I was taking a class in sheet metal and I decided to make another sign," Eddie Ragsdale says, reaching for a sheet of paper and sketching details with exact measurements.
"Oh, it was a big sign, a nice sign. I made each of the letters 12 inches tall and each one hung by a chain from a 2 x 4 across the top," Eddie Ragsdale says, showing how the word "Tobacco" hung above "Road."
He hung the sign on the same pine tree. It wasn't there long. Someone took it, too.
Tobacco was not an official road name but it was getting close. Eddie Ragsdale continued taking courses at Brewster and during an auto mechanics class a sheriff brought in a car for service. He saw a road directory in the car and Tobacco Road was listed.
"That made me feel real good," says Eddie Ragsdale.
He signed on with Seaboard Air Line Railroad that later merged with Atlantic Coast Line to form Seaboard Coast Line and worked the job for 42 years, retiring in 1992, with an accident-free record he proudly claims. During those years he and Carol raised a family in Temple Terrace.
"Daddy wanted me to build out here," says Eddie Ragsdale, but the drive to work would be too far.
The time was right after retiring and Eddie and Carol Ragsdale enjoy a serene setting on the edge of the lake, feeding fish and turtles from their dock with orchids, bromeliads and lush ferns surrounding their home.
Does Eddie Ragsdale find it amazing that he named one of the most well-known roads in northwest Hillsborough County?
"I don't think much about it," he says, "But when I saw that Tobacco Road sign on the Veteran's Expressway, now that amazed me."