St. Petersburg, Florida (Sunken Gardens)

February 16, 1971

228 ½ 12 Ave No.

St. Petersburg, FL 33701

Hi Ardeele.  Here we are in the sunny south and some days not so sunny.  On the whole it has been very nice.  Guess you have had a bad winter.

Love Pauline + Willie(Nellie?)

Mrs. Robert (McCombies?)

75 Manor Drive

Portsmouth New Hamp

03801 


Sunken Gardens was built by a plumber.  In 1903, George Turner drained a lake that was on his property and set clay tiles around the muck that would provide the rich soil for his garden.  Through three generations and the purchase of a former Coca-Cola bottling plant, Sunken Gardens thrived as the tourist destination it is today.  Facing financial hard times, the city of St. Petersburg bought the property in 1999, restoring it to its former splendor.  Growing up in Tampa, I remember many family and field trips to this place, and how boring it was without the thrill rides and shows I had come to expect as a Florida boy living near Busch Gardens and Adventure Island in Tampa.  


Portsmouth, New Hampshire is a very old city, founded in 1653.  It's the birthplace of John Paul Jones, the naval hero and Ronnie James Dio, the rock hero.  The small house still stands at 75 Manor Drive, but the Rockingham County website does not seem to support property searches by address.  There are a few obituaries, and even a sex offender with variations on Robert McCombie (McCombies?), but neither birthrates nor surviving relatives match with anything on this postcard.


This postcard is typical of many postcards from Florida, with the sender really rubbing in the fact that it's sunny and warm with no snow.  I admit I do the same thing every winter to my brother in Seattle by phone.  (Oh, you had an ICE storm!  Wow!  I went to the beach!)  But old Pauline and Willie really put an passive-aggressive spin on things, with the right scintilla of concern- "guess you had a bad winter."