Nearly outshining the visual aesthetic that continues to define St. Petersburg as a place of quirk and destination are its colorful cast of residents, who from my experience seem to be some of the best storytellers in Florida.
Often resoundingly open and detailed, the folks who call St. Pete home have a vibe that humbly reads, “Let me tell you a smidge about me, oh, and don’t you just love this city?”
On numerous accounts I have found myself on the bench beside Central Coffee or blowing the leaves off the sidewalk on First Avenue N at work, suddenly met with conversation. I know what they told us as kids, “Don’t talk to strangers.” However, there is a certain amount of moderation involved in everything, and with that rule in mind I often proceed, for the conversations to be had are so frequently remarkably random and enlightening.
On Friday, March 21, I met Milwaukee Mike near Third Avenue S and Seventh Street, and received a nice cup of thought # the special gift that is experiencing someone else’s nostalgia. If possible, read Mike’s words with the best internal Milwaukee accent you can muster.
I had gone for a walk, deciding to take advantage of the promise of Florida sunshine holding true amidst recent weather. While stopping to take some succulent cuttings growing near the sidewalk, I was asked, “What kind of plant is that?”
I responded, leading to the voice introducing itself as Milwaukee Mike. Mike told me his mother was a florist, and despite the exposure for most of his childhood and adulthood, he “still didn’t know what many of ‘em [plants] were.”
After telling me of his mother’s resilience for self-taught entrepreneurship, he paused mid-story. Seeming to trip over a memory and chuckle over the happiness it brought, he took a moment to close his eyes and relive it so that he could relay it. Milwaukee Mike proceeded, his cheeks becoming blush and his eyes watery with pure joy. When Mike was a boy, about 8 years old, his mother had picked up babysitting as a way to make ends meet. She was also a frequent gardener who spent nearly all of her leisure time with her plants.
One day, one of the kids she was babysitting, who was about 9 or 10, got hold of her small gardening saw and cut the small tree that she had recently planted clear in half. Mike’s father, “a good ol’ blue collar America-builder,” as Mike put it, came home from work, and upon seeing his wife’s sorrow, he promptly went into problem-solving mode.
Mike’s father drove a stake in between the divided tree trunk, held them together and wrapped it to the top with rope.
“Thirty years later and it’s the tallest tree in the yard. I never thought it had a chance,” Mike said.
When he was 19, right before moving out of his parent’s house, he asked his father, “Why did you try and save that tree when I was a kid? You could’ve just bought another one.”
His father half-smiled and responded, “Sometimes you just got to slap s*** against the wall and see if it sticks.”
Taylor Austin is a junior majoring in history and photo editor. She can be reached at tayloraustin@mail.usf.edu or on Twitter @mapplemix.
