PUBLISHED NOV. 17, 2016
Remember when …
By PENNY FLETCHER
I’ve been writing for local publications continuously since moving to South Hillsborough County from Bradenton in January 1980, so I thought I’d better explain why I am no longer one of your local news sources.
Every week I get e-mails suggesting news stories and profiles at both The Observer News and my home website mail. I just want you to know it’s a good idea to send your ideas for news and features to news@observernews.net from now on, because in September I was in a tremendous automobile accident that has left me in a wheelchair; the doctors say for maybe six months, or a year, or permanently.
But then, what do they know about the tenacity of someone who did their news job in 1992 on crutches, taking photographs and doing interviews in Sun City Center, where I was then the editor of a different local publication. I know some of you still remember calling out to me not to fall when I had a huge camera bag hanging down my back around my neck (out of the camera’s way) so I could aim and shoot properly.
These days, I would never attempt such a feat, since so many years have passed, and I’m not even up to using a walker, let alone crutches. But just thinking about it may make some of you who remember laugh.
Oh, the things we did together — residents of South County and I.
Being such a long-time resident, I don’t even use the words South Shore. That’s relatively new. This area used to be known as East Bay. If you look at the map of the area, East Bay was the correct location. After that, locals began to call it South County because it was the developers who started using the name South Shore for marketing purposes, and all residents didn’t approve. Perhaps you already know that; perhaps not.
So how (and why) did a Jersey Shore girl decide to call South County home?
After growing up in Asbury Park, and “touring the world” as a military dependent in the 1960s, I moved to — and then from — Tennessee after a divorce and landed in Bradenton where I had a great friend who allowed me and my three children to sleep in her living room for a few weeks until I could rent a small cottage of my own. At the time, I was in another line of work, but freelancing for national magazines like Gulf Coast Fisherman, Today’s Christian Woman, True Love, True Story and National Fisherman.
It was at my other job where I met and married a real Ruskin native. When I say native, I mean third-generation, whose parents had plodded their way from Georgia to plant crops with a mule and catch fish with strike boats and nets.
Catch fish they did.
My father-in-law was a commercial fisherman, as were my late husband and two of our sons. Remember the old J.O. Guthrie Fish House on River Drive in Ruskin? We lived right near there, and many times I have stood knee-deep in live mullet helping to unload the boats and weigh the catch.
The purpose of this column is to recall what those “old days” were like in South County; not only for me, but for you. That’s why I’m urging you to write me at penny@pennyfletcher.com about your early days here, especially if you predate me to the area. I got here when Ruskin had one grocery store: Thriftway, and a few shops like Lamberts General Store, a post office, the Dickman Branch Library and a few businesses, one of which was Don Baxley’s Texaco, whose policy was to give his regulars credit and still service their vehicles every time they got gas.
Do you remember the tiny Ruskin school? The grocery store in Gibsonton? The one-plaza Sun City Center? If you remember a time before this, you predate me, so please tell me about it so we can talk here sometime.
Before I close, I want to quote Mark Twain because “the reports of my death are (also) greatly exaggerated.” I may not be kicking, but I am alive, and I haven’t gone anyplace.
Thank you for following my work all these years through so many local venues, and I hope you like this new column.
I have enjoyed my time at The Observer News more than at any other newspaper. They have allowed me freedom I never had before; to tell only the truth; and they try their best to give their communities what they need and want, unlike so many other media outlets.
I thank them both here and privately for letting me present this new column, Remember When, to our readers.
Editor’s note: Welcome back Penny, we wish you the best in your recovery and in the stewardship of this column. You’ve been an asset to our staff for many years.