October 23-24, 1976: A Weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah
	October 4, 1976: At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida
	Return to Index for 1976

Neither Tony nor I needed to be back until Sunday evening, so we headed over to Florida's west coast to see what the area around Tampa-St. Petersburg looked like. I also planned on looking up an officer that I knew in the Army who lived north of Tampa.

On Friday afternoon, after our work at Harris Corporation was completed, we took our rental car across the state to the Tampa area, intending to find a reasonably-priced motel or hotel as close to the beach somewhere as we could get. Getting across the state took a little over two hours, so by the time we got into the Tampa area, it was getting dark.

I had a Tampa map with me, so we plotted out a route that would get us across Tampa Bay and over towards Clearwater, where we again followed the map to get over to the beach. There, we cruised along the beach road for a ways, looking for a place to stay, and finally found a local place just on the other side of the beach road from the beach itself.

(Note from 2019: I kind of remember what the little beach motel looked like, and I do have a picture coming up of the beach near the motel, but when I went to Google Maps to try to find it again so I could include an aerial view here, nothing looked remotely familiar. I have come to expect that, now that I have worked this far back in my photo album; in the 40 years between our visit then and my working on the album now, so much has changed that I am quite sure that pretty much nothing that was there in 1976 is still there now, given that we weren't staying in some fairly new chain place. So that's why I can't name the motel and why I can't quite place exactly where the beach was where we relaxed for a couple of days.)

Anyway, an aerial view is not that important, when all you're talking about is a night or two at the beach. So, again, here in Tampa I just took the occasional picture, and there is no big story to tell about any of them.

This is a typical beach view over by Largo, Florida, on the barrier peninsula where we stayed. Along this stretch of beach there were some small hotels and a bunch of beach residences, although I'd wager it is a lot more developed now.

The Town of Largo was incorporated in 1905, and ten years later, the small lake that once occupied the central part of the peninsula that extends down the Gulf side of the north portion of Tampa Bay was drained to make way for growth and development. Between 1910 and 1930, Largo's population increased about 500% (which wasn't saying all that much) as the economy became dependent mostly on citrus groves (which led to the city's nickname, no longer used, of "Citrus City").

The Great Depression was a tough time for Largo; it's population shrank by a third, and the debt incurred when it issued bonds in the 1920s was not paid off until after World War II.

But after the war, the fortunes of the town of Largo changed, particularly from the late 1950s onward. Was gold discovered? Oil, perhaps? Did some huge company start here or move here? No, none of those things occurred. The city was saved by one fortuitous circumstance; Largo was in Florida.

The entire state, and particularly the areas on the coasts and around large cities, saw rapid growth as people began moving to the state for retirement and for jobs in the burgeoning electronics companies like General Electric and Honeywell- both of which had plants nearby. Largo's population is now some 25,000, and the town's area is back up to ten square miles from its original one-half of a square mile. The citrus groves are disappearing, going the way of the farms and ranches that have already mostly disappeared, as the entire peninsula is rapidly urbanizing, and becoming a significant bedroom community for the nearby city of Tampa.

On Saturday, we did some driving around the area, just to see what we could see (and also because I'd mapped out the location of a few Baskin-Robbins stores I wanted to visit. The main route from Tampa proper over to the peninsula and the cities of Clearwater and Largo is via the State Road 60 causeway. This bridge/roadway combination is not an expressway, but just a four-lane boulevard, and from it, heading west, you can see some of the newer highrises that are being built in Largo and Clearwater.

The original Memorial Causeway Bridge was a two-lane flat span that opened in the 1920s. It connected downtown Clearwater and Clearwater Beach for nearly thirty-plus years until it was replaced by a bascule bridge (a single-element drawbridge) in the 1950s. A portion of the original bridge was demolished with the remaining section kept open as a fishing pier.

When we arrived in Tampa, my ever-increasing total of Baskin-Robbins stores visited was very close to an even 200, and that milestone was reached while we were here in Tampa. I stopped in to my 200th store on Saturday afternoon. To mark the occasion of my 200th store, an event that coincided with the Bicentennial Year when the United States was celebrating its 200th year, I decided that I would have not one, but four scoops of ice cream. This was because Baskin-Robbins was marking the Bicentennial with four "Bicentennial Flavors". The flavors were Yankee Doodle Strudel, Valley Forge Fudge, Concord Grape, and Minute Man Mint. This was something of an effort for me because I dislike most mint flavors! I recall that the store owner, who was present and scooping ice cream that afternoon, asked commented on my having the four different flavors, and I told her the story of my effort to visit as many of the franchises as I could. (Three years hence, I might note, I would be able to stop explaining myself to store owners, as Baskin-Robbins corporate would do that for me. But that's another story, and one you'll be able to read about in the album pages for 1979.)

On Saturday afternoon, I left Tony happily laying out at the beach for a while and I drove up to Tarpon Springs to visit an Army Officer that I knew (and worked for) when I was stationed at Fort Harrison, Indiana, after my return from Korea five years ago. I took one picture while I was visiting them, and at left is former LTC Anthony Samarkos, his wife (Marika, I believe), his three kids, and even their dog. It was a nice visit, and I was happy to see him again.

NOTE from 2019:
I had not thought about Colonel Samarkos for a long time before creating this page for my trip to Tampa in 1976. As on all my pages prior to 2000, the narrative on the page is an expansion of the diary entries that I have kept for each of the photos I have taken. On a chance that I might discover the Colonel's current whereabouts and perhaps contact him, I Googled his name, and was saddened to find the following posted on the website of the Retired Army Finance Organization:

"LTC ANTHONY C. SAMARKOS passed away on Monday, April 13, 2015. "Tony", born on Feb. 7, 1932 in Tarpon Springs, graduated from Tarpon Springs High School and Stetson University. He was a Finance Officer (but not a member of RAFINO) and served in the Army for 20 years, including a tour in Vietnam, and retired with a rank of Lt. Colonel. After retiring from the Army, he moved back to his hometown of Tarpon Springs where he opened an accounting office. He is a former Tarpon Springs City Commissioner and had been a member of the AHEPA and Rotary Club of Tarpon Springs. He was preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, Marica Samarkos, whom he met on Epiphany day in Tarpon Springs in 1962. He is survived by children, Charles (Annie) Samarkos, Nick (Julie) Samarkos, Elaine (Dave) DeLeeuw, Chuck (Karen) Thomas, and Cindy Thomas, brother Theodore Samarkos; sister, Katina Theofilos; and grandchildren, Sylvia, Gracie, Mary S., Anthony, Demitri, Mary D. and Sophia. He was a member of the Tarpon Springs St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs or The Arc of Tampa Bay (formerly UPARC)."

When I got back to our motel from visiting LTC Samarkos, I found Tony on the beach nearby, just having had his fill of sun.

We did some more exploring, and this is the bridge that now carries I-275 over the entrance to Tampa Bay.

We went and had some seafood on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning got ready to head over to Orlando for our flights home. I guess we could have flown out of Tampa, but open-jaws are harder to book and usually more expensive.

Tony and I, of course, left on different flights; my own departed about two in the afternoon. I was a little worried that we might get delayed, as the generally overcast weather was becoming more threatening over by Orlando, but, as it turned out, I took off right on time.

And just in time, I think, because this thunderstorm was getting churned up.

It was neat to be able to work in not only a trip to my sister's farm in Elon but a tour of the Kennedy Space Center and a visit to Tampa into a single business trip to Florida. That is one of the nice things about my job; the schedule is flexible enough that if I am going someplace interesting I can usually take an extra day to see things in the area, or, as I did on this trip, work in a stop somewhere else.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	October 23-24, 1976: A Weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah
	October 4, 1976: At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida
	Return to Index for 1976