by Gwen Mayo
Chapter Twenty-four
Even with the press—all of it—on their side, the ladies weren’t released until Monday morning. As always, bureaucracy came before justice.
The first thing they did was bathe. Well, Teddy bathed. Cornelia took a sponge bath and washed her hair in the sink. Uncle Percival and Rena were sent to purchase saline and ointment, so she could clean and dress her burns afterward.
Later in the day, they sat on the veranda, enjoying the sun.
“I like what you’ve done with your hair,” Teddy said. “It’s different, but that twist suits you much better than a bob would.”
“Someone reminded me that there’s life outside the Army,” Cornelia said. “I’ll be retired soon, and I’ll have to figure out what to do with myself.”
“I have some ideas,” her companion said, “but they’re for later. We need to get back to our vacation. I’m sorry my being arrested took so much of your leave.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Cornelia replied. “I expected this trip to have its complications, but so far, it’s gone over the top.”
“I’ll do my best to make the rest of your time pleasant.” Teddy sat up in her rocking chair, and then stood. “Look! There’s a good omen for the future.”
Cornelia stood up and lifted her field glasses. The Silver Breeze was gliding out of the marina and into the bay. Young Harry steered the vessel while Violet adjusted the sails. Both were smiling and waving towards the dock, although Cornelia would have sworn she saw a glimmer of tears on Violet’s face.
They watched as the yacht headed into deeper waters, then shifted course to the south, towards the Gulf and into an unknown future. Cornelia didn’t know where life would take them, but they would face it together.
THE END
The Bee’s Knees
In 1920’s “the bee’s knees” was slang that meant ‘the best.’ The Prohibition-era cocktail was a gin sour blend of lemon juice and honey that was created to mask the harsh “bathtub gin” smell. The earliest book to publish the recipe was the 1930 edition of San Francisco bartender and author Bill Boothby’s cocktail compendium World Drinks and How to Mix Them. However, the drink is believed to be from Post World War I Paris, where sugar was in short supply. The true origin of the drink is the subject of much debate and so far, there is no definitive answer.
There are several existing versions of The Bees Knees, including one that is still served at the Vinoy Park Hotel. They differ in some ways, but all of them agree on three basic ingredients: honey syrup, gin, and lemon juice. Instead of bathtub gin, I recommend you experiment with more modern and palatable versions until you find a favorite.
The Bee’s Knees
1 Cocktail shaker of crushed ice.
2 oz. gin
1 oz. honey syrup
1 oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice
Shake the liquids with crushed ice and strain the drink into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon or orange twist and/or a sprig of fresh basil.
(Honey syrup is made by thinning honey with hot water. I recommend every 3 ounces of honey be thinned with one ounce of hot water. If you prefer a less sweet drink use honey and hot water in a 1 to 1 ratio.)
Authors’ Notes
Saint Petersburg, Florida is known as “The Berg” to locals. The city’s history begins with the story of a coin toss between two men who shared a vision. In 1888, General John C. Williams bought the land and traded some of it to Peter Demens in exchange for bringing the Orange Belt Railroad to the area. Demens won the famous coin toss and the right to name the city. He chose to name it after his hometown, Saint Petersburg, Russia. As Demens laid tracks for his railroad, Williams constructed the first hotel in the new city and named it after his hometown. The Detroit Hotel still stands but has been converted to condominiums. Renovations have changed the Queen Anne’s façade, and only the old lobby was preserved as part of the Garden Restaurant.
At the end of World War I, the City of St. Petersburg saw a golden opportunity to attract wealthy tourists who usually wintered abroad to a warm climate closer to home. John Lodwick, an ambitious young newspaper man, was hired as the first municipal public relations director ever employed in the United States. Soon, smiling pictures of Florida visitors appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country, promoting St. Petersburg as “The Sunshine City.”
The land boom of the 1920s had a huge impact on St. Petersburg, which was already billing itself as a tourist town. The Gandy Bridge, opened in 1924, cut travel time across Tampa Bay and helped grow the city. Tourists came from all over by automobile, yacht, and railroad. The population growth turned St. Petersburg into the largest city in Pinellas County. The city also adopted the Mediterranean-style architecture brought by Snell Isles founder Perry Snell. Snell’s influence on the city’s architecture can still be seen in its historic buildings.
The Berg suffered major setbacks in growth and tourism when the land boom went bust, throwing Florida into depression long before the rest of the country. Growth didn’t resume until the Public Works Administration invested some ten million dollars in improvements that included construction of a new city hall.
The Million Dollar Pier was the brainchild of Lew Brown, editor of the Evening Independent. When both the popular municipal pier and the railroad pier were destroyed in the hurricane of 1921, Brown challenged the city to build a “Million Dollar Pier” and used his paper to raise funds for the project. The campaign quickly collected some three hundred thousand dollars. Brown used the success of his campaign and his editorial power to pressure City Hall into floating a bond issue for the remaining funds.
The pier was an engineering marvel of the time. Over ten thousand visitors were present when it opened on Thanksgiving Day in 1926. The 1400-foot-long pier led to a spectacular Mediterranean Revival-style casino. The St. Petersburg Pier boasted a swimming area called Spa Beach, a solarium in which to sunbathe in private, a bait-house for fishermen, a streetcar line, an observation deck, and the studios of a popular radio station, WSUN. It was an instant success and quickly became the most recognizable landmark in the city.
St. Petersburg’s pier was the focal point of social life in the city for the next forty-six years. It hosted regattas, speedboat races, water skiing exhibitions, dances, fishing competitions, and numerous other events. The shift in America’s perception of St. Petersburg in the 1960s from tourist destination to a city of old people, coupled with the city’s failure to properly maintain the pier, led to its demolition in 1967.
The Vinoy Park Hotel opened with a grand ball on New Year’s Eve 1925, but its story began in 1923 with an expensive pocket watch and a wager. Aymer Vinoy Laughner, a wealthy Pennsylvania oilman, hosted a party at his winter home in St. Petersburg. Famed golfer Walter Hagen was among the guests. Laughner boasted that Hagen, who was known for his powerful drives, couldn’t drive a golf ball hard enough to break the crystal of his watch. The watch was set up on the lawn and Hagen bounced several golf balls off the face of it, doing no damage. The balls landed on a vacant waterfront lot across the street from Laughner’s house. While they were retrieving them, Hagen suggested Laughner buy the property and build a grand hotel.
Laughner purchased the property for 170,000 dollars, and then hired architect Henry L. Taylor and contractor George A. Miller to build his namesake hotel. Construction began February 25, 1925. Miller and his construction crew set a record in building the hotel in just ten months.
The Vinoy Park was probably the most opulent of St. Petersburg's boom-era hotels, a sprawling assemblage of Mediterranean Revival splendor. The hotel was built on a twelve-acre site in the heart of the waterfront park area. The architectural embodiment of the Florida boom, the Vinoy Park had everything: Moorish arches and tile-lined cupolas, elegant Georgian-style ballrooms with leaded glass windows and carved beam ceilings, scores of crystal chandeliers and ornamental urns, and 367 lavishly appointed rooms. A single room went for twenty dollars a night during the mid-1920s, the highest rat
e in town, but it was a bargain considering that the hotel promised to surround its customers with the "quintessence of beauty" including "the blue sea and the sapphire sky and the same profusion of vivid flowers as greeted the earliest Spanish explorers on Florida shores."
The hefty price of a room didn’t stop the rich and famous from spending the winter months at the lavish resort. During the 1920s and 30s, the Vinoy hosted businessmen, athletes, movie stars, and presidents. Just about anyone who could afford it stayed at the Vinoy sooner or later: Calvin Coolidge, H. L. Mencken, Babe Ruth—heroes and antiheroes alike—all came to sample the decadent pleasures of St. Petersburg's grand hotel.
In the 1940s, the hotel joined the war effort. On July 3, 1942, the Vinoy ceased operation as a hotel and was leased to the U.S. Army Air Force, and subsequently to the United States Maritime Service, as a training center and housing for military cooks and bakers. By the time the training center was closed, more than 100,000 trainees had passed through the city of St. Petersburg.
The hotel underwent extensive repairs after the war and reopened to the public. For a few seasons, the grande dame of St. Petersburg regained its prewar preeminence as a go-to destination for the rich and famous. However, the popularity of air conditioning, and the Vinoy’s resistance to it, ushered in an era of decline. In 1974 the hotel closed, and its trademarked china, crystal, and other items were sold at public auction.
Despite its declining condition, the community petitioned to have the hotel added to the National Register of Historic Places. At its lowest point, the landmark hotel was used as a training ground for SWAT teams. But there was still a soft spot in the heart of the Berg for the Vinoy. Citizens came together again in 1987, and a public referendum saved the hotel from the wrecking ball.
After seventeen years of being unoccupied and misused, the Vinoy was reborn. Two years and over ninety-three million dollars went into the restoration and expansion of the grand hotel. In 1992, the Vinoy reopened and again became the place to stay in downtown St. Petersburg.
The Bee Line Ferry made its first public crossing of Tampa Bay on Valentine’s Day in 1926, although the regular schedule did not begin until March 7. On calm waters the eleven-mile trip took 45 minutes. Crossing time extended to a one-hour ride on a choppy day. Sea spray soaked the cars at the front of the boat, and sometimes the drivers as well. Still, with road conditions nearly as bad as the rubber tires rolling on them, the saltwater shower was much better than having to circle back through Tampa or Oldsmar to travel south.
The ferry service crossed the bay from Pinellas Point at the south end of St. Petersburg to Piney Point in Bradenton. This shortened the trip from Pinellas to Manatee County from 69 miles to 22, and shaved two hours off the travel time. Even so, the ferry did not make money in its first two years of operations. Real estate agent J.G. Foley, civic booster Charles R Carter, and attorney James E. Bussey expected to lose money on the service when they founded the Bee Line Ferry. They first considered a bridge, but that proved too difficult and expensive for the time. Their purpose for creating the enterprise was to sell homes on the south end of St. Petersburg. In that respect, the Bee Line was an instant success. With the completion of the Tamiami Trail in 1928, the ferry service began turning a profit. In 1929, the state of Florida granted Bee Line a 50-year franchise on the bay crossing. Their franchise was purchased in 1944 in order to begin construction on the first Skyway Bridge.
St. Petersburg’s Green Benches are an icon dating back to 1906, when real estate salesman Noel Mitchell decided he could improve his business by providing people a place to sit. He ordered fifty bright orange benches and placed them outside his business at Central Avenue and Fourth Street. They were an instant hit. Soon, there were thousands of benches in different colors all over the city.
In 1917, Mayor Al Lang got the city to pass an ordinance that the benches all be one style, one height, and one color: hunter green. There was some grumbling from business owners, but they grudgingly accepted the ordinance and over seven thousand St. Petersburg green benches became part of the city landscape.
The popularity of the benches had an unintended consequence after World War II. Retirees began settling in St. Petersburg in large numbers. The benches were very popular with the retirees, at least with white retirees. The benches, like many other amenities in the Segregated South, are tainted by the injustice of racism. The 1960s brought two changes: an end to the ‘whites only’ laws and a change in how the city saw the green benches. The number of retirees enjoying watching life in Sunshine City from the benches earned the Berg a new and less welcome nickname as “God’s Waiting Room.” The city quietly began removing the green benches. By 1970, the benches were gone.
In 2002, the city’s famous green benches once again made news when the K.C. Brady sculpture of a Dali-style melting clock opened at the Dali Museum, draped over the back of a green bench melting into the earth.
Thankfully, the garden is no longer the only place to find the city’s green benches. They are making a comeback along the waterfront in St. Petersburg. While the style is different, the purpose is the same. The benches are there to allow residents and tourists to relax, enjoy looking at the Gulf, or do a little people watching in a vibrant downtown. The big difference today is that everyone is welcome to have a seat and enjoy the beauty of the city.
St Petersburg Police Detectives must have been hard pressed to know who was in charge from day to day at the time of this book. St. Petersburg had a small plainclothes detective unit, but the department was plagued with corruption and conflict. They had thankfully gotten past the 1923 problems that gave them two chiefs of police: one chosen by the mayor, and the other by the city council. But divisions and conflict still reigned in the ranks.
On February 15th Chief of Detectives GC Rodes resigned after only one month on the job. He had taken the job after Chief of Detectives John Trotter was forced to resign over corruption charges. Howard Smith was promoted to the position the following day. During his first weeks on the job, he was embroiled in a sheriff’s department investigation over the lynching of a black prisoner being transported to the county jail in Clearwater.
The Klan played a large role in the department’s troubles, even after black officers were added to the force. It would take until the 1960s and a lawsuit in the federal courts to resolve the legal conflicts in the St. Petersburg police. The dozen black officers that brought that suit were men of remarkable courage and determination. Their actions paved the way for black police officers all over the country to gain career advancement and equal treatment.
The Gangplank Night Club was located in the exclusive Jungle Prada neighborhood on the eastern shore of Boca Ciega Bay. The Spanish Caribbean building was built in 1924 and was the first nightclub in St. Petersburg. The club was rumored to be partly owned by Al Capone. Capone’s “business partner,” Johnny Torrio, wintered in St. Petersburg—his wife’s family lived there—and engaged in land speculation. He and Capone were shareholders in the Manro Corporation, which bought up approximately 50 acres all over the city. The extent of Capone’s involvement is hard to say; in 1926, he spent a grand total of two days in St. Petersburg.
What we do know is that during Prohibition, the club was a hotspot of activity. Rumrunners’ boats would dock at the small pier a short distance from the building. From there, the booze was taken through a tunnel that opened in the fireplace of the club, keeping the Gangplank well supplied with high quality alcohol from the Caribbean and avoiding any attention from the police.
The Gangplank was the first, but not the only, club in town. Despite the efforts of teetotaling ministers and other moralistic crusaders, St. Petersburg had more than its share of bootleggers, speakeasies, and nightclubs. Local enforcement of Prohibition laws tended to be extremely lax, and liquor was sold by the truckload within the neighborhood of police headquarters. To the delight of most tourists, city officials rarely levied serious punishment to the pursuers of pleasure. Drunk or sober, those
in search of the high life could drive out to the Jungle area to visit Walter Fuller's Gangplank Night Club.
Today, it is still worth driving to the Jungle Prada to see the club. The area has changed, but the feel of the 1920s speakeasy is still there. You can see the remnants of the bandstand and the dance floor shaped like the prow of a ship. In the 1920s, bright striped canvas awnings covered the open-air dance floor.
Opening the door to the bar is like stepping into a time machine. The bar where Babe Ruth was married, and countless illegal bottles of rum were consumed, is much the same, though the fireplace is gone. I don’t know about the tunnel.
While we were working on the book, we were able to visit and take some photos of the ship prow rising out of the sandy ground. We ordered drinks and food at a bar that took us back to the age of flappers and gangsters. Around us were graceful archways, beautiful stained-glass windows, and dark wood paneling that were all original to the building.
If you are a history junkie like us, you’ll appreciate that across the street from the Gangplank is a park with several ancient Indian Mounds erected by the ancient Tocobaga Tribe. Historians believe that this is the spot where Europeans first set foot on the North American Continent in 1528.
A 1920s beauty parlor might easily be confused with the lair of a mad scientist. Women in long white smocks worked on women draped in beauty capes. Along with the scissors, combs, razors, and clippers, the shops had early and sometimes dangerous versions of curling irons and hair removal treatments. One particularly noteworthy one is the x-ray hair remover. Yes, until many women started showing up in hospitals with radiation sickness, the x-ray hair removal machine was the height of fashion.