Wild & Wacky Tourist Places

Well, I have to admit it....and come clean...about my sordid past.

Yup, I was the Public Relations Director for a wacky Tourist Trap...complete with gator wrestling, swinging monkeys and a tried & true wax museum!

When I turned on AOL this morning I received the shock of my life...to see my old work place listed as a wacky tourist destination.  Boy, did this bring back memories!  Figured I'd share some of the funnier ones with you....I may have to change names to protect the guilty - please bear with me.

Sunken Gardens (which I will refer to as "the Gardens") has been in existence since the early l900's.  It started out as a lake bed formed from a sink hole eons ago.  A man called Turner decided that the land was valuable as a place to grow his veggies and sell them.  He had such a way with plants that soon his little Garden became the hit of the neighborhood.  People claimed that he had created a little piece of Eden right in Saint Petersburg!

Turner worked extremely hard toward fulfilling his dream of reclaiming all the lovely muck at the lake's bottom.  Given that our soil here in sandy Florida is just about all sand - who could blame him?  He, and by this time, his sons worked diligently reclaimed the land, using tile viaducts to portion out the water from the lake.  He also installed sump pumps that kept the water circulating throughout the Gardens.  It was a work of love and survival.

Times were tough during these years, Mr. Turner was no fool...he started charging  five cents admission to walk through his beautiful Eden.  As luck would have it, people came from all over as word of mouth spread about the beauty of his Garden.

As the Garden's popularity grew so did the need to make it more unique, so that people would come back year after year to see what was new.  The original owner really knew how to run a business.  Unfortunately, that business gene does not always continue in other family members.

Today the Gardens are 100 years old and still exist, due in part to the determination of a group of unlikely compatriots who sought to save the Gardens from developers.  I'm happy to say that I'm one of them.   Another was my friend Betty who spent most of her life - living for the Gardens - protecting them like a Mother lioness.  Because of her collecting thousands of signatures requesting the city to buy the Gardens....the city actually listened and saved a beautiful site.

Today, there are no more Gator wrestlers, although the amphitheatre still stands. The monkeys left long ago, sadly missed but not by Peta.  Any bird shows are limited, most of the animals are gone. There are a few birds left, among them the beautiful  pink Flamingos. The aviary is closed, breeding programs are over.  Yet, the three hundred year old tree in the Oasis remains, as does the magnificent bougenvilleia in every glorious shade imaginable cascading over its walls.  There are places within the Gardens that are so peaceful as to be far removed from our harried world.

The path through the Gardens is exactly one mile long. During my eight years there I walked that path many times, sometimes in a rush to find someone.  At other times, leading a special group through, or leisurely letting reporters get their fill of whatever new thing was going on in the Gardens.

One day we had a small break out...some younger gators from the gator pool had managed to get into the aqueduct, which meant they could wind up in any of the many pools throughout the Gardens.  Well, what to do? Can't close down - now can we?

Also didn't want to risk a tourist getting eaten. So our whole crew was out there catching gators.  Only problem was I had a wedding rehearsal that afternoon that could not be postponed. I prayed for rain like no one has ever prayed!  My inner most fear was for the little ones in the wedding party.  So the time came for the rehearsal, I had someone positioned by the surrounding pools just in case.

As I am leading the bridal party to start to proceed over the dam Wedding Bridge...I glance over to my left and see a four foot gator sunning itself on the edge of the pool!  Not wanting to alarm any of the wedding party I let them proceed down to the lawn area for the rehearsal.  As soon as I could I radioed the Gator people, within minutes one of the guys cornered the little beastie, but not before it leaped into the shallow pool.  Poor guys jumped in after it....he did subdue it rather quickly.

Would you believe no one in the wedding party was aware of any of it! Whew!

I also had to watch out for the Black Swans right on the side of the bridge at certain times they became very territorial and would try to attack anyone coming over the bridge.  I could rename it and call it "the bridge from hell"!

Seriously though, I arranged over 350 weddings at the Gardens and enjoyed every single one of them....I have wonderful memories and I loved my job.

After all, who wouldn't? Never knew who was coming, what was happening, things changed on a dime....could never get bored that's for sure.

I have more stories but that will be at some other time.......