Thursday, June 13, 2002

FELLOWSHIP JOURNAL
Getting Friendly with the Locals
By Beth Nabi

Fellows drew beat assignments Wednesday and spent the day scouting their new communities and reporting back what they had learned. Tim Sturrock and Beth Nabi headed for the tiny beach town of Pass-a-Grille at the southern tip of Pinellas County's barrier islands.

Photo by Jim Stem

Hurricane restaurant owner Bruno Falkenstein, center, shows Tim Sturrock and Beth Nabi an aerial photo of Pass-a-Grille taken in the 1950s.

As you cross the Pinellas Bayway into Pass-a-Grille, you're assaulted by the sight of the Don CeSar Beach Resort Hotel. It stands there, like an enormous pink elephant about to charge, and its towering presence immediately taints your idea of what you think this island village will be like -- ritzy, glitzy and full of tourists. But, this little beach community lacks any notion of the pretension the CeSar predicts.

Our first stop was at the Wharf, a seafood restaurant that sits right on a canal between the Yacht Club and the Marina. We took a seat at the bar and ordered lunch from Kelly, our waitress, who calls everyone "darling" and prefers a tanning bed to lying out on the beach, despite her incredible surroundings.

Then we talked with Jim, a boat captain/drifter who lives on his sailboat and hasn't owned a car in six years. He's been floating back and forth between St. Petersburg and Key West, and doesn't really claim a job title or a last name.

Kelly then introduced us to Bill, a developmental engineer whose business card proclaims him as "suds buster, oyster shucker, Cuban explorer and treasure hunter." He was happy to talk with us and ready to share what he knew about the local characters. Bill even drove us over to the locally-famous Bud Allen's house.

Bud wasn't there, but Bill took us in anyway and gave us a tour. Bud's prominent decorative piece is the huge Christmas tree he keeps up year-round on his screened-in porch, and his driveway is blocked by the most recent addition to his collection of eccentricities -- an old gypsy wagon he just bought at an auction in Georgia.

We're looking forward to returning and actually meeting Bud, and hearing about how he knows Clint Eastwood. Bill then steered us in the direction of the Hurricane Restaurant, a landmark Pass-a-Grille seafood restaurant. So, we headed to the Hurricane, via a biker bar named Shadrick's, and met Bruno Falkenstein -- owner of the Hurricane, former city commissioner and avid endangered sea turtles activist.

He seemed thrilled to have an audience for his soapbox speeches, but he had a wealth of information about the island's history and offered to show us around the island anytime. After leaving the Hurricane, it was time to return to the mainland and so ended our brief introduction to Pass-a-Grille.