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I've Got To Get Out More

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By D'ANN LAWRENCE WHITE | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 18, 2007

Brandon - Brandon - You know you've been spending way too much time in your comfort zone when you venture just 10 miles beyond it and you become discombobulated.

Yes, the same woman who prowled the Combat Zone in Boston at night interviewing prostitutes and drug addicts at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic was now perfectly happy in her comfort zone: my little community of Brandon.

However, we'd been summoned to the The News Center in Tampa for computer training, so fellow Brandon News & Tribune staff members Laura Frazier and Terry Dickelman piled into my car, and we set out for the "big city."

Laura had ridden with me the week before when we journeyed to The News Center to have our photos taken for the masthead. She'd dubbed a car trip with me "Mrs. Toad's Wild Ride" and warned Terry accordingly. It might have something to do with the fact that I swerved onto the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway's on-ramp at the last minute, cutting off a truck and missing a concrete barrier by inches.

We were doing what women tend to do when confined in close quarters — talking — when I realized I had somehow gotten onto the elevated lanes. And I don't have a SunPass. Oops!

No problem. A sign assured us that we could "Pay by Plate."

That's easy enough, we all concluded. When we get off the expressway, there will be a plate we can drop our money into (you know, like the plate you pass at church).

We spent the next five minutes searching for the plate so we could pay our toll and avoid a fine.

It was Laura — obviously the genius of the bunch — who finally realized that "Pay by Plate" just might be a reference to your license plate. Apparently you could call or go online and pay the toll according to your license plate number. Who knew?

Frankly, I think the toll folks have gone out of their way to make things as confusing as possible for those of us who haven't taken the plunge and purchased a SunPass.

When returning from the Center Place Fine Arts and Civic Association Patron Party at the Tampa Convention Center, I missed the entrance for the original paid expressway into Brandon, marked by tiny signs, requiring you to take several side streets to an unlit entrance.

The entrance to the elevated expressway, on the other hand, was on the main drag, boldly lit and marked with giant illuminated signs. I vowed then and there to purchase a SunPass.

There probably was no greater indication of our plebeian existence than our fascination with the vending machines in the The News Center.

Back in Brandon, we're accustomed to the vending machines in which you stick your change into a slot, punch a button and pray the machine delivers a can of Diet Coke or 7-Up into a slot below.

We walked into the break room at The News Center and knew we'd entered vending machine Utopia.

There stood every type of vending machine imaginable featuring products we never envisioned could be packed into a mechanical device — cappuccino with a hint of vanilla, a variety of green teas, Lean Cuisines, Red Baron pizza, cheeseburgers.

After much toe-tapping, Laura opted for a green tea. She put her money in, and we were both stunned when a mechanical arm emerged, grabbed her green tea bottle, carried it over to the retrieval slot and dropped it in.

News Center veterans eating at a nearby table observed us like we were animals in the zoo as we marveled over the ingenuity of the vending machine. Then they burst into laughter when the machine spit out our change all over the floor. Apparently, the vending machine designers can invent a sophisticated retrieval system, but they can't invent a cup that can actually hold returned change.

After all that, it was nice to know I'm not the only one who doesn't venture far out of my comfort zone often.

At the invitation of the Brandon Rotary Club, two former Tampa mayors traveled to Brandon for the first time in years.

Former Florida governor and U.S. drug czar under former President George H. W. Bush, Bob Martinez, who graduated from Jefferson High School in Tampa along with Brandon residents Don Pate, Derrell Curry and George Anello, journeyed from Tampa to Brandon for a recent Brandon Rotary Club meeting.

Martinez admitted he hasn't been to Brandon in years and had to use his global positioning system to find Center Place, where the Rotarians meet.

Also a lifelong Tampa resident, former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco, speaking at the Rotary installation banquet at the Palmetto Club in FishHawk Ranch, admitted he doesn't get to Brandon much either.

He said he barely recognized Brandon, a community that was dominated by dairy farms in his youth. Scogin's Department Store and Stowers Funeral Home, he said, were among a handful of businesses in Brandon back then.

There were no elevated expressways and no vending machines with mechanical arms when he was growing up in Ybor City, the grandson of immigrant cigar factory workers.

But both Martinez and Greco said there was a lot more appreciation for America's freedoms back then. People respected their neighbors. You didn't have to lock your front door or worry about offending someone if you placed a Christmas tree in your business. There was more tolerance.

I found it was interesting that these men, both vanguards in the creation of America's Next Great City, were now lamenting the loss those changes had rendered.

Maybe the moral is things will and should change. Other things will always come back to haunt us, kind of like a bad penny rolling out the change bin of a malfunctioning vending machine. However, our values, our humanity, should remain status quo, safely in their comfort zone.

Reporter/columnist D'Ann Lawrence White can be reached at (813) 657-4524 or dlwhite@tampatrib.com.

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