I have a friend who spent the early years of her life in Clearwater. When she found out that I was doing this whole "become a Tampa local" thing, she sent me an email recalling some of her memories of the place. They may be distorted a bit by time, but check them out:
your blog assignment got me thinking about my tampa days (clearwater would be slightly more accurate, i guess)… but most everything that's coming to me involves learning to ride my bike around the block and scraping my knees (the tree roots in tampa can be very tricky). i also vaguely remember seeing hundreds of beachballs blown out into the gulf while hundreds of people, one for every beachball, ran into the water in slow motion with their arms up over their heads (but that memory may have become a bit romanticized over the years).
The beachball scene is especially vivid—can anyone corroborate this memory? And if not, let me know if you're interested in making it a reality. All I need is 99 friends and an equal number of beachballs and we can make this happen.
This article appears in Jul 25-31, 2007.