By Caron Schwartz
Saturday Afternoon Sally
“What are you doing?” asked Lenny, my other half, as I sat at my desk typing madly. “Working on Hanging Around,” I explained. “It’s about shopping for flooring with snacks along the way.” “You can’t bore everyone with that! Let’s go DO something.” He suggested the Museum of the American Arts & Crafts Movement, one of our faves. But I thought the St. Pete History Museum, easily accessible by Sunrunner, sounded more fun.
We parked in a top-secret spot near a Sunrunner stop and were downtown in no time. The walk to the Pier was enhanced by traipsing through the last minutes of the St. Pete Saturday Market at Al Lang Stadium. At the Pier we relaxed on a concrete bench, watching the world go by. “Caron, I have a feeling we’re not in Gulfport anymore,” Lenny whispered as parents pushed strollers holding babies, not dogs, like at home.
Inside the museum, the Benoist airboat hovering above the lobby caught our attention. The replica commemorates the first commercial flight from St. Pete to Tampa on Jan. 1, 1914.Lenny’s fascination with baseball found an outlet in Schrader’s Little Cooperstown, a Guinness World Record worth of 5,000+ signed baseballs. I wandered through Meddling: The Women Who Built St. Pete. The exhibit’s hundreds of photos and text spotlight Sarah Williams Armistead, who founded the First Congregational Church and negotiated to bring the railroad to St. Pete; educator Johnnie Ruth Clark; activist Mary Wyatt Allen; Museum of Fine Arts founder Margaret Acheson Stuart; and more.
We enjoyed a stroll along a hall lined with paintings by the Highwaymen, 20th-century Black artists who sold their artwork along Florida roadways because Jim Crow laws kept them out of galleries and museums.
Next we retreated to Mio’s on Second St. N for a Turkish spread including red lentil soup, hummus with crudites and pita, falafel, and amazing Anatolian wine. Then back to the Sunrunner and home.