[START TAPE 1, SIDE A]

This is an interview with Kim O'Haver (KO) of Land O'Lakes. This interview is being conducted on July 9, 2001 at Mr. O'Haver's home. The interviewer is Steve Szekely (SS), representing the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library system's oral history collection project.

[Recorder is turned off and then back on]

Steve Szekely: Well, why don't we start at the beginning--

Kim O'Haver: OK.

SS: --and go through again the time and place of your birth?

KO: OK, well, I was born November the 4th, 1937 at then-Tampa Municipal Hospital--it's now Tampa General-- on Davis Island. I lived in Tampa until I was nine years old. At this time, we moved down to Fort Myers, lived there for a couple of years, and then we moved back to Tampa. I--. How do you, how do you want to go with this?

SS: Well, let's--. You, you said you were born--, your family lived in Ballast Point.

KO: Oh, yeah. My, my family lived in Ballast Point. In fact, I was--. My earliest memories was we were living on Selbourne Avenue in Ballast Point, which is off of Interbay, and lived there until we moved to Fort Myers. My father, in my earliest memory of him, he was interes--, always interested in automobiles. He had worked with a garage and sold some automobiles down there in Ballast Point until the war came along. And because of his knowledge of the bay, Tampa Bay, he was able to get a warrant and went in the Army Air Corp as a warrant officer and captain of a crash boat here in Tampa Bay, where he practiced that throughout the war. And in early--. After the war was over-- either late 1945 or '46-- he retired from the--, left the Army Air Corp and went back into the automobile business. At that time, he--. I remember one of the first trips--, one of the first cars he bought after the war, he bought from somebody down on Boca Grande- the city of Boca Grande, on Gasparilla Island. It was a woman that owned a boarding house that the servicemen stayed in when he was stationed down there with his crash boat. And she had an old Lincoln. I don't remember the year of it, but I do know that she called in and said that he--, was he interested in buying it, and if so, he would have to come down there and bring four tires with him. She didn't have any tires on it. So he took me on this trip. We went by train from Tampa down to Boca Grande. Boca Grande was a railroad trestle that went across the phosphate docks that were down there. And they also had a passenger train that went there a couple of times a week. So we took the passenger train down to Boca Grande, got off. I remember spending the--, that night and the next day watching my dad try to get that old car going. And he worked on it for much of the day. But we carried four tires down with us and got the car running. And the second day we left, heading back to Tampa, taking the ferry. They had a ferry that took the car across, over to the mainland. And I remember our trip from, from Boca Grande back to Tampa, a distance of probably eighty miles, something like that. Had three flat tires on the way. Having to stop--, and of course, you didn't change them out. You stopped, and you repair. He brought that car back into Tampa, pulled it out to Ballast Point at--, to Junior Child's for the filling station, which was on the corner of Gandy and Bayshore- the Gulf Station. Pulled that car in front of that station, jacked it up, took the tires off of it, and put an ad in the paper and said the first thousand dollars walks away with this car.

SS: Mm hmm.

KO: The first person that came to look at it bought it. He was cussing himself because he didn't ask for more money. [Laughter] But that was, that was the way my dad was. Later on, he became a wholesale dealer. He would travel throughout Florida, buying used cars from dealers. Took them in on new car dealers and he'd buy--, go out and buy several cars from a lot-- sometimes a whole man's lot-- and transport those either back to Tampa for one of the automobile auctions that was held over at Lakeland, or on up to--. Valdosta; Macon, Georgia were the two largest automobile auctions at the time. And sell them up there, then go back and do that again. Anyway, that's--. He did that much of, much of his, much of his life in the '50s. I--. When we moved to Fort Myers, I spent two years down there going through the fourth and fifth grades-- sorry, fifth and sixth grades-- at--, in Fort Myers. And then we moved back to Tampa, to Davis Island. At this point, we were living on a boat, the Rowena, which was a--, I believe it was a 54-foot houseboat of some sort. And because we were getting back late in the school year--. And for what reason, I don't recall, my mother didn't particularly like the school I was going to be going to. And she arranged--, asked me if I would like to go to St. Leo, where a couple of my friends from Fort Myers were also going to be going. And I said yes. And so, I spent the--, my seventh, eighth, and ninth grades going to school up at St. Leo--

SS: --which was a boarding school.

KO: --which was a boarding school at the time, yes. It was a prep school- seventh grade through the twelfth grade- all they, all they did at that point in time. And so--. And during that time, my parents lived for about the first year on the boat at Marjorie Park Yacht Basin, Davis Island. They then moved to a house on Vasconia, up in Palma Ceia. And they lived there during the next couple of years, during the time I was spending most--, much of my time up at St. Leo. However, back in those days--. And this is, this is mostly covering the time after around we moved back to Tampa. Something that might be of interest is that in the summer time--. See, this was the days before air conditioning was popular, before much air conditioning anywhere. And living in the city at that time was extremely uncomfortable in the middle of the summer. So if you could, people tried to get out of the city, especially over to the beach. And during much of my pre-teen and teen years, my folks always managed to get a cottage, usually at Indian Rocks Beach. And we would go over there and spend three months, from the time I get out of school until school started again, living on Indian Rocks Beach. And it became a time when, on your way over there, where they'd pick me up from--. Later on, when I was going through--, to high school, they'd pick me up from school. And you'd go over there, you'd get onto a pair of shorts, and that was it. You'd stay in shorts for the rest of the summer. We seldom wore shoes; we just really lived for the summer. And Indian Rocks Beach was much quainter then than it is now. It, it didn't have the high-rise buildings. There were smaller cottages kind of nestled in among the Australian pines. Although the cottages were crowded. There were a lot of them, but they were old- just anything from small shacks to some rather nice homes. But if you could get a cottage that was somewhere right on the Gulf or just off the Gulf, you could count on getting those sea breezes. They were voluptuous.

SS: Fortunately, your father wasn't tied down by a ( )?

KO: No, he wasn't tied down by an office job. He had--. During much of this time, he was a wholesale car dealer. His time was his own, other than when he was traveling around Florida to buy his automobiles and taking them up to the auction, which could take two or three days out of the, out of the week. The rest of the time, he'd be home. So it worked out very well for him. In the tenth grade, I started--, I left St. Leo and went to, to Plant High School, where I finished off my education through the twelfth grade- ten, eleventh and twelfth grade there. I was a member of the Plant High School band, playing the tenor sax. Nothing really unusual that I can think occurred during that time, other than--. Well, we were supposed to make a band trip down to Havana. And that was the year that Castro decided to play games down there, so we lost out on that. We didn't get, we didn't get to do that. [Chuckle]

SS: I guess you were fortunate not to get there ( ).

KO: That's right. That's right! [Laughter]

SS: ( ) find that before you leave!

KO: But we--. It was something that was traditional, that if you went through three years of high school at Plant, you usually--. The band usually made a trip down to Havana for one of the celebrations during those three years. Well, I think I was the first where that didn't happen, and--. However, we had, we had a lot of good times. We had--, we went to several band competitions, and I think, as I recall, we did pretty well. Anyway, it was, it was an interesting time. I graduated in 1956 from Plant High School. And the following semester, I entered the University of Florida, where I went through three semesters up there before deciding to drop out one semester and make some extra money. And when I did, when I did this, when I dropped out that semester, I got notification that I was getting drafted. Through the grapevine, we heard that my name had been selected before I had actually got my, my notification. And not wanting to be drafted, I decided to try to get into the Air Force. Now, when I went there to the Air Force to enlist, to try to get in, all the quotas were filled- everything except the band. So I didn't really, really want to go into the Air Force for four years playing a band instrument. But if it was my only way in, I was going to do that. So they had an opening. I went to an audition over at the air base over near the Cape- I think it's named Patrick Air Force Base, I believe it was. Went over there to an audition, was accepted, came back, I enlisted. The recruiter said, "No problem. You get to Lackland, and you just tell them you want to change your career field. And you can go into whatever career field you want." Well, I guess I was a little gullible then. Got to Lackland. The first thing we hear is: there will be no career field jumping. Whatever you signed up for, that's what you got. However, during my stay there, while I was going through basic training, I did get the ear of one of our drill instructors. And he said that he agreed with me, that my--, a couple of years of school at the University of Florida and everything, I might be wasting my, wasting my talents there. And they got me in to interview with the colonel. And I ended up getting transferred to electronics squadron and got sent to Heathcliff Air Force Base for 14-month school there. And I came out of that as a ( ) for the Air Force, which I spent for the remainder of my career at the Air Force stationed at McCord Air Force Base in Washington state- Tacoma, Washington. And arriving back in Tampa in 1965, at which point I applied for and started to work for Honeywell. And I worked with Honeywell until our company, the Tampa division of Honeywell, was divested by Honeywell. And we became Group Technologies, where, several years ago--two years ago, in fact-- I retired as a quality control engineer there. And then we can--. That's an overall, big picture of everything that happened. I don't know--

SS: Well, I'd like to ask you if you remember much about Ballast Point.

KO: I remember quite a bit about Ballast Point.

SS: ( ) describe ( ) at this time?

KO: OK. Even though, during the--, even during the period of time that I wasn't exactly living there, my grandfather lived in Ballast Point. He lived at the foot of 2nd Street, which is--. We had five acres which I still own- I inherited that through him. So I got right now one of the-- to my way of thinking; we've had some disputes over this-- one the few, if not the last, legal farms in the city of Tampa. I've got tenants out there right now that do some gardening, and they have several farm-type animals- cows and ( ).

SS: So it's an actual producing farm.

KO: It is a producing farm. Now he's making most of his money off of honey. He's got a bee apiary out there. In fact, recently there was an--, a couple of, you know, over the last several years, there's been a couple of articles in the Tribune about ( ) out there. In fact, it was after the last ( ) that we got calls from other cities, saying, "Are you running this?"

SS: Uh-huh.

KO: And I think it's put to bed. We, we--. It is, it's always been used as a farm- that's what my grandfather bought it for. And we always had stuff growing there, from the time that we were living there, and my aunt and uncle, when they were living there. So it's, it's not doing anything now that it's ever done- at least since when we bought it in 1907.

SS: So therefore, it's grandfathered in?

KO: It's grandfathered in; it's grandfathered in- as long as we continue growing with it. And it's not very--. No one ever complains about it. And--. But anyway, it's--. What was Ballast Point like? I went--, first through the fourth grade, I went to Ballast Point School. It was a beautiful school. As I recall it, the school almost looks the same way as it did then, except it was a lot prettier. Back then they--, all the roofs had this Spanish-type tile on it, and there was vines growing up all over the sides of the buildings. So it just looked--. It was a beautiful old Spanish-style school, with iron gates over the doors that led down the hallways, which they've now removed. And it had a nice courtyard in the center. But essentially the school is very recognizable today as it used to be. I wish--, I'd like to see them restore it to the way it really, really can look, the way it is ( ). I--, I'd like to say, I grew up here when I was going through high school. This would have been in 1954, '55 and '56. I always did and still do love fishing. I was a big fan of fishing. And for the last couple of years I was in high school, I would come home in the evening. And by the time I got off the school bus ( ) and walked home, I would come in; change into a pair of wading shoes and an old pair of Levis; and take along a stringer and my rod and reel; and walk from my house down to Ballast Point, right over towards the Hillsborough Bay, not too far from the MacDill Field gates; and wade out there and catch trout. And I could, if it were afternoon, I could catch back then anywhere from 8 to 15 trout in an afternoon, before the sun went down, and which I would then carry up to Scionti's Fish Market up at--, on Bay-to-Bay. And he used to buy them from me, 25 cents scale-on, guts-in- just, just right on the stringer. ( ) that was my spending money. A lot of my spending money from high school was picked up that way.

SS: Do you happen to know how much he charged customers for that--, the same trout?

KO: I really don't. It couldn't have been much- probably 60 cents a pound or 50 cents a pound, something like that. But this was--. I'd just take my stringer in there, throw them on the scale, and whatever it came up to, he'd give me 25 a pound for. It was--, yeah, that was not bad money then; it gave me--, it gave a little spending money. But, but, you got to recall back then, it took for an evening out, you know--. If you was a junior or senior in high school, you get among your friends and see if you could get together a dollar. And you figure, well, 50 cents will put a little gas in the car. And 50 cents would get two people into the drive-in and maybe a couple more in the trunk, you know. [Laughter] So you'd have an evening, and that's the way you could do it. And so these 25 cents a pound for these trout made for some nice little spending money. It wasn't bad at all.

SS: When you went to the drive-in theatre, where was it?

KO: Oh, drive-in theater that we mostly frequented, for us living in Ballast Point, was the Dale Mabry Drive-In, which was located at the corner of Gandy and Dale Mabry. It was right next to the Jai-Alai Fronton. In fact, there was another thing. We'd walk on over to the Jai Alai Fronton and walk through, [Chuckle] but only when we couldn't get the money together. And that was, that was--. But that was the hangout then; that was the big--, that's where you went. If you weren't going to a movie to hang out, and you just wanted to meet with your friends and stuff, there were the drive-in restaurants. Our favorite was the Colonnade. That was the big one at that time. The Colonnade--

SS: Is that the same Colonnade that--?

KO: Same Colonnade there that's a sit-down restaurant now, but it was in the same location. But it was a small building up front. And the back, where the big parking lot was, that used to be just pull-in-there-and-park. And you'd get out and order a cherry Coke or a vanilla Coke, and maybe something else just to hold the spot. Then you'd get out and walk around and visit with all your friends. [Laughter] And it became a way of life, it was the way of--. That was a Plant High School hangout. That, and there were a couple other drive-ins that we also went to. There was Zi-Chex, which was on the corner Gandy and Dale Mabry. There was Chicken N' Chips, which was on the corner of El Prado and Dale Mabry. There was Seely's Chicken and--, Seely's something and I think Chicken and something; it was up on Bayshore. But it was up near where the Jewish temple is now, up in that area. Those were our big hangouts. Now, if you talk to somebody living out at Hillsborough High School or something like that, they'd have different ones on their side of town. And--, but it was a very, very good way of life. We had--. I--. From what I understand it, when I left back in the '60s, I guess, they started clamping down and making people stay in their cars. And couldn't get out and walk around and that. That would have been terrible. You know, we, we never--. There must have been some trouble out there, but I do not recall--. I really cannot recall any fights or anything going on. Really, you hear about one every once in a while, but I never--. Maybe I was just unlucky. I never got to see them.

SS: Real Archie and Veronica kind of stuff ( ). Idyllic.

KO: Yeah. It was, it was fun, it was, you know, a bunch of kids getting together and having a good time. Of course, we didn't consider ourselves kids then. We were very adult and sophisticated. But nobody else understood us. [Laughter] However--.

SS: In those days, did you get north of Kennedy very much, or is that basically--

KO: Well, that was, that was pretty much for us out there. Yeah, as you got older and stuff, the generation kind of almost got into--, as it got a little older where you--, if you got in with the partying crowd, the drinking crowd ( ). I know on North Dale Mabry there was a bar out there called the ( ) that used to be a popular place. But let's say, I remember seeing that when we were like sophomores and juniors in high school, the older guys would go out there. But never, never got into that, maybe because I was not really in the area that much, after going up to the University of Florida. And then from there, I went on to the service. But, but the whole Interbay area, which I thought was really nice. ( ) you heard about, you heard about some fights and things. There were some drag races that I did not really participate in. I did know of them going on, but not--. I, I just do not recall any instance where, where there was real anything malicious going on. One time--. I will, I will amend that. I understand that back in the '50s-- early '50s-- ( ), there was a big football game every year in Tampa between Plant and Hillsborough. I remember now- at this point in time, you had Plant, Hillsborough and Jefferson were the three public schools, main public schools. You had Brewster, which was a technical school. You had Jesuit, which was the Catholic school. And those were the high schools in Tampa. You didn't have ( ). And Jefferson was kind of a late-comer. I mean, it was--, it had been there the whole time I was at school, but it never worked its way into big Thanksgiving football games. It was always--. Every Thanksgiving at Plant Field-- which was up by the old fairgrounds in Tampa, University of Tampa-- Plant Field, there used to be a big football game between the university--, between Hillsborough High School and Plant High School. It was one of these so-called blood games. But I do recall, one of the years that I was there that there was incident where somebody came over and slashed some tires at the Colonnade, and it was blamed upon Hillsborough ( ). But I wasn't there that night; I don't know--, I don't really know what happened. And I don't recall whether it was ever really proven that they did it, or somebod--. I don't know. But I do recall that incident.

SS: Were any reprisals taken?

KO: It wouldn't, it wouldn't surprise me if--. My, my recollection is not good. I don't remember. Probably ( ). [Laughter]

SS: And you went to St. Leo's.

KO: St. Leo, yes. Seventh, eighth, and ninth grades.

SS: And you had some--. I heard some stories about someone had a choir there?

KO: Oh, yeah. I was--. I'd mentioned that while I was there, I sang in the choir from the seventh to the ninth grade. I started off as a soprano. And I was finally singing alto when I ( ). And--, but during the summer, I was living back in Tampa out in Ballast Point. All my friends in my neighborhood were going to the Interbay Methodist Church at that time. We try to--. It's a good program for teens. We would, we'd go there on Sunday and they'd have--. One night during the week they'd have a gathering of some sort. And they found out that I was singing ( ) choir. And the minister asked if I would like to join their choir. Well, I did; I ( ) for a couple of summers there, singing with the Methodist choir during the summer. And in the winter, I was singing St. Leo Catholic choir.

SS: And of course, you aren't a Catholic, so ( )--

KO: No, I'm not a Catholic. No, I'm, I'm not. I'm really non-denominational and ( ). [Chuckle] But it was very interesting, and at the time--. Well, at the same time, my folks were Baptists, and I was even going to a few services with my mother at the Ballast Point Baptist Church. But I didn't participate as much ( ).

SS: What do you recall about Davis Island when you were living on the boat?

KO: Just ( ). I rode all over the island on my bicycle. It was not all that much different than it is today, other than the hospital. The hospital was much smaller then, although it's still big. We considered it a big hospital. You didn't have as much traffic over there as you do now. But--. And I've been over to Davis Island recently. And you know, riding around, it's very recognizable as to what it looked like in the '50s. It was fairly well-developed and all that during that time- no vacant lots, or very few; no more than there are today. It's a, there was a--. In high school, one thing about Davis island was the ( ) down there, which back then, it used to be sort of a lover's lane. It was kind of an interesting parking area down there, which I don't believe you can do anymore. I think that's been taken over by--

[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START TAPE 1, SIDE B]

SS: It's, it's been taken over by a yacht club.

KO: Yeah. There's a yacht club that's down there now. But back then, it was nothing but just an old dirt road. You can drive off the end down there. It was a, it was a teen parking place ( ).

SS: Did your parents take the houseboat out, or did they ( )?

KO: It stayed back. We, we only lived on it for--, I think it was like two years until we sold the boat. But it was just a little more than what you really wanted to do with it. My dad was--, he always had boats, always had automobiles that he'd buy and hold on to them a few years, then sell them- fix them up, turn a profit on them, and then get out and move to something else. That was a--, but that was a nice little boat. It was--, I think it was 56 feet long- 54, 56 feet. Had seven state rooms in it and a large conc--, large saloon up top with a spiral staircase that went down to the state room and the dining room down below, and a big kitchen in the galley. That was, it was a nice little boat. It was something probably built back in the '20s.

SS: Mm hmm. With some variations.

KO: Yeah, yeah. But it had not been--, it was not in pristine condition, let's face it. But it was livable. We were able to live in it. And it's pretty nice. I enjoyed it. That's all. Oh, let's see. [Pause]

SS: Now, a lot of people don't--, probably don't know what--. You mentioned a crash boat.

KO: Yeah, a crash boat! Yeah!

SS: People don't ( ) know what that is.

KO: A crash boat is--. The duties of a crash boat have been pretty much taken over by helicopters and sea rescue men. But before the days of a helicopter, airplane went down on water, you had to have a way of getting to it. And I don't know, there was--, there used to be an old saying in--, for MacDill Field that "One a Day in Tampa Bay," you know, type of thing. [Chuckle] How often is it being used? Not only MacDill, but Drew Field and a couple of other airbases in the area were being used as training fields. You had a lot of pilots ditching those aircraft out there, especially, you know, coming into the fairly short runway at MacDill anyway at that time. If they overestimate it, they'd run off the end of it. Well, the crash boats were there to go after these downed aircraft. And during the time my father was in it during the war, he was stationed not only at the crash boat docks at MacDill, but also at the crash boat docks at Rocky Point. The ones over at the Belleview, the big hotel--

SS: The Biltmore.

KO: --The Biltmore, The Biltmore Hotel over in Clearwater. The--. There, it was being used--, the whole hotel was being used as an R & R center for, for ( ) shell-shocked, or whatever. Anyway, but the yacht basin had been used as a crash boat dock then. And he was also stationed for a long time at the crash boat docks down at Boca Grande ( ). And he did have at least one incident where he had an encounter with a ( ) of a German sub, I thought, off the mouth of Tampa Bay, because he can recall sitting there and seeing the torpedoes go right underneath him. [Laughter] He said--. Of course, the crash boats are very shallow draft; they were wood, so they didn't have anything to attract anything. So I don't know whether he was just telling me a story or what, you know? I don't--, I really don't know, but it was interesting, because I was impressionable at the age. He could've, he could've embellished a little bit.

SS: It was common knowledge that submarines are coming up into the Gulf?

KO: Yes. Yes, it was my understanding, my understanding, they were, they were attacking our shipping. Now, you--. Most of ( ) did not come that far into the Gulf. You heard a lot about them down around the Straits of Florida. In fact, I can remember hearing stories about them actually sinking many of the tankers and things going in the Gulf Stream out there. But now, Tampa was a little further north. I did hear a story once that there was a German mariner--submariner-- that was captured somewhere in Tampa, in uniform, with a bag full of groceries under his arms. ( ) had a gray coat on or something, where he was hiding his uniform, but--. And he was trying to reposition, I guess, one of the submarines out there. You got to figure these guys were many, many miles from home and they got--, somehow they got to get supplies. I don't know. I don't know if that's true or not. But it was told to me.

SS: But you were just a little guy during the war.

KO: Oh, yeah.

SS: Do you remember much about--

KO: I remember when we--, when my dad was over at the Biltmore, when he was stationed over there, my mother and I took up residence on Indian Rocks Beach. What I remember--. And I can remember it very vividly. And what we call Sand Island now, which is like the other side of--, between Indian Rocks Beach and Clearwater Beach, was a pirate practice area, the aircraft. And they had bunkers and pirate bunkers and such set out there. There was no, no explosives; they used ( ). But these aircraft going over--. And I can recall sitting down here and watching them and hearing them zoom in, go over and dropping their bombs. And they also did target practice out there on towed targets. And I can remember seeing these aircraft pulling these great big targets behind them, and then aircraft coming over and shooting ( ). I was what- five or six years old at the time, seven years old maybe, and I ( ) that was really impressive to me. That was great stuff. [Laughter]

SS: Great stuff in the ( ).

KO: Yeah. It was, it was, it was super. But it--. That happened all summer long. It was one summer we stayed over there. And--. But I remember one other thing: during that summer, my dad was able to get the boat one day and bring it around, and brought it into shore, got my mother and me on board, and took us for a ride. I don't remember how he did that. It was ( ). [Laughter]

SS: ( )?

KO: Huh? ( ). Nope, nope, nope. But I did. And those were, those were fast boats then. These were, these the same boats that the Navy used to ( ). They were, they were very, very fast boats; they would travel 50 to 55 miles per hour, easy. And they just weren't ready ( ) torpedo ( ). They had [Tape skips] gear onboard, rescue gear, stuff like that. But they did have a machine gun ( )- I remember that. They still had that, some sort of ( ). But it was--, that was, that was a real thrill to me, getting a ride in that thing. Later, let's see, back in the, in the '50s, we still every summer--. And my dad would get a cottage over at the beach to get out of the heat of Tampa. And I even used to have a paper route over at Indian Rocks Beach that I took over from a friend of mine that lived over there for a summer, while they were off on vacation. And--

SS: When did you first live in air conditioned homes?

KO: I first lived in an air conditioned home probably about 1954, would be my guess; about 1954. My dad had a used car lot when we were living in Fort Myers, and he was, he was always the first to have something. And he had a little bitty postage stamp office, if he had windowed air conditioner that he'd brought back when--. This would've been 1949, 1950. This thing was a huge thing. ( ) made all kinds of noise; it was terrible. But he had an air conditioned office at his new job, I remember that. We didn't have one at home.

SS: When did you get one?

KO: About 1954, I believe. That's--

SS: ( )?

KO: That would been, that would have been while we were living in Palma Ceia. I think we had a room air conditioner for the bedroom.

SS: Uh-huh.

KO: I think the first one was--. I didn't have one in my room. My folks had one in their bedroom. Because we had big fans. My dad always had a big--, one of these attic-type fans that he would put the screen around, that we'd carry with us over the beach and everything. ( ) hurricane in the house with that.

SS: ( ).

KO: Yeah, no, he'd just--, we'd just set it up in the room, and get that thing going. But we did have in our homes, at that time, we had attic fans. ( ). You could turn that on and close all the windows in the house except for a couple in the bedrooms, and have them about half open. And you'd get a pretty good breeze coming through there.

SS: Terrazzo floors ( ).

KO: Yep, yep, the terrazzo floors. In Fort Myers, we were down there, we also got a cottage at the beach each summer. And I remember this one in particular, this cottage we got there for a couple of summers. It was--. Houses on that beach, unlike ours, were normally built on stilts back then, because they had a lot more high water problems than we did. This house was on stilts; somebody had to be closed up. And it made two bedrooms down below, which we as kids--my cousins who were staying with us at the time-- we had this bedroom down below. And it was hot: just two little bitty windows in that room, and no good circulation. And I remember, had a concrete floor on it. And I got memories of, of--. You'd go to bed at night, and no telev-- this was before television-- you had to have a radio then. And we had great radio programs ( ) all kinds of good radio programs. And I can remember, even with the little fan that we had in there, being so hot that we'd get out of bed, lay down on the concrete floor, with nothing between us and the concrete, and just use that as a heat ( ) to cool us off, and sit there and listen to this radio program into the night. It was interesting. It got hot; you wanted to get a breeze. Of course, the main part of the house is up in ( ). But if you didn't have an extra bedroom…[Chuckle] Being young and being the kids, we had to suffer. That's the way it was; that's the way it was.

SS: And you went to work with Honeywell when?

KO: I went to work with Honeyw--. I got out of the Air Force in 1965, and I started that same year. I started in October of that year with Honeywell as a technician.

SS: What kinds of things did you work on with Honeywell? What was, what was--

KO: Well, it was--. I was with the design group. There, we--. When I first started wor--, started to work for them, we were working on some cryptographic equipment for the military. Yeah, it was military stuff. And we--. The campus communications division-- which we finally later became known as-- we were always in the military cryptographic-type communications stuff, and stayed in that. In fact, even after we divestitured-- we became Lucent Technologies-- we still kept the same structure, the same customers, and everything- pretty much what we did now. We did diversify after that, and actually go into the commercial world, too. But I stayed with more the military side the whole time I was there.

SS: Did your folks use computers?

KO: No, neither of my folks use computers.

SS: No, I mean--. No, I mean at, at Honeywell.

KO: Oh! Did I, did I use ( )? Oh, I, I--. Cutting edge. Earliest, earliest I could get my hands on it. Any kind of computer. The earliest computer I remember was a little suitcase-- blue suitcase-- that was about the size of a medium-size Samsonite suitcase- big ol' thing. You opened that thing up; it had a keyboard in it- weighed probably 80 pounds, 90 pounds. And it had a--. It didn't have a screen- you would just type ( ). Have a--. Use that thermal-sensitive paper, full- size paper. And you'd call in on a telephone and use a--. [Pause] What's the, what's the word I'm--

SS: Acoustic.

KO: Yeah, acoustic coupler to, to tie the computer after you get a hold of it. At that point, we--, our main computer with Honeywell was in Minneapolis. So we were connecting into this computer up in Minneapolis--

SS: ( ).

KO: Yeah, time share. We'd type in stuff, and then it ( ). The material comes ( ) back out to about 300-bulb connection, and--

SS: Like a, like a mistake.

KO: [Laughter] It was--, that was, that was the first. Then, then I--. Then, from then on, there were those personal computers started coming out. Honeywell got into the personal computer business right when IBM did. And they had a competing--. Or actually, I got in myself a little earlier. I started out with the Apples. I started with an Apple II, then went to an Apple III. I never got into the Macintoshes. But I bought one of the Honeywell 8086 computers for home, then upgraded that later on to a Pentium from Gateway. And now I've got a Pentium II from Dell. But I've always kept up my proficiency. I usually--, I've done a bunch of programming and things. So I know database management and design, and things like that.

SS: Personally, how primitive ( ).

KO: Yeah. Oh, it was awful.

SS: I've seen large air conditioned rooms of banks of computers that probably had no more capabilities than the ones you have on your desk.

KO: I have a related story on that. I was going through basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in the Air Force. One of our classes that we had one Sunday, they took our whole flight-- a group of people out of our flight-- and took us over to clean computer rooms- mop it down. ( ) Sunday, and this place was closed down, and we had to go in there and spent the day swabbing this place down, and cleaning it up good. And they had one person cleaning this computer ( ), but it was kind of closed down. And we're talking about a room, now, that was much larger than our house here- a big room, ice cold, heavily air conditioned, raised floors, tape drives everywhere. Yeah, it was, it was just a huge amount of stuff in this room.

SS: What was the Air Force running out of all this?

KO: And, well, I don't know exactly what he was running, but we got to talking with this guy. It was ( ). And I recall statements he made and he says, "Boy," he says, "you guys don't realize that this is one of the largest computers in the Air Force." And he says, "We run all kinds of stuff here." He says, "This thing has a full 64 megs of memory." And I cannot--. I couldn't--. You know, I couldn't, just couldn't perceive that. ( ). I'm going to stick with 64 megs. It may have been 64 kilomegs that he said. I think it was; I think it was 64 kilomegs that he said this thing had. It was an unbelievable huge thing. ( ). Of course, all the programmers back there wrote for that. You had a lot more ( ) code than you do today, and you didn't need as much memory. Everything was swapped in and out. But still, that was a little Apple II that I had. The first Apple II that I had ever bought had more power than that did. [Laughter]

SS: And that was what- twenty years later?

KO: Yes, that was twenty years later. That was in 19--, that was in 1961. So that was a--, just a huge amount of equipment, but very--, what we considered a ( ). But it was a massive ( ).

SS: ( ) about what your--, what people in the Interbay area did for shopping back in the '50s. What was available?

KO: ( )? We--. Britton Plaza was the big shopping center in--, certainly in '55-'56. Trying to think ( ). It was about '54, I think, when they built that, but I'm not, I'm not real sure about that. But Britton Plaza was the shopping center for that part of Tampa.

SS: ( ) stores were in there?

KO: Belk Lindsey ( ). There was a big Belk Lindsey. Boy, let me tell you, big theater there. There was a Penney's on--. I'm sorry, it's just too much thought. I mentioned that I was in the Plant High School band. One of the things that we did-- and this might be of some interest-- in I think this was in 1955, Maas Brothers opened what was considered one of the largest furniture stores in the country, there on Gandy Boulevard. And it's still--, the building is still there now. And I think it's a Burdines now, OK? But Maas Brothers opened this store, and it was a--, it was a big enough thing to get television coverage on. I remember they had-- I think it was WTVT at the time-- or maybe not- maybe it was WSUN. Could've been WSUN, but, but TV coverage in it, and they had Plant High School band come there for the opening. And I remember we marched down in front of the store there, right into the cameras while they were taking pictures of the opening of this big, massive home decorating furniture store. And also that same year, which we were associated-- I think this was in '55, might have been '54-- ( ) they opened up a big trailer park right there on the corner of Westshore and Gandy. That was called Jersey--. Oh man, I'll never forget that. Supposed to be the largest trailer park in the world- most--. I'm sorry, I can't remember the name. Jersey something, I believe- Jersey City, I believe it was. It was--, it's still there; that trailer park is still there, but they--, it was a ( ) when they opened that. That was something else that got abandoned, I forgot. So we got involved in a little bit of local stuff at that time. Otherwise, shopping was still uptown, but not--. It was dying; that town was dying at that time. But you still had Maas Brothers; Kress is still uptown, I guess; and Woolworth; and some of those stores. Other thing that had disappeared by this time-- certainly after the war-- was the streetcar. We had streetcars out there in Port Tampa until about 19--, [Pause] probably--. You know, I think probably they disappeared when I was in Fort Myers. But I remember when I was in grade school, I used to pay a nickel to ride the streetcar out to school from Sheldon, up to where I get off and walk to Ballast Point. Then later, they opened up the bus transportation. Then, probably 1956 or '57-- this is about the year I graduated from high school and made it ( )-- they opened Westshore Plaza. And that was the first enclosed-type shopping center that we were familiar with. Before that, you had Britton Plaza and what was it? Northgate, I think, was the other one- something called Northgate, out on Florida Avenue. Equivalent to Britton Plaza. But Britton Plaza was a big thing. ( ).

SS: Free parking?

KO: Yeah! Oh Yeah! Yeah, yeah. That's right. That was quite a thing, quite a thing, quite a thing. But by the time I was in high school, we had just the one television station in town. That was--, and that's why I corrected. And I don't think it was for the--, I think it was WSUN, Channel 38- used to be UHF, and it had this weird-looking ( ) tower. ( ) I was just trying to think some of the other stations in there. And I've lost that now. But it was a--, it was--, you know, with age and with time, I'm sure a lot of the bad stuff kind of filtered out of one's mind, but it still seemed like a much gentler time back then. It was still back in the day- '50s ( ). I remember when we'd go to the beach for the summer. We didn't even ( ) lock on our door, on our front door there, didn't even work. ( ). It had been painted over so many times it wouldn't work. So my dad used to take a nail, and nail it through the door, and nail it shut while we were gone ( ). But you just didn't lock your doors back then. You just didn't. Us kids, we were--, we did things that I'm sure you'd, you'd probably get--. If you let your kids run around and do things that we did unsupervised back then, you'd be in trouble today. And I wouldn't recommend it today. But we never had any problems.

SS: ( ).

[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[END OF INTERVIEW]