In Thursday’s Trib, there is a story about the Travelers Motel being torn down and replaced by a 34 home subdivision.
I have bizarrely fond memories of this place. This 1932 motor court is located on Nebraska Avenue, north of Fowler. Writer Connie May Fowler lived in that motel as a child and it was featured in her book “Before Women Had Wings.” In the early 1990’s we lived a few blocks away from the motel on the other side of the Interstate when Susan read that book. What a surprise for us to then find the motel in the book was just around the corner from us.
From Kirkus Reviews:(On Amazon)
“Gritty detail aside, this lyrical tale of an abused child’s survival and empowerment is more fable than yet another story of a dysfunctional family facing down its demons. Set in her native Florida, a place of sandy scrub and rundown motor-courts, Fowler’s tale (River of Hidden Dreams, 1994, etc.) offers a child, Avocet Abigail Jackson (Bird for short), as the chronicler of one redneck family’s misery and mayhem. Glory Marie, the mother, gave Bird and her older sister, Phoebe, birds’ names because birds could “fly above” the debris in their lives. And the girls will need to do a lot of metaphorical flying if they are to survive their increasingly violent childhood.
Bird and her dirt-poor family live in an orange grove near the small store her parents run. Billy, the father, is suicidal and prone to drunken rages in which he beats his children and fights with his wife. But the family’s troubles multiply when Glory Marie buys a car of her own and spends time away from home. Mad with jealousy, Billy pays someone to beat up Glory Marie, and then–horrified by what he’s done–he disappears, only to be found a few days’ later, a suicide.
Mother and daughters head for Tampa, where Glory Marie finds work and a home for the family at the Travelers Motel. Phoebe does well at school, but Bird doesn’t–she takes to staying home instead, befriending Miss Zora, a mysterious black woman who lives in one of the motel cabins. It’s Miss Zora, a healer and a wise woman, who saves them all when the grieving Glory Marie starts drinking heavily and badly beats Bird. Under Miss Zora’s wing (as it were), the two girls can fly away to safety while their mother heals. A vividly modern if schematic fairy tale with the usual goodies and baddies appropriately updated.”
As I mentioned in a prior Seminole Heights Blog post, we have a piece of the motel in our yard.
“One day after we moved to Seminole Heights, we were driving down Nebraska headed home when spotted the table top at the motel laying broken on the ground. She asked me to see if I could get it. Maybe to break up and use for a walkway. So I did. I told them my wife was an artist and wanted to use the pieces for an art project. So they gave it to me. Heavy, heavy thing. Took it home. Since it was rebared together, we decided to keep all the pieces together and use it as a base. Moving it once I dropped it on Susan’s fingers. Fortunately nothing was broken”
Sad to see another piece of Florida destroyed.
Crossposted on Seminole Heights Blog.
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