T-Gard

When Dave and I went to Florida in February, we stopped to visit a place that is very significant in my life -- Tropical Gardens, where I lived with a roommate during college in my first apartment.

The complex is no longer called Tropical Gardens -- it's been through several name changes in the 40 years since I lived there -- but to me it will always be "T-Gard," as we affectionately called it. The apartment Robert and I shared is up those stairs, second door from the right -- number 250, as I recall. I took these photos on my recent visit.

Here's the courtyard. Our windows were the second and third from the left on the upper floor.

As you can see, the place is a little rough around the edges, and that was true even when we lived there. Robert and I knew each other from high school and we'd lived on the same floor in the dorms, where we each had different roommates. When we decided to find our own place we figured we'd just get a one-bedroom apartment somewhere. We'd lived with other guys in a dorm room so the idea of sharing a bedroom didn't seem like an issue, and we couldn't afford the rent on a two-bedroom place.

But in Tampa at that time, many apartment complexes had a rule against renting a one-bedroom apartment to two men. They wanted to keep away "undesirables," you see. Tropical Gardens didn't make an issue of that -- and again, the price was right. I think we paid $250 a month for our unit, which had terrible insulation and was hot as hell in the summer. Our air conditioner was a little wall unit (like the ones you see above) and totally inadequate to the job, and also we tried not to run it because we wanted to save money.

Here's an ad from the student newspaper from 1980, just five years before we lived there.

T-Gard was in an area that came to be known as Suitcase City, with lots of inexpensive rental housing. That didn't always attract the best clientele. One night we heard gunshots. Another night, Robert and I were walking through the neighborhood and a man flashed and propositioned us. (Mind you, this was definitely not a gay area.) "No, that's okay," I said to him lamely.

Our next-door neighbors used to argue loudly in Spanish, and some guys across the courtyard -- also students -- used to sit in their apartment in their underwear with the curtains wide open. It was not a show anyone wanted to see, but I'm sure they were suffering from the heat just like we were.

Our neighbor downstairs worked as a clerk at a local convenience store. She had a little dog, and I was shocked when I once visited her -- delivering a package or something -- and saw that she allowed the dog to simply poop on the floor, wherever it wanted. She hastily picked up several piles as I stood there.

So, yeah, it was an interesting place. Eye-opening, for a young relatively sheltered college boy like me.

Here are some pictures of T-Gard back in 1985. As you can see, there was a pool then, and we happily swam in it. Our apartment was on the upper right in the first old photo above. You can barely see my bougainvillea plant sitting on the air conditioner.

Here's what it looked like inside. Very collegiate, with the bicycle propped against the bookcase and papers strewn everywhere. No computers, though!

Here's the kitchen. We did a little bit of cooking, but nothing very elaborate. I think we owned one saucepan (pictured), one frying pan and one baking pan (pictured). I went through a phase where I was buying generic products like that big jar of non-dairy creamer. God only knows what was in it. I still have that yellow kitchen timer hanging on the wall!

Anyway, we only stayed in T-Gard a year before we moved to a two-bedroom apartment closer to campus. By then I had a couple of jobs and was making more money, and we could step up in the world. But I will always remember the year of 1985-86 in T-Gard, where we fortunately did not die.