The Florida Collection, from the Jacksonville Public Library

The Florida Collection is an online resource made available by the Jacksonville Public Library. It includes biographical sketches, historic photographs, and old postcards, among other things. Browsing through the postcard index, I discovered:

* a 1900s photograph of horses at the starting line at Moncrief Park

* two brave men plucking feathers from an ostrich, and

* a 1940s advertisement for Berney's Restaurant.

The Berney's card proclaims "Dine with the Man in Green from Ripley's 'Believe it or Not'." And sure enough, there's a man in a green suit. A little googling finds a January 18, 1937, letter to the editor, published in Time magazine: "Dressed completely in green day and night, he will give to any woman dressed entirely in green the choice of his menu, gratis. ... The only man in Florida to drive an automobile with a green licenses, he has even painted the 'White Horse' Scotch whisky statue green."

Commemorative Building Replicas

This weekend the Tampa Bay Devil Rays gave replicas of Tropicana Field to the first 12,000 fans through the gate, to commemorate their 10th season. The replica is about the size of an adult's hand, and has a lid that lifts off to reveal the field and stands. It is easily my favorite Rays giveaway (of course, bobbleheads and bats are also good). Tropicana Field is older than the Devil Rays, having opened in 1990 as the Suncoast Dome.


I have another souvenir, a Cat's Meow Village wooden cutout of the Roser Chapel in Anna Maria. I bought this when we spent July 4, 2002 at the beach. The local historical society was selling them in their giftshop. There's a little story about the building on the back of the wooden cutout.

This idea of commemorative building replicas is intriguing. What draws us to these knick-knacks? Do they keep the idea of a place fresh in our minds? On a more practical level, do they work as fundraisers or promotional items?