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South Of The River
 “Captain! Captain! Off the
starboard bow! We have what appears to be an anomaly!”
While
Kirk always seemed to define an anomaly as just about anything that
wasn’t aboard the Enterprise, Webster says thus, “Anomaly –
deviation from the regular arrangement, general rule, or usual
method.” So if you ain’t doing it the way it is regularly done you
must be an anomaly.
And folks, we have an anomaly right here
in Ruskin.
On the south bank of the Little Manatee, in that zone
that isn’t in the Ruskin Community Plan, but that for the most part
considers itself a tried and true part of the little town that
doesn’t really exist, a house is rising from the sand that begs to
be known as off the beaten path. An anomaly of the first
magnitude.
I first met the designer of this truly unique
creation when a recurring boating excursion took me to a dock
directly beside empty ground where activity was beginning to take
place. I had been by this lot along the river’s south side and near
the bay often over the previous few years and finally one could see
construction underway. This particular day a young man in torn cut
offs and worn, steel toed boots was digging what appeared to be a
house’s basic footers. I assumed him to be a day laborer from some
temporary work service until we began conversing. It was then I
discovered the day laborer was actually the architect.
The
architect!
With dirty hands!
Over the next few months I
watched in amazement as this young innovator, Mike Calvino turned
out to be his name, dug the footers, poured the footers, laid the
concrete block, roughed in the plumbing and electric, and then built
the metal trusses from scratch to support this ever expanding and
miraculous maze!
And the project itself? Breathtaking in its
imagination. Half way through the construction of this living,
breathing body by the bay I took my daughter to the site. To see
this amazing design, but also to meet the force behind it. Mike is
an accessible genius, ready to show off his precocious offspring. He
gladly took my daughter on the ten minute tour, explaining to her
how the monstrous wood beams that supported the three story
structure would be fabricated on site, and wrangled into place.
With, of course, Mike creating and wrangling it all
himself.
When we left the house, staring back at its looming
steel skeleton stretching high over the neighborhood, my daughter
summed up her experience by noting a book she was reading for her
high school philosophy class.
“That,” she said matter of
factly, “Is Howard Roark.”
Howard Roark was the architectural
genius in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”, and as I have mentioned
before, a big favorite of my daughter. Still, I found it strange she
thought it no big deal to find Roark in Ruskin.
So that
brings us back to this anomaly point. Is this “deviation from the
regular arrangement” related to the fact Ayn Rand probably never
envisioned South Hillsborough as the setting for her philosophical
conflicts? Possibly. Partly. But the true anomaly, at least in my
mind, and for all of us, goes back to this past year’s struggle for
the future of this region, wrapped up in the soon to be finished
community plans. Those who argued 4,000 square foot lots were
essential continually returned to one telling point. “This area can
not support higher end development. There is no market for homes
filling large lots, and no profit in these ventures.”
My
reply is, take a drive down Gulf City Road. Turn off onto Canal
Street and follow it to a sign marking 1012. Look right, look up,
and then, when you’re over your sense of wonder, tell me this market
doesn’t exist.
Potential buyers as well.
As Captain Kirk
continually discovered, anomalies, like the Borg, are
everywhere.
Final note. Mike’s work, including the “Ruskin
House”, can be found on line at
www.calvinodesign.com.
wade@gate.net
© Copyright 2004 by The Observer
News Publications and M&M Printing Company, Inc.
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