Brass Bowl

We see and say the names daily, but we rarely know who they were.  Adamo Drive is one of Hillsborough county’s main roadways, traversing east and west across most of the developed area.  But who was Adamo? 

This marker is located on Franklin Street, next to Tampa’s New City Hall 

LT. COL FRANK S. ADAMO, MD

———————-Bataan’s Medical Hero——————–

 This distinguished native Tampan served with courage, honor and personal sacrifice as an army surgeon during World War II.  He was captured and made a prisoner of war when the Japanese overran the Philippines.  Afflicted with Beri-beri and other diseases he performed heroically serving his comrades as doctor, friend and lifesaver.

 Dr. Adamo discovered a revolutionary method in the treatment of gangrene using hydrogen peroxide and saved thousands of gangrenous limbs.  A grateful nation decorated him with the medal of the Legion of Merit.  When he returned home he found that First Avenue, a major thoroughfare, had been named Frank S. Adamo Drive in his honor.

 ——————————————————————————

  Col. Adamo passed away in 1988 at the age of 95.

Below is an image of a map of Fort Brooke.    This is set in the paved walk along Cotanchobee Park, which is south of the Ice Palace St. Pete Times Forum (in Tampa!).  The map does not give a date of the layout, but my guess is 1830’s.

On this map, north is up.  Davis Islands and Harbor Island are not shown as they have not been created/expanded yet during the dredging operations of the first part of 20th century.

TPD on bikes.  I don’t know why.  But the pictures tell the rest of the story.  Well, almost.  More after the last picture.

Three guesses on what the driver of the pink 350Z looks like…

Female.    Check

Blonde.    Check.

BIG Blue Eyes.  Double check.

A Montana cowboy was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud toward him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?” The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, Why not?” The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an e-mail on his Blackberry that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with e-mail on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, “You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.” “That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,” says the cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the cowboy says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?” The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why not?” “You’re a Congressman in the U.S. government,” says the cowboy. “Wow, that’s correct,” says the yuppie. “But how did you guess that?” “No guessing required,” answered the cowboy. “You showed up here even though nobody called you, you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are, and you don’t know a thing about cows. This is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog.”

Text of image follows.

The Fort & Town of Tampa

Above Whiting St. & the military reservation, the town of Tampa was taking shape even as the wars continued.  First came those who provided skills useful to the military; cobblers, harness makers, laundresses, blacksmiths, among others.  Sometimes their families came as well.  Among the officers & men who appreciated the intensity of Florida’s climate & landscape, some stayed on after their service, as merchants or government agents.  Throughout the wars, & years of intermittent raids & skirmishes, the Indians continued to visit Fort Brooke & Tampa also, to trade or fish, or conduct other business.  The Indians had made it clear all along that their fight was not with individuals but, rather with a government that would go so far as to kill them in order to take away their homes.  But the withdrawal of troops in 1842 angered & frightened many Floridians, & tensions mounted again, until their erupted in a short series of skirmishes that constituted the 3^rd Seminole War (1856-58).  U.S. Soldiers destroyed a camp & garden belonging to Billy Bowlegs, & the Indians fought back.  For the second time, however, the U.S. made a unilateral decision to pull its troops out.  The cost of removing the few hundred remaining Seminoles would far outweigh the benefits.  They would finally be left alone in their homeland.  The tiny community of Tampa would remain also, until the coming of Henry Plant’s railroad, in the late 19^th century, would provide a distinct economic base for municipal growth.