‘Tis the season for festive events and the Tampa Bay area celebrates in colorful style, with holiday light shows and decorated boat parades. There are so many options, that it actually isn’t possible to attend them all.

Many of the events are long-standing traditions because they are well-planned and attendees have a wonderful time. Unfortunately, not all events work out. I recently read about one that was an unmitigated disaster*.

The eight day extravaganza was held in downtown Tampa back in 1958 and it’s so infamous that it is still discussed to this day. Howard Hilton (of the Hilton & Gray Advertising Agency) pitched a winter wonderland to downtown business leaders and they eagerly hopped on board.

Snow Show would feature the nation’s tallest Christmas tree, a 5-story ski slope with toboggan rides, an ice rink with skate performances throughout the day, a world record ice cube, “reindeer”, and, of course, Santa.

What transpired reads like a script for a National Lampoon movie. The troubles began with the tree. The governor of Minnesota enlisted a logging company to scour the North Woods for a massive specimen. They bulldozed a road in order to haul it out and then strapped it on a train bound for Florida.

The tree was so immense that it snapped in Indiana when the train rounded a curve. The logging company attempted to get another tree but their equipment bogged down in the mud. Finally, a second company shipped a suitable tree.

Upon arrival, engineers took extra precautions and dug a hole in the middle of Franklin Street. The towering conifer was carefully lifted into place but its weight broke through the sewer line below and raw sewage gushed forth.

Florida’s typically warm weather also played a role, it was almost impossible to maintain the ski slope, even with 3 million pounds of shaved ice. The Norwegian ski jumper brought over to open the venue crashed on his first run down. As did the first few toboggans before the slope was closed due to unsafe conditions.

The ice rink didn’t fare much better, during the first performance a skate flew off and gashed a young attendee’s face. The show ended early and the girl was taken to the hospital. A few nights later, one of the performers was caught making extra money by putting on an “after hours” show for men in the dressing room.

But surely nothing could go wrong with watching an 8 ton ice cube melt? Well, in an effort to win the “guess when it will melt” contest somebody doused the base with salt which created a top heavy shape that fell over on a little girl.

The borrowed deer which were to serve as reindeer were so traumatized by their handling that one died trying to escape and another molted (huge chunks of fur fell off leaving behind raw, red skin). After protests by animal rights activists all the animal exhibits were closed.

The beginning of Florida’s resort industry can be traced to the vision of railroad magnate, Henry B. Plant. He brought his railway to Tampa in 1884, utilizing the town’s port to offer his customers steamship travel to Mobile (Alabama), Bermuda, Jamaica, and even Cuba.

His grand vision required an equally grand hotel so in 1888 he hired architect J.A. Woods to design a massive structure in the Moorish Revival style (mostly). Plant insisted on a few distinctive design elements – the finished building was certainly unique with minarets and gingerbread trim.

Plant’s 511 room hotel took three years to build and cost $2 million (which does not include the $500,000 in fine furnishings that he and his wife sourced from Europe). When it opened on February 5, 1891 the six-acre hotel offered top of the line accommodations: every room boasted a telephone and electricity while most even had a private bath. The hotel also offered a billiard room, barbershop, shoeshine service, beauty shop, flower shop, telegraph office, formal dining room, Grand Salon, Reading Room, and a Music Room with orchestra.

At 150 acres, the grounds of the hotel were no less grand, encompassing a 18-hole golf course, tennis courts, bowling alley, racetrack, baseball field (where Babe Ruth is said to have hit a home run of record length), casino, card rooms, exposition hall, flower conservatory, a croquet greensward, shuffleboard courts, boathouse, hunting and fishing grounds, stables, kennels, and an indoor heated swimming pool.

Yesterday, I drove down to Manasota Key with a couple friends. Since they’d never been before, I showed Katie and Alyssa how to hunt for fossil shark teeth. Quick learners, they wandered along the shore doing the shark tooth shuffle. It wasn’t long before they both had a couple handfuls of shiny, black teeth.