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Originally built in the mid 1920's to be the home of an automobile agency, the American Legion, Bay Post 30 occupied the cavernous coliseum building at Fruitville Road and North Washington Blvd. To pay for the building and fund their many civic and welfare programs, weekly boxing matches, featuring area professionals and local wanabes proved very popular and profitable. Soon, wrestling bouts were added. As you might expect "NO GAMBLING" signs turned out to be a waste of paint. My father was the Post Commander in the early '40's so I became a member of the Sons of the American Legion Drum and Bugle Corps. A little known feature of the building was an indoor fifty foot firing range (without proper ventilation-lead poisoning anyone?) That's where I earned my Boy Scout Marksmanship Merit Badge. In addition to the standard requirements I learned how to plunk a mothball swinging to and fro on a six inch string. During WWII the Legionaires kept the building open nights to provide cots for G.I's needing over night accommodations; free of course. As membership shrank and television changed people's entertainment habits the Post members opted for a smaller facility. Soon the coliseum was remodeled to become the Old Heidelberg Castle. The original Old Heidelberg Castle, built in Germany in the 1500's became the namesake for a popular German restaurant here in Sarasota in the mid 1900's. Featuring "exceptional German and American food", dancing nightly to the music of the Bavarian Tyrolean Show Band (or "Oompah" band)continued into the 1990's. But to the chagrin of many locals the "nothing is forever" rule of life prevailed. Auf Wiedersehen. Soon the stuccoed, hollow clay tile 1920's building laid in a pile of rubble giving birth to a new modern, "built to Southern Building codes" cookie cutter, Walgreen's Drug Store.