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Back in the days of yore when I was a lad of eleven, Saturday mornings were Cub Scout pack meeting days. From there, me and some of my buddies would ride our bikes to the Ritz Theater on Main Street. The Ritz Theater, with approximately 500 seats, was about half the size of the Florida Theater and was known as a second-run house, showing re-runs of earlier big hits, at reduced prices. As I remember; a full length feature film, a serial chapter, a cartoon, the news and of course, previews of coming attractions.

Flavor the above with a box of Milk Duds or a package of Necco (Nestle Candy Company) wafers and you get a hundred dollars worth of entertainment for 50 cents.

During the latter part of World War II the Ritz allowed colored patrons to occupy the balcony, accessed via the outside metal fire escape. After 1946 the Ace Theater on now 5th Street, opened and catered to the colored clientele.

With the popularity of television, people's entertainment activities changed and for many years downtown Sarasota was without a movie theater.

Nowadays theaters are like bananas (they come in bunches) because film makers, once again, have discovered how to make make-believe believable, and a $3.00 bag of popcorn is irresistible.

(editor's note:  originally the theater was known as the Virginian - click here to learn it's story.

"I remember when John (Ringling) hugged Mable so hard, he cracked one of her ribs," said Mrs. Earl Burton, sister-in-law of the late Mable Burton Ringling. "Mable had just returned from seeing a doctor in Germany and had given John an encouraging report. They had a very good marriage and I thought John was a wonderful person."

Mrs. Burton's son, Jack, also remembers some interesting anecdotes involving his aunt "Mim" (the family nickname).

"One author has described Mable as being small and dainty while another wrote that she was tall and willowy with delicate features. Actually, she was quite tall, with dark brown hair and big brown eyes, very pretty and made an impression that commanded attention. All of her sisters, Clara, Amanda, Alma, and Dulcey, were nice looking.

"One writer has said that Mable met John while she was performing in the circus. Another wrote they met while she was working in a Chicago restaurant."

"Both are incorrect," Mrs. Burton said adamantly. "I am positive they met on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. She had previously worked in a shoe factory, but was working in a small jewelry stand at the time she first saw John. He courted her and lavished money on her." John and Mable were married December 29, 1905 at Hoboken, New Jersey in the city clerk's office. He was thirty-nine and she was thirty.

"Mable and John had no children of their own, but unknown to most people, Mable raised three of her sisters' children. Clara Smith and Amanda Workman were deaf mutes. So, when their children became of school age, they went to live with Aunt Mable. She sent them to the best schools and dressed them beautifully, but she was very strict with them. However, all three of them seemed to resent rather than appreciate their aunt's attention. Evelyn married the Ringling's chauffeur while Mable and John were on one of their European trips. Mable was furious and disowned her niece. Both boys ran away and joined the Navy when they reached 18. Mable loved her brother, William Earl, as well as her parents. On her parents' 44th anniversary, she gave her mother a pair of diamond earings."

Shortly after Mable's death on June 9, 1929, the Sarasota Sunday Times published an editorial describing Mable: "Of a retiring disposition, Mrs. Ringling never sought the limelight, though much of her work and philanthropy, all of which was unknown to the average person, would have brought her much prominence if given publicity. One of the greatest memorials is the John and Mable Ringling Art Museum. And their beautiful home here, considered on of the finest in the United States, is an offspring of her constructive genius, for it was she, at John's request, who advised the architect as to the type of residence she desired."

In June of 1991, the bodies of Mable and John were laid to rest on the grounds of their former estate, near Ca'd'Zan.

(Excerpted from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, October 12, 1970, from an interview with Mrs. Earl Burton and her son, Jack. By Lee McCall, S-H-T Staff Writer)

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.

 

 

One of the neat things about living in a community for a long time is that if you don't know the answer to a question you know where to go to find the answer...enter my classmate Phyllis Norman Nodaros who is the daughter of Dorothy Riggs Norman. Eureka! I emailed her and she quickly gave me some facts about that family property. Addison Henry Riggs bought the property in 1922 about a year after the 620 square mile area was established as Sarasota County. According to Phyllis the house was one heck of a solid concrete structure. A wonderful old place and behind it was a boat house with boat and an old wringer washer and 2 large tubs for rinsing clothes, a back yard with long clothes lines and poles to prop them up when loaded with laundry, a hen house with chickens and a rooster or two where we used to gather eggs and eventually he built a garage apartment over a 2 car garage right on the water. There was an old pump there that supplied sulphur water that was pumped up, aeriated and used by Theresa and Earl Riggs, Emily Yentner (Theresa's sister and Marion Marable's grand mother)and Cora Belle Gallagher (Theresa's mother) and several cats. The location is on Bay Street just west of Osprey Ave a block south of US 41. There is a condominium there today. Phyllis has passed my email on to her brother and she is going to further search her own memory bank and hopefully, she will have more remembrances that can be shared.

As teenagers going out to Lido Casino wasn't dependent on the weather.  It was all about seeing who was there.  If the weather was warm maybe we'd swim or just sit and talk but even in winter we could play volley ball or sip a coke in the snack bar.  It was all about gathering together, rain or shine, hot or cold.  First a cruise through Smack (more about Smack another time) and then across the rickety bridge to the beach.  Did we even realize we were living in Paradise?

The Lido Beach Casino