Shuffleboard!

Times change. When we were kids growing up in St Petersburg, Florida, shuffleboard was a past-time reserved for the old folks. Well sorta. As youngsters we sometimes played at playing the game but it was the retirees that took the game seriously. Then about a dozen or more years ago the St Petersburg Shuffleboard Club began opening the courts to the public for free on Friday nights. It’s a delightful community event with people of all ages engaged in fun but serious play on the courts. Everyone plays by the rules and observes court etiquette. Our friends Arleene and Sean are regulars and often invite friends to join them. Tonight we were part of the crowd, joined by family and friends, after we had partaken of a delicious meal at the Tap Room at The Hollander Hotel, a location that we knew as The Bond Hotel when we were frequenting downtown. And it’s worth mentioning that the shuffleboard courts are across from Mirror Lake Library where the two of us had a life changing conversation sparked by The Iliad in October 1969.