A Catalog of Change

When the Marco Beach Boys and Girls began, a single runway was the beginning of Marco Island Airways. The landing strip was just inland from the new Marco Beach Hotel, and whenever airplanes made an arrival after sunset, Gil Nordel, the very first Marco Beach Boy, drove his car to the windward side of the little airfield and turned on his headlights to allow incoming pilots to see where to land.

About four decades earlier, Tony Jannus was a barnstorming pilot who became the first commercial aviator when he flew the former mayor of St Petersburg across Tampa Bay on a windy and freezing February morning for two dollars.

Four decades before the first money making pilot was busy trying to keep himself and his first passenger alive for a harrowing ten-minute flight from St Petersburg to Tampa, the W. T. Collier family was ready to leave Tennessee and travel to Florida and eventually Marco Island.

After the Civil War, much of Tennessee was busy rebuilding and trying to come to terms with a new age of almost everything. This was when a business concept known as the General Store began to flourish. The big cities of the South were devastated after the war, and most of the merchandise the Southern folks needed was simply not available because the traditional stores were gone.

When the first of the General Stores began to open near horse and wagon crossroads or restored railroads and depots, a new way of life began as the new business idea started booming. In the General Store, anyone could buy coffee, tools, tobacco, medicated paper, toilet paper, coal oil, flour, or even exotic and expensive items such as oranges or even coconut flakes.

When a customer wanted something from the General Store in winter, the whole family would arrive and gather by the wood-burning stove to warm up while they snacked on saltine crackers from a barrel. Older folks were always nearest the stove and would offer age-old and sage advice for anyone coming to purchase anything from suspenders to petticoats. Traveling strangers were always a treat, as they would arrive with news and maybe even newspapers. Visitors to the store would always be well dressed for travel, even if they were carrying the occasional black speck of soot from the wood-burning locomotives.

Tales from the big cities were also entertainment and often told of newfangled inventions such as indoor plumbing and ice boxes for the kitchen. In the summer, the General Store would expand and move onto a vast wooden front porch that typically ran the length of the building. When the weather was fair, the older folks with their rocking chairs lined the porch beside fresh produce, pickles, and penny candy. During any weather, the General Store was a community center, a gossip mill, and a possible meeting place for romance.

When it became “high time,” and a young couple decided to get married, fancy items such as wedding dresses and men’s suits were only for the well-off, but if the money was not a problem, the owner of the General Store would dig out the “Big Book” catalog from under the front counter. After the dust was off the cover and the heavy book was open so that everyone could gather and look at the fancy people on the pretty pages wearing the latest fashions from all the big cities, lengthy discussions led to decisions. After the all-important decision (that often included everyone in the store), the proprietor would place an order for any product that was not available at a commonsense General Store. A month or longer, however, was required before the special wish list articles would begin to arrive.

During the summer of 1872, a brand new idea began to change everything that was traditional. Montgomery Ward began sending out its first mail order catalog, which was proudly offering 163 unique but practical items that anyone could order, cheaper, faster, and with the unheard of feature of privacy. Ordering and buying was now possible without everyone in the county knowing how much was spent, who was buying what, and how foolish anyone might be for wasting money on something the General Store owners were anxious to find out about.

Sears and Roebuck soon began to follow the Montgomery Ward business model, and with every item ordered from the newfangled catalogs, the “Big Book” in the country General Store began to gather dust. Within the next few years, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison began producing products to replace horses, wagons, and lanterns and gas lamps.

When iceboxes were outdated seemingly overnight, and the electric refrigerator found a home in almost every kitchen, 400,000 jobs were up for elimination in the ice cutting, storage, and delivery business. After the first tractors began replacing horses and mules as the beasts of burden, another new industry was born, horses began relaxing in the pastures, and other countries around the world began to eagerly watch and see what America would think of next.

When Orville and Wilber Wright took off and flew the first mile above the earth, other Americans would follow a few decades later to land and walk on the moon.

When cell phones became computers another era began to dawn, and as Amazon has become the new Montgomery Ward catalog with everything anyone could ever want waiting at the click of an image, perhaps another new age is waiting just over the next horizon. Another new age where staring at a phone all day will be laughable and new social ideas might be as renovating as Elvis or The Beatles or even a family like the Colliers from Tennessee who made the innovating choice of finding something different and moving to the paradise that is Marco Island.  

Tom Williams is a Marco Islander and the author of two books: “Lost and Found” and “Surrounded by Thunder - The Story of Darrell Loan and the Rocket Men.” Both books are available on Kindle and Nook.