"I don't know if this was ever used," Engell says.
On the wall hangs photos of star players of years past -- most of them deceased. I spot Mickey Henson and Dave Minnich, both of who are still playing in today's finals.
Pinellas Park shuffleboarder Stan Budin.
(Kyoko Hamada)
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Maloney calls my attention to another photo, an elderly woman named Ada Armstrong, who died recently at 93. In her will, she left the Clearwater Shuffleboard Club, which she loved, a gift of $50,000. "I played her at the Senior Olympics when she was 90 years old," Maloney says. "She just knocked the living hell out of the disc."
Engell finds a photo album, and turns to a page that shows the results from a tournament called the Trailer Estates National Doubles, January 21-22, 2002, in Bradenton. "That was the first year we turned pro," he said. "We went down there and we just kicked butt."
Engell and Maloney leave me for a moment, and I continue to flip through albums of yellowing old newspaper clips. In the 1960s and 1970s, the local newspapers covered shuffleboard in the sports section: "Seeded Players Fall in Singles Shuffle"; "Three Champions Still Undefeated"; "Master Shufflers Underway Today". The photos show hundreds of people watching tournaments from the grandstands. The players themselves are much younger, some of the champions looking young enough to be in their 40s. But then, in the 1980s, a significant shift occurred. The newspapers stopped treating shuffleboard as a sport, and instead starting covering it as a gee-whiz, "human-interest" feature. Two sample headlines from 1990: "Shuffleboard keeps retirees hitting deck"; "Shuffleboard Club is part of local history."
When Maloney returns, he sees me looking at these newspaper stories and says, "We have to get shuffleboard back on the sports page."
We walk outside. "The youngest member we have is in his 50s," Maloney says. "I've tried to get the club to have more night games, so young professional people can play. But everybody always says, 'I don't like to drive at night.' So what can you do?"
The day after I visit Clearwater, I drive west a half-hour from St. Petersburg across the causeway to Treasure Island. There, I am greeted by a sign of a huge pirate with a saber, and then by the gigantic blinking "T" of the Thunderbird Beach Resort. I cruise along Gulf Boulevard, Treasure Island's main strip, past its amazing collection of 1950s and 1960s-era mom-and-pop beach motels. I pass the Ebb-Tide, with its teal shutters and marlins and "Spotlessly Clean Rooms," the Sea Chest, with its big diorama of a seagull stealing a pearl necklace from a treasure chest and another giant pirate; the salmon-colored Satellite Motel, emblazoned with a yellow orchid; the Algiers, its sign bearing a genie rising from a lamp; the Carol Ann, featuring a buxom, suggestive mermaid; the Buccaneer Beach Resort, with yet another 20-foot high buccaneer, wooden leg and all, rising from the roof; the Sea Fever, the Sea Oats (by the Gulf), the Swashbuckler, the Mardi Gras, The Jolly Roger, the Saltaire, and the Tropic Terrace ("Welcome Canadians"). I pass a Pancake House and a Waffle House within a block of one another. There is a watering hole named Captain Kosmakos Cocktail Lounge and another called Ikky WooWoo's Tiki Hut. The marquee at the Jefferson Motel reads: GULF VIEW POOL GOD CARES. And then underneath, "Wir Spechen Deutsch." The marquee at the Shifting Sand reads, "A United America Will Prevail." The marquee at the Gulf Sands Beach Rentals reads, "Welcome To Paradise." Finally, I pass a small community of modest cottages surrounding a pool -- screened porches and window-unit air-conditioners -- that reminds me a little of my grandparents' place at the Shalimar.
Earlier in the week, I'd read in the St. Petersburg Times that local preservationists were up in arms about the forthcoming demolition of the Surf Motel, which was built in 1956. The old building would be torn down in the spring to make room for a 30-unit condos. Preservationists are concerned that the Surf's demolition is just the first, that soon the dominos of Treasure Island's classic midcentury architecture will fall one by one.
I park my car near the Surf and get out to stroll along the promenade near the beach. The Surf still has a sign that reads "Heated Pool" but it already looks desolate. Four empty shuffleboard courts sit near the beach, with weeds growing around them.
Fog begins to roll in from the Gulf as I continue along the promenade. I see a sign that I remember from childhood, during visits with my grandparents, that warns swimmers to "Shuffle Your Feet For Sting Rays" during spring and summer months. A little further down, I move toward the Fargo, pink with light blue lettering. By now the fog is getting thick, and I cannot see into the Fargo's courtyard. But I hear an unmistakable sound -- that of shuffleboard discs gliding down a court. As I get closer, I can see two couples, about my age, laughing and drinking and playing shuffleboard. "Does Ten Off mean I take ten points off the score?" shouts one of the women. As soon as I walk past, the fog envelops them, and then I can only hear them, and then a few paces later, they are gone.
Jason Wilson is the editor of the annual anthology Best American Travel Writing.
Do the Shuffle
• At the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club, an annual membership for $20 per person, or a family membership for $40, lets you enter state and local tournaments and use club facilities. Nonmembers can play for two days free or pay a fee of $1 a day. Call 727-822-2083.
• The Clearwater Shuffle-board Club offers 26 outdoor and 26 screened-in courts. The first visit is free, with a daily fee of $2, a monthly fee of $10 or a yearly membership fee of $45. Call 727-446-3306.
• The Pinellas Park Senior Recreation Center has 16 shuffleboard courts and hosts amateur tournaments throughout the winter. Nonmembers may visit two days for free. There are no day rates, but annual memberships -- available to those 50 and older -- are $5 for Pinellas Park residents and $25 for nonresidents. Call 727-541-0776.
