How comforting, when driving home very late last night from Ybor City, to pass by this Big Guy at Muffler and Brake City and know that he is on sentry duty 24/​7, watching over us with a strong-​jawed confidence, a Mona Lisa smile, and, for any perceived threat to our safety, a big ol’ wrench, from the corner of US 41 and Causeway Blvd. in Tampa.

According to Brian and Sarah Butko, in their wonderful book “Roadside Giants,” the emergence of fiberglass in the 1950’s caused a brief but widespread flowering of food and auto industry advertising giants, which proliferated along commercial strips across the U.S. Of these, the so-​called Muffler Men were the most common. They were crafted from the mold of a Paul Bunyan figure (ca. 1963), an icon on Route 66 outside the Paul Bunyan Café in Flagstaff. This prototype featured a right-​palm-​up/​left-​down pose, because Paul held an axe. Conveniently enough, Paul could be repurposed to hold a muffler, with no modifications required.

The manufacture of these figures by the company that originated Paul, International Fiberglass, petered out in the 1970’s, and all the original molds were destroyed. Since then, however, there have been many permutations of the existing stock of Muffler Men.

Downtown Plant City, Florida is a thrift-shopper’s paradise. I try not to abuse the privilege of living close by by wandering around too often, lest “thrift” become an oxymoron, but I still sometimes find an “object of desire” I just can’t resist. This phone is a case in point. I might have missed it altogether, had I not noticed another shopper take it down from a high shelf at the Next to New Thrift Shop on West Reynolds St. When she did, the heavens opened and the angels sang. I loitered nearby while she turned it this way and that… she put it back.… she walked away.… I pounced! What a heft that phone had to it; it must have been three or four pounds. There was a small triangle of plastic missing near the handset, but nothing you’d notice. The price? $4.00!

I couldn’t wait to get home and research my trophy phone. One hit from my Google search was an article from a 1979 Popular Science issue: “Plugging into Bell: It’s a new gadgety world when you own your own phone.” The reader was invited to “choose between a new, wild array of phones,” but most of those pictured were ugly and boxy, except for the donut-​shaped wonder I had just purchased, the “Sculptura” by Western Electric.

Back in the day, if I had the luxury of a free afternoon in Winter Haven, Florida, I’d spend it at the charmingly “Old Florida” tourist attraction, Cypress Gardens, which is, sadly, no more. (Things got so desperate at the end, my parents told me that they happened across a gardener spray-​painting a dead bush green. But I prefer the good memories, like the fun we always had watching the water ski show with our kids. We were there so many times, “Hit it, Corky!”- the M.C.‘s exhortation to the boat driver, who then hit the throttle, became a family mantra.) Were it later in the year, I might spend the afternoon satisfying my curiosity about Legoland, the highly-​touted theme park due to open this October on the old Cypress Gardens site — and sure to be a boon to the local economy of this little town. Barring those two possibilities, though, I thought it might be wise to consult the Apple Oracle for ideas on what is extra-​special about Winter Haven before setting out.

It didn’t take me long to find my answer, in the form of a feisty and funny octogenarian named Gene Leedy, the pride of Winter Haven for his work as a founding father of the “Sarasota school” of architecture and a resident since 1954, when he was commissioned to build a private residence here. Mind you, I knew none of this until I found a mention of the “Leedy Lifetime Works Tour” in town. Intrigued, I followed a link to Leedy’s own website and was treated to a very entertaining video interview with him. (What’s not to love, when the site’s link to an audio interview contains this caveat up front: “Please note that Gene Leedy is a colorful character, as is some of the language used in this interview”? Woo hoo!)

It’s an adventure even finding Bob’s Train, and it’s certainly a novelty having breakfast or lunch in a train car. You can pretend that you’re not stationary, sitting on a remote siding in the warehouse district just outside downtown Sarasota, but that you’re taking an elegant meal as you travel cross country during the golden age of train travel. Or you can imagine that you’re part of circus family, an aerialist, perhaps, like our waitress, traveling to your next show in the partitioned compartment that you call home, only as wide as the train window at which you sit. (This car housed many circus families in that fashion up until its last run for Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey: the 2004 Blue Show.) After lunch, you can pretend you’re fabulously wealthy and traveling in your own private train car… but more on that later!

Florida is a vast state. For that reason, we Floridians rely on our cars more than we should, in a perfect world. I am married to a transportation planner, a man who has spent his entire career promoting public transit, carpooling, and bicycling, so I am very mindful of my own carbon footprint tooling around in an SOV (Single Occupant Vehicle). To counteract this energy expenditure, I limit many errands into each trip. This is what my husband calls “trip chaining”; it’s catching on, given the price of gas!

Occasionally, however, my errands take me out to the “exurbs” beyond suburbia, where such economies don’t work. Today was such a day. I needed to go to Plant City, a lovely old Florida town that is the Winter Strawberry Capital, 25 miles due east from Tampa via I-​4, and from there, southeast to Riverview, a burgeoning bedroom suburb of Tampa. There was no errand chain in between, because, to my great delight, there is nothing at all in between!