Twice, the world has opened up for me. Once when I found my first fossils and again when I first read the works of Sigmund Freud. For me, fossils were never curios. Instead, they were literally touchstones to the environments of a lost world. As a child, my surroundings were solid and permanent. In my view, everything had always been the same and would remain the same. When I was 9 years old, with the discovery of my first fossils, that paradigm was forever changed. The planet I lived on was in a constant state of flux, unfolding as I strolled through my lifetime. Myself, my family, and acquaintances were all part of an unfurling process, history. The fossils I found in dragline trailings, the fill from dredges, or washed out of the shorelines along the Gulf, were my inheritance, a portion of time and space that I was now a part of. They opened the door to this magnificent world and the greater Universe beyond.
When I was 17 years old, Freud opened a vista to my psychological world, a unique dimension of history that we all share. Translations of his works in paperback had just been published. I stepped into an amazing tangle of neurons, flowing with electro-chemical exchanges, based in internal and external stimuli. Some folks want to criticize Freud. He was just a pioneer on the way to discovering a world that opened the environment of neuroscience and modern philosophy. It has allowed us to see all humans as a part of the life process, putting extreme privilege and grinding poverty into a grim perspective.
For my others fellow travelers there were different doors opening. For those willing to step into that magnificent space, they become part of that experience, a truly incredible journey. The wonder of discovery and learning are extremely seductive. The ecstasy of sudden insight totally fills the body and the mind.
When I was nine years old (1954) I found some bones. It was a brisk, late December, morning. My friends and I were out of school for Christmas vacation and our bikes made us as free as birds. We were packets of pure energy, reveling with the cool wind in our faces. Our legs pumped that energy into the peddles almost without effort. Thin cirrus clouds streaked the blue Florida winter sky. We ran out of paved road, but the world was ours to explore and most of South St. Petersburg was still just wilderness. We must have peddled west on Lakeview Avenue. Whatever road it was, it was freshly watered and readied for paving, making the surface firm enough for bikes. Thirty-fourth Street South was a construction site then. From 22nd Avenue South, 34th Street South was a great earthen scar through the South Pinellas scrublands. Bulldozers and grading equipment roared up and down its length. To the south, the original Sunshine Skyway Bridge (the William Dean Bridge) was under construction. Along the west side of 34th Street mounds of earth had been heaped up. A trench had been dug to bury drainage pipes. The piles of earth were like a magnet for us. We parked our bikes, using the kickstands, and rushed for the nearest mound. The dirt was soft and our feet sank in. Still, we climbed to the top of the nearest mound. The hills of fresh earth ran into the distance.
Of course there was some jostling and shoving. We ran down one side and rushed up the next side. Someone found a dirt clod and tossed it at a friend. The clod busted into a spray of sand. The war was on. Dirt clod wars were always fun for a while. But, they invariably ended the same way. Some kid would get a grain of sand in their eye and then there was a sudden break. “Hey,” one of the kids would shout, “Bobby’s got sand in his eye.” Everyone would crowd around. Tall and lanky, short and stocky, everyone had to look and offer an opinion. As if by magic, one of the boys would produce a clean handkerchief, and try to pick the sand out of the offended eye. Crowding in to watch the delicate operation, they all offered advise.
The boy ahead of me was kicking up sand as he climbed. Becoming the kid with sand in his eye was unappealing. I dropped back and looked for a good lump of earth. What I picked up had a little too much weight and substance. I dusted it off. Instantly I recognized it as bone. It looked like the stuff I had occasionally seen on my dinner plate or in a pot, adding its flavor to green beans. But, this things color was a tawny gray and it felt heavy like stone.
My breath caught. ‘My God,’ I thought, ‘I’ve found a dinosaur bone!’ I looked around and found several more chunks. Standing up straight, I viewed the area. The war had moved on to the south. I gathered up what I could immediately find and carried the chunks to my bike. I had saddlebag baskets as well as a basket in front.
Now, I find it odd that I didn’t look around more carefully in order to find the source. Instead, I just grabbed what was obvious, threw it into one of my baskets, and rode for home. By the time I opened my front door, it was already afternoon. The winter shadows of the cabbage palms were creeping across the patio on the south side of our home. In my excitement, I had barely dusted off the earth clinging to the fossils. I showed my parents my incredible treasure form the past. My mother was a little upset by the sand. She spread a newspaper to lay them on. “How much money are they worth,” she asked? I shrugged. After that, she lost interest. My father, was a little disgusted and refused to handle them.
“Hermann,” his voice was emphatic. Normally I was called Hermie. “This is just the garbage of someone’s picnic. We don’t want you to bring this kind of garbage home.”
Dad folded them up in the newspaper, carried them out, and tossed them into the flowerbed. Then he folded up the newspaper and took it out to the garbage. He was squeamish about dead things. In the next few days I retrieved all of those stones. Stored in a cigar box, they took up residence in the shadows beneath my bed. For me, they opened up a world of adventure and discovery. When my parents traveled back to Rochester, New York, I hauled them to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and the Museum Of Natural History in New York City. It was summer, and the big museums never had staff present who could identify them. But I kept asking.
In the museum of Natural History, I rode the elevator up to the 4th floor. I wandered around the offices trying to find someone. I met a woman, who I believed to be a receptionist. I explained my interest. She suggested that I leave the box of fossils on her desk, go down and explore the museum for a couple of hours and then come back up and try again. I went to the Hayden Planetarium for the star show. When I returned, the elevator operator told me that visitors were not allowed up on the 4th floor. Of course I was indignant. I had left my fossils up there. He had to call somebody.
I was greeted by a nice, serious looking, young man. “What’ve you got there,” he questioned? “I think that they’re dinosaur bones,” I replied. “Well, lets have a look,” he studied them. “Nope, they’re mammal bones.” My heart sank. “They’re ancient,” he went on. “Turned to stone all right. Thanks for sharing your discovery,” he smiled. “But, I don’t have a clue what animals they belong to. The people who really know about these kinds of fossils are out in the field right now and won’t be back for months. I’d suggest that you take them downstairs and look at some of the fossil critters in our displays. See if you can find bones that match.” Those fossils introduced me to a lot of interesting folks. Slowly over the years, Florida’s ancient story began to unfold for me.
One of those bones turned out to be a mammoth’s toe bone, modified into a grinding tool by a woman living with our ancient people, more than 12,900 years ago.
2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?
History was already there before the origin of our Universe. There never was an all unifying energy or cause. The Universe has always been the sum of its parts moving through time, creating the opportunities that probabilities provided. If the Periodic Table of Elements is indeed prevalent through out our Universe, then probabilities plus opportunity creates repeating patterns and cycles of circumstance. Those repeating circumstances generate coincidence which humans personalize into meaningful determinations. We all actually come out of that moment of creative energy, flowing through a past which always extends back a nanosecond from where we are now. We are all tumbling through time toward unknown possibilities. The Universe is made out of history.
3. How does history play a part of your professional life/career?
For 28 years I was a park ranger and an environmental educator for the City of St. Petersburg at Boyd Hill Nature Park. I use my art to explore historical situations and concepts.
4. Why is studying/knowing history important?
I see history as the study of cause and effect. Everything which is known is made out of history. Everything is the product of history. Without history we wouldn’t even be inert matter floating in a vacuum.
5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?
Geologic history, the history of life on this planet, cultural history (anthropology & archaeology) are all precious to me. I truly appreciate Florida’s amazing Ice Age environments in which the first people wandered, the nature of their challenges, and the fabulous adaptations that those first Americans went through. They became the only truly human adapted to America’s environments.
Jaguar Hunts Capybara, copyright Neily Trappman Studio
6. What makes Florida history so unique and inspirational to you?
Florida was born out of the collision of continents. My research suggests that Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, and Florida were at the heart of Pangaea. When Pangaea broke apart to form the global map of continents that we know today, it occurred from the Gulf of Mexico, along side the massive rifting zone ripping along the western coast of Africa. All deep Florida geology seems to be African in origin.
7. How does your art tell Florida’s story?
Since the break up of Pangaea, the broken fragments of Florida drifted through time toward North America. Starting out below the equator, Florida wandered north northwestward. It bumped into a clumsy fit, below the Gulf waters, with the DeSoto Canyon on its northwest and the Okefenokee Swamp along the Florida Georgia border. During that time, Florida went through some amazing environmental changes. Just over the horizon, Florida witnessed the explosive asteroid impact with the Yucatan 66 million years ago. That impact sent massive waves crashing across Florida, ripping at widespread coral reefs. On its surface, it left the remnants of Florida as shattered rubble. Again, 36 million years ago, this landscape was effected by great waves form the asteroid impact in Chesapeake Bay. This time, great chunks of rock tumbled across the idyllic tropical islands which made up this place. Hung up against the edge of the Caribbean plate’s eastward migration, Cuba crashed into south Florida creating the Islands of the Bahamas.
It was only around 21 million years ago that Florida finally reconnected with North America again. A strange menagerie of critters from the north came to Florida. After the Isthmus of Panama closed off the Atlantic’s North Equatorial current from the Pacific Ocean, 2.5 million years ago, the Gulf Stream was formed and a new Ice Age began. Growing glaciers swept up water out of the oceans dropping the sea level over 300 feet. Florida grew to over twice its present size. There is clear evidence of people living in Florida 14,500 years ago. With the melting of the Ice sheets, vast lakes were formed. Between 12,560 and 11,690 BPE, massive break-out floods from Lake Agassiz would have caused a rapid sea level rise, infusing the Gulf with cold fresh water. I like describing some of those events with my artwork.
Eventually American Indians, Tunica speaking people, arrived to make their home along the gulf coast. Using Archaeological studies and historical accounts, I like to paint my interpretations of their cultures. Like the Aztec and the Maya, Florida’s people were a high culture. Without stone to build with, they relied on shell as their foundational building material. Recycling the shell waste from joyful feasts, they built tall temple mounds, plazas, ball courts, and causeways. The other wonderful resource they had was Pinus elliottii - Slash Pine and Pinus palustris - Longleaf Pine. These trees can produce 40 feet of clean lumber before they spread into their crowns. With plentiful wood, our original people built great buildings. Their wooden supports would have been covered with carvings. Their cities spread along the coastline, where incredible marine resources fed large populations. Beginning in autumn, clouds of ducks and geese arrived to fill our bays and bayous with a din of noise and a flash of color. Rivers of mullet and mackerel flooded the coastal areas.
Our people had brought the Mississippian Ceremonial Culture from the core of North America to these shores. Using thousands of beautifully built dugout canoes, they visited and traded both north and south into the Caribbean. Spanish Conquistadors were attracted to Florida’s Gulf coast by the population density and apparent wealth. But, for our people, that wealth was dependent on the good life and not gold. The Spanish were disappointed. Our environmentally intricate culture was vulnerable to Spanish slaughter and European disease. In the end, the wooden structures would evaporate like fog caught by the morning sun, leaving only the shell works behind. Everywhere I traveled in Pinellas during my youth, I witnessed environments recovering from ancient human habitation, covered with pioneering plant communities, not climax communities. The first people loved these environments and their population had an effect. I like to paint and tell the story of their lost world and the incredible landscape which produced it. I find Florida to be one of the most incredible pieces of property on the planet Earth.
