Remembering the Sweet Tea Side of My Sleepy Hollow

Over the weekend I went to visit the place where I grew up in Tampa, the Sleepy Hollow Mobile Home Park. I have visited this place many times since moving away when I was 13, but I have never had the nerve to get out of the car. I guess I have always been too scared that I would get flooded with memories if my feet touched the gravel of the dirt road where I spent so much of my childhood. I have always imagined something kind of like what happened in the movie the Green Mile when John Coffey touched Paul’s hand.  Usually, I go there when life gets tough as it grounds me and reminds me of just how far I have come. Typically, I just sit out front and cry and pray for some peace with the chaos that surrounds my memories of this place while I beg God for understanding.  

Even when I was in Colorado, every time I would come back to Florida for vacation, I would make time to pay tribute to my past by stopping by Sleepy Hollow for a good cry. It isn’t necessarily a past I am proud of, but it is the past that I have. Sadly, it comes along with a lot of traumas that I have had to learn to make space for and carry with me on my journey to rise above. For some reason going back there always made me feel better even though it was scary. I guess seeing it again always gave me justification for the broken parts of me that I have yet to figure out how to heal.  

A while back I was enjoying a day with a couple of the kids I grew up with while living at Sleepy Hollow. They let me know that Miss Hurd, the same lady who ran the park when I was a kid, had finally passed and Sleepy Hollow was up for sale. I knew that I needed to get back out there and physically touch the place that had touched me so horribly as a child soon or I may lose my chance forever.  

See for the past nearly 35 years every time I went back it was like time had stood still and nothing had changed about Sleepy Hollow. While the area around Sleepy Hollow has seen progress there, it sat in stagnation. You could still smell the poverty and despair that engulfed that place.  

I had been watching the property to see when it changed hands periodically online. At the beginning of June, I noticed that Sleepy Hollow had been sold. I told Matt that I had to go back before it was too late so the first Sunday of June, he took me back. I had planned my outfit; I had planned the footage and pictures I wanted to take on my visit. When we drove up to the front of the park, it was finally different. There were dumpsters all over the place, trees down everywhere, and workers sorting through the dumpy trailers to see what was salvageable. Hurricane Milton had done a number on Sleepy Hollow. There were no trespassing signs on what remained of the grand live oaks that sheltered me as a child. I cried, I was too late, I thought I had waited too long. I felt defeated. In all honesty I was mad at God, he knew what I went through there and he knew I desired pictures for the books I want to someday write, but he allowed that opportunity to be taken away from me. I just didn’t understand.  

As the weeks went by, I came to terms with my lost opportunity and my anger at God became trust that he knew better than me. I kept a watch on the Hillsborough County Property Appraisers website for them to update the records with the new owners. Three weeks ago today, I found the new owner’s names and hunted them down on Facebook. I let them know who I was and asked their permission to allow me to come back one more time, walk around and say goodbye to the place that has haunted me for decades.  

The new owner responded and told me that I could come anytime I wanted. Yesterday was my first opportunity to go. We got a sitter for the pups and Matt took me to my Sleepy Hollow for the last time. He is such a blessing. This time when we pulled up, I saw real progress. Sleepy Hollow had finally “turned a corner.” There were a couple of newer trailers that had been brought in, others that had been there all along were being repaired, and it felt the same yet different. I mean it was physically the same place, but it no longer reeked of poverty and despair. Instead, you could feel hope and prosperity in action.  

I hopped out of the truck excited to see what had changed. I walked right into the Sleepy Hollow Mobile Home Park like a child full of excitement and wonder. I noticed I wasn’t talking about all the bad things that happened there this time. Instead, I was sharing with Matt all the things that I had cherished about Sleepy Hollow that somewhere over the last 35 years had fallen to the wayside as the trauma took precedence.  

I showed him where my best friend Missi had lived. I pointed to the trailer that I used to run to for refuge when my brother was chasing me down the old dirt road to deliver me with a beat down. I showed him where I wrecked my friends Jimmy’s 4-wheeler while trying to avoid hitting the gang of Chihuahua dogs that used to chase me down the road. I showed him the old concrete slab that sat out in front of my dumpy trailer where I spent so many days dancing away the blues of life at Sleepy Hollow. I took him to the back of the property where all of us kids used to escape to a beautiful oasis in the middle of the woods. The path was no longer there as nature had long encapsulated it, but I was able to show him the creek bank where the Rocky Creek with its sweet tea colored water used to wash away our troubles.  

I was able to get a couple of the shots I wanted and take a couple of videos. It was reminiscent of the talent shows my friends and I would often put on for some of the residents in the old trailer park. In the middle of my video making, it started to rain. We originally turned to leave and call it a day. I stopped myself and said this will pass, let’s keep going. The rain started to slow almost immediately. As I looked up, my eyes fixated on the sun fighting it way to shine through the clouds and there it was a tiny rainbow, God’s promise to me for a new beginning. He even let me capture it on video. I shot one more video and took one more walk around before we left, and I said my final goodbye to the Sleepy Hollow of yesteryear.  

We made one more stop on the way out of the old neighborhood where many people were taking their daily walks and bike rides. A place I often visited with friends as a kid. Back in the day it was a dirt path that led back to an old rail-road bridge that once carried cargo over my beloved Rocky Creek. The very bridge where I shared my first puff of marijuana with the old neighborhood drug dealer’s daughter. The very bridge that held so many intimate conversations between my friends and I. As we walked down the now asphalt path, it started to come into view. A beautiful new concrete bridge and below it that sweet-tea colored water that saved me so many years ago.  

Cheers to the new American Deam that is taking over the Sleepy Hollow Mobile Home Park.

About the Author-Amy Amdahl