VANISHING VOCATIONS: An occasional series on jobs threatened by changing times, by Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times.
Work takes her on a road less traveled these days
Sylvia Reina daydreamed of faraway places. The Tampa native made a hobby out of planning getaways for family members while she was busy at home caring for her children. She was organized. It was easy to find the best airline rates and fun to sort through excursions and attractions in cities around the world. “I was always doing it for my family from home. They joked that I should start my own travel agency,” said Reina, who is now 76.
A job out of tune with changing tastes in music
Bill McKaig likes to work with his hands. And his ears. What started out as a way to make extra money while studying music in college became the career he was always looking for. McKaig tunes pianos and restores them in a workshop at his South Tampa home. “I taught myself to do it in college,” said McKaig, who has tuned pianos in the Tampa Bay area for more than 30 years. He fine tuned his own skills by working for another piano tuner in Safety Harbor. “That’s where I figured out I had so much more to learn,” he said. Then he worked as a piano tuner at a Tampa music store for 12 years. The business has changed a lot in that time. For one, fewer families own pianos, as fewer parents are investing in lessons for their children, he said.
Doug Maggard is a third-generation horologist. What does that mean? Maggard, 58, describes it as being a mechanic, just on a smaller scale. As the owner of Maggard’s Watch and Jewelry Repair Service in Tampa, he fixes watches and clocks, repairs jewelry, resizes rings and does engravings, among other things. Basically, he’s really good at tinkering with small parts. Maggard opened his first store inside the University Mall’s Sears department store in 1981 with his father, also a watch repairman. The store is still there, located on the second floor of the department store.
With Netflix and Redbox, how are these guys in Tampa still renting out movies and video games?
David Gegenfurtner misses the days when video games were simpler. Graphics were basic and pixelated. Games came as bulky plastic cartridges that sometimes required a lick of rubbing alcohol to work. There were no complex story lines. You raced to win. You saved the day. Gegenfurtner, 33, started selling old and new video games at flea markets in the Tampa Bay area a couple of years ago. It isn’t a full-time job — he’s an IT tech consultant by day — but it helped put a few extra bucks in his pocket. he games were selling fast, especially the older ones. So Gegenfurtner and his buddy since the second grade, Joe Pochulsky, decided to open a store. It has been almost two years since Revolution Video Games & Movies opened on Busch Boulevard in Tampa and business is steady.
Dave Percival still remembers the man who used to work at his hometown gas station in a secluded part of Maine. Every time the family car would pull in for a fill up, this man would jog out from the adjacent store to pump the gas and clean the windshield. So when Percival, 50, opened his own gas station in St. Peterburg many years later, he vowed to keep that tradition alive. The BP gas station at 7424 Fourth St. N has eight pumps. One of them has a green sign above that reads “full.” That means that if you park there, an attendant will pump gas for you, wipe down the windshield, check your car’s tire pressure and fluid levels — for the same price as self service. But tips are appreciated.
