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Lunch with Ernest
Benefit should fit right in
By ERNEST HOOPER
Published April 8, 2005
The idea was to talk with Nathan and Keri Hargis about their home being a backdrop for the American Cancer Society's third-annual Gatsby Affair.
The April 23 party will be one of Brandon's premier social events.
What I came to discover, however, was that Hargis' 20-acre property is as much a story as the cancer society's fun fundraiser. With towering oaks, a fully stocked lake and an old-style farmhouse, Hargis has created a little slice of his native Tennessee in Valrico.
Most people would say the centerpiece is the home, but for me it was the wooden structure near the house. It looks like an old-fashioned general store, but Hargis calls his cozy two-room meeting place "the barn." It has a flat-screen television, music system, small kitchen, bar and patio.
Over a meal Nathan cooked up himself - grilled pork chops, stewed okra and tomatoes and great Northern and pinto bean soup - we sat in the barn and talked about raising his sons Curt and Nathan on the property, and why he and Keri opened their home up to the Cancer Society.
ERNEST: How did you come to own such a beautiful piece of property?
NATHAN: I bought the land in 1990 and built the house between '90 and '92. We lived in Mason Oaks across the street. The driveway was a dirt road and I hauled out six junk cars that had been left here for years. I grew up in Tennessee and my wife lived in Atlanta. She had grown up in a subdivision and she didn't want to live in the country. I kept walking over here and looking at this. It wasn't for sale, no one was living here. I had a friend of mine call to see who owned it. The owner met me over here a couple of times and showed me around. We agreed on a price and I bought it. I told my wife about it three months later.
That's funny.
I kept walking her over here to see if she would like it. The original house was about 1,200 square feet. She finally decided she liked it. Our home in Mason Oaks was real pretty. It had Southwest furniture and everything, but there wasn't a comfortable place in it to sit down. It was just a pretty house. So we decided we were going to build this farmhouse.
Rustic?
Farm looking. Tennessee looking. We wanted to build a house for ourselves, not for other people to look at. A place where you could raise kids. So she saved pictures from magazines, different rooms and we gave it to John Elliott and he drew up the house.
I know you and your wife are happy here, but your kids must have loved growing up here.
That field out there is all lighted. You'll see it at the party. We had a baseball field. We had soccer goals. Their little league soccer teams and stuff would practice here, so all their friends have grown up here.
Mr. Elliott built the house, but what about the barn?
It was half this size. It was just a place where you work on cars. We tore it all down and all that was left was this concrete pad. He built these two rooms and a couple of horse stalls on the back of it. But my kids didn't really care about horses, and there was another old building in Brandon being torn down. So he took the horse stall and added the back kitchen and that room. It just kind of evolved.
Now you have a place where people come over to watch football games?
Oh yeah. Football, hockey, the NCAA tournament. Guys will show up with a six-pack of beer. Guys I know from playing golf at River Hills. Somebody will call me and say, Hey, you watching the game? My wife doesn't mind and their wife doesn't mind because we're right here in the neighborhood.
Yes. I was saying to Keri that it must be easy to keep the house clean if you entertain out here.
She doesn't give a flip. Women are funny. They want their house perfect before they let anybody come in. With this, she doesn't care. We sweep the floor and go on. But I don't want to say it's a men's building. The wives come in all the time. When your kids are growing up, your friends end up being the parents of other kids. There was hardly a weekend that went by that we didn't sit out here around the fire or the barbecue grill while the kids played until they were worn out.
I was going to ask if it was a big deal to open your house up to the Cancer Society, but this is just an extension of what you normally do.
When David Gee was running for sheriff, we had a big fundraiser over here. We had a 50th wedding anniversary for a couple who lived down the street, and he's since passed away from cancer. It touches everybody.
It's a part of everybody's life, so when they said they needed a place to hold the party, serve food, music, I said, Sure, sure.
DESSERT: A postscript from Ernest
Nathan was expecting me for lunch, but it just so happened that three other friends came over to join him, including Jesse Lawrence, a longtime friend who is something of a caretaker. Jesse was out fishing when Nathan saw him and stopped to ask if he had caught anything. When Jesse said no, Nathan took him to his property and they've been friends ever since. Hargis, 54, runs Ringler Associates, a company that administers annuities in Florida, from his office on the property.
The well-manicured spread will undoubtedly be the perfect backdrop for the Gatsby Affair, a posh lawn party themed the "Bootlegger's Bash." A stage will be erected in front of the barn for the band, the Bedrocks, and a tent will hold a casino with blackjack and craps tables. There also will be a live and silent auction, and the 300-plus revelers will have a chance to endow summer camp and college scholarships for kids suffering from cancer. Tickets are $150 and all proceeds will go to the Southeast Hillsborough Unit of ACS. Table and sponsor opportunities are still available. Call 685-0670 for more information.
Ernest Hooper also writes a column for the Tampa & State section of the St. Petersburg Times. Lunch With Ernest is edited for brevity and clarity. To suggest lunch partners, call Ernest at 226-3406 or e-mail hooper@sptimes.com
[Last modified April 7, 2005, 08:55:10]
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