The strangest things can imbue us with a concrete sense of place

This plaque was installed on the top of the marker explaining its significance. "Our sense of place is what orients us and provides context for our lives, from birth. We are all a part of the places we live within, and when those places are destroyed, a part of us dies with them."

— Melissa Holbrook in "The Place You Love is Gone"

The paradox of progress is hard to swallow when the place we love has to change.

Wallace Stegner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who influenced presidents from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton, understood sense of place from the perspective that something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.

Mr. Stegner believed sense of place comes from making a living from "it," suffering from "its" catastrophes, valuing "it" for the abiding investment of hard labor that you, your parents and grandparents and your all-butunknown ancestors have put into "it."

One's sense of Naples, as it relates to providing a context for our lives, depends upon when "it" became your home — not a tax shelter, but your home. Of course, this goes for wherever one calls home.

The marker was placed at the corner Third Street South and Third Avenue South in 1952. Here today, gone tomorrow, back again

A few years ago, I had a phone call from a Naples-born friend, Denyse Smith Mesnick. A longtime supporter of local history, she asked for my help in saving the city's last remaining concrete street marker — all 400 pounds of it.

Ms. Mesnick had received a tip that the city was concerned about the Third Street South/Third Avenue South marker and had plans to remove it.

The simple white marker had originally been installed at the corner in response to a need for "change." When the postman back then said his route was getting too big to not have some kind of street marker with numbers, the residents of Naples agreed. Up until this time, the mail carrier knew the houses along his route by the colors and tile designs on the individual roofs.

The Chamber of Commerce decided it would donate the markers and made a plan to install 136 of them around the town. That was in 1948; it took four years before any of the $2-apiece markers were put in their proper places.

Over the course of many years, the street markers gradually disappeared, most likely tossed in the trash as part of demolitions and re-dos. The post at Third and Third stood firmly in place, however, watching over the home of Ms. Mesnick's family friends, Preston and Margaret Tuttle (who City Historian Doris Reynolds says was the first girl to graduate from Naples High and the first woman to work for Florida Power and Light).

When Margaret passed away in 2005 at the age of 95, the house was sold. With demolition crews on their way, George Archibald, the city's traffic engineer, saved the day by saving the marker and storing it for safekeeping. Once freshly painted, it was returned to its rightful spot, now distinguished with a marker of its own declaring: "Naples Land- mark Street Marker circa 1948. Former site of the home of Preston and Margaret Tuttle 1945- 2005."

Not the only one

Not long ago, Chester Keene, a former Collier County deputy, brought a box of his "sense-ofplace" memorabilia to the Naples Backyard History Mini-Museum. As we got to talking, he said he had read a newspaper story about "the last concrete street marker" and wouldn't want to hurt Ms. Mesnick's feelings by letting it be known that that the Third and Third marker wasn't the only one left. It seemed Mr. Keene had one in his backyard that he had saved from being tossed in as filler for a concrete patio years before. In his box of treasures was a Polaroid photo to prove the existence of the post.

When Mr. Keene offered his piece of local history to the mini-museum, we were absolutely delighted. All we had to do was figure out how to get 400 pounds of cement picked up, washed, painted and propped into a permanent position.

"It's too bad my great uncle's not alive," Mr. Keene reflected. "He'd probably carry it for $10."

"Who was your great uncle?" I had to ask. "'Acrefoot' Johnson," he replied. "Oh, my gosh!" I smiled as a warm sense of satisfaction flooded me because I knew "Acrefoot" — or at least I knew of him and his legacy — and that made me feel even more connected to this wonderful place I call home. Who would ever think talking about 400 pounds of concrete could do that?

So who was "Acrefoot" Johnson? His story is coming to a memory near you — next week.

Lois Bolin is the co-founder of Naples

Cultural Landscape, a fund at the Community

Foundation of Collier County. Naples Backyard

History is the fund's educational initiative.

For more information, visit the NBYH

Mini-Museum at 1300 Third St. S., call 594-

2978 or visit www.naplesbackyardhistory.org.