…Was promoted primarily to bring people to cultivate its natural beauty and to enjoy its vast native offerings to the wealthy but then to the masses, gives one a moment to catch their breath and then sigh…
It’s not like I was unknowledgeable about its inherent gift to the nation and the world, why one might ask?
It may very well have been a family legacy to evolve into a resident here eventually, since my grandparents would winter here way before I was even born.
Sadly, my Mom’s Mom, my grandmother was killed in a car accident enroute to Miami the year before I was born and we will leave that up in the air… just hanging there; let’s just say it was before 1950, but not before 1948. I am her namesake.
With that said, my grandpa and my Mom’s Dad, still would come down here to good ole Florida for the winter with his new wife, Julie, and so in the winter of 1957-58 my Mom and I got to come down to Miami for the Hanukkah/Christmas vacation through New Years and a few months more that winter, Dad was still in business and so he stayed up and worked at the Eclipse with his partners his cousins, a bowling alley/cocktail lounge and restaurant combo. They all would only have one Sunday off a month so they all needed to be there.
My Mom didn’t drive, never was clear on why that was, but even in those days that would be a terribly long drive for anybody but especially a woman alone with a young child, and so since my Mom also had a fear of planes, the other mode of transport gaining popularity even back in 1957, the last option was taking the train and so that is how we got from Newark NJ where Dad I think must have dropped us off to Miami!
Any travel of that distance for a child with a parent was going to be an exciting adventure and it was… I think…being only seven, yep I was I did not really know too much about American history, but from what I saw on the TV, with shows like Westerns and Cowboy shows that all talked about the wild west, and to me anything away from Paramus NJ, I had nothing really to go on, but on either side of the tracks from what I could see out my window sure looked like what the TV showed us of the wild west.
And so I asked my Mom about Indians?
I do believe she knew about the Seminoles, but not a whole lot.
It was hard to fall asleep because of the sheer excitement of the journey that took more than a day I believe.
And until we actually arrived in Miami and got off the train I thought there were no other people in this whole foreign place, called Florida!
That winter after the holidays I got to go to a real private school, where I was the only girl with two others there; who were boys. It was cold that winter in Miami I think they said the coldest in history, but that was way long ago, so I don’t remember that well…The boys were something called gentle men since they helped me on with my coat.
I took a taxi to school from our hotel and I remember one day I walked back to the hotel and on my way I found a great big noisy rock with something sloshing around in it.
My Mom told me it was a coconut. Oh yea, I recall now the reason we stayed longer that winter of 1957-58 was Grandpa had, had a heart attack and Mom was worried, yep sadly grandpa died that year of 1958. Mom was his eldest of five children, and that is why we were there.
I don’t remember our trip home but I am sure it was just as exciting. I brought my coconut to my second grade classroom for show and tell or some such thing, Mrs. Lavin’s, and my Dad came to school to open it for my entire class… He was not a tool guy, but a great guy and it took him awhile to get that ugly rock open, but when he did, it had liquid like milk in it and that is what is was called, coconut milk and white tasty harder stuff that was oh so tasty I almost didn’t share, but I did!
And everyone gave their own opinion of what they thought.
On that note of my first encounter with where I have been now calling home for this our twenty-seventh year, allow me to wish all of you your memories of how you got to be where you just might be in this point in time or where you may be heading…kindly count those blessings and share those overages and we will too!
And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?!