The Center for Literature and Theatre @ MDC

Respect By Brenda Mezick I knew things were going to be strange in my first year as an Assistant State Attorney for Miami-Dade County when a defense attorney came up to me during court and asked me to spell my full name. “Is that the exact spelling?” he said pushing his legal pad in my face. “It has to be exact.” “Why?” “My client’s family wants it.” When he came back and asked for a strand of my hair, I was bewildered. “Absolutely not,” I said. A few moments later, I felt a sharp yank at the back of my head. “Owwww. WHAT THE ….” The defense attorney, a licensed member of the Florida Bar, walked the strand of my hair to the Defendant’s family. I had been violated, but why? A Cuban American prosecutor nearby whispered the word “Santeria.” It was all he would say. Over the years when I asked other Cubans about Santeria, I got the same tight-lipped reaction. One woman explained, “We might not believe, but we respect.” When I told a fellow prosecutor I thought the little cloth doll placed on his chair during trial was cool in a slasher film kind of way, he gave it to me. I found another outside the courthouse. I began to collect them even though they burned my hands a little when I touched them. Then one evening after a hearing involving defendants whose families were Santeros, I saw a three-foot life-like doll face-up in the gutter outside the courthouse. The detective who was walking me to my office politely ignored what became obvious the closer we got. It was an effigy of me. The detective lead me away, but I kept looking back at the doll. What do you do if a magical representation of you has been left lying in a gutter? Do you leave her there where cars could hit her? Do you pick her up? Or would that be like taking home the Bride of Chucky? I left her, but I wanted answers. I signed up for a Ritualistic Crime Investigation Class with the City of Miami Police Department. I learned not to pick up those little dolls with my bare hands. They’re usually covered in pulverized frog skin or urine. We went on field trips deep into the heart of Hialeah -- to graveyards and Botanicas, stores that sell magical items. The first was a combined Botanica and “pet store” for “pets” you want to sacrifice. The second Botanica looked like an apothecary out of Harry Potter. It specialized in Pahlo, the darkest, the most powerful of black magic. There were shelves of powders, potions, and dried plants. I came out of that store with a prosecutor’s protection kit, complete with beads, potions, and a piece of tree bark that was supposed to heighten my powers of persuasion. I was ready to battle the supernatural. Two years later, I prosecuted a Pahlo high priest. He was said to have cured cancer and made the lame walk. I charged him with the sexual battery of his step-daughter. He had molested the child from age six to twelve. When the child’s autistic little sister began obsessively drawing herself being chased by spirits and being lifted to heaven by angels, the family became convinced it was the Pahlo priest sending a warning. They had confidence in me, but they weren’t taking chances. They brought in a specialist to dismantle an altar in the priest’s backyard. The altar featured an assembly of black cauldrons. That’s where the spirits are housed. They were guarded over by life-size statues, including Siete Rayos, the diety of war, with action-figure sword accessory. It was the same sword the child had watched the Pahlo priest hold to her mother’s throat. The child was allowed to testify by closed circuit TV, but strange things happened. First there were technical difficulties with the closed circuit system. When we finally got reception, the child froze in fear and wouldn’t answer my questions. Then, while she was testifying, an electrical power surge raised the clerk’s table and the Judge’s bench off the floor like a wave . One of the jurors gave me a look like “NO WAY.” I turned to the Pahlo priest. He smiled. Now, he’s doing a life sentence. I’m not sure if the protective powder I dabbed behind my ears, or the bark I chewed that morning had any effect on the outcome of the trial. But even if I don’t believe, I too have learned to respect.

Only In Miami By M.J. Fievre I've been to plenty of places I'd rather not have been. Only in Miami am I not tough and bitter like uncooked roots. For me, Miami is tequila breaths. Roads always getting dug up, conspiracies of quipping ravens on their telephone poles. It’s the mellifluous smell of ylang-ylang flowers and that of the Pollo Tropical down 57th Avenue. Of Cuban cigars and menthol cigarettes, Haitian patties and old books from Libreri Mapou. Of sage in bloom in the Gables, the purple shafts smothered with pollen-drunk honey bees. Miami is mangroves, with their wild, walking roots in brackish mire, taking the bitter and making it sweet; anchored in bedrock, the banyan is ready for the hurricanes. Miami is half hidden alligators biding time. It’s basking sharks and white herons, growing palm trees and wild orchids. Mosquitoes and overgrown vines with gray moss draping from them like ghosts tangled in the green of the leaves. Miami is sudden rains after the sky is briefly gold, the water pouring over my curls and cheeks as my arms outstretch like Christ’s. It’s sudden colds, when the sky is withered and chapped with wispy clouds; the wind then blows repetitive onomatopoeias, howls with no beginning. Miami is the stolen Canton cock of Calle Ocho, the Chicken Busters of Little Haiti and Overtown, protesters in orange jumpsuits and hoods who demand closure of Guantanamo, and a gaggle of police officers who trample an Harlem Shake video shoot in Hialeah. Miami is poetry flash mobs and impromptu fests. It's Romero Britto's pop art bombed by C-Dog's graffiti in Wynwood and an Occupy-Wall-Street banker mannequin hanging by a noose from a telephone wire alongside I-95 and its bad drivers. "This is not art" (and I’m not sure I disagree). Miami: where Port-au-Prince and Havana both seem so close, while Key West, Pompano, and Homestead sound like foreign lands. Only in Miami does my chest never sing its broad thrum of loneliness—even when only a few understand me as I rush past pauses and breathe between my words, chest heaving, my accent slanted east. For in Miami, almost everyone's English has warm vowels like sun-drench, sandy washboard roads, and sharp, salty consonants like olives.

Photo caption: Sharokina De Mirza and her mother Growing up Assyrian-American in Miami By Sharokina De Mirza My story begins on a sultry day in August in the mid-1970s. I was born to Assyrian parents. In the 1970s there were no Assyrians residing here. (Even now I don’t know of any others.) If there were, there was no community or organization that would foster a gathering of Assyrians. Therefore, during most of my childhood, I grew up around other cultures and I tried desperately to convince others of the veracity of my own. My trials and tribulations with my identity surfaced when I was at school. My preschool teacher refused to pronounce my name and nicknamed me “Sherry.” I was regularly poked fun at, not just for my unusual name, but for the food I ate as well. My lunches were not your usual cold cut sandwiches on white bread, a few cookies and a bag of chips. No, I was sent to school with dolma. Imagine my anguish when I was asked to explain what I was eating. How do you tell your classmates you are eating grape leaves? Not only did my name and food spark interest, but my language has raised a few eyebrows as well. My mom took my sister and me on a trip to the grocery store when we were about 3 and 5 years of age. We were being a bit rowdy and feeling overwhelmed by the sensory stimulation of cookies, cakes, sodas and chips. We began to fight with one another, so my mom, who was trying not to attract any attention, reprimanded us in Assyrian, a language very similar to Aramaic. Rather than telling me to stop fighting in English, she said “la bullshit!” You can imagine the stares and nasty looks we received that day. As I grew older, I became fascinated with our origins. All I had learned from my world history courses was that the Assyrians were warriors who had established a great reign but due to their barbaric ways, were toppled in 612 B.C. I began to wonder, how was it that I was living every day with an identity that was not recognized? Usually when I was asked about my heritage or the derivation of my name, I would be delighted at the interest others were taking. But, I soon realized that each attempt at explaining the name, the history and the culture bumped into an overwhelming ignorance of our existence. Not only were others under the assumption that we did not exist, they also thought we were Arabs since “Assyrian” sounds very similar to “Syrian”. I could not even consult a current map and point to Assyria. Recently, I was approached by a college student asking where I am from. I chose to illustrate my heritage on a world map by pointing to the land once called Mesopotamia. The student replied, “Transylvania”? Since minds had been so closed to our existence, I felt no other place but in academia would I find an audience. To my dismay, the reverse was true. My first experience occurred in religion class. I was one of 200 students and the professor was giving a lecture on Judaism. In the midst of his lecture, he began to speak about the Assyrians, “those barbaric people who wreaked havoc on their foes,” I was a freshman at the time and unaccustomed to voicing my discontent. I was writhing in my seat and I desperately wanted to share with my classmates that I was an Assyrian and I was nowhere near barbaric! How could he, as an academic, fall prey to a characterization that was only appropriate to an ancient era? Did he not know that Assyrians still existed and were peaceful people? I do not have the pronounced features most Assyrians do and therefore, I have assimilated well with the rest of the community. Naturally, this has led to assumptions that I am Hispanic. On more than one occasion, I have been spoken Spanish to. After I turned 18, I decided to get a summer job at a clothing store at the mall. One time in particular, I was assisting a customer from Latin America. Having never taken Spanish before, I tried my best to assist this woman and unfortunately for me, her speed in speaking progressively hastened to the point that I had no idea what she was saying! In sheer desperation, I sought the help of a co-worker who spoke Spanish. When the transaction was complete, my co-worker pulled me aside and informed me that the customer was appalled that I was denouncing my heritage for having not assisted her further. “Denouncing my heritage?” I exclaimed! If only I had had the opportunity to enlighten her about my heritage. I have now come to retaliate, not with “sorry, I do not speak Spanish,” but by answering in Assyrian! Quite often I am told that I need to take Spanish language classes on account that I look Hispanic. Or when I deny that I am Hispanic or speak Spanish for that matter, I am greeted with raised eyebrows. For example, my mom and I decided to watch an MDC sponsored film at the Koubek Center in Miami. While we were patiently waiting for the film to begin, an older lady seated in the row before us turned around to engage my mom in conversation in Spanish. My mom politely replied that she did not speak Spanish and the older lady’s companion retorted by saying, “And you live in Miami? How disgusting!” Without causing a scene, my mom replied that she did speak English and they could still have a conversation since this woman knew very well how to speak the language while simultaneously insulting us both for our lack of Spanish speaking skills. How will my story end? Will I continue living on the hyphen misidentified and engaged in a cultural conflict? Or will tolerance and a better understanding of the Assyrian identity prevail? Bit khezakh – we shall see.

Home at Last by James Hall Every time I see that bumper sticker—Florida Native—a ripple of envy and irritation flutters in my chest. It’s a rare and exotic club to which I will never belong because I’m one of those thousand-a-week folks who have been flooding into Florida for the last few decades. Although they tell us that the tide has slackened to 591 new residents a day, Florida natives are still as scarce and outlandish as manatees. How unfair it seems that even though I’ve lived in the state for well over thirty years (surely longer than plenty of the younger natives) I should still feel like an interloper. In 1965 on a south Florida winter day much like this one, I stepped off the train at the Hollywood station to attend Riverside Military Academy. It had been an incredibly romantic journey, a long rumbling train ride through the brown scraggly fields of Tennessee and Georgia, then into the expanse of green nothingness that was north and central Florida, until finally the palm trees began to thicken, the greens grew lush, and the windows in the train slowly lowered. Suddenly I was standing beside the tracks looking at a sky dense with extravagant birds, white and huge with lazy wings, long orange legs trailing. I remember taking my first breath of rich sub-tropical air. There was something sweet and spicy in the breeze—that warm macaroon aroma with an intoxicating undertone of cinnamon that seems to waft directly from some secret Caribbean island. That afternoon I breathed in a lungful of air I have yet to release. Though I didn’t have the words for it then, I knew the light was different too. Softer than the harsh and unglamorous Kentucky daylight I was used to. It had an almost romantic, twilight rosiness, a quiet light, yet at the same time far more vivid and precise than any I’d known before. A painterly January light. And while I had been on the platform of the Hollywood train station for less than a minute, I knew with utter certainty that I had taken a mortal wound. Sometime later that winter, I dropped the bombshell on my parents. I informed them that I had decided to turn down the Air Force Academy appointment my father and I had labored so hard to secure. I wanted to attend college in this newly discovered Shangri-La, Florida. While the shock of my passing up a free four years of college must have been incredibly difficult for them to absorb, to their everlasting credit my parents let me win that argument. I never told them that the institution of higher learning I had chosen, Florida Presbyterian College, had caught my eye because the catalog I’d devoured in my boys school guidance office had numerous photographs of coeds wearing Bermuda shorts in classrooms. Ah, sweet Florida, what a sensuous and libertine land. I did four glorious years of college in the charming and soporific St. Petersburg of the 60’s. On holidays I explored the west coast, the Keys, camping at starkly primitive Bahia Honda, building bonfires on midnight beaches, discovering out of the way taverns that served cheap pitchers of beer and spectacular cheeseburgers, bays where fish jumped happily into frying pans, and unair-conditioned piano bars in Key West where writers huddled in the corners and talked the secret talk. I had never felt so at home. Then I graduated and after serving a bleak exile in snowy latitudes to collect two more degrees, it was finally time to find a job. I was so determined to return to Florida that I didn’t even bother applying for teaching jobs in any other state. It was a cavalier decision bordering on lunacy for that was a time in the early seventies when teaching jobs were scarce and terminal degrees plentiful. Every taxi driver had one. When no job offer was forthcoming, I moved back to Florida anyway and put my new Ph.D. to use digging holes and planting azaleas, palm trees and a host of other landscape plants around the bases of high rise condominiums. Better to do manual labor in the relentless sun of Florida than to find myself in some university office staring out the window at the desolate tundra of Anyplace Else. The phone call finally came. A new state university in Miami. The ground floor. A dream job. And then little by little, all these years happened. But even after all this time, the light is still new and surreal and the air still drenched with spices they haven’t yet named and the sky is chocked full of the most impossible birds. Parrots squawk across my backyard sky every morning at seven. Garish flowers big as Stetsons bloom in December. Some evenings the breeze is so luxurious I feel like weeping. I kidnapped a boy from Kentucky and transplanted him in paradise and he grew up to write books that sing the praises and mock the dizzy and perilous follies of this gaudy corner of the nation. I love this place. I have loved it from the start and have learned to love it more with every passing year—all its quirkiness, its stresses, this simmering melting pot where no one wants to blend. I have decided we need a bumper sticker of our own—those of us who had the misfortune of being born somewhere else, but who made the difficult choices, overcame the fears and complications and the psychic traumas of abandoning the safety of one home for the uncertainty of another. There are 591 stories a day about how we arrived here, and sure, not all of us were as swept away by the sensory treasures of this place as that eighteen year old kid on the train platform. Some of us came simply for jobs or to play golf in February or to soothe our arthritic joints and there are many who find nothing to rhapsodize about in the sumptuous air or rosy light, the awkward, delicious grace of a heron rising into flight. There are many of those 591 who simply ignore or endure what the rest of us cherish. Well, let them get their own license plate. But as for the rest of us, ours should say, Home at Last.

Swimming with the Man-O-War (2005) This week the jellyfish glowed lavender on their way to shore, floating in like portals. Bathers poked them with snorkeling tubes, splashed dramatically around the glassy bodies that had come to the beach to die. A laughing man buried one alive. The fine hairs on the man’s arms turned gold. His sweat sparkled. Last week I bought D batteries, saint candles (Barbara and Clare), and a Bic. I said: Upstream echoes, frictional effects, Max Mayfield, surface failures, wind event, tornadic, eyewall, surfers missing in Palm Beach. Before I evacuated I placed a chocolate in the East window for the hurricane. Imagine: a whole peninsula without people. There were a thousand fish and one touched my right leg on its northern run and a man further out yelled A THOUSAND FISH. It was the week before the hurricane whose eye was an energy unfathomed who came to the barrier islands and leveled the place they called Conchy Joe’s where I once ate so much crab the sea flowed up to my table with a sound like a thousand legs brushing against mine. My life has very little to do with belief. Do you believe me? Donna—Betsy—Andrew—Gordon—Opal—Mitch—Floyd—Irene—Gordon—Charley—Frances—Ivan—Jeanne—Katrina—Rita—Wilma On the beach there is a dark girl and her prince who wears many bracelets. They are so quiet they thrill me and the gulls who quiver in the sun as if freezing. During the hurricane, that busted sky place, that devil of sand and frond, that third eye, I prayed: Let It Be. There might be a poem in here, there might be a lover. Royal terns look at the sea, their little Groucho Marx hairdos so cute the herring gulls laugh hysterically. I’m swimming with the jellies. I’m windblown beside the Canadians and the Haitians in a delicate glissando and glyph. Palms are down or tilted, some South, some East, the land marred and ailing. The birds are not back yet and the water is blue with grief. Look at the way the clouds sculpt sorrow. Look at that tree who barely survived, weeping into the sea, an elegy in thirteen winds. For a moment I can smell it, the method of the storm beginning in the trees. Everything reflects recollection, a turtle’s back and crawl. Everyone is hungry for the goddess and the grave and the sea. She walks on water right past the rest of us in her pregnant clothes with her womb full of gumbo. Nobody can walk on water, someone says. I know you are wondering why everything waits to be said or nothing remains to be said but it’s like this: no woman ever walked on water before and the child of the woman in this place who has visions worries her mother, yes, the daughter herself a crazy one. Words build up like ghost ants on skin, and when they bite you are left with marks like the place in your womb that longs for a kind of water you can walk on and a kind of land you can swim in and a kind of sky that holds you exuberant in its fury.

Photo caption: N Gérard and her son Leaving Miami: A Love Letter By N Gérard Jesus, I’m ranking murders now? “At least he didn’t kill his kid”? Miamians have a perverse, reverse pride; I get that. We think our newscast is more ‘interesting’ than other places. We’re the world’s rudest city, the worst drivers, the epicenter of Medicare fraud. When some study reported that, combining all the social indices – housing, crime, attitude, whatever – Miami is the number-one lousiest place to live in the U.S., many of us thought, “We won!” But did I really just now think that this murder isn’t as bad as the one two days ago, because this time no machete was involved, because this time he killed the mother but spared the child? I must leave Miami before my son is much older. Yet noticing how randomly delightful this place is can mess up an exit strategy. The crooked line of ibis wobbling across the sky above traffic. The marlin that explodes, twisting, off in the Atlantic. The screech owls, six inches of knock-kneed indignation, that hiss as you pass in the night. Even these crazy-ass people might reel you in: the person who pays a skywriter to convince rush-hour heathens that “God loves U” + smiley face, causing us all to squint and crane out our windshields – then swerve to miss other bad drivers, thinking ungodly thoughts. The man walking down Flagler with his head on fire – the incendiary effect of one of our ridiculous, gaudy sunsets bouncing off the cigar smoke swirling around his head. The mighty woman in the parking lot of a peeling strip mall who can lop the top off a coconut with one machete stroke. It’s hard to leave a city where the local Publix stocks Santería candles. Where the owner of a shop in Little Haiti keeps a huge glass bottle on a metal pivot in which herbs resembling lawn clippings float in grain alcohol; he’ll swing it to pour you a shot just for stepping in. Where life-size statues of rearing stallions are wedged in a tiny garden off Douglas Road. That giant plaster manatee mailbox in front of the million-dollar home? Somebody put it there. Don’t be captured by the charm. Daily signs are so yin-yang that they could go either way. The man on the motorcycle who blows past the 75-mph herd, pops a wheelie and blasts down the highway, dreads streaming behind: Is he here to knock someone off St. Peter’s waiting list, or to make us all tense up and behave? Hard to tell. The guy in the pick-up who pointedly roars over the median where my son and I stand, almost hitting my head with his side mirror; but he’s chased by the Cuban fellow, mouth wide, bellowing, “Casi la mató, carajo!” in our defense. Or the time I picked Félix Morisseau-Leroy as Miami’s best poet in a local newspaper and was blindsided with hostile telephone calls – couldn’t I have called him Miami’s best Haitian poet and then picked a ‘real’ one? – but then a colleague taught me the infallible way of hanging up on an asshole without it coming back to you. In Miami, the wound and Band-Aid aren’t separated by much. Unless they are a chasm apart. We stop traffic along the I-95 for two cops gunned down so wastefully, and post silently flashing police cruisers mile after empty mile. The tribute is moving. They deserved to live. But I’m too mean not to notice that we didn’t stop traffic the last time a cop gunned down some unarmed black guy and later said ‘oops.’ Prosecute the Liberty City Seven because they might eventually make a bomb? Isn’t that sort of Liberty City returning the favor? I mustn’t lose sight of that; I must get my son out. Yet it’s easy to put off planned departures at dusk, in May, when the humidity isn’t yet cruel, and the tabebuia blossoms catch a breeze off the 16th Street cemetery and waltz like little wayward ghosts. The wind feels almost otherworldly, like a storyteller drawing breath before she begins. It’s hard not to see that there is something deeper here, or maybe just darker. I think it’s something brave. Miami is so brash that, sometimes, I forget the stories of sea-crossings and chancing everything, of people who won’t see their families for years – maybe not ever again. Of people who, maybe, no one will ever watch over again. On a sweltering afternoon when the air feels furry like growth in a Petri dish, I try not to be so peeved by the sweat pooling behind my sunglasses that I forget those stories. I’m not made of that stuff, but it’s all around: in the mariachi singer in silver-studded regalia, chest no longer puffed out, trudging home in the heat. In a trash-filled lot, in the circle of plastic chairs and a blown-out sofa arranged under a Poinciana tree: old heads in straw hats, a certain attention to dress. In the worn T-shirt folded over the face of the dead dog lying by the curb of a neighborhood where no city crew is coming to pick it up. Missing home, I’ve recognized it in the upheld tradition of a cricket match and stopped to watch. And that’s when a stranger with an island voice may fashion a rose from a palm leaf and pass it to you, saying “Smile, darling,” and walk on. He knows what it’s like. I wake at night afraid for my son – not now, but soon. So what, who doesn’t? It seems arrogant to leave. It feels disloyal to the city, to the people here who’ve never had their fuck-you money lined up and don’t have that kind of luxury. Maybe Miami lends itself to stereotypes of cheap flash and ugly tempers but, here, resilience is everywhere, like the banyan tree that needs just a tiny break to grow in concrete. Miami is a city of sly grace. It’s a seductive tar-pit that can trap a mammoth. I must tell it good-bye.

Photo caption: Family photo taken after my brother Henry’s First Holy Communion at Immaculate Conception Church. Pictured from left to right, my father Henry, mom- “Cuqui”, Grand Aunt Estelita, Maternal Grandmother Olga, Paternal Grandmother Abuela Nena (on which story is based), me in front of her, my two brothers Henry and Dave. The Bus By Olga Perez-Cormier It was always exciting when Abuela would tell me that she needed to go downtown for the day. This meant she had business to attend to at “El Refugio”. This also meant that we would do a little shopping. As a reward for helping her translate and get around, she would treat me to lunch at McCrory’s. We lived in East Hialeah. Our world was limited to our house, school, the grocery store and very rarely, a trip outside of all of that to visit family and friends. We did not play with the neighborhood kids. She would not let us play outside of the yard. She was responsible for us so we were always within earshot. My mom did most of the major groceries but Abuela liked to shop with her money – the money she got from “El Refugio”. I’m not sure that’s where it came from, but that is what I thought. Sometimes that meant that we would walk five blocks west to the big bodega where she felt most comfortable. She could pick up a few things and speak to anyone she needed to, in Spanish. We would walk down 54th Street to East 4th Avenue. It was a busy street with lots of cars so crossing it felt like a major event. Abuela’s personality was hard. She was a very strict disciplinarian and there was no crossing her. You needed to stay by her side while crossing the big avenue. Abuela was 60 years old when I was born. This means that she was probably in her early 70’s when we would make these trips. She did not walk fast but she never showed weakness. We moved at a certain pace and that was that. We would then walk four more blocks until we reached Palm Avenue where the bodega was. It looked big to me. She always took me or my brother Henry with her. She did not like to take both of us together because it was harder for her to keep track of us if we wandered off. My brother was quiet and curious. He never made trouble but it occasionally found him. She preferred to take me along. I was chatty and wasn’t afraid to speak to anybody. Most of all, I didn’t wander. So on those rare days when she had to present herself at “El Refugio”, we took public transportation to get where she needed to go. My parents worked. They either couldn’t get the time off to take her or she didn’t want to ask them. On the day of the trip, Abuela would never eat anything. She said she was afraid that she might be sick. I think she was just nervous. She would stress about the trip for days. She put her hair in a redecilla (a hairnet). It seemed weird. Today, you would call her a control freak. We would take a public bus and ride from East Hialeah all the way to downtown Miami. We would cross neighborhoods I did not know existed and see people I had never seen. I looked at other people on the bus and knew that they came from different worlds than the one I knew. It felt almost magical. She was responsible for getting us around and she was also responsible for me in a strange place. At 10 or 11, I went along to translate and ask questions for her. She needed me although she never let on how much. It seems strange that an adult could count on a kid but that’s how it was. I remember walking into “el Refugio”- The Freedom Tower today. There were lots of desks and people talking. There were high ceilings so the voices seemed to grow louder. I remember that they would give her jars of peanut butter and probably other stuff I don’t remember. That was something she would NEVER have bought but my brothers and me loved having it because it was so different from what we were used to. My favorite part of the trip was lunch at the McCrory’s lunch counter. I got to eat American food in an American restaurant. I mostly remember asking for Fried Chicken and French Fries. It tasted so good- Like I had seen on TV. She did not like hamburgers and hot dogs. She said it wasn’t “real food” so I didn’t push it. We sat on the swivel chairs and I would order for both of us. Next, we would go to “el discount”. The store was big and she could get stuff there she did not find in Hialeah. The shelves were really high and there was a lot of stuff there to buy. Sometimes she went into La Epoca. I think this store was Spanish (from Spain). It looked classy or classier from what we were used to anyway. I know for a fact that she got my Dad a guayavera there. They also had dress shoes and other special things there she seemed to really like. Lastly we went into Gesu church just for a few minutes if there was time. Then, back on the bus.

Photo caption: Joe as a teen in the 1960s. Finally, I found a real job at a well-known auto-rental and leasing firm in Miami with a large fleet of vehicles and a high-end clientele. Driving around and picking up people at the airport was part of my new job. I took a new car home every night. I remember pulling up to the “love-ins” at Greynolds Park in a new convertible every weekend, which made me extremely popular — a rich hippie. The job lasted almost three years. I knew it was only a matter of time until the U.S. armed forces’ Selective Service System would come knocking and drafted me into the U.S. Army. I was almost 19. I was very lucky to have been permanently stationed in one of the most beautiful places on earth, Ft. Ord on the Pacific Coast Highway in the Monterey Peninsula of California. The Santa Ynez Mountains climbed up from Big Sur. There are not enough colors in an artist’s pallet to duplicate the sunsets I was lucky enough to see along the Pacific Ocean from my ocean-view Army barracks. San Francisco was a short hop away from Ft. Ord, and on the weekends we hung out at The Haight (not what I expected) and saw a lot of the bands you only heard on the radio. I was having a great time, but sadly the ’60s were coming to an end and so was my Army obligation. I had choices to make. “Going Back To Miami” was playing over and over in my head, and I knew in my heart what I had to do. It was time to come home. I have no regrets. This story courtesy of HistoryMiami.

Poet, performer and interdisciplinary artist Adrian Castro will lead a workshop exploring “place” as part of The Center’s celebration of National Poetry Month. This workshop aims to answer the question: Where is that physical place, that mental place that the poetry springs from? Feedback will focus on the artist’s place of inspiration first, and then from the reader's/listener's perspective. Below is a poem that illustrates the use of “place” from Adrian Castro’s second book of poetry, Wise Fish. Register here for The Poets' Place Saturdays: April 5 – April 26 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Books & Books 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables One Irony of the Caribbean It is common knowledge: these waters witnessed the meet between East & West Those sullen sailors rancid with chorizo talcumed with salt & sea breeze old gunpowder the perennial scent of Spain flapping among the crested flags the debauched night of laud the Moorish cumin the Gypsy’s dervish But Tainos had mango o guanábana to hoist as flag perhaps a carey & tabaco leaf as insignia They used planks from siguaraya o quiebra hacha pine or cedar (that perfumed at the same time) while sailing to the Areyto plaza And the Caribs well they used bones with hatchet scars for mere decoration in effect a floating coffin The triangle that ensnared freedom corralled continents into a trinity of suffering the ships which chiseled these shores in effect floating coffins They departed from these islands in rafts at best hammered & fastened from rafters from dangling colonial homes in Regla, Cojimar, Marianao, Jacmel Cap-Haitien the same homes built by survivors of floating coffins They built them With the same wood that bolted their ancestors’ chains The same wood glued with sugarcane sap They used strewn army canvases for sails the sails that pivoted often in the wrong direction A rudder fashioned from a shovel stained with the earth of a dead man They launched it to sea to begin anew but in effect a floating coffin A long time ago they didn’t bury the dead till the eyes were pecked by a mysterious bird delivered to the heavens so the eyes could oversee the body’s proper burial It was then that they buried the body in a hollowed trunk of siguaraya, quiebra hacha, pine, or cedar sometimes ceiba for chiefs & priests They launched it to sea to reach home to reunite with the others they launched it to sea to begin anew in effect a floating coffin – Adrian Castro

Photo Caption: Geoffrey's mother, Merty My great-grandfather and my grandfather are a part of a Scottish lineage in Jamaica. As youngsters at Jamaica College, we used to joke that when the teachers were taking roll, you could go outside, smoke a cigarette in the bathroom, come back, and they would only be getting to the McKenzies after going through the MacAdams, McDaniels, McDonalds, and MacDougalls. The meeting of Scotland and West Africa (I will only vouch for those two--who knows what else happened in my grandfather’s bar on a Friday night?) down in Westmoreland tempered by the rigors of farm life and the daily chores of feeding the chickens, produced a set of habits such as dependability, tenacity, and a certain fearlessness toward work and sacrifice that kept my mother’s family together. For my mother’s family to survive in Struie, they had to be ready for any opportunity that presented itself. My aunts and uncles had careers in fields where opportunities were open: nursing, law enforcement, and teaching. They did well in these professions because they had learned firsthand about dependability and sacrifice in Struie. Everyone on the farm was expected to contribute something. There weren’t any exclusive boys’ jobs (except with the bulls and hogs) or girls’ jobs. You had to help in any way that you could. This tenacity and attitude towards work helped my mother throughout her life. She began as a teacher, and then she became a legal secretary to one of the top lawyers in Jamaica. When she left Jamaica, she started all over again and eventually became a nurse—the career she had always wanted. But she always stressed, if a job had to be done, someone had to step up to the job. If you couldn’t do the job, you could help. This is why she taught me how to cook and to iron my clothes because the last thing she wanted was a wutless man in her house. Everyone had to do something. So, on Sunday evening it was my turn to do something that no one else could do as well. Whatever I brought home from the college had to be put aside for my family’s sake. I made the chicken soup from Jamaican-Miami recipe with a whole chicken (skinned and quartered by yours truly), thyme (of course), onions, butternut squash (they only had some fenke-fenke pumpkins and the kids prefer squash), dumplings (the kids used to help me make them when they were younger, but they’re teenagers now and way too cool for that. But they did help to carry the bags in from the supermarket), carrots, celery, parsnips (added since we’ve come to Florida—for a little sweetness), chayote (don’t make the mistake of going into the Cuban supermarkets and asking for cho-cho, you will get hurt), turnips (I now have immense respect for the turnip since I saw the movie Last Holiday: “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish”), and scallions added just before serving. The soup may not have cured our colds, but it gave us a chance to sit down together and have a hearty meal with equally wholesome company. Well, not so wholesome. There was a revival of “The Dumpling War,” a family habit, which I hope our children will never share with their children.

By Tobi Ash In the sultry Florida dawn, even at 6 a.m., everyone is sweating. We are all standing in Mr. Moskowitz's lush, verdant garden on North Bay Road, with his prized mango, avocado and papaya trees heavily laden with pendulous, lazily-hanging fruit. The sun gradually appears and lends the sky a healthy ruddy hue. There are four boxes filled with squawking chickens, overseen by an old Jewish man with a sharp knife. We are here to perform the ritual of kaparos, a literal transfer of our sins onto these hapless poultry, by swinging them around our heads while reciting some prayers and invocations, and then summarily slaughtering them. The air is thick with that certain smell that only live fowl, scared to death, exude when they are cooped up and stacked on top of each other. The women too, are all huddled together, and even though I am a little girl and not yet required to by halakha (Jewish law), we are all wearing scarves on our heads. Despite the heat, I am grateful because I don't want chicken feet near my hair at all. The men are all joking and laughing as men do, full of false bravado at the killing fields that will take place beneath these splendid tropical trees. The men decide that the young children will go first so that they can be rushed away when the blood first spurts. My sister is the youngest. My father grabs an ugly scrawny white chicken from the crate. He grasps it firmly by its neck and swings it over my sister’s head while she screams with horror. My mother tries to say the prayer for my little sister but she herself is terrified and is seemingly nowhere nearby. The men decide that her toddler sins have been transferred and the Schochet smoothly draws his knife across the chickens throat, decapitating it. My mother suddenly swoops in to usher my sister away; together they run towards Mrs. Moskowitz's kitchen, where strong coffee and Hungarian babka await them. Three stout Haitian ladies enter through the garage area, ready to pluck the freshly-killed chickens. They wear low-cut, clingy dresses that amplify every roll and curve. They gleam in the early morning sunshine. They smile at the chicken heads and carcasses on the bloodstained floor. They are used to this I think. The men ramp up the speed, rushing through all the children, the women and finally the men, although, in the fray of the slaughter, I am neglected. The Haitian ladies hum a song, apparently quite content in the scene of bearded Hasidic men in starched white shirts and black suit pants, fully-covered and head-scarved women, dozens of dead chickens and the heady scent of fruit and flowers ripening in the sun. Finally there is one hen left. “Who didn't get a chance?” asks the slaughterer, his apron a testament to his bloody, hard work. “It has to be a girl, because I ordered the exact number of roosters and hens for your group,” he proclaims loudly. “It’s me,” I say quietly. I see how this hen has bright black eyes. I don't know if she sees all her girlfriends and maybe even her boyfriend, dead, their once-full plumage expertly removed and discarded by women sitting on the ground underneath the frangipani tree. Does she know that she will die for my sins of not making blessings with the proper thoughts? That I sometimes dislike my cousins? That I don't always say grace after meals? These great sins of mine will allegedly be absolved by her fowl death, but it’s all a little too much. My father pushes me to the center of the chicken carnage. He directs the slaughterer to hand me the chicken. “She’s a big girl and she can do it for herself,” my father, trusting in me, proudly states. I hold the squirming bird by the neck and feel its life force vibrating in my hand. I swing her gently, not wildly like the others, trying not to disorient her in her last few minutes of life. It’s harder than I expect, because I am crouching low to the ground and holding my hand high above my head and the silk scarf is slipping off my head and I am sweating, knowing everyone is waiting for me, feeling their eyes burning into me to just finish up already. Am I really so bad that she has to die for my sins? Goodness knows I have never done any of the major sins, like breaking the Ten Commandments, least of all the Three Cardinal Sins You Should Die For, like idol worship. I wouldn’t even know what an idol looked like if I saw one! I say the strange words, only used for this purpose, only for this holiday. I want to cry. I don't want this bird to die for me. I give what I expect to be a tiny little swing for the third time, but without realizing, I swing the bird forcefully, with all my strength. The bird flies hard and fast, clean out of my hands into the bushes. Realizing its sudden freedom, my chicken escapes into the forest of shrubbery the Moskowitzes planted as a natural gate. “Where is the chicken?” the slaughterer asks. The men hunt in earnest but the Haitians and the slaughterer have to move on to their next stop, so they are forced to abandon the search. I see the chicken literally cross the road without a backward glance. “Nah, it’s ok,” says the Rabbi to the slaughterer. “Let’s get the show on the road.” We take the defeathered chickens, so tragic with their pink pimpled skin, and as the halakha demands, plunge them in cold water, salt them liberally, and then spread them out on a board with holes in it, slanted over the sink. We are kashering these sinful dead birds with water and sodium chloride, and then we will add them to a pot of more water and sodium chloride and maybe some of the vegetables they ate in life. The kreplach are prepared, the nude kosher chickens tucked into the soup, and we sit down at the table. I know I may be going into the holiday with all my sins, but I feel a twinge of happiness that I didn't break the 7th commandment, "thou shalt not kill".

Liz Balmaseda’s First English Teacher Leaves Her Tongue-tied Before I learned to speak English, I flung about pretend words, hoping that by mimicking the strange, twangy language around me, I'd sooner or later hit a real word. English was the language of television, of rock-'n'-roll, of neighborhood girls who could do The Shimmy. It was a code that I desperately wanted to decipher. I badgered my father each time we watched the Dick Van Dyke Show. Papi, what does tired mean? In my Cuban girl mind, America's slangs and rhythms all rolled into one pulsating, pizzazzy soundtrack featuring everything from Bewitched to James Brown's Papa's Got a Brand New Bag. Unlike the open, flowing expressions of my family's Cuban Spanish, English seemed to demand greater dexterity. It required pursed lips and lots of reserved, "shhhh" sounds. I was 6 years old and headed for the first grade at Palm Springs Elementary in Hialeah. I could pronounce only my name, Elizabeth Rosalina Balmaseda Mas. I don't remember what I expected that first day of school, but whatever it was paled in comparison to Mrs. Roberta Sussman. She was the personification of groovy, 22 years old in a mini-skirt and brunet flip-do, a hip chick citizen of 1965. She was gorgeous and funny, and she could do The Shimmy. Still, I was petrified. I studied her careful pronunciations, the slow-motion ovals of sound, and I tried to re-create them in the mirror of my East Hialeah bedroom, as my mother fried palomilla in the kitchen. At home, I talked incessantly about "mi teacher" and repeated all of my great, new words. Syllable by syllable, they were becoming mine. I'd recognize them in my library books, silently turn them in my mouth and, like Mrs. Sussman, fire them from the hip. "Mouth!" That's what she called kids who talked out of turn. It has always been a mystery to me how I learned to speak and read English at the same time. But I remember it as a great, happy adventure. I don't remember the other children or teachers. Sometimes, I confess, I even forget the name of the school - I was there only that academic year, 1965-66. But I have never forgotten Mrs. Sussman. She has always remained the larger-than-life figure, perched atop her desk, her legs dangling like a little girl's. I still envision her at the blackboard rendering neat parallels with a three-pronged chalk holder, making bears' bellies out of the letter B. Soon, I was chatting up Mrs. Sussman as if I had been born in Miami, as she was. Spelling competition Sometime toward the end of the school year, the unthinkable happened. With Mrs. Sussman at my side, I competed in the first-grade spelling bee, sponsored by The Herald. One of the last words: doll. Borrowing some of mi teacher's cockiness, I came back: "D-O-Double-L." Mrs. Sussman was just as excited as I was to hold the first-place trophy. Later, she said they wanted to give me a "certificate." "What is that?" I asked. "It's a special paper," she explained. "Oh, that's OK, I don't need a paper," I told her, "I can just tell my mom and dad that I won." I remember she laughed out loud. Days later, she came to my house and brought the special paper. To this day, my mother talks glowingly about the teacher who came to our house to visit. After the school year ended, my family moved to West Hialeah, and I transferred to John G. DuPuis Elementary. I took along my love of English. I went on to memorize poems and read tons of books. Through the years, I happily drifted back to Mrs. Sussman's class. Unexpected call When I heard her voice on the phone last week, I could hardly speak. She had called to congratulate me on a recent column. In turn, my thank-yous tumbled out awkwardly, between sobs, as I tried to enunciate all the feelings of a 6-year-old refugee girl. "Elizabeth," she began, her voice now 34 years deeper, "I remember the first day you walked into my class. I remember exactly where you sat. I remember the dresses and the bows. I remember your father's short-sleeved shirts, perfectly creased. I remember your mother's smile. You must know this - your parents were so proud of you." Two days later, we were in her office, racing through the past three decades. It took us 41/2 hours to scratch the surface. In her world, she is now Bobbi Schulte, a 56-year-old mother of two, divorced and remarried, no longer a teacher. She co-owns managed-care community health clinics. Reminders of past Even so, I recognized glimmers of her previous life in her fabulous, mauve nails, her double-pierced ears, her sassy talk. As she told her story, she filled in the blanks of mine. She had wanted to be a singer, not a teacher, but wound up in the classroom, following her mother's career. Mine was the first class she taught. I was the only Spanish-speaking child in the class. "I made flash cards for you. I painted a rabbit - a conejo, right? You were so eager. It all happened very fast for you," she said. She quit teaching four years later, when her first child was born. "But I never forgot you. For years I prayed for you," she said. "Why?" I asked. Her words stunned me. "You were a Cuban refugee girl in a redneck town. I never wanted anyone to hurt you," she said. All of my memories took on a new light. I wanted to say so many things, but my words tangled. How do you begin to thank someone so pivotal in your life? Long before Air Jordan inspired children to aim higher, my Hialeah teacher gave me wings of gold. She gave me the words with which I write. She gave me the very power and protection that she prayed for. "You know, I still don't know how I wound up as a teacher that year," she mused. "Maybe you were there so you could teach me," I offered. She tossed her head back, and we laughed for a long time. This piece was published as a column in The Miami Herald on July 24, 1999, when Liz Balmaseda was a metro columnist at the newspaper.

At the Royal Palm Barbershop At the Royal Palm Babershop I am hailed by bells, I am called “young fellow,” I reside within the nautilus chambers of memory. At the Royal Palm Barbershop we peruse the local papers in rattan chairs, chew upon unlit El Productos, jig the palomino tassels of our loafers while we wait; the heavy pedestal ballglass ashtrays carol the tunes of yesteryear, anachronistic as barroom cuspidors, as the blue medicinal vials of Aqua Velva encrypted in lost codes of tonic and dust. The do’s and don’ts of handsome hair adorn the paneled walls, travel posters bespeaking identity, Jerusalem and Havana, Miami Beach; three flags for Cuba, Israel, and the U.S. of A. At the Royal Palm Barbershop there is no extra charge for “Roffler Styling.” At the Royal Palm Barbershop I surrender to the ritual ministrations of compassion: lave and salve, adoration of the straight razor, the laying on of hands. The scissor clip behind an ear keys the echolocation of bats, nosings of a mole, the fruit rat upon his twilight vigil. At the Royal Palm Barbershop Kenny displays his diploma from the College of Coiffure, his specialty the Sculpture Kut, a practice he works on the weak-willed or unwary; the man on the next chair appears to have drowned within a turban of hot towels and lather, toes unholy as bloated otters in tiny buckets of oiled water. At the Royal Palm Barbershop I am whisked and talced, I pledge again my allegiance to this world, I plight my troth to the faithful arms of the sunlight, shorn of the weight of the present, unburdened of the past, little changed and yet renewed. (O the broom sings, the broom sings of its bondage, curled and wizened, as you rise to pay.) At the Royal Palm Barbershop you can crunch Kiwanis gumballs on your way out the door, click the tutti-frutti castanets of chiclets for a nickel, crack your enamel on a Jewish Fund jawbreaker or toss a bill for Hermanos al Rescate as you wave so long to Joseph, Eddie, Alex, Ken. At the Royal Palm Barbershop we are all brothers, and saved. This poem appeared in the collection, Florida Poems (Ecco).

Augusto W. York, who came to Cuba as part of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, stayed in Cuba and became a renowned sportsman. Here, he is starting a bicycle race, ŒCarreras de Bicicletas,‚ in Havana, 1923. Last Thanksgiving, the descendents of Augusto W. York gathered here in Miami, at the home of his last living daughter, Elena. We are grateful to the generations who came before us and helped define the values of who we are today. My mother, who will turn 90 on Aug. 19, has always been a source of light, of gentle and humble grace, of quiet, enduring strength, and of infectious humor and love. Southern and Cuban generations, both past and present, are ennobled and proud of this amazing South Floridian. Thanks Mom! This story courtesy of HistoryMiami.

By Diane Bronstein My earliest memories of Miami date back to December of 1944 when I was 4. We were all bundled in heavy winter clothing and shivering in sub-zero temperatures when we left Toronto under a blanket of crusty gray snow and headed south. On the first day, as we crossed the border at Buffalo, N.Y., the roads were icy and visibility was poor. Finally, after three-and-a-half days of driving, we arrived at the Florida state line. We all cheered as my father pulled into the welcome station, where we sampled fresh-squeezed orange and grapefruit juice. How wonderful it felt to get out of the car, stretch my legs and feel the warmth of the glorious Florida sunshine on my bare skin. The sky was a clear brilliant blue, and we were surrounded by verdant greenery. Hibiscus shrubs were bejeweled with blossoms in vibrant shades of red, yellow, pink and white. After the drabness of Toronto, it felt like I had walked into a Technicolor movie. After 30 hours of driving, we had arrived at our winter home. It was not Miami or the Hollywood where they made movies, but we did have orange and grapefruit trees in the backyard. That winter was the first of many delightful winters our family would spend together in Florida. I have many fond childhood memories of those times, but most memorable were the things I experienced for the first time, like swimming in the ocean at the beach in Hollywood, being stung by a jellyfish, visiting the orange groves with my dad, and seeing the bridge rise up over the Intracoastal Waterway. Dad would hold my hand as boats passed by, and we could see the Hollywood Beach Hotel, which was being used to house U.S. troops during the war. When Dad went back to Toronto to check on his business, mother and I would go for long drives in her creamy yellow Chevy convertible. We'd stop on Harding Avenue for lunch and check out the small shops, then head south again to Miami Beach and Lincoln Road. Our favorite place for dinner was Wolfie's. Often we stopped at Haulover Beach to watch the colorful kites soaring near the old marina. Even after my parents sold the house on Hollywood Boulevard, we always wintered in Florida until 1953. By that time, I was too involved with my education and music lessons to be away for long periods of time. It was only natural that after I married, I wanted my husband, Bob, to see Florida and experience the joy that I remembered so vividly. Bob and I made our first motor trip to Florida in 1963, and we stayed at the Colonial Inn in North Miami. My husband fell in love with Miami just as I had, and we had a wonderful vacation. Bob loves swimming and enjoys basking in the sun. He also loves to eat, and Rascal House became his shrine. For breakfast, we gorged on the tiny prune Danishes; and for lunch, a succulent, hot pastrami sandwich on rye. The desserts were divine, but the tasty little black bread rolls and salt sticks were like candy. You could rarely walk into Rascal House without standing in line, but that was part of the charm. Sadly, it no longer exists, and in its place is The Epicure, an upscale gourmet market and café. In 1974, during a business trip to Miami, my dad happened to meet an old friend on the plane who talked him into seeing an apartment he was selling in a new development called Coronado, in what was then North Miami, now Aventura. Dad was so taken with the view of Turnberry Isle Golf and Country Club, the Intracoastal and the beach that in his excitement he bought the apartment before my mother had a chance to see it. Even though Bob and I had demanding careers - he was in structural steel and I was a piano teacher - and we were raising two daughters, Melissa and Stacey, we managed to come to Florida whenever time allowed, especially after my parents, Lillian and James Betesh, became snowbirds. There is no doubt in my mind that living in Miami not only enhanced, but extended, their lives. My parents spent almost 20 happy years at Coronado. They enjoyed an active social life and made many new friends. They took up tennis in their late 60s, and my mother played well into her 80s, winning local tournaments. My father lived to be 83, and my mother continued to live at Coronado until she was 89. I spent many enjoyable times with my parents and our family visited often, so it was natural that after my mother passed away at age 91, we became the second generation to live at Coronado. The famous restaurants like Wolfie's at Lincoln Road, The Rascal House, Pumpernick's, Martha's on the Intracoastal, Grey's Inn, and Martha Rae's Five O'clock Club are gone, and the once grand hotels of the 1940s, '50s and '60s, like The San Souci, The Saxony and The Roney Plaza have long passed their heyday. Since Miami is only three hours away from Toronto by plane, our children can visit often. Bob and I take advantage of the live theater, concerts, comedy clubs and fabulous restaurants. We both feel very fortunate to live here. This is truly paradise. This story courtesy of HistoryMiami.

By Leonore Hoffner In December 1945, I got my first glimpse of the palm trees, beach umbrellas and hotels on Miami Beach. After six years of being exiled in England, I managed to get passage on a tramp steamer in Norway so I could join my family in Mexico. We had all been dispersed from our home in Germany by the Holocaust. The North Atlantic was cold and miserable, but eventually we rode along the coast of South Florida in the Gulf Stream. It was delightfully warm, and I spent most of the days in my swimsuit on the captain's bridge, looking at the coastline with his binoculars. That's when I fell in love with this area. At the time, I was "stateless" and knew that I could not get into this paradise. I was reunited with my family in Mexico after two weeks in Cuba. I lived in Mexico City with my parents and two sisters for 2 ½ years and learned to speak Spanish. My sisters immigrated to New York City, and I planned to join them there. When I did get my U.S. visa, I looked at a map and concluded that my dream land (South Florida) was almost on the way to New York. I decided to see if I could get a job and stay in Miami. At age 23, I arrived with $200 and a suitcase full of out-of-fashion clothes. I landed a job as an English/Spanish secretary, even though my first languages were German and French. My stay in Mexico had paid off. I rented a garage apartment at Northwest 76th Street off Seventh Avenue. I rode the bus to my job at the airport. When the bus route was discontinued, I bought a motor scooter. There were no expressways, so I could putt-putt my way to the airport every day. My only problem was going to Hialeah via the 103rd Street overpass. The scooter barely made the "hill." Every weekend, I drove over the 79th Street Causeway to the beach. The police stopped me quite often. I was terrified because of what I had experienced as a Jew in Germany. Eventually, I learned that the Miami police were just being friendly and wanted to chat with a young woman on a motor scooter. I saved my money, and after a year I bought a used car. I worked for a freight-forwarding company and managed it for years until I finally got the title of manager. I was one of the first women in that position. My name is now on a black marble monument at the entrance to the Port of Miami. The monument is dedicated to the pioneers of the freight business in Miami. When I got married, I was glad to change my name from Wiener to Hoffner. I was originally from Hamburg, Germany, and didn't want to be known as a hamburger or a wiener. I remember a neighborhood restaurant called Jumbo's on Northwest Seventh Avenue. I believe it still exists. We liked Junior's at 79th and Biscayne. Occasionally, my husband and I went to Tropical Acres in Fort Lauderdale. That was a very special treat. Our shopping area was Little River. There was a nice restaurant called Watson's and, of course, the movie house. For movies, we also went south on Biscayne Boulevard to the Mayfair. At times, I shopped downtown. I loved Burdines and Hartley's. Woolworth's and Grant's were wonderful dime stores. My greatest experience in downtown Miami was going to the old federal courthouse. That is where I became a U.S. citizen in 1951. One thing that detracted from my chosen paradise was racial prejudice. The rule was "separate but equal," but life was definitely not equal. My husband, who was not Jewish, was shocked to find that he could not take me into certain places that were "restricted" - that meant no Jews or blacks. He also told me that when he was working as a tile-setter he had a black helper. The helper was just as skilled as he was, but he could not join the union. He did the same work for less pay. I am happy to say that these injustices no longer exist. In 1963, I went to work in the cargo department of British Airways. During the 13 years that I worked there and in retirement, I enjoyed the airline travel privileges to see the world. After retiring, I volunteered at the Holocaust Center at FIU, transcribing the life histories of survivors and liberators. I now live in a condominium overlooking Biscayne Bay and look at Miami Beach from the opposite side. I walk every morning and enjoy the sunrise. Sometimes I swim in the pool. When I first gazed at the beautiful shore so many years ago, I couldn't imagine what a wonderful life I would have. I still love it and feel so lucky to be here. This story courtesy of HistoryMiami.