Tag: Written

Oh, Miami! What a wonderful and glorious place to live.

I have been in Miami since 1949.

My parents moved here from Pennsylvania, when I was almost a year old. My father opened a soda fountain on Southwest 67th Avenue and Eighth Street. At the time, it was the closest place for the Miccosukee Indians to come and eat. I remember the pictures of them in their traditional Native American dress.

We lived in a small house behind the store, and when my mother’s family soon followed from Pennsylvania, everyone lived in this small home while my father and his new neighbors built a house on Southwest 57th Avenue and 33rd Street. The mortgage? All of $7,000. The neighborhood is now known as Schenley Park.

When the area on 67th Avenue started to build and added a drugstore, my parents sold the business and my dad took a job at Dressel’s Dairy Farm as a milk delivery man. He used to get up at 4 a.m. to start his milk route. What a great place.

Dressel’s Dairy was a farm with an ice-cream shop, ponies to ride, and cows to watch being born. We used to have great birthday parties there. Sadly, this place also closed and moved upstate to a bigger plant.

I also remember the Holsum Bakery on South Dixie Highway. Who could forget the great smell — a smell you just waited for?

When my uncle Paul went to the University of Miami he would take me to football games and we played on the grass.

My grandparents soon moved into their own home on Villa Bella Avenue. My grandfather continued to work as a food business owner. I loved the trips with my grandmother to downtown Miami where we would go to the old Burdines store and I used to get M&Ms; by the pound because they were not packaged. Burdines had a “ladies lunch room” and an ice-cream parlor, which was such a special treat. At Christmas time there was an amusement park on the roof with wonderful rides and, of course, Santa Claus! So sad, it is all gone now.

One of my grandmother’s favorite places was the cafeteria on Miracle Mile. We would go there for lunch. My grandmother lived in her house on Villa Bella Avenue until her death at 103.

My dad’s favorite things were Bird Bowl and waking everyone up to go to 7 a.m. Mass at the Church of the Little Flower. Mine? The skating rink next door to Bird Bowl. My mom’s? The Slim and Trim club, to which she belonged for over 25 years.

My brother and I would walk to what was then Children’s Variety Hospital. We would fly kites and play football in their front yard. It was such a big place to have fun!

There is a canal a street over from my parents’ house with open towers in which to play “king and queen.” They were sealed shut later because of bats. The boys in the neighborhood would swim in the canal and it was sparkling clean, but I was too scared so I would just walk the wall behind the canal.

The Biltmore hotel had a pool that was so deep you could “scuba dive.” Doctors were trained there. Somehow, my doctor got my friends and me into the pool. It was so deep that it scared us.

We had Fuller Brush men coming door to door selling such great products, and also a knife sharpener who would come by every month to sharpen all of my mom’s knives. One of the most fun things was the man with ponies. He would come to our houses and had hats and costumes to take pictures of us riding. It was just a great thing to do.

When my father worked at the dairy he would get off on Wednesdays, which meant breakfast at Crandon Park. Back then it had grills set up with picnic tables and even spigots to clean with. Mom used to say I loved the spigots more than the beach. But how could you forget the zoo and amusement rides there? What a special treat to go there. I remember taking my children to the zoo and the rides there.

Mr. Crandon had a huge house on 57th Avenue that was set way back; it had a wall around it and the kids used to walk on the wall till the butler would catch us and come running to make us get off. Now that area is filled with houses.

How can I ever forget the Venetian Pool? So cold and so big. It had a snack bar when you first walked in and I just loved to get the cherry sticks, hot dogs and Florida trinkets. They even had a Miss America contest there! The pool had islands in the middle and a cave with an opening you could dive through. You had to swim across the pool before the lifeguards would let you go to the diving boards. How proud I was to do that. The pool is fed with an underground spring and every night it was emptied and refilled with ice-cold water.

We would drive to the pool and have to do a circle around this huge fountain with faces that sprayed water. On special days we would go by the fountain and it would be full of soap bubbles to clean it. But as I grew older, I spent less time at Venetian Pool.

Oh, Miami!

The Chandler clan arrived in Miami early in the 1920s so that my father’s father, Thomas Chandler, could make a living working construction in those boom years of early Miami prior to the big hurricane of ’26 that destroyed it all. The family, including six children, lived in the Allapattah area enjoying the fruits of the tropics and fresh-caught fish from the-then pristine Miami River.

The maternal side of my family arrived in 1944. My mother, then 23, had had enough of the cold Indiana winters and longed for warm breezes and the glittering nightlife that was Miami. She arrived by train, suitcase in hand, $75 in her purse along with the phone number of a friend’s grandmother who might be able to put her up for the night.

It was with this journey that Velma Ruth Villwock of Indianapolis became Ruth Villwock of Coral Gables. Always one to dream big, my mother took the bus downtown and, looking skyward, saw the towering Alfred I. DuPont building on Flagler Street and declared that she would work there.

I don’t think that my mother ever took no for an answer, and consequently worked there a short time until seeing another impressive building that called her name. While living on Alhambra in Coral Gables and renting a room in the home of a wealthy elderly couple, “Mom and Pop Rhoads,” she became acquainted with the majestic Biltmore, then an Army Air Force hospital.
Once again, setting her sights high, she gained employment as a medical secretary in orthopedics at the hospital.

She changed her residence to an apartment within walking distance of the fabulous edifice. Thus began her magical “Biltmore days,” eating lunch by the pool, watching celebrities like Johnny Weismuller and Esther Williams come and go, meeting wounded GIs, and dancing with soldiers at USO parties. Her photo album is filled with lovely, smiling young women and handsome men who crossed her path and are ever immortalized in fading black-and-white photos, names unknown.

A highlight of those days was a reception given at the Biltmore for General Dwight D. Eisenhower where, as a date of her boss, Mom shook the hands of the general and his wife, Mamie. Miss V., as Mom was known to her boss, was dressed to the nines and was as glittery and sparkling that evening as the event itself.

In 1947 at Coral Gables Methodist Church, she married a handsome young Marine, my father, Joe Chandler. In 1950, they bought a house on the GI bill for $50 down and $50 a month in West Miami. It was there they began their family, which included my brother Bob and me. They raised us in Riverside Baptist Church in a city where we could walk to the corner Grand Union for groceries and play outside until the street lights came on.

In 1960, when our first Cuban neighbors moved into the house next door, my mother made them feel welcome and mentored the young mother in the ways of our city. Neither spoke the other’s language but as mothers, they communicated with the same language of the heart with a little help from their children and much pantomime.

My father was busy building a business, Craftsman Commercial Interiors, which was located on the Palmetto Expressway near Hialeah. The business built and installed interiors for restaurants and bars. It couldn’t have existed at a better time. Miami was growing and prospering, as was the Bahamas. Dad frequently flew on a small plane to the Bahamas for installations. His business had among its clients Chippy’s restaurant on Miracle Mile, where the New York-style cheesecake was out of this world. Our family got a kick out of sitting in the booths that were our dad’s handiwork.

As the business prospered, my parents wanted more for their children, so we moved to a new pool home in the Westchester area where Bob and I could attend the new, all air-conditioned Miami Coral Park Senior High School.
Miami grew and changed quickly; when my parents retired in 1975 they, like so many others, left for northern Florida. In 1992, my mother returned as a single woman because Miami had never left her heart. She closed on her condo in Kendall the weekend Hurricane Andrew arrived.

After six months, she was able to move in and lived in her condo 20 more years, enjoying all that Miami had to offer. Her connection to the Biltmore continued as she went for tea in the lobby and had brunch on the terrace. She especially loved the 4th of July fireworks at the Biltmore and even took the tour inside, adding details of the Biltmore’s war days to the docent’s speech.
My mom’s love of Miami never ended and her tales of the magic of being young in Miami during the war years live on with her children and grandchildren.

We gather back in Miami for her funeral this week and to celebrate her life. The balmy breeze and slanted light of autumn remind us that for everything there is a season. This magic city grew in my mother’s lifetime from a winter vacation playground for northerners to an international metropolis. It changed with each decade as we did. What doesn’t change is the clear, clean air from the ocean, swaying palm trees, the vibrant green of our tropical plants, explosion of color from bougainvillea and hibiscus, along with stories and memories of our beloved and unique home. We all attest to the fact that Miami with her flair and charm is in our hearts always.

We hauled my parent’s aluminum canoe off the roof-rack of his 2002 Mitsubishi Montero and onto the grass near the edge of the Biltmore canal. I grabbed the essentials from the trunk and tossed them into the canoe: two wooden paddles, a foldable, plastic seat, a faded, waterproof cushion, and a couple of well-worn life-jackets.

Larry—the tall, Colombian-American I had just been introduced to a few weeks before—adjusted his maroon FSU hat and repositioned his thick-rimmed eye-glasses before reaching down to help me lift the canoe.
My water bottle rolled towards the stern as we lowered the boat down the grassy bank to the water’s edge. I glanced over my shoulder at Larry, trying to keep the giddiness I felt from showing on my face.

“You ready?” I asked, eager to embark on our first date adventure.

“Let’s do this,” he replied.

I held the canoe steady as he stepped in and made his way towards the back of the boat. Once he was seated, I nudged the boat so that it slid further into the water, until all that was left on the rocky shore was the tip of the bow, just enough to let me climb aboard without having to get my feet wet.

I had been in this canoe countless times before. Growing up in Coral Gables, my parents would often take me and my brother out for a Sunday afternoon stroll along the waterways that snaked their way through our neighborhood and out towards Biscayne Bay.

Our usual route would lead us from the starting point near our house to a spot where the canal dead-ended across from the football fields of Coral Gables High. There, we would spot manatees that had come in from the bay in search of more tepid waters. In the winter time, when cool air graced a muggy Miami and the ocean temperatures dropped, the warm waters of the canal offered a sanctuary for these marine mammals.

From the edge of the water, on-lookers often congregated to count the rounded backs of these dormant sea-cows, which emerged from the surface like buoys. Every few minutes a pair of circular nostrils appeared as a manatee brought its nose up for air. From the canoe, however, it was easier to see through the murky canal water and observe what went on beneath the surface.

With a few quiet strokes of our wooden paddles, we let our canoe glide right up next to them, stuck our hand in the water, and caressed their slimy, algae-covered backs. It was easy to spot the older ones, who were often coated with barnacles and striped with scars from motor boat propellers. The younger ones were more curious, and came right up to the side of the canoe, rolling belly-up and lifting their flippers out from the water as if to offer a high-five.

As Larry and I paddled through the canal on that cloudless, summer day, I was hoping that we would get to see a manatee up close. Larry had grown up in Miami as well, but had never canoed through these parts before, and I was excited about showing him a side of his home town that he had yet to discover.

From the few times we had hung out since our first encounter on a South Beach dance floor the previous month, I already knew he was the type of person who, like me, enjoyed being in nature and staying active. In our first phone conversations, he’d told me about his years playing basketball and running track, about his days owning a longboard and surfing the waves on the northern coast of Florida, and about his plans to hike in Patagonia with some friends that fall. While getting “outdoors” in a city like Miami sometimes felt like a challenge, this, I thought, would be a great way of doing it.

Cruising passed the unique Spanish-style homes that lined the waterway, with their lush, tropical landscaping and beautiful backyards, it wasn’t long before we noticed the wildlife that called the canal their home: a great blue heron perched on a mangrove; a charcoal Anhinga drying out its wings; a giant iguana sun bathing on the coral rock.

At the edge of the lawn to our left, a family of ducks wandered towards the canal, squawking a dissonant tune as they hurried passed the canoe. On the opposite bank, a slender white egret waded in the water, keeping its eyes and beak fixed on the ground below its branch-like legs as it crept towards a potential meal.

And as we drifted down the canal, I thought about how comfortable I felt spending time with Larry. Perhaps it was his laid-back personality, or how he’d been so eager to join me on this canoe ride through the Gables.

Perhaps it was the way he joked about almost anything, and how good it felt to laugh so much whenever we talked. I never expected to find myself starting a new relationship weeks before moving overseas to teach English, but that day in the canoe, as we explored the hidden outdoors of the “City Beautiful” together, I couldn’t help but recognize that being with him just felt right.

And as we slid past a “no wake” sign and turned the corner towards the high school, hearing nothing but the sound of water hitting the sides of the canoe, my eyes fell upon a pair of rounded, barnacle-covered backs emerging from the surface. There in front of us, floating near a dock at the end of the canal, a pair of manatees rested in the tropical waters of Coral Gables.

I moved to Miami Beach in 2009 from Naples, Florida, with my boyfriend, in search of better career opportunities.

I grew up in Massachusetts, however, and lived in Massachusetts until 2005. When I first moved to Miami Beach, I was not a happy camper. It took me a while to adjust to the craziness of South Beach. I couldn’t find my comfort zone and was intimidated by the whole “party” scene.

I didn’t have a true understanding or love for Miami Beach, until I started working for the Miami Design Preservation League. Since starting my position at MDPL, I have learned about the history and culture of Miami Beach. I continue to learn about the Art Deco, MiMo, and Mediterranean Revival historic buildings and architecture and about all the passion and hard work that went into saving these gorgeous buildings that surround my home and office.

My appreciation for these architectural gems grows every day. I feel so lucky to live in such a beautiful place.

MDPL has allowed me to become more involved within my community. I am able to meet people that live and work in Miami Beach. I’ve learned that although Miami Beach is a huge tourist attraction, it is also a small community of residents.

I’ve never lived in a place in which people are so passionate about their community. The residents of Miami Beach care about Miami Beach’s image, its businesses, its organizations, and about each other. They want it to be a safe place, a beautiful place, and a place people want to live and visit.

I feel settled in Miami Beach now. I have made wonderful friends. I am in love with the design and art scene of Miami and Miami Beach. I am a regular at Second Saturday Art Walks in the Wynwood District (the food trucks are a bonus).

I LOVE the Design District, too! I stroll down Lincoln Road every weekend and often have breakfast at Books and Books. I have become a HUGE Heat fan (don’t tell my friends and family back in Boston).

I love spending afternoons at South Point Park and sometimes splurging for dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack afterwards. I LOVE being a car ride away from the Keys, a boat ride away from the Bahamas, and only a short three-hour plane ride away from my friends and family back in (freezing cold) Boston.

I have developed a love for Cuban food and I cannot live without my cafe con leche each morning! I always take my visitors to dinner on Espanola way (its a hit every time). I take my young visitors to the Everglades for a Florida adventure they will never forget. Miami Beach is always a hit for my guests. I have developed a true love for Miami/Miami Beach and the WEATHER!

Miami Beach is my home now. I look forward to many years living and working here.

Stories of families separated and reunited, of language difficulties, of nostalgia for the old country, of countless vicissitudes, but also of triumph, success, happiness: all immigrants share very similar stories, and mine is no different.

My mom, dad, sister, and I lived in Marianao, Havana, in a huge home with my uncle and aunt, who had a very successful pharmaceutical business. My dad and his brothers owned two auto-parts stores. We were happy.

On that fateful New Year’s Day 1959, when I was just 5 years old, our lives and those of countless other Cubans were forever changed. Two years later, my sister would leave Cuba for Canada – the first exodus of our small but close-knit family.

The next year, Castro officials would call up my dad in the middle of the night and offer a one-way ride to Miami on the African Pilot in exchange for the keys to his business and his car. This was the modus operandi for the Castro government. They would play your desire to leave the country against your assets.

If a person had a business or any other substantial asset, government officials would tap them to see if they were willing to make a deal. There was no halfway – you gave them everything you owned in exchange for the ticket out. You had to hand everything over at a moment’s notice; you did not have a chance to select some things you might want to keep or give to your relatives – it was all or nothing.

My dad took them up on the offer in order to pave the way for my mom and me to join him. A church group from New Jersey sponsored my dad and moved him to Orange, New Jersey, where he worked as a school janitor to earn enough money to prove to the U.S. government my mom and I would not be a public burden.

After enduring an extensive “inventory” of all our belongings by the government (where they would catalog everything you owned before you left and come back to check it again the day before your departure to make sure you didn’t give away, sell, or get rid of anything).

Mom and I left Cuba for Mexico City on a Cubana de Aviacion flight in late October 1965. After four months, in what seemed to me to be a paradise of food, clothing, entertainment – all available for the buying without the “libreta” (the notebook where the government keeps track of your food allotments), we traveled to Orange, New Jersey, in the dead of winter, to join my dad.

My mom and I had not seen him in over four years. We all had to get used to each other again. We lived on the third floor (a semi-attic) of a three-family home. There was only one room which was divided by a sheetrock partition; I slept on the couch and my parents on the bed on the other side. Still it was wonderful to be together again. But painful memories remained on our island – my aunt and uncle were still there with no hope of leaving.

I was enrolled in school midyear and had a very hard time with the language. I was forced to repeat the fifth grade again because the principal didn’t think I could make it in the sixth grade with my poor English. I recall the teacher dictating sentences in English for the class to write down. It was a terrible feeling not to understand a single word and seeing all the kids writing and my own page a complete blank!

Despite this setback, the unfamiliar-yet-beautiful snow, the cold winter, and the long walks to and from school, I learned English quickly. I passed the fifth grade in only four months and was promoted to sixth grade. But I was always teased because of my accent and the way I dressed. There were no Hispanics in my town and my classmates didn’t even know where Cuba was!

Every summer we visited Miami Beach for two weeks (no SoBe then!) and stayed at the White House Hotel. I fondly remember a little restaurant on Washington Avenue that served black beans and avocado salad (something we rarely saw in New Jersey).

We used to go for drinks to the Doral’s Starlight Roof on Collins, we went swimming off Lummus Park on Ocean Drive, and attended concerts at the Sportatorium in Hollywood (now the BankAtlantic Center).

I attended Berkeley Secretarial School in East Orange and got a job with Exxon Corporation in Florham Park. After a year, I moved down to Miami with my aunt and uncle, who had been able to leave Cuba via Spain by turning over their house and business to the government, in the same way my father and countless others had done before.

My parents moved down the next year and we all lived in an apartment in Hialeah – together as we had been so many years ago in my beautiful Havana.

Wonderful, beautiful, sunbright Miami! – the weather, the smells of Cuban food, the chatter on street corners, the royal palms dancing in the breeze. Here, so close to our homeland, life is pleasant and the dream of going back to Cuba one day that much better defined. I will go back one day.

My sister never moved back to Miami. She made her life in Montreal until she passed away in 2008. My mom and dad are also gone, as are my aunt and uncle.

I made my life here, married, and had two wonderful sons who are now 27 and 25. I offer my eternal gratitude to this great country that offered us a safe haven and that continues to open its arms to so many. There are many days when I look at the shimmering blue skies and remember the sky over my house in Cuba, the palm trees, the trips to the beach, the durofrios (little frozen juice cubes).

On those days, I drive over to Little Havana to get a colada and a pastelito and to hear some good old-fashioned “Cuban” Spanish. I take a deep breath, and for a moment, I am back home.

In the winter of 1937, when I was 5 years old, my grandparents took an apartment in Miami Beach for the winter.

The apartment was on the corner of Española Way and Meridian Avenue. Our family was from Youngstown, Ohio, and we would drive down for a visit and spend a few days on the beach like any other tourist. That was my first long car trip, and I fell in love with Miami Beach. Along with my brothers, Bert and Bob, and our parents and grandparents, we all had fun at the beach. That was something I can never forget. It was fantastic.

My earliest recollection of Miami Beach was in that winter. We lived there for a few years and then moved to an apartment at 15th Street and Euclid Avenue, where we spent the war years. I vividly remember seeing the soldiers marching up and down the street singing, as they counted cadence, during their period of basic training. The entire city had been converted to a large Army base, and we lived right in the middle.

I attended the Lear School on Bay Road for a couple of years, then in third grade switched to Central Beach Elementary. Then it was on to Ida M. Fisher Junior High across the street, and then next door to Beach High, where I graduated in 1950.

During my early years in Miami Beach, the west side of Ocean Drive was lined with recently built hotels. They all had front porches with chairs facing the ocean so that the patrons could sit, relax and enjoy the gentle ocean breeze while on their vacation. Lifelong friendships developed among the fellow tourists who chatted on the porch.

Ocean Drive, with its beach of golden sand, was “combed” freshly each morning by beach boys who had a chair concession every hundred yards or so along the beach. Our special spot was under a clump of three Coconut Palm trees on the beach at 14th Street. For a dime or so, you could have a beach chair set up foruse all day. Another quarter got you and your group some towels and a large umbrella planted nearby to provide shade from the broiling sun. Sunburns were frequent, and unwary visitors suffered much pain if they didn’t take proper precautions by taking the blazing sun in small doses.

Teams of lifeguards would protect the occasional bather in trouble, and each lifeguard station had a lifeboat that was used for more serious emergencies. This setting made Miami Beach a picture-perfect place to spend a vacation.

Flamingo Park provided outdoor sports venues of all types for natives and tourists alike. Baseball diamonds, tennis courts and a jungle gym kept a sports enthusiast busy from dawn to dusk. The older folks had shuffleboard and horseshoes to keep them entertained. The park also had a football stadium used by the Beach High Typhoons. Free concerts were held often, and the park was the central attraction outside of the beach scene.

Lincoln Road, today’s equivalent of an upscale shopping mall, was meticulously manicured and lined with Royal Palm trees. The Beach and Lincoln Theatre provided the latest in movie entertainment.

Miami Beach at the time was a city of less than 10,000 permanent residents that swelled to an estimated 50,000 or more during the winter season. The “season” was considered to last from November through March. Because of the extreme heat in summer, most commercial establishments would close during June, July and August. A few businesses would remain open with skeleton crews to accommodate the people who remained. In those days, even the permanent residents would leave town in the summer, leaving Miami Beach a virtual ghost town.

While about a hundred hotels had been built, all in close proximity to the beach, the city council had wisely reserved the beach along Ocean Drive be used for the public. There was also a 12-story height restriction on all buildings. The city of Miami Beach was fairly small, linking together several islands. The main island extended to 87th Street, where the village of Surfside began.

The east side of Washington Avenue from First Street to Lincoln Road housed block after block of small, mostly family-owned businesses — bakeries, food stores, restaurants, delicatessens and butcher shops. Most of these shops were owned by Jewish people who had found that a good living could be made catering to the permanent residents, as well as the tourist population.

In 1950, my grandparents built a fabulous home at 45th and Pinetree Drive just north of the Firestone property on Indian Creek. We could look across the creek and see the ocean from our living room. This view was spoiled somewhat when the Eden Roc Hotel was built.

While growing up, we spent a lot of time fishing in the Everglades, picking grapefruit and just sightseeing. It was a great time that I shall never forget.

Hopefully, some of my friends will see this article and recall with me those happy times.

My family moved to Kendall in the fall of 1975. Both from Ohio, my parents settled here with a pioneer spirit, building a home together in an old pine tree forest at a time when the area felt like it was at the edge of civilization.

A reserve filled with Dade-County pine trees now surrounded them— these tall, skinny trees are covered with red and brown bark plated like paper scales and have tufts of evergreen needles that flourish at the top.

Early settlers built their homes from these pines because they believed them to be strong and capable of withstanding hurricane winds, in addition to being termite resistant due to their high sap content. My parents felt that “high pines” was desirable as it was supposed to fare better than most areas from flooding if Miami was ever struck by a major storm.

They bought the house from an Irish builder on a handshake, and opted for an English Tudor style design. My dad installed his own solar heating system for the pool, circulating the water through black piping on the roof, which was considered innovative for its time and featured in the Miami Herald Tropic section.

The warm tropical climate lured a succession of friends to visit from up north, so having a heated swimming pool was an exotic addition. The first order of business was to ensure that I could swim, so I was enrolled in “water baby” classes—I learned to swim before I knew how to walk.

I attended Leewood Elementary and would walk to school every day. My mother would accompany me to and fro, and when I got a little older I was permitted to ride my bicycle. She would quietly trail behind me until she was confident of my skill and I was then allowed to commute to school on my own.

The area was ripe for development with sidewalks and small homes starting to appear, yet the moment retained so much possibility and opportunity. The pine tree lots were expansive and the generous space predicated the sprawl of urban growth. It was the emptiness that was full. This was the era of magical realism, where childhood was still immersed in innocence and dreams, the excavations of invented worlds abound.

When not in school, I would spend endless days venturing out into woods with neighborhood kids, finding a clearing for forts which we would construct from discarded plywood sheets and old particle board cabinetry, making ladders of 2x4s, furnishing the hide outs with contractor bucket seats and holding court.

Traversing the soft needle carpet beneath my feet, my footsteps padded and dowsed yellow with pollen and sticky sap speckled every surface I made contact with. The edge of the woods was populated with towering cane sugar plants that had downy razor sharp leaves, leaving a stream of paper cuts on my legs in the wake of a mad dash of tag and game playing.

What kind of future could I dream about? I would always lose myself in thought, my head full of possibility and reveling in freedom — definitely a sign of my artistic temperament. Rays falling fast across the sky designating it was time I head home. My mom would be anticipating our return, hair matted hot with sun and retaining the wild airs of adventure. I remember the light had these mysterious ways of southern light, gathering itself together and suddenly dissipate.

The passage of time brought with it inevitable changes. This was a rapidly shifting suburban environment and development was encroaching, and with it came more trouble, incidents of crime were reported, and these occurrences indicated the transformation.

Someone tried to coax a young child into their car after school, a sign of times to come. I negotiated my way into middle school, and the internet became more prevalent as outdoor activities lost their appeal. My parents sold their green Karman Ghia because it didn’t have seat belts. Things were forced to change, to become something new and something different.

The early 80s also brought turbulent times — the Mariel boatlift with its Cuban mass exodus and heartache, the drug trafficking, and the abduction of Adam Walsh forever scarred the landscape of our childhood. Miami had its edge, Miami Vice and South Beach and its lively pursuits of pleasure and the pulse of constant culture, but this atmosphere was not for me. I left Miami to attend college up north, with the assumption that I would not return for a long time.

I was home with my family when Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, and our house was one of the only ones in the area that withstood its powerful and destructive winds. That Irish builder had designed the house so the doors would swing out- not in, which would prevent the interior corridors from being blown through.

When we woke up the next morning after Andrew, our home was one that was not emptied of its contents. The majestic pine tree forest, or what was left of it after development, was decimated. Those treasured moments of solitude in the woods, and how it provided me with a childhood full of discovery and revelation still remains firmly anchored in my mind.

I was born in Havana, Cuba on July 4th 1956, and came to Miami in January of 1962.

For years I thought I came to Miami as part of the Freedom Flights, until I later discovered that those flights did not start until 1965. As young as I was, I remember boarding the plane with my mother and father and my four siblings.

I sat on my mother’s lap and my father carried my baby sister, making room for two more passengers. At a time when so many parents were sending their children to the states alone and out of harm’s way, my mother did not waiver. She later told me when I was older that she told my father, “we all leave together, or we don’t go,” and so we did.

My father was 38 and my mother 34 when they arrived in Miami. How courageous they were to leave their homeland with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a couple suitcases of belongings. I am certain they struggled but I don’t ever remember going to bed hungry or not celebrating Christmas. How they managed I don’t know.

Shortly after we arrived, my mother took in three young teens sent alone to Miami. The first, my cousin, was later reunited with his parents. The second was our next door neighbor’s son-in-law, who was the eldest but cried the most having left his new bride behind.

He, too, was reunited with his family shortly after living with us. The third eventually married my oldest sister Mary. We lived in a two-bedroom home near the Allapatah area. I don’t remember being cramped but I do remember covering ourselves with the curtains one very cold January in Miami.

My father, a successful salesman in Cuba, took the first job he could find. He made fudge in a candy store in downtown Miami. I wish I could remember the name of the place. I would watch my dad through the large glass window, making fudge in his chef’s hat. We got to enjoy some of the leftovers at the end of his work day.

Before arriving in Miami, the Fourth of July did not have much significance other than my birthday. I don’t know what year exactly but I recall all of us sitting on the hood of my dad’s car watching the fireworks at Northside Shopping Center, while “Skipper Chuck,” Chuck Zink, emceed the event. You can just imagine the excitement of my birthdays going forward. We used to have so much fun. It was an event I looked forward to annually.

My parents and my oldest sister have passed away. The rest of us, with our respective families, live in Kendall. I have lived here since 1977. A lot has changed in 34 years. There were mostly strawberry fields in what now is a vibrant community. I live here with my 16-year-old son, David. He attends Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in Miami this year.

I wonder at times what it would have been like if I had remained in Cuba. What would have become of our family there? Would we have been able to remain together? My parents never returned; they would not go as long as the Castro regime remained in power. In the spirit of their beliefs, I have not returned either to the place I was born. Maybe one day I will, but without a doubt Miami is home and it always will be.

Thank you Mami and Papi for your sacrifice and, most of all, your love.

Miami and Dade County in the late 1970s and early 1980s had a different atmosphere and environment than they have today.

Truth be told, I was a vastly different person then, too. In those days I was a full-time undergraduate student (living off-campus) at Barry College (which became a university in November 1981) before it grew west of North Miami Avenue. Bob’s Subs, with the best cheese steaks and onion rings around (and, conveniently enough, cold beer), was still across the street from Barry then, at Northeast 115th Street and 2nd Avenue.

I had neither a car nor a phone and was all but penniless — a thrift-store denizen –so I worked part-time as a bartender, a cook and/or a waiter in just about every restaurant around: Lum’s, Pizza Hut, Prime Steak House, The Round Table, Red Lobster, Watsons Family Restaurant, The Jockey Club, Miami Shores Country Club. Most of those establishments have been renamed, changed, or simply closed.

Next to Lum’s (near Northeast 125th Street and West Dixie Highway) was the Pieces of Eight Lounge, my favorite local bar. It, too, has changed, appropriately enough, into a family planning clinic. Around the corner stood Grand Union, an all-night supermarket, where a broke college student, up all night doing homework, could walk at 3:00 a.m., simply for someplace to go.

Without a car but still a “carouser,” I walked everywhere at all hours: to and from work, school, or the Trailways bus station near Northeast 163rd Street and Biscayne Boulevard. I enjoyed walking. Once I walked home from Coral Gables, and thrice from Ft. Lauderdale Beach. (I still enjoy walking but now own a vehicle.)

My fondest memories of Miami and Dade County are of those times I spent walking. Most often it was late at night. The streets were deserted. The sea breeze, without the sun’s heat, would have died down, and stillness prevailed. The trees, many draped with Spanish moss, were like statues.

As powerful and pervasive as the city seemed during the day — people bustling about, noise from traffic — when the late-night hours came and I’d walk through North Miami and north Dade neighborhoods, I’d get an overwhelming sense of the Everglades, the swamp, residing patiently beneath the brassy urban development’s then deceptively thin veneer. The swamp was perceptible. It seemed like a living organism, an abundantly powerful life force, nonplussed by the concrete and the humanity covering it, casually waiting to reclaim its own.

It’s clear that I never really bonded with the city itself, but rather with the land on which the city stood, and the natural environment that surrounded and permeated the land. It was all so abundantly alive and present, regardless of the city that had been built on it.

It seemed that nothing that humanity could do — no roadways, no stone buildings, no canals slashed through the land — could suppress the swamp that, if not constantly held back, would quickly and inexorably break through and devour all that humanity had built, in a lot less time than humanity had taken to build it.

Yet it was so peaceful. For all of its latent power and authority, the swamp didn’t seem threatening — not like the ocean which, with its hypnotically immense majesty, seemed liable to snatch the city from existence with one convulsion. No, the swamp seemed to have a patient, harmonic personality. It was massive, yet finely balanced: an unfathomably complex mathematical equation, trillions of factors in a constant state of flux and yet perpetually attuned with the organic whole.

The more time I spent walking through southeast Florida, the more I marveled at the swamp’s immeasurable capacity, its abundance, complexity, harmony. It was like a song no human being could write, a portrait no human being could render, or an idea no human being could conceive, simultaneously and symmetrically consuming, producing, and providing.

That is all gone, of course. This land is no longer “mine,” and I’m no longer this land’s. The city, with its tall mountains and expansive plateaus of concrete, steel and glass, seems to have dug into the swamp’s heart with quests for commerce and a continually burgeoning population, all of which seem to have erased the swamp’s former beauty. Given the city of Miami’s prominence as the Caribbean basin’s commercial capital, the city will likely only grow.

But to this day–nigh on 35 years later–I’m still spellbound, not by the city of Miami, but by my memories of the land on which it’s built. Since I first moved to this town in 1979–more accurately, since I first moved to southeastern Florida in 1970–a lot has changed, both about the town and about me. I’ve traveled across the seas and around the globe, and I’ve lived all over the country. I’m older–more emphatically, no longer young–and tired, and not so innocent anymore. Similarly, the city of Miami and Dade County have grown huge and become much more crowded: pervasive, overpowering, dominating the land.

But when I see the pink and white cumulonimbus clouds billowing skyward in the east in the morning, and the seemingly endless saw grass plain stretched out to the horizon, and the scrawny Florida pines silhouetted against the red sky at sunset; when I walk the old, North Miami neighborhoods, feel the stillness–quiet, finally, in the wee hours–and recall, rather than still hear, the swamp quietly whispering behind it; when I smell that damp smell that once seemed to hold and to affirm everything, my fondest memories come rushing back, and I bask in the imagery of 35 years ago, when the land beneath the city and the atmosphere surrounding the city still sweetly breathed the promise held ever true in my heart.

Spanglish.

I do not know when I first heard that word, but it pretty much summarizes how I feel about growing up in Miami during the 1970s and ‘80s.

To me Spanglish is not just a mixing of English and Spanish; it is the mixing of two diverse cultures. It is a culture unto itself.

In the 1970s, I lived on 13th Street, five blocks away from Calle Ocho. It was a working class neighborhood — mostly lower-income families living in two-bedroom duplexes. Every morning, I walked to Auburndale Elementary, past Woodlawn Cemetery, La Lechonera, and Velvet Cream Doughnuts. In other parts of the country, I would have played with kids named Mary or John, but in Miami, my playmates had names like Maria and Juan.

At the end of the day, when we were called in for dinner, I would eat beef stew, while my friends had carne con papas. “Ay Mami” and “Oh Mom” translated to the same desire to stay outside ” cinco minutos mas,” or five minutes more.

My mom picked up eggs and milk from Farm Stores; my friend’s mom called it La Vaquita. Because it was a working class neighborhood, both parents worked in many homes. Those of us who came home to empty houses were welcomed into homes with an abuela present, who made sure you got an afternoon snack, did your homework and stayed off the roof.

I took cultural differences for granted. Spanglish was how we understood one another. It blurred the lines between languages and gave us common ground so we could get on with the business of being kids.

Summers are long when you are a child, but in Miami summer lasts most of the year. I spent my weekends with the neighbor’s grandchildren exploring Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, also known as El Farito because of the historic lighthouse. We searched for hermit crabs and sea slugs. We were sunscreen-free with sand baked on to our bodies. We climbed onto picnic tables, ate sandwiches wrapped in foil, and drank water out of a thermos before heading back home to play a few more hours outside.

Other times, I spent weekends with a dear friend who had moved on from our neighborhood. Those Saturdays consisted of all day in the pool and backyard barbecues. We did this all year, never thinking that in September and October kids elsewhere were wearing sweaters. For kids growing up in Miami, shorts and T-shirts were a way of life.

If my brother had extra pocket money he hoisted me on the back of his bicycle, and took me to the Machine Shop to play pinball, or sometimes to the Coliseum, a gorgeous old bowling alley off 37th Avenue. The bowling alley changed over the years, and eventually was torn down and a Publix now occupies the site.

We sneaked into the Gables movie theater on more than one occasion. If we were lucky and my mom had time off, she would take us to the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables. I eventually was married there in my 20s.

In the 1980s, Central and South Americans and Haitians became part of the Miami landscape, bringing a new dimension of diversity to a city that already had many identities. The city and its people became media targets.

Miami was the poster child for violence and racial tension. I remember watching Channel 10 news and the broadcasters talked about the violence that was taking place in the streets. I didn’t understand what was going on back then.

Talk of cocaine cowboys and images from the television show “Miami Vice” began to show up everywhere. I did not know this version of Miami. My version of growing up was more like the PBS show “¿ Qué Pasa, U.S.A?” I did not grow up surrounded by violence, I was not afraid to play outside. The only time I ever heard gunshots was when some of the men in the neighborhood shot off their rifles to ring in the New Year.

We moved for a year to Birmingham, AL. It was the first time I experienced the change of seasons; We had a bigger house, I lived in a better neighborhood, and I went to a good school. But I felt like I was missing something. It felt strange to be surrounded by Marys and Johns. It felt strange not to smell café Cubano and sazon criollo wafting from the neighbor’s house in the morning and evening. It felt weird not to communicate in Spanglish.

We moved back after only a year, and the missing pieces fell back into place. I caught up with my old friends and life resumed its normal Spanglish rhythm.

To this day, even though I understand Spanish completely, I speak Spanglish. I have been lucky to travel as an adult. I love the hospitality of the Deep South, the romance of Paris and the hustle and bustle of New York. However, Miami is my heart and its Spanglish culture will always be my home.