Miami 1959 #2

Aside from my operation at age 4, I have other memories from Miami.

I remember taking long walks with my father. We would walk to a department store and I would ride the escalators up and down several times. We would walk to a McDonalds -I was fascinated by the arches. We did not get food. I recall that my "job" was to get fresh towells - I would bring the used ones to the main cottage and the owner would swap them out and call me "whitey" (presumably for hair not race) and ruffle my hair.

I hesitate to bring this up - but we would also walk to Sid's school during his outdoor dancing class and heckle from the sidelines.

I also remember for the first time thinking "ADULTS LIE". One day, all the adults were nervously listening to black transistor radios. I asked what was going on and the only response was "nothing". If I was a modern Joe Wilson, I would have shouted, "You Lie!" Instead I just thought it. Shortly thereafter "nothing" struck - a hurricane! We were hunkered down on the floor next to a wall as the hurricane passed through. The next day Miami beach was a mess. Trees knocked down - garbage and debris everywhere.

My brother thinks that I am Michael Jackson for saying stress locks in memories. All I know is I have a two or three month period, from age 4, pretty well embedded into my memory with two stressful bookends - an emergency operation on one end and a hurricane on the other. So I guess I buy in the theory. Fortunatley, there are some happier memories in the bookshelf between the bookends.