I've been living with a very dark secret, one that I have been carrying my entire life. After all these years it's time I told someone, anyone, the world before this secret completely consumes me. Ok...here it goes... for most of my life... I have been... a walker.
God, that feels good. Now before I'm flooded with comments about my lack of a car, how I've been a Luddite for shunning the marvels of my own internal combustion engine powered transportation, let me give you some background.
I spent my formative years in Miami Beach during the Sixties and Seventies. I realize that by today's standards that make me "ancient." That is another subject, for another post, on another day. The reason I mention my formative years on Miami Beach, is that it was, and still is a small town. Long before Miami Beach became SoBe and as a result became the ocean side appendage of the city of Miami, Miami Beach maintained it's identity as a city, true and whole, incorporated in 1915.
As a small town, it is very walk-able and I walked EVERYWHERE. From our apartment on 4th and Meridian I would walk to elementary school, walk to the southern branch of the Miami Beach Public Library, walk to Washington Park, walk to visit my dad at Piccolo's Restaurant where he was the baker, walk to the drug store with the newsstand in front and the soda fountain inside, I even walked to the 5th Street Gym (above the drug store) where to had my first, laughable attempts at boxing lessons and never ran into Mohammed Ali.
My parents didn't own a car and neither had a driver's license. My dad, being legally blind, couldn't see well enough to drive and my mom was terrified of driving. I'm not sure why or if there was a specific incident that triggered her aversion of being in control of a car. I never asked, the unspoken question was never answered and that was that.
Of course there were limits to my bipedal wanderings. I didn't walk across the causeway to Miami, at least not until I was in high school. Weekends were often spent taking the "C" or the "K" (later the "M") bus across the MacArthur Causeway to downtown Miami where we would have lunch the McCrory's lunch counter where Elsie would always give me extra potato chips with my hamburger. Lunch would fuel an excursion around the aisles of Burdines, Richard's, and a visit to Yamamoto's store loading up on Japanese rice, laquerware, figureheads to ward off evil spirits, rice candy and origami paper. There was always sandalwood incense burning and to this day, I can't disconnect the sandalwood's scent and the sights and sounds of that store.
More background to come...
