45 Years!

So the Ds had a very nice guidance counselor in Palmetto High named Harry. Luckily, they didn't need TOO much guidance, but got to know that very sweet and competent man. When we considered transferring D2 to Ransom, after what I misunderstood was a bout of racial violence at the school (turned out 2 friends on a sports team were horseplaying and one got hurt), Harry was very helpful. He tried to talk us out of the transfer, and we ultimately took his and the principal's advice (a man named Howard who you NEVER saw at the same time as droll actor Ben Stein) and we saved probably close to $100K in tuition and D2 did just fine.

Anyway, Harry and I are FaceBook (tm) friends, and he had a lovely post today talking about how he and his wife, a nurse, first moved to Miami in 1979, and have lived for years in what is now Palmetto Bay, in a neighborhood called Mangowood. I know it -- after Hurricane Andrew they called it, smarmily, Mangle-wood. Harry's final post was nostalgic as he said goodbye -- he and his wife are moving an hour or so's north.

They got the letter the US government sends to many Jews older than 65: "Our records indicate you are currently residing someplace OTHER than Palm Beach County, and you are to report immediately to that locale, lest the Early Bird Specials and other benefits we have for your people become underutilized."

I wish Harry and his wife well, and then it occurred to me: 1979 was the year I moved here, too! I enjoy recalling the events that lead to this Southern migration.

We had visited Miami many times, each Winter and Spring Break from probably 1974 through 1978. My Grandpa Goldsmith wintered at the Edward Hotel on 10th and Collins (she called it the EdVARD." We would fly down, check into either the Ocean Haven and later the SeaCrest on what is know called SoFi (South of Fifth Street) and have an awesome vacation.

One year I was allowed to bring my friend Mike Monahan, who promptly climbed a coconut palm and got us coconuts. Another year, when I was 15, I met a girl from Columbus Ohio, and ended up flying there to visit her when I was 16, with my lawn mowing business money. Alas, there were no chemicals, as my late suegra said, but years later in an amazing small world story, I had an apartment mate at UM named Tom Phillips who in fact knew Gina's family well -- I thought Columbus was a bigger city!

I'm pretty sure I fell in love with Miami those years, and maybe it set my Fate as to where I would settle. The Great Blizzard of '77 then moved things along.

My Mom hated snow and cold weather, and the Blizzard of '77 was the last straw. As I recall, she barely left the house that entire winter. The next year, 1978, the time came to move Grandma from her efficiency to a nursing home in West Palm. My Mom flew to Miami with her sister Lorraine, from Spring Valley, NY, and the two of them did just that. I remember being a happy pair of bachelors with my Dad -- eating at local delis and diners, and one night enjoying a huge tub of delicious chicken and matzah ball soup carried over by Bernice Horowitz, my Mom's good friend, since "Boys have to eat right while Mom is away." She was a large woman with a huge heart -- I always think of her with warmth.

So we fetched Mom at JFK, and she said "Guess what? I bought a condo in Delray Beach!" Now -- we were a 50s style family -- Dad made all the big financial decisions, but Mom was adamant. The place would be ready Summer of '79, her brother Marty and wife Murial bought, as did sister Dorothy and husband Arthur, and Lorraine and Abe. The 5th sibling, Florence, was kind of broke and would follow to South Florida years later.

The Goldsmith siblings had it all figured out: back to the future to the time, like their Bronx childhoods, where they would all live close by, except in warmer climes with Early Bird Specials. My Dad was to retire at 59, in June of '79, and I was free to stay up North for college, where all the serious colleges were, as a Regents Scholarship winner like myself was not cut out for SunTan U, as they called UM back in the day.

So Dad wisely went along with the first major life choice Sunny made. But he really wanted me, his youngest and the only son, to come along, and he applied to UM for me! I had never visited the campus, but got a letter saying I had won a half tuition scholarship, with back then was worth $1250.00!

I figured -- well -- why not? And I accepted, and the day after I graduated high school in June of '79, after selling the house on Charles Lane for $49K, we caravanned my Dad's huge Oldsmobile '98 and my Pontiac Firebird (I was a lucky kid) to Virginia, where we took the AutoTrain to Sanford, Florida, and then drove to Delray, and a beachfront motel called Bermuda Inn, as the condo was 3 weeks from completion.

I had my first legal beer at Boston's midnight of July 18, and we got driver's licenses, and we were Floridians.

The following week, I drove to the UM campus, pretty deserted in July, and something grabbed me. Once I moved in, that August, other than breaks in Delray for Summers and Winter and Spring, I've lived in the 305. And it will be 45 years!!!! this Summer.

The place has been magical for me. I met friends who decades later are still by brothers and sisters. When Eric and I moved to a Dadeland apartment to room together during his med and my law school, I met a 4.5 year older chick and we got close. She kinda dug me after a few months, but was looking to settle down, and I was barely legal. So we were friends, and I used to tell her that I would probably be married when I was 40, retired from Law, and she would be a guest at my wedding.

Well, she WAS at my wedding, which happened when I was 25, and she was the guest of honor. And that was the start of our a (pause) mazing family, with the Ds, their wonderful husband, and 2 grandsons who we kinda dig, too.

In fact, today Wifey and I are fetching Baby Man at his preschool up in North Miami, and then hanging with Little Man, too. We savor this grandparent gig.

Four and a half decades have a way of flying by, and these have. So I wish Harry and his wife all the best up in Boca. I was happy my life's direction followed his from NY -- I have zero desire to have it follow his newest move.

If I need to be moved to a nursing home, like Grandma, the Ds are both in Miami, and I would think it would be here in the 305. Ah -- the next 45 years...