Oh Me Oh My

Monkette cavorted on the rusty beat up chain link fence for awhile but this is supposed to be a bayfront park. She wanted to go out on the pier, walk on the board walk, watch the gulls and the pelicans, not climb on the fence and gaze out at weeds and trash. She's really hoping the City of North Miami will get on the ball and restore the place to what it once was and what it should be.

All That's Missing Is The Parade

I guess you could say that patriotism survives but the glory is gone. When I was a kid over half a century back I used to love going to parades, and there were plenty of them. Every patriotic holiday there was a parade. My father or my grandfather would take me downtown and for block after block people would line both sides of the street, flags everywhere!

When you're three or four years old time passes slowly. We always arrived early to assure getting a good place by the curb so I could watch the parade without somebody having to hold me up. Then suddenly you became aware of drums beating in the distance! The parade was on its way. It wasn't made up of the high school drum and bugle corps, no squads of cheerleaders doing fancy tricks with twirling batons. These were real soldiers and sailors carrying real guns marching up the street, real military bands, rows of olive drab Jeeps. Marching groups of men in the Coast Guard, the National Guard, and units of World War II veterans, even units of proud old men who'd served in World War I.

Then there were the convertibles driving slowly down the street carryng the few remaining veterans of the Spanish-American War, and when I was real little, a veteran or two of the Civil War. Everybody was white. Whatever blacks that served back then were pretty much relegated to non-combat duty. They didn't march in parades. After I moved south from Massachusettes to Florida one southerner summed it up "It's glorious to die in defense of your country. We don't want to give no n*****s any glory!"

Vietnam changed a lot of things. The patriotism aspect of defending the United States this time around turned out to be a big lie. The military wasn't just a white man's army any longer. The country itself was changing, and the way we looked at the military had changed. Now we have public ceremonies in the park to honor our war dead and the veterans who survived, a speech by the mayor, the high school drum and bugle corps plays some music, we eat hot dogs and carry little flags, and those two cute little girls in red dresses will never know the excitement of watching a parade. But their grandmothers probably never knew that excitement either. They wouldn't have been allowed to live in the neighborhood.

The Best Meals In Life Are Free

That's Griffing Park in the background and across the street to my left is the Griffing Community Center. There was some kind of hurricane preparedness presentation, or maybe it was a crime watch presentation, or who knows? That was a month ago.

Anyway, Marvin, the guy on the left, was schlepping in the munchies and the hand-outs, and I'd stepped outside to give him a hand with the schlepping. He works for the police department, going around to various community groups and local schools getting the residents up to speed on what's going on.

Obstensably I was there because I'm on the city's Disaster Preparedness Board, the Board of Adjustment, as well as being on the board of directors of the Central North Miami Homeowners Association. Also, I suppose, because as my ex keeps telling me "You're a respected member of the community!" usually followed by "...and you should get a haircut! You look like a streetperson!" But hey! I'm 65 and still have my hair so I flaunt it. Marvin should be so lucky!

So here I am, "a respected member of the community" doing my civic duty, taking part in the discussion, taking notes and making suggestions. A more immediate reason for my showing up that morning was the free food, ice cold cokes, little pastries, fresh veggies with dip, one inch sections of sub sandwiches impaled with toothpicks, nuts and chips, and best of all, hot coffee.

Every little bit helps, of course, when the city still pays us board members the same amount that they paid way back in 1961. Then recently they had the temerity to give themselves a ten-fold salary increase, a gold plated health insurance plan, plus a generous expense allowance. What about the board members? "It wasn't in the budget" I was told. "No funds are available this fiscal year." So I attend all these free breakfasts. Maybe next fiscal year's budget I'll get enough money to afford a haircut.