Looking around Miami Beach, past and present

The school, students, and faculty of Miami Beach High, Miami Beach, FL

Take a drive around Miami and Miami Beach, FL

We all had our special places, those locations where we gathered and built memories together. The roller rink at Flamingo Park. The Cameo Theater. Ollie's. A certain beach. A friend's house. Maybe it didn't even seem all that special to us in the moment. We were passing time, with no real sense of the future, no realization that it would all change, all slip away as we grew and gathered responsibilities around us. We didn't have an inkling that we ourselves would change, that the world would toughen our hides and make us both a little less innocent and a little more cynical.

Which is exactly why those days are more important to us now than they ever were then. Now our memories of that time and place give us a chance to touch our youth once again. They give us back the one time in our lives in which -- studies aside -- we really didn't have a care in the

world. Our summer days seemed to go on without end. We walked the streets in complete safety, and pretty much in total isolation from what is now known as "cultural diversity." We were in our own neat, clean little world, cut off from the ugly reality that was brewing off our little island paradise. We were insulated and, simply put, very lucky.

Deco reigns in South Beach, Miami Beach, FL

Who knew from Art Deco. Never heard of him. People swimming in the ocean in the dead of winter? Tourists. Scorching sand and the blue Atlantic. Hear the Everly Brothers' latest? Cool. Madras. A full moon rising out of a crystal ocean. Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show. Flamingo Park. The 27th Day is playing with 20 Million Miles to Earth this Saturday, wanna go? Ralph Rennick on WTVJ. Boy Scout Troop 330. Jim Dooley and the weather. Mel, Phyllis, Gary, Jay, Don, Bobbie, Brenda, Murray, and on and on. Many of the unbreakable threads in the warp and woof that make up the tapestries of our lives today remain within us, warming our hearts as nothing else can.

Let's not forget
the other Miami Beach.

Click on the upper or lower half of the 1960 Gulf Tourguide Map above and visit some places you may have forgotten about (or may never have gotten to "back then"). We sincerely hope that some of the things you see recall great times you enjoyed so long ago.

2004 Words to the Wise, Inc.