The Florida Experience-Day four

Well, the Old geeze is back with more stories of life and lifestyle during the silent" 1930's in South Florida. Why silent? Miami was and is, to some extent, kept alive by our Northern visitors. During the depression, they were conspicuous by their absence. The town had signs up pleading with visitors to "Stay through May." I remember a remark from someone, that "You could shoot a cannonball the length of Biscayne Boulevard, and not cut a hair."
Bay Front Park was actually bay bottom that had been pumped up and sodded. For trees, they put in "Jamaica tall" coconut trees and sea grapes. Sea Grape trees bear purple fruit in clusters that are edible and quite tasty, but you have to be aware that they have a very large seed that is rough on teeth.
On the North end of the park was the aquarium. It was actually a large multi-masted steel schooner that had capsized in the bay during the 1926 hurricane. It was dragged ashore and there finished it;s days providing home for fish of all kinds. In the front entrance were several very large galapagos turtles [tortoises] roaming almost free, on the greenery.
As a young teenager, I remember President Franklin Roosevelt coming to speak in the park. One night. a frenzied kook by the name of Giuseppi Zangara tried to assasinate him but his shot missed and killed then Chicago MayorAnton Cermak. For this stunt, he ended his life in Florida's Raiford Prison Electric Chair.
The 1926 hurricane, undoubtedly a category 4 event, destroyed many of the "frame" houses in town including ours. It moved our two story home West about ten feet onto the lot next door and took the roof off and deposited it on a street one block away. The hurricane was in September, and even though I would not be four years old until December, I have two scenes etched in my memory. One was of my mother holding my hand as we, with my grandparents and two uncles, made our way through a tangle of "turks cap" shrubs to the house of the medical doctor that lived right behind. The shrieking wind and blinding rain I shall never forget. The doctor and family were up North, and I recall my uncle Cyril breaking one of the small panes in the front door on the lee side, to gain entrance. As an aside, I remember that that bunch of shrubs was home to Painted buntings or Nonpariel, as we called them. They have to rank as one of Natures most vivid and splendid birds with orange and blue feathering.
Opposite the park and looking East is Government cut which was dug to accomodate shipping into the harbor. It is quite deep and protected from shoaling by two long jetties on either side.
In high school we would put two cell flashlights in mayonnaise jars, with the ligh on and padded with paper to keep them from moving around. We would walk to the end of the jetties and dive on the beach side where it was only about 25/30 feet deep. At night the crawfish, or Florida lobsters as they are now called, would come out from under the jetties and they were soon in our bags. I am surprised now that the water pressure did not break the jars. The PSI at 33 feet is
about 30. We never ate anything but the tail and we would take a "whip". as the long feelers in their front are called, and after wringing the tail from the carapace of body, run the whip into
the anus backwards so when you extracted it, the intestine came with it. This is the best way to clean your catch. A one-pound lobster is about five years old with a carapace of about three inches.
When I first got out of the Navy in 1945, lobsters were plentiful and my cousin and I would easily dive up two to two and a half hundred in a day. Most we sold to Zaney's seafood restaurant where the Miami Herald building sits today. We sold them whole, and got about eighteen cents a pound for them.
The tails are best, broiled with melted butter and garlic. They cook quickly and are best when not overdone.
Stay tuned for more from the old geeze.