the 6th borough

springtime in 1970 was not a happy time for the majority of united states based airlines. the pilots, ground crews and stewardesses (now politically correctly termed “flight attendants”) all were threatening to, or about to, go out on strike. not the best time for a flight from nasty old new york to the sun drenched shores of miami beach, but that is where my parents decided to go for vacation. i, for one, was certainly not complaining. at least i would get to go on this vacation; in the past my parents had farmed me out to the fresh air fund camp (see hundred mile himalayas). we were supposed to leave kennedy airport at 8:30 pm and arrive in florida a bit before midnite. with the work stoppage/slowdown, however, we did not take off until 3 am. since i was at the tender young age of 16 at the time, this was all new and exotic to me, so i did not sleep a single wink that long night (and still cannot sleep on as plane), lest i miss something important. we finally touched down at miami international airport just as the sun was peeking over the eastern horizon.

it is said that miami is the 6th borough of new york city, and it’s not hard to see why. dade county, and its nearby northern relative, fort lauderdale, is (and has been) the retirement mecca for new yorkers sick and tired of the snow, the crime and the smog for decades. in florida, they can look forward to their golden years, only having to worry about skin cancer, making the early bird on time and getting run over by an errant golf cart. before we checked in at the carrilon hotel on collins ave., we decided that getting a bite to eat might be a good idea, as we hadn’t eaten anything since we received our “meal” on the plane at around the original “takeoff time” the night before. looking back on it, we should have been grateful. nowadays, you are lucky if you get a microscopic bag of pretzels to sate your ravenous hunger as you while away the hours on the tarmac, reading “skymall” over and over until even the ADS from omaha steaks and the churrascaria begin to look good enough to cram in your mouth.

after a general consensus, we decided on going to wolfies, a quasi-new york style deli/diner further down collins ave. they had enough variety on the menu so that everyone could at least pick something that they thought they might like; kind of like a prototypical chesseburger factory (and right in the same neighborhood, no less). my parents and sister wisely chose breakfast fare, but somehow my eye became fixated on the corned beef hash. i had never eaten it before, but the illustration looked SO GOOD. this is an excellent example of “never order food by its picture on the menu”, also known as the “bowling alley lettuce” warning. the sodden mass of flecks of meat, surrounded by a gelatinous miasma of whatever the hell else was in that steaming pile was just this side of inedible, appetite be damned. of course, this led a to a litany of complaints from my mother, who never hesitated to use any of her favorite gripes about me, such as “your eyes are bigger than your stomach” and “you just look at the price, not the food”. neither could have been further from the truth. first of all, i was but a lad of 16 years old, and did not yet comprehend anything about the cost (or value) of things; i never looked at the price (much to my father’s consternation, when i invariably ordered (or WANTED to order) lamb chops from a menu every chance i got, plus the fact that i was so hungry when i ordered the hash, if it had been even CLOSE to not being thoroughly repulsive, i would have finished off 2 plates-full of the slop. i did manage to choke down enough mouthfulls to quell the embarrassing noises emanating from my digestive tract as we walked back to the hotel.

it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day, so we all figured we should get out to the beach. this way, when we returned to new york, we would have our requisite tans perfected. in retrospect, this was not a great idea. as soon as i lied down in the warm sun, i immediately fell sound asleep, and as i hadn’t slept the entire night before, i STAYED asleep. all day. in the florida sun. parental supervision had not yet been as perfected then as it is now, so when my parents did not see hide nor hair of me for the next 8 hours or so, they must have thought “what trouble can a 16 year old get into?” the short answer to that would be “sun poisoning”. by the time i awoke at around 5:30 that afternoon, my back was pretty well blistered and i was in agony. after a short visit to the infirmary in the hotel (where nothing much was done) i was released to “enjoy” the rest of the vacation, with the caveat that i stay out of the sun. just what i wanted to hear on vacation. in florida. if nothing else, i am a compliant patient, so i did what i was told. as a result, the days of my vacation were a wash, but the evenings were great! the hotels back then had headline acts to entice the northerners, and the carrrilon had some of the best! during the week we were at the hotel, santana, fresh from woodstock, was appearing, as were diana ross and the supremes AND the temptations. the best show of the week was when both motown groups were on the same stage, singing “i’m gonna make you love me”. the shows were great, because they played the same songs that were we currently listening to on the radio.

it was at the santana show that i met nancy. they played “soul sacrifice” and “evil ways”. she was from hicksville and was in miami staying with her grandparents, who had a condo on the beach. at 16, i had absolutely no idea what a condo was, but was amazed to find that her grandparents actually LIVED there. all year! to me, florida had always seemed be a vacation destination, not a place where real peole actually lived and worked. this was like finding out someone lived full time aboard one of the ships in the pirates of the carribean ride at disney world (which did not yet exist, but you get the idea). i have chronicled before how smooth i was with the ladies at this age (see thespians and lesbians) and this was no different. the highlight of my entire vacation was when, as we walked along the water one (overcast) day, i reached out to hold her hand and she did not withdraw it in total disgust! from that moment on, we (and our hands) were inseparable. we attended the shows in the hotel every night and she even gave me her (real!) new york phone number and asked me to call her when we returned to our respective homes. i could not wait to get back to new york.

unfortunately, she was 15, i was 16 and neither of us drove. we lived way too far apart to walk, and the public transportation system in nassau county is woefully inadequate. we had to rely on one of our parents driving to each other’s house, and then the other parent picking one of us up. not exactly conducive to romance, but what the hell did i care? she LIKED me!
the trips back and forth were endless, especially when her mother drove. this woman must have learned how to drive by watching old movies, where the scenery rolls past the driver as he (or she) saws the wheel back and forth, back and forth. as if this constant side to side motion was not enough to get you carsick (and believe me, it was), she also had a penchant for alternately stepping on the brake and the gas in rapid succession, so by the time we reached our destination in hicksville, we were both the same shade of avacado green as the appliances in her kitchen. i can still remember those few blissful encounters in her basement, holding hands as we listened to simon and garfunkle as her sister valery watched us like a hawk.

her father, along with her aunt, owned a pair of shoe stores, both named “pic ‘n’ pac”; one in patchogue and one in lynbrook. when i mentioned one day that i was looking for work that summer, her father generously offered me a job in the lynbrook store. it was only a 10 minute drive from my house in woodmere (or 20 minutes by bike), so it seemed an ideal way to spend the summer. without my even asking, he offered me a salary of 2 dollars an hour! nancy was going to be in sleep-away camp that summer, so i didn’t have anything better to do, anyway. the first day of work, nancy’s aunt anabell showed me where all the inventory was located in the back room and how to ring up sales on the ancient manual register. this store was definitely NOT a high end operation. the shoes they sold in the store ranged from bargain sandals at $2.99 to the “top of the line” popagallo shoes, which sold at the princely sum of $7.99. just for the record (and to give you an idea of the clientelle) i never did sell a single pair of popagallos.

the main problem was with the quality of the shoes. i think this is when the taiwanese shoe industry first getting a foot in the american sales door (pun intended). the shoes were not just poorly made, they were total garbage. one day, nancy’s dad bragged to me of how he got a special closeout on sandals at a ridiculously low price, and that even at a selling price of $2.99, he would still make a handsome profit. WRONG! just a couple of days after the shoes went on sale, the customers started returning them. in pieces. this continued for a while until he solved the mystery. the shoes he had bought at such a low cost were not supposed to be worn by live people. they were supposed to be put on corpses when they were buried! the shoes were held together with hot glue. a live person’s body heat, combined with the hot, summer lynbrook sidewalks, melted the glue and the shoes came apart while being worn. it’a a good thing this didn’t happen nowadays, otherwise i’m sure some shyster lawyer would have started a class action lawsuit against the owners.

the store was located on atlantic avenue in lynbrook, right acroos the street from a large bank. for the majority of the day, the store was virtually empty. i spent many hours listening to the radio. the hits playing that summer were “band of gold” by fried payne and “close to you” byt he carpenters. mungo jerry’s seminal summer hit “in the summertime” was released, as was the zombies’ “time of the season”. every time i hear one of these songs now, it brings me right back to pic ‘n’ pac (see sounds and smalls). in fact, customers were so few and far in between, i used the idle hours to learn how to build heathkit electronic equipment. there was always a soldering iron left on behind the counter with component parts, metal chassis and instruction booklets scattered about. however, as noon time came around, and the bank’s personell were freed for lunch, there was usually a stampede across the street. a horde of women converged on the store, all demanding that i help them first because they were on lunch break (as if i didn’t know). they took hundreds of shoes off the racks, trying on multiple pairs at the same time, but never actually buying anything. as soon as 12:55 rolled around, there would be another stampede across the street, but in the opposite direction. i was left with the store in shambles. shoes, boxes, plastic “shoe foolers” (you know, those things that fit inside the shoe, “fooling” it into thinking someone is wearing it when no-one actually is) and those annoying pieces of tissue paper were scattered about, everywhere. it’s just as well that nobody usually showed up afterwards, because it usually took the rest of the day just to put everything back where it belonged; only to have to do the same thing the next day. it was kind of like the fable where the guy rolls a rock up a hill, only to watch in frustration as it rolls back down again and again.

my salary was 16 dollars a day, and because the store usually pulled in an average of around 35 dollars a day, it was not to long before the fate of pic ‘n’ pac went the way of the romance between me and nancy. kaput.

Tags: disney world, heathkit, kennedy airport, miami beach, miami international airport, dade county, carrilon hotel, collins ave., early bird, "skymall", omaha steaks, churrascaria, wolfie's, cheesecake factory, santana, woodstock, diasna ross, supremes, temptations, "i'm gonna make you love me", "soul sacrifice", "evil ways", "pirates of the carribean", simon and garfunkle, popagallo shoes, "band of gold", freida payne, carpenters, "close to you", mungo jerry, "in the summertime", zombies, "time of the season"