The Wild Dog adventure continues. I was forty-five or so, which seems so young now. – JDW
We finally found the money. In Boca Raton, just a life-threatening sixty-minute ride up Interstate Highway 95 from Miami.
People drive cars you see only in automotive enthusiast magazines. More Rolls-Royces than the Bhagwan. Boca Raton is home of the world’s top-volume Porsche dealer.
The well-heeled huddle in exclusive enclaves called The Sanctuary. The Preserve. The Polo Club. Green fees are $30 at the one public golf course in Boca.
For only $7,700, you can have your dear departed loved one mummified at Boca Raton’s Institute for Funeral Service Education and Anatomy. Gold, jewels and death mask run extra.
In Miami Beach, rather than endorsing either side of the Christmas or Hanukkah debate, students at Nautilus Middle School held STEPHEN SPIELBERG DAY. The festivities celebrated the bearded, long-haired Jewish filmmaker’s forty-fifth birthday.
The second largest Cuban city – after Havana – is Miami.
Miami considers itself the international capital of Latin America. About half of the city’s two-point-one million people are Hispanic. Cuban refugees float into town on everything from an inner tube to a beer cooler.
The Miami River flows from the NotForEverglades through the heart of downtown Miami before dumping into Biscayne Bay.
Pumping tons of toxic waste and raw sewage, the five-mile channel is so polluted, so unhealthy, police scuba divers refuse to swim in it looking for discarded weapons.
Unless the victim is a fellow officer.
Bodies float to the top. About four dozen headless chickens – sacrificed to the various gods of the Afro-Catholic religion of Santeria – are picked out of the river monthly by local garbage crews.
A city commissioner’s aide got a voodoo-doll-sized coffin in the mail. “R.I.P.” Three stink bombs have exploded inside the aide’s locked inner office.
Then there’s the matter of the bloody cross drawn on the door.
HAITIAN EARTH FIRSTERS?
County officials concede over six hundred thousand cubic yards of sludge clogs the river bottom like glow-in-the-dark cholesterol. Deep doo-doo. Authorities admit the primary health hazard – fecal coliform bacteria – is caused by the city’s crumbling sewer system.
A grand jury is investigating.
I’m sure you feel better knowing that.
The waterway hasn’t been dredged in thirty years.
Because the sludge can catch fire when dried by the subtropical temperatures.
Bigger freighters are forced to travel light. Developers are pressuring the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to clear the river bottom. The Environmental Protection Agency has so far blocked the Army’s plan to dump the muck out at sea.
Offshore somewhere.
The Miami River smells like a poorly maintained public toilet on a hot summer day. Knock you over, when the wind’s right.
The same developers recently convinced city fathers to adopt a master plan which would transform the abandoned warehouses and shipyards into a “Riverwalk” of trendy stores, expensive restaurants and a potpourri of tourist attractions.
Chic condos. Espresso bars. Leotard shops. The usual.
The homeless, currently residing in abandoned boxcars, would have to be relocated.
There’s certainly no room for them at The Sanctuary.