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| Warm Smiles We Recall |
Like Jimmy Stewart running through the streets of Bedford Falls after he learns that he no longer existed, we drove through the streets of our old haunts here in Florida to find the world had changed. It became hard. Where there were once friendly shops offering wares appropriate for children, there were now tattered holes and kiosks selling services from tattoos to piercing to porn.
Where we once took refuge after magic meetings, we now found bars where women will join a customer for a bottle of $125.00 champagne and “have personal party.” In the same way the article is missing from the advertisement, the class is gone from the neighborhood we once called home.
South Florida is no longer the southern portion of a southern state visited seasonally by those from colder climes. Our old high school and its theater have been fenced-off but not destroyed. Like a caged animal, the home of the Rams is now just an exhibition of urban blight. The funds ran out before the buildings could be destroyed but not until the garish chain link fence circled the campus.
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Unlike Jimmy Stewart’s run through Bedford Falls, there is no happy ending to this story. There is no realization to which we may come sufficient to bring back the neighborhood we once knew. The magic shops we visited, loitered around, learned from, and spent our newspaper money in, are gone. The mall that contained the newest magic kiosk responsible for taking the business from the institution that was Johnny’s Playland and Trickshop, is itself a victim of newer malls. Where young men, learning at the right hand of the talented Barry Gibbs, once walked their invisible dogs to drum up business, police officers now circulate to decrease the threat of gangs.
Everything changes. We know nothing is permanent. Our memories of the area will always exist even though the…
Continue reading Smiles of Yesterday – Richard Adler
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