The Coral Gables Times

Thursday, June 8, 1961, page 4 (of 50)

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THE Coral Gables TIMES

Thumbs Up for the Boys At City Hall on This One

Our new City Commissioners haven't yet smelled the burnt smoke of battle. Their tenure is too new for much to have happened. However, already they have made a major move. That was the decision to hire a planning firm to take a calculated look at us and where we're headed. The Times is pleased with the decision. Not that the firm is going to lay out a five-year-plan which will solve our problems. That isn't the intention and it should be understood now that this isn't the purpose. The planners, experts if you wish, are retained to make an appraisal of our city - what its needs will be, how to avoid some land use problems, and to come up with recommended equations for those problems already existing (i.e., Le Jeune Road, Douglas Road and similar puzzlers). So, we look to the planners for the basic gathering of data and pointing our nose toward the issues. Then, it again becomes a matter for the City Commission. To them belong the choices. It is clear to any who cares to look that the overriding issue in our lovely community is land use. Shall there be high rise buildings, and if so, where? Shall streets once residential and now arterial be converted into non-residential zoning? How contained shall new shopping facilities be? The list is a lengthy one. As we said, the important move has been made. A firm will be engaged. We look with anticipation to the Commissioners' follow through.

Rally 'Round the Flag

We were bumping along to work (our city's streets are lousy despite our beautiful profile) and we were thinking as we passed through the shaded, well-tended neighborhood: "It's wonderful how many people in Coral Gables display their American flags on holidays." Even though there was but a flag or so to a block it was certainly a greater observance than any other city in which we've lived. Then we got to the morning's mail at the office. Here was a letter, carried elsewhere on these pages today, from a local citizen saying there wasn't much flag waving hereabouts. He offered direct evidence to his point. All of this led to further thought. It's an unhappy fact that to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" or hang a flag out the kitchen window in these times is apt to draw from your neighbor, not a "well done!" but a quizzical look, much as if to suggest, "The guy must be some sort of a patriotic nut." For shame that it's no longer popular to believe in something and demonstrate in behalf of it. Our nation, Protestant in heritage and Revolutionary in birth, has evolved to the point that we seem to prefer a bland mixture or none at all. Pablum-fed citizens are we. Perhaps it's the part of the price of sophistication, of "education." As we lose our prejudices and acquire tolerances, we seem somehow also to yield up the hell-raisin' virtues of passionate belief and indignation. Must it be so? A slightly-choleric citizen is to be desired. Let's get over the idea it's a sin to wave the flag.

Remember The Times ONE YEAR AGO THIS WEEK

A study was launched to work out details of the proposed transfer of Coral Gables Stadium to Metro . . . Complaints of inadequate free parking at Veterans Hospital has brought a recommendation from City Manager L. W. Robinson Jr., than 100 more spaces be added behind the hospital. George A. Smathers, U.S. Senator from Florida, will address more than 1,000 students during UM commencement exercises.

EVERYBODY'S Business By Rolfe Neill

Seen at Night Things you'd never know unless you stayed up late: The Gables has a different character between midnight and dawn. The houses are hid in the softness of their own shadows and have an eerie beauty. Why do so many people leave the livingroom light on all night? At least one - most often two - people are fishing on the bridge at Le Jeune and Sunset until daybreak. Some folks take everything for granted. The other morning at 1:20, the phone rang at The Times. When I answered the lady said, "Can you tell me what those flares are in the Southern part of the sky?" Her question was matter of fact; there wasn't the slightest bit of surprise that somebody should be at a weekly newspaper office at 1:20 a.m. (Maybe she's worked on one.) * * * Hook & Ladder Talking to Chief Paul Matheson at the Fire Department this week, I remarked that I was surprised at the variety of calls answered by his department and its emergency squad. For instance, while it was no laughing matter to the policeman, there was humor in the brief, one-sentence entry in last week's list; "Officer Bell bit by a coon." Chief Matheson is proud of his department. And as for the emergency squad: "We've delivered two babies and even saved a doctor's life." The latter occurred when they attended a physician who critically wounded himself when he fell through a plate glass door. * * * Verse Maker From the prolific pen of Anon comes this: THE RAT RACE This is the age of the half read page And the quick has and the mad dash. The bright night with the nerves tight. The plane hop and the brief stop. The lamp tan in a short span. The big shot in a soft spot. And the brain strain. And the heart pain And the cat naps And the spring snaps And the fun's done. * * * Up North From The Lake Worth Herald we read, in a front page editorial, that that newspaper is asking the question: "When our guests (tourists) have gone home . . . Is there really any need for parking meters during the late spring, during the summer and into mid-fall?" The Herald thinks not, that it's hurting downtown business. It cited its own Monday morning check at 10 a.m. to show 254 vacant metered spaces. * * * Menagerie The Gables attorney and his family shall go nameless here to assure them the immunity of prosecution for health ordinance violation, but their assembled animal kingdom is something to behold. I had knocked on the door and was surprised wyen the mother, a stranger to me, answered, holding a struggling, white hen under her arm. She didn't even seem aware it was there. Later, I learned from her husband that to keep the hen company there is a chick, two ducks, two parakeets, a dog and some assorted other pets. They all make their beds in the garage and behave themselves in unexpectedly fine fashion. How do you account for the collection? "Easter presents," says the father. "Easter presents that wouldn't die and we seem to add every year."

Editor's Mailbox

EDITOR: I would like to call your attention to the apparent lack of interest on the part of the citizens of Coral Gables to display our national flag on the days designated for this purpose. On Tuesday, Memorial Day, I was the only resident in my block to display the American Flag. On an inspection of Miracle Mile, from City Hall to Douglas Road, I observed only two flags on display and they were in front of the office of Keyes Realtors and Stadler Realtors. On Ponce de Leon, from Almeria to the Trail, I observed six flags, in front of the Coral Gables Savings and Loan Association; Weinkles Liquor Store; American Oil Service Station; Cooper's Oldsmobile Agency; Printz pharmacy and Philbrick Funeral Home. It is suggested that your paper could be instrumental in arousing some interest in the citizens on the subject of displaying the flags on proper days if you would carry sufficient advanced news items on the subject. It is a disappointment to me to see the lack of interest in displaying our national flag and I trust that more people will become conscious of their loyalty to our free country and in the future honor "Old Glory" in the usual traditional form. THOMAS P. LYNCH Commander USN (Ret.) 436 Candia Ave. (See page 1 of this issue. -Editor)

OFF THE ROCKER Lord Help You If You Use Cream Or Sugar

BY ELVA CHARLTON Correspondent A group of Coral Gables business associates, relaxing after a meeting, sat at a round table drinking coffee. Bud, the youngest, on the real sunny side of forty, helped himself to cream and sugar, then passed them to the man on his right. The man reared back in his seat as though struck by a snake, saying: "I never take anything in coffee." He then passed the cream and sugar to the man on his right, who said: "I used to drink it with sugar and cream, but now I can't stand it that way." Bud glanced down at his cup. The sugar was melting in the bottom and the cream floated deliciously on top. It now looked like poison. The man across also had something to say. "Bud, have you ever tried it black?" "Yes, and I don't like it." "If you try it black for a week, you will never use cream and sugar again," another offered. "I did, and I still don't like black coffee," Bud argued. He took a little sip to show his strength. This is an amusing game. If you take even a smidgin of sugar and a thimblefull of cream, you are by far inferior to those wo drink it black. I still drink both sugar and cream in coffee, regardless of the remarks of my friends and the sly glances at my waistline. I find myself very interested in how coffee is served in different parts of the world, but since I have never been abroad, would like to hear from someone who has. But coffee is not the same brew it was in the old days. I remember my father drank his differently from anyone I ever heard of. When Billy Sunday campaigned in Philadelphia when I was a child, he converted everyone on our block on Walnut Street. It was said that he broke up the platform on which he was standing, setting it on fire, so the fires of hell could be visualised. Home life was different after that. All the families between 59th and 60th strtets joined the Presbyterian Church across the street. The men stayed home at night. My father bought a regulation size pool table and put it on the diningroom table. All the men in the neighborhood played pool every night including the minister from the church. The beverage for the evening was coffee. I never understood why this was so amusing until years later. The coffe had replaced the beer which was drunk before. Sunday morning ws church morning. Nevertheless, my father had his usual Sunday breakfast. He ate it in the kitchen. The round table was covered with a white cloth, replacing the red one round which we kids sat at night and did our homework. Fried scrapple, fried mush, and bread (no toast in those days; toast was only for invalids). The coffee ws made in a huge agate pot and boiled with egg shells to clear it. The longer it sat, the stronger and better it was. My mother poured one cup before my father sat down. In this she dropped a huge hunk of strong (rat cheese) to melt. Then she poured another cup for him to drink black. By the time breakfast was ready, the cheese had become a gluey gob in the bottom of the cup. My father scooped this out and spread it on his bread, not drinking this coffee, of course. You have now a picture of my father, A big, burly, strapping individual and strong. He wasn't. My mother had the strength. My father was a small, (Beau Brummell) good-natured Southerner, but meek. But he was not so very blessed, and inherited very little of the earth.