I grew up in Miami during its most unremarkable years. My time was not during its Golden Age, when
movie stars and their entourages flocked to luxurious landmarks like the
Fontainebleu or the Biltmore. Those were
the years before Hollywood hit it big and sucked the "filmerati" westward. In those long-forgotten days, Miami was as
good as luxury got for spending a hiatus between films—a haven where a start's solitute was certain to be captured by the tabloids. Nor was I there
for the Miami Renaissance of the last generation, the post-Miami Vice years when
South Beach reestablished its cool, creating grand destinations such as the Delano or
the Mondrian.
My Miami—North Miami Beach, actually—was an unincorporated
stretch of northern Dade County where businesses popped up as fast as the small
ranch-style dwellings could multiply.
The name is a bit of a misnomer as we were situated a good mile or two
from the ocean, north of North Miami.
The landscape was flat, dotted by a healthy supply of cultivated palm
trees, criss-crossed by perpendicular roads, and populated by chameleons. It
was hot. Oh, how it was hot.
As a child, a neighborhood of about 20 square blocks was my
universe. We had everything we
needed: a shopping center (the word ‘mall’
wouldn’t be introduced for decades), a supermarket or two, a couple of
synagogues, the correct number of elementary schools feeding into a single
junior high, and a short ride to Baker’s Haulover Beach. We had a strange attraction for such a
nondescript suburban area: an authentic Spanish
Monastery that was purchased by none other than William Randolph Hearst and
reassembled in North Miami Beach in the 50s.
Ours was a simple family.
My mother was a housewife cast in the mold of a 50s icon with poofy hair
and pink lipstick. My father was a
working class engineer who threw himself into his work until he rose through
the ranks of sales and management. We
did not live lavishly but we had plenty—good cars, a pool in the back yard, a
boat for fishing and waterskiing, and most important to me, piano lessons.
My parents went out frequently, leaving us kids home with the latest pick from an assortment of babysitters. Mom and Dad loved the theater and fine dining; and
boy, could they dance. As kids, we never
accompanied them “out to dinner” unless it was to Burger King or Coney Island--someplace with no table service. The only opportunity to "go out fancy" was the occasional Bar Mitzvah or wedding, or that rare occasions where a
large extended family dinner was staged at a family-style restaurant. That's when going out for spaghetti or
Chinese food took on celebratory significance.
Pizza, however, held a special place in my family’s culinary
taxonomy. My father was late to discover
pizza, having been told by his mother that he hated cheese. When he realized how much he loved pizza, he
spent the rest of his life trying to compensate for his pizza-free
childhood. To say he was a pizza
aficionado would be an understatement.
He was the undisputed supreme arbiter on what constituted good, better,
and best among pizzas across the globe.
One of our family’s favorite pizza escapes was a festive North
Miami dive called Myers Pizza Parlor. My
earliest memory of pizza comes from Myers, a place my father discovered and
worshipped for years. He befriended the
owners—who I think were named Joel and Harvey—so that when we arrived we
received special treatment. Joel would
come out of the kitchen to sit at our table and share a beer with my Dad. I felt like pizza royalty.
But while the pizza was the main attraction at Myers, I was dazzled
by what went on at the other end of the restaurant, far away from the kitchen
and the blazing pizza ovens. In the
corner, elevated slightly on a small platform, was an upright, honkey-tonk piano. This out-of-tune junker was played, all night long, by a
down-on-his-luck, aging soul named Milton.
Milton dressed in a festive red-and-white striped shirt and a straw boater,
giving him the appearance of a disenfranchised member of a Barbershop Quartet. He worked keyboard side out, his back to the
audience, with a microphone stand between his legs.
I would not realize until much later in life what Milton’s
true economic circumstances were. To me,
all that registered was that this man was playing a piano—in public. It was incredible to me that one could have a job like this, and that people came over to fill his sad jar with their quarters and
dimes. It had been only a short time
ago that I had started piano lessons. I
felt this bonded us—Milton and me—in that we shared this skill that was
obviously lacking among everyone else at the venue. When he took his breaks, Milton allowed me to
play his piano. He would announce my
name into his microphone and people clapped, showing appreciation for insipid
pieces just mastered from my John Thompson piano method books. It was my fifteen minutes of fame, cut short
by the man’s limping form emerging from the Men’s Room. When he returned, he said his classic, “That
was just lovely, dear heart.” Milton
called everybody “dear heart.” He would then
take over, returning to his harmonically-abused renditions of Golden-Oldies: I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, Swanee River, and Dixie. (For the latter, he would ask everyone to please stand and face Ojus.)
Through the years of my adulthood, I would seek out pizza establishments in
the cities where I lived, trying to find exceptional examples that my father
might like during his occasional visits. It was a personal challenge to uncover pizza
greatness, if only to see whether it could rank among my father’s all-time
favorites. On a few occasions, I was
able to make my father ooh and ahh—though he was easy when it came to pizza,
his favorite of all foods. But one mention
of Myers Pizza Parlor and my father’s eyes would turn misty, the creases that
came with age softening just a bit. I
suspect that my father remembered Myers the way one remembers a first
love. Although I have no lingering recollection
of how the pizza tasted, I still feel the same way about Myers. It was as memories should be—filled with
friends and family, loud music, good food, and a little bit of magic.
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