Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma Read Online Free PDF Page B

D. Eisenhower
    Best film : Ben-Hur; Anatomy of a Murder, The Diary of Anne Frank, Room at the Top
    Best actors : Charleton Heston, Simone Signoret
    Best TV shows : Twilight Zone; Hawaiian Eye; The Untouchables; What’s My Line; This is Your Life
    Best songs : Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Stagger Lee, Donna, 16 Candles, Charlie Brown, Come Softly to Me, Battle of New Orleans, Dream Lover, Sea of Love
    Civics : Fidel Castro in power in Cuba; Alaska and Hawaii become the 49 th and 50 th states
    Popular Culture : development of first integrated circuit for computers; Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence, Hawaii by James Michener and Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak published.
    Deaths : Lou Costello, Cecil B. De Mille, Frank Lloyd Wright
    _________________________________________________________________
     
    When my family moved to North Miami Beach, we joined Monticello Park, a little old wooden one-room synagogue in our neighborhood. My Bas (we said Bas not Bat back then) Mitzvah in 1960 was one of the last services held in that old building. The new synagogue, Beth Torah—meaning House of Torah—was about to open. It was constructed of stone and looked like a giant Jewish Star if you were lucky enough to fly directly over it. The front doors looked like the scrolls Moses held as he came down from Mt. Sinai. (My mother used to reproduce those scrolls every Chanukah on the sliding glass doors in our house, using glass wax and food coloring. Her artistry won the Synagogue's Chanukah decorating contest for years until they got tired of giving it to her. They finally made her a judge on the decorations committee.)
     
    My family was immersed in the life of our Jewish neighborhood, surrounded by Jewish culture. I knew very few people who were not Jews. Occasionally I’d meet someone at my school, North Miami Beach Junior High (later to become John F. Kennedy Middle School) who wasn’t Jewish because some non-Jews lived south of 163rd Street—the Jewish demarcation line.
     
    Beth Torah Synagogue was two blocks south from the junior high. Corky’s Deli was a block to the west, and the new 163rd Street Shopping Center was a couple of blocks to the east. We lived about a mile—a short bike ride—to the north of all of those places. It was a great location for young active families, and especially for hyperactive kids like myself.
     
    Like every other Jewish family in our neighborhood, regardless of income, we had a “girl,” an African American woman who cleaned our house and who was like a member of the family, sort of. Our “girl” was Mary, who helped my father care for us kids when my mother was so ill. Mary hugged us often and told us she had our pictures on her dresser at home “just like my own children,” who I’d never met. But otherwise, we were a very white, very Jewish community and family.
     
    I experienced direct discrimination as a Jewish person only once when I was growing up, though I often saw blatant signs of discrimination against Jews in Miami. (There were many communities, facilities, and hotels in South Florida that were “restricted,” which meant only white Protestants were allowed access, even in Miami. In fact, the celebrity Arthur Godfrey owned the big Kenilworth Hotel on Collins Avenue which was a restricted facility—no Jews, no Blacks, no Catholics.) My friends Rosie and Marsha and I were seniors at Miami Norland Senior High School. It was January, 1965, and we had just returned from the winter break. The three of us were musicians in the school concert band which met in a building not connected to the rest of the school. Apparently, while we were in band class, an announcement was made for students to stay out of the main hallway due to 11 th grade testing. Since we had not heard the announcement, and since the lunch room was at the far end of the main hall opposite the band hall, down the corridor we went, laughing and chatting away as usual. The vice principal, whose name I’ve