Funny (or, sometimes not) how “stuff” happens or, as I am wont to say, how feces occurs.
In our Part One I talked (wrote) about being in love with “a nice Italian girl from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn” and how it turned out that, not only wasn’t she so nice but how a stunningly beautiful woman by the name of Myrna (last name at the time, that “time” now being almost 49 years ago, being DePaula) saved me from the late Maryann. And, as we would say in Espanol, “OY! Is dot a story!”
Anyway, I met Maryann at the Fontainebleau in late July or August of ’66, getting ready to leave for a little place in upstate New York called Cornell University, my being the first Dade County Junior College (DCJC) graduate to be accepted at that fabled institution of higher learning and being the first DCJC graduate to graduate from Cornell (only took me seven years to get my bachelor’s degree) but in regard to Maryann I was totally infatuated with her. Simply put, she was the sexiest female who I had ever seen, much less met. The infatuation did turn to love, but totally and thankfully (although I did not feel that way at the time, this all pre-Myrna) to no avail.
She came up to see me in Ithaca for two fraternity weekends and my fraternity brothers sat there staring at her with their mouths hanging wide open, she was that sexy-looking. I spent Thanksgiving (remember, that was 1966) with her at her sister’s house in Brooklyn and a couple of weeks later called her on the pay phone from my upperclass transfer dorm in Ithaca only to have her tell me that she and Sammy, who she had been going with for seven years before she met me were getting married and I can’t begin to tell you—which I am doing!—how broken hearted I was.
He, being a tough guy from Brooklyn was the type of moron who, when they were dating and going together would, if a guy turned and looked at her (no normal guy could help doing that she was so rousingly sexy) he would throw his chair back, walk over to the—in his mind, offending–male who had been staring and say (and I quote) “What are you doing? Looking at my girl friend (or wife, later)? I’m gonna kick your ass. After we re-united I explained to her what an insecure putz he was and asked her if she hadn’t noticed that, when we went out, I was looking around to enjoy the fact that all the men were staring at her, which was exactly the same with Myrna because she was so stunning and elegantly beautiful that you (male or female) couldn’t help but turn and drink in her beauty. Seriously.
In Part One I wrote of reconnecting with Maryann after she was married and how she was going to leave the husband and come up to Ithaca for my graduation, then to my first two jobs in Dallas and Atlanta and then to meet me back in Miami Beach, none of which happened. Fortunately (for me) I followed that with (as the great song goes) “Some Enchanted Evening” when, indeed, I did meet a stranger, and saw her laughing across a crowded room and have shared the story with you of how the late, great Oliver “Butch” Stallings introduced us.
Myrna had been married twice before and I became her third (and last) husband, she my first and only wife, but truth be told (again) I chased that woman for three years until she caught me!
We met one week and one day after Thanksgiving of ’73 and about a month later when I called her for our next date she said to me “I don’t think I’m going to be seeing you anymore.” Well, I had learned a lesson when I went to Chicago (as I did every summer) following my 10th or 11th grade at Beach High to spend about six weeks with my dear Aunt Gertrude (Mom’s sister) and Uncle Joe but I left behind a Miami High girl by the name of Gale Burt, who I was honestly and earnestly crazy about. Soon as I got back to Miami Beach I called her and much to my shock heard these words: “You didn’t write me while you were away so I’m not going to see you anymore.” I was stunned and couldn’t believe it, but I did learn the lesson that I should have tried to convince her that it was wrong of me and to at least meet with me and give me another chance. (Of course, I didn’t have her address so it would have been tough to send a letter!)
That lesson stuck with me and as soon as Myrna told me what she told me in the first sentence of the above paragraph I responded with “Wait a moment. Please, let’s do this: meet me at Parham’s (remember that wonderful restaurant on the northeast corner of 73rd and Collins on Miami Beach which was famous for it’s pancakes?) and least let’s talk about it.” As she would later say—with a smile, of course!—“Big mistake! I met him there and with his glib commentary and wonderful voice, that was it! We were never apart again!”
Myrna came up to New York, where I was managing the fabled New York Gaslight Club (the great story of the Gaslight Clubs, which—seriously—the Playboy Clubs came from) will follow in another episode “down the road apiece” and I know you will love that one, also) to spend the summer of ’76. Her daughter, Saralyn, then 14 and now my daughter, also, spent the summer with Uncle Barry, Myrna’s brother and his then-wife at Barry’s apartment on the east side. We had a wonderful summer and every time I would bring Myrna to the Gaslight Club, Ann, my head Gaslight Girl, would come over and say (and, yes, I quote exactly) “Myrna, you have to become a Gaslight Girl,” and Myrna would respond, always graciously, “thank you, Ann, but I teach in an elementary school on Miami Beach and I just can’t” and the same thing would happen when I brought her to the Miami Playboy Club when my Bunny Mother would come over and say, “Myrna, you have to become a Bunny” and Myrna would give her the same answer as I smiled through it all. (Yes, “it’s twoo, it’s twoo” as Lilly Von Shtup would say to Clevon Little playing “Sheriff Bart” in “Blazing Saddle,” this writer is the only living former New York Gaslight Club and Playboy Club Miami General Manager)
So what was next for us? Myrna had earned a two-week fellowship from Sears (a different company at that time, of course) at the University of South Florida in Tampa, all expenses paid, the title of said fellowship being “There is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch” and it was a marvelous learning experience for her as it was a two week presentation and discussion on and about capitalism, the free market economy and democracy and she loved it, returning to the apartment in North Bay Village in time for the resumption of classes in either very late August or early September.
Keep in mind that in those years we didn’t have cell phones. While we did have direct dial, we paid for each long distance call and there was no Caller I. D. so you didn’t know who was calling. Anyway, it must have been a Sunday because I was in my apartment (12J at 101 W. 57th Street on the southwest corner of 57th Street and 6th Avenue, the “Avenue of the Americas”) and the phone rang. Upon answering it I heard two words: “I’ve decided.” To which I replied, in my innocence, “you’ve decided what,” and the answer to that question was (no kidding!) “I’ve decided we’re getting married!”
Now, folks, here I was, running the famous New York Gaslight Club, surrounded by the beautiful Gaslight Girls and so I immediately started back-pedaling: “Wait a minute,” I said, “the several times I brought it up you told me that everything was fine and that we should just “leave it as it is,” so let’s do this (as I desperately tried to buy time!) let’s think about it carefully and we’ll talk about it again in February” and what I heard on the other end of the line was (and I quote) “If you don’t want to marry me then don’t call me the next time you’re in Miami.”
Well, dear readers, in addition to being a writer (America’s single most-published Florida history book author, now working on numbers 34—38, none self-published and having written something in the vicinity of 400 articles, I am also a talented public speaker) here is where I must state that I hope that some of you will get to hear this routine at one of my talks because you will be rolling off your chair laughing.
First, as I say to the audience, “do you think any woman is going to speak to ME that way? Do you think any woman—my voice rising—is going to talk to me like that?! And—now with a very much raised voice—”do you want to know what I said then? I said (again, loudly) following which my voice dropped to just above a whisper, “what day do you want to get married on?” and that was how I found out I was getting married!
We set the date for November 27th of 76, the wedding at the Gaslight Club, and, yes, I was still seeing Maryann until the month before and on our last date (for lunch) we were walking back crosstown toward my apartment when I stopped (I will never forget this) in front of the famous New York Athletic Club on the north side of 57th Street and said to Maryann, “I have to tell you something,” to which she answered with one word, “what?”
“Myrna and I are getting married” and she did something she had never done before: she started to stutter “but…but…but…I’m getting divorced.” “Really, well, I’m sorry. You’ve been telling me that for eight years and I am not going to tell Myrna that I’m not going to marry her because you’re telling me again that you’re getting divorced.” She appeared to be genuinely upset, and that, I thought was it.
Well, she (Maryann) did get divorced two years later, in ’78, and called to tell me and to ask if I was still married and those calls went on every two years, she re-marrying in ’88 and getting divorced in ’96, calling me bi-annually to update me and find out if I was still married, which, obviously, I was. (I was Myrna’s third and last husband, she my first and only wife and the only time she ever smoked was between husbands!). Anyhoo, two final notes: Maryann died in 2019 at the age of 74 and her sister, Geraldine (Geri) called me from New York not just to tell me that Maryann had passed away but to also tell me that Maryann had asked her to call me to let me know that she knew she had made a terrible mistake not marrying you and she hoped you would forgive her. (Yes, actually and truthfully, I really would have liked to thank her)
And, “in finality” for this episode, I have to share a secret with you all. Myrna divorced her second husband when he didn’t come home one night and finally admitted to her that he had had a “little thing” with a tsotskalah (Yiddishism for a babe) who worked at First Union at the corner of Lincoln and Alton, which had been Miami Beach First National Bank, after which she told him—after eight years of marriage—to pack up and get out. As she told me, he begged and pleaded with her, eventually on hands and knees, promising that it would never happen again, and I have never forgotten the words she used in her elegance and refinement when she told him it was over: “You’re right. It will never happen again because you took away my dignity.”
Dear readers I never forgot those words and if you don’t think that, as G M of the New York Gaslight Club and Playboy Club Miami that I didn’t have plenty of opportunities you would be wrong, BUT:
In almost 47 years of marriage (November 27th of ’23 would have been our 47th anniversary, she having passed away on September 7th of that year) never once—not once—in those almost 47 years did I violate our marriage, never, for one moment. I never forgot those words, and we never, ever, took away each other’s dignity, but, and in closing, a real and true confession….
….about three years before she died I said to her, “Myrna, I have to make a confession,” and she said, “which is what?” and I then followed with, “I have been having an affair for i a few years” after which a broad smile broke out on that still stunningly beautiful face of hers and she replied “I know.”
“You know?” I queried, and she, still with that smile, said “of course I know: it’s called the Florida East Coast Railway” and that dear friends and readers will be “it” for this go-round, looking forward to regaling you with more in the next several issues, perhaps with the factual stories of and about the NEOsonderkommandos, as well as “Debunking the South Florida Myths” in which you will learn that so many of the fables, fairy tales, fol-de-rol and bubbemissehs spouted off by certain other people are nothing but that: a complete bunch of nonsensical hooey with no basis in truth of fact, as well as, in addition, with “more good stuff.”
Be well, all, stay safe, and as we say in South Florida, “Thank you for not shooting and have a MIAMI NICE day!”
