Driving in Miami and Other Death Defying Activities

Driving in south Florida is not like driving anywhere else in the country.  I guess every geography has its unique hazards.  In Miami you're not likely to be squashed by the felling of a giant redwood, but in northern California?  In Miami, you and your little sports car are more likely to be swallowed by a Burmese python as to become redwood fodder.  Don't laugh at the giant python reference, just read the NY Times article titled, "The Snake That's Eating Florida" to get some perspective.

A Small Local Python

When I learned to drive, Miami had no expressways and the only exotic snakes were kept at the Miami Serpentarium.  You drove on regular roads with regular people except during "snowbird season."  Then you ran the risk of getting run down by a tourist from Quebec.  You learn early on that any car with a license plate on the front is a threat.   (Florida cars only have the rear tag)

Miami Serpentarium

Back in the day, people used turn signals.  For my younger readers, the little lever on the left of your steering wheel is supposed to be moved up before you make a right turn and down before a left turn.  If you are an older driver you just turn on your turn signal before you leave home and you will be ready for the rest of the day.  Actually, since nobody had air conditioning in the 60's, we even knew all the proper hand signals.  Now, nobody in Miami uses hand signals, and for two very good reasons.  First of all, your air conditioner is on and your window is up.  Second, any hand gesture given while driving, runs a 50-50 risk of gunfire, and not the usual happy, celebratory kind.

Outdated Driving Hand Signals

In the news today you hear about self-driving cars.  In Miami, we have had them for years.  At least it seemed so.  You could regularly see a car moving down the road without a driver.  You might see some white knuckles on the wheel and some blue hair at dash level, but no head.  Florida retirees in the 1960's were very short but somehow managed to get on down the road.  I think they drove from memory.  When their memory failed, the herd got automatically thinned by drivers from Quebec.

Typical Florida Driver

I started my driving career in my dad's lap.  I would stand on the seat between his legs and he would let me steer.   My dad stopped letting me stand and drive when I think I stepped on something.  He yelled and I never got to steer there again.  Later, when my legs grew longer, I began my driving with more involvement.  I took a Driver's Education class in high school that was very helpful in later years.  It was in this class that I learned that some of what they were teaching was wrong.  At least in terms of how to quickly apply the brakes.  They taught me that, you moved your right foot off of the accelerator and over to the brake pedal.  I found, on their response time tester, that it was much faster if I had my left foot hovering over the brake just before needing to stop.  This two-foot technique ruled out stick shifts but saved my butt more than just a few times.  I have been driving this way for over half a century, in Miami and elsewhere, and I have been involved in only one accident.  I was stopped and the young lady behind me couldn't stop in time.  An obvious product of a flawed technique.  It didn't help that she was on her cellphone at the time.

A New Driver Hits the Road

In Miami, another accident type seems commonplace.  You watch the 6 o'clock news and they show the image of a driver who just managed to park their car next to the potato chips on aisle 3 of the local mini-mart.  The universal response is, "I thought I was pressing on the brake."  When the brain sends the signal to STOP and to GO down to the same leg, it's easy to see that there can be confusion.

Clean-up on Aisle 3

In the early days of my driving life in Miami the population was less than half of what it is today.  On the roads were a bunch of south Floridians along with a seasonal influx of some American snowbirds and a few Canadian loons.  We have since doubled the local population and managed to import half of the populations of Central and South America.  While I love the diversity and the inherent cultural exchange of ideas, the driving experience in this environment is like jumping out of an airplane with a parachute packed by a three year old.  The Forest Gump box of chocolates analogy jumps to mind.

You never know what you’re gonna get.’” – Forrest Gump

Let's say you are in Vermont and have an accident.  The two drivers exchange information and the police department might be called to issue a ticket to a guilty party.  They likely all know each other and both drivers will have insurance.  In Miami, that accident will more likely involve three or more vehicles and perhaps a dozen or more people.  The drivers involved will have no insurance and no valid drivers license, one will be wearing an ankle monitor, and only two will be in the US legally. Once, in a very long while, you might find that very rare Miami driver left alone at the scene of the accident.  He's the one who just happens to have a valid drivers license, insurance and no outstanding bench warrants.  If the news is any indication, the proper procedure when you hit a pedestrian is to pin a note to his chest that says, "Sorry", and then drive away quickly before anyone realizes this is another hit and run.

Another anomaly in tropical Miami is the fact that, while many people don't know how to drive when the sun is out, almost no one knows how to drive in the rain.  We may be in the Sunshine State but we also have more rain here than Noah dealt with during biblical times.  Since we only have two basic street conditions, wet and dry, it would seem logical that a sensible driver would know which of these two conditions would warrant extra caution.  The problem here lies somewhere between the steering wheel and the headrest.  When it starts to rain and visibility is poor, the idiots here want to tailgate so they can better keep an eye on your tail lights.  Tail light visibility is important to a Miami driver because it is the first thing they try to find when they look up from their cellphones.

Typical Florida Driver's View at 70mph

Speaking of cellphones, there seems to be a requirement that you type LOL, TTYL, and WTF while sitting in the lead position at a traffic light.  This then requires someone further back in the line to take it upon themselves to watch the light and honk their horn when the light changes.  When nobody takes the responsibility to not text at a light, everyone waits for another light cycle.  I'm sure that, somewhere in Miami, a group of texting drivers has sat through several light changes while each is texting some information of obvious critical importance, when they eventually get hungry, realize that they forgot where they were going, and make U-turns to go back home.

Traffic.  Miami doesn't have traffic.  You see, traffic implies movement.  We have something more akin to parking with occasional changes in position.  Traffic in Miami generally moves at the speed of tree sap.  And not the white, milky free flowing sap but the golden, resinous oozing kind.

To help speed up traffic the government decided to build Interstate 95.  I know because I helped build it as a surveyor on a State Road Department crew.  This wasn't enough so they built SR836, which I also helped build.  They keep adding more expressways, adding more lanes and correcting their mistakes with more construction.  The new roads are supposed to help but, since they are always under construction things never seem to get better.  A GPS is now an essential piece of equipment for me to find my way in a city where I grew up.  Even the GPS has difficulty keeping up with the changes.

Which Lane Would You Choose?

Before you venture out in Miami, you need to watch the time of day.  You don't want to go out between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. because that is rush hour.  You don't want to go out between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. because that is commercial traffic time with UPS and Fed Ex trucks mixed in with 199,000 lawn service trucks towing trailers.  You don't want to drive between the hours of 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. as that is when the soccer moms pick up their kids from school and deliver them to soccer fields, ballet classes and karate dojos.  The hours between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. are again rush hour and you definitely don't want to be out in that.  Between 8 pm. and 10 p.m. you don't want to be on the road because that's when the happy hour drunks are making their way home.  Then from 10 p.m. to  5 a.m. the clubs in Miami are in full swing and the crazies are out in fine form.  From 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. you can go out and do anything you want but realize almost everything is closed.  There will still be heavy traffic, but at least it is a bit lighter than at other times of the day and night.

Television, Back in the Day

From the primordial ooze that was radio, television was born.  Yes, in the beginning, your wide screen, thousand channel, gazillion inch, super high definition, 3D, color, smart television with Internet access, was a small dumb black and white glass fish bowl with maybe three stations.  The TV programming was free and came in through a set of aluminum sticks on a pole called an antennae.

TV Antennae

The first television on our block was at Tommy’s house.  This was in the early 50’s and Tommy’s dad was an engineer who flew for Eastern Airlines.  I guess it just made sense that the family of an engineer would have the first TV.  I would spend as much time as I could at Tommy’s watching countless old movie westerns, Tarzan, Ramar of the Jungle, The Cisco Kid, Superman, Howdy Doody, Broken Arrow, Sky King, Merry Melodies cartoons, The Lone Ranger, Adventure Time, The Mickey Mouse Club, Felix the Cat, Winky Dink and You, and The Dungeon with Miami’s own, MT Graves (Charlie Baxter).

MT Graves, Host of The Dungeon

In the string above one show, Adventure Time, was like crack cocaine in the innocent 50's.  They played the old movie serials where the car with the good guy runs over the cliff just before you heard the words, "tune in tomorrow to see..."  When you tuned in the next day you would see that the good guy jumped out of the car and grabbed a branch just before the car exploded in the valley below.

Another innovative show in the list above was Winky Dink and You.  I say innovative since this was perhaps the first interactive television program.  I had my Winky Dink and You kit, purchased at a local store.  The kit had a flexible piece of plastic that stuck to the television screen with static electricity.  It also had special crayons that could be used to draw a needed bridge or tool that Winky Dink needed to complete his journey.  The cartoon would stop at the crucial moment and you were directed to connect the dots to draw something essential to the cartoon story.  I'm sure that, more than once, parents came home to watch the Huntley-Brinkley Report only to see the two of them looking out from behind a bridge or tree freshly drawn directly on their new television screen.

Winky Dink and You Opening Screen

TV westerns were perhaps my favorites.  I would watch stars like Audie Murphy, Duncan Reynaldo and his sidekick, Leo Carillo (Cisco and Pancho on The Cisco Kid), Bob Steele, Johnny Mack Brown, Randolph Scott, Slim Pickens, Roy Rogers, Kirby Grant (Sky King), Gene Autry, Gabby Hayes, Fuzzy Knight, Tom Mix, Tex Ritter, Smiley Burnett, Guy Madison and his sidekick, Andy Devine (Wild Bill and Jingles on Wild Bill Hickock), and William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy).

Johnny Mack Brown

I watched so much TV at Tommy’s house my parents finally broke down and bought our first set.  They did this as it was their last hope of ever seeing me again.  Our first set was a Magnavox 19” beauty mounted in an upright light oak cabinet on wheels.  It had a large 12-inch speaker at the bottom with the screen up top.  All of this was behind two hinged doors which, if I had anything to say about it, would never close.

Magnavox TV circa 1950's

Television, back in the day, was not a passive experience, you had to work at it.  You see, TV sets regularly broke down.  I guess that's why they had wheels on the cabinet.  You would roll your broken TV out into the floor and you would remove the six screws that held the back cover in place.  You would then hold the flashlight while your dad removed all of the tubes from their sockets while uttering words you hadn't heard before and for which your mom would remind your dad that he had children.  The tubes were placed in a paper bag and then you drove to the local Eagle's Army Navy Store.  They had a tube tester.  This was always a fun trip because the Eagle's Army Navy Store always shared a parking lot with a Royal Castle.  Nothing like a burger and birch beer to help take some of the sting out of having a broken TV.

TV Tube Tester

The tube tester was your friend.  It was a life saver.  You first looked up the number of the tube in a catalog chained to the tester.  Then you would look up the proper socket number on the tester and the settings for the two knobs.  After the tube warmed up you would turn the "TEST" knob and watch the needle swing across the dial telling you the tube was GOOD or REPLACE or the dreaded question mark meaning it might still be good enough.  With the question mark: You've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?’

Good, Replace or WTF

When you found the bad tube(s) you wrote down the number, the clerk would open the lower cabinet on the tester and would hand you your new tube(s).  You then drove home and realized that you should have written down where each of the tubes needed to go.  Your dad only did this the first time.  Insert more expletives here.  Once the tubes found their proper homes you replaced the now 5 screws holding the rear cover in place, plugged the set back in and turned it on and waited, and waited, and waited in hopes of seeing a picture and hearing some audio.  If all went well you were back to watching your beloved TV for a few more months before you needed to make another trip to the tube tester and get another vocabulary lesson from your dad.  You would also lose another of the back screws and realize the importance of saving the 4 screws that remained.

Inside an Old TV

Another thing your dad only did once was to accidentally contact the high voltage wire connected to the big picture tube.  This wire is attached to the aptly named "flyback" circuitry.  I say aptly named because if you touch it, you not only fly back across the room, you can learn to speak in tongues.  My dad did this once and began a stream of words I had heard only on rare occasions.  My mom must of known of some of them because she once again reminded him he had children.  I just thought the whole thing was funny and laughed out loud.  I would pay for this laugh later in life when my dad was working on our lawnmower.  He had me hold the spark plug wire while he pulled the starter cord.  I got zapped and my dad merely stated, "Yup, we've got spark".

In the beginning you had three channels to choose from, CBS, ABC, and NBC.  If you wanted to change channels you had to get up off your butt and make a trip to the channel dial on the TV.  This was the only form of exercise most folks got in the 50's.  

Zenith Space Command

Eventually, Zenith removed even this activity with the Zenith Space Command.  The device was called "the clicker" as it produced an audible "thunking" noise when the button was pressed.  You could now change channels and raise and lower the volume from your chair.   It had just two buttons, one for Channel, one for Volume.  Push the Channel button to go up one channel.  Want to go down one channel?  Sorry, you have to go higher until you go all the way around the dial.  The same went for Volume.  You had  Low, Medium, and High.  If memory serves, this was also the Off button.  The quality of health in America hasn't been the same since.

A Delicious TV Dinner

Another health related effect of the TV revolution was the famous TV dinner.  Moms could drop a few of these in the oven for a specified length of time and, voila, dinner was ready.  Fried chicken and Salisbury steak were my favorites.  Actually, any of them that came with dessert were good.  I remember that they also had something they called roast beef, but it was really dark brown cardboard covered with sauce.  TV dinners were served right in the aluminum cooking container and placed on, wait for it, a TV tray.  So, now the family could gather around the television, pull up their TV tray, eat dinner and watch TV at the same time.  The decline of American civilization was guaranteed. 

Even Republicans Ate on TV Tables

TV programming wasn't a 24 hour affair like it is today either.  The stations would go off the air with the playing of the National Anthem, after which they would display a test pattern until morning.  Many people of my generation have stared at this screen waiting, waiting, standing by as directed.

TV Test Pattern

The first thing you would see in the morning might be The Today Show starring Dave Garroway and his regular sidekick J. Fred Muggs.  The Today show started in 1952 and is only the fifth longest running show in television history.  Of all the intellectual commentary I have heard over the many years coming from my various televisions, the utterances of J. Fred Muggs were perhaps the most profound.  He was certainly more eloquent than any of the political speeches I have heard recently.

Dave Garroway and J. Fred Muggs

I also remember that, unlike the kids programming that I watched, there were shows that I couldn't watch.  The one that comes to mind is The Untouchables.  In today's world, gangsters shooting people with machine guns would seem like PG fare but, in the late 50's, parents worried.  Not to be deterred, I would regularly go to bed, wait until The Untouchables came on, and then I would sneak into the hallway behind the couch where my parents were watching.  The Untouchables were now touchable, or at least watchable.  Cowboys shooting "bad guys" or Indians was one thing, but a guy in a suit shooting another guy in a suit was just too real for my young eyes.  I guess in today's world of television programming, I wouldn't want a child of mine watching a show like Dexter.

Opening Title Screen for The Untouchables

The next milestone in the evolution of television was color.  I only remember one family in my old neighborhood having a color set.  The Wagner's lived one block over.  I remember my amazement at first seeing a color television picture.  The grass was a beautiful shade of green.  The people were also a beautiful shade of green.  If they were wearing a red shirt that might show in red.  If they were wearing a yellow shirt it might show in red or green, but not a hint of yellow.  Eventually however, red, green and blue appeared and sometimes they would be associated with the appropriate item.

I remember my dad saying the reason we didn't have a color set was because they, "haven't perfected it yet."   This was in the late 50's and he was probably right that color was still a work in progress.  Throughout the 60's color television improved.  Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color was first broadcast in 1961.  To me however, it was Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Black and White.

By the early 70's all of the networks were broadcasting in color.  I think my parents bought their first color set in the mid to late 70's.

So, for all of you who are now growing up in a generation of hand held devices where you can drive your car while watching music videos, feature length movies, and clips of cats chasing red laser dots, you can thank my generation for putting seatbelts in cars.