Good Season

The sun had not shone on Miami Beach that day, and the Sunday night was chilly. Men on the hunt, women coyly at bay, people who were merely married or alone packed the twin, curving bars at the 5 O'Clock Club (where the drinks are free at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m.). Jack Dempsey brooded in a corner of his dim and crowded saloon. Fat, male Mother Kelly dished up steaks, drinks and hermaphroditic comedy at Mother Kelly's. Across Biscayne Bay, on the Miami side, painted men danced and profaned sweet songs at the Club Ha-Ha. In the casinos at Ben Marden's Colonial Inn, the Sunny Isles Club, the Royal Palm, gamblers crowded the roulette and dice tables. On the ocean side, Glamor Row flung its facade of stucco and neon at the sky and the sea: the new Lord Tarleton, the Versailles, the older Roney Plaza, many another hostelry where the cheaper rooms went for $16 a day.

This was the Florida of the headlines, of the columns, of salesgirls' dreams. It was the Florida which Columnist Lucius Beebe last week called "the last Gomorrah, the ultimate Babylon, the final Gnome-Rhone-Jupiter-Whirlwind, superdeluxe, extra-special, colossal, double-feature and Zombie-ridden madhouse of the world." And it was as far from the rest of Florida as Mr. Beebe was from the many-millioned humanity of his own Manhattan.

Last week very few people wrote about, read about or even talked about the other Florida. But a great many people lived in it. In downtown Miami, on the inner streets of Miami Beach, in many a haven of the sane which boasted none of their expensive fantasies, life was simply transplanted for a while from Brooklyn and The Bronx, from the stores, the shops, the offices, the farms, the homes of Wisconsin, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri. It was life in rooming houses, tourist camps, family apartments, hotels rated for thrifty folk who could walk, drive or ride in public busses to public beaches, do their fishing from bridges and public boats, their loafing in public parks. They were folk who went to church or sang Rock of Ages in their hotel lobbies on Sunday evenings.

Because thousands of them went south this year, Florida was having a good season last week. Press agents, nightclub men, the managers of the black-tie hotels paid them very little heed. These gentry were largely occupied in bemoaning or explaining the "bad" season. By all the travel indexes (airlines, railways, busses, boats), more people went to Florida this year than ever. But less big money went there, or at any rate was spent there. That portion of Miami, Miami Beach and kindred spots which was built for and catered to the big-money trade found itself overbuilt (Miami Beach alone had 42 new hotels), spreading a rich business too thinly among too many hungry operators. Favorite explanation : the defense boom had kept many a well-heeled businessman at home, minding his contracts.

The safe, sound, thoroughly American bedrock of Florida's winter trade was bigger and sounder than ever. A bus-line authority said that trying to count the passengers was like counting the snowflakes that fell in Manhattan last week. The middleaged, the old, the thrifty young thronged ancient, calm St. Augustine, Fort Lauderdale, Delray Beach on the Atlantic Coast. St. Petersburg on the Gulf of Mexico did its usual huge and placid business. The thousands of green benches along the city's sidewalks and in the parks were always crowded. Gaffers 75 and over played their daily six innings of cautious baseball, and Webb's Cut Rate Store (one egg, two strips of bacon, hominy grits for breakfast, 3-c- ; with coffee and a doughnut, 8-c-) cashed their modest checks by the thousand.

Up to mid-February, the season was better than the weather. In Miami, between Dec. 15 and Feb. 15, 29 of the 62 days were rainy or cloudy. Then the sun smiled: only four days were cloudy between Feb. 16 and March 8. "It was worse last year," the permanent residents said (as it was). And it was a fact that the sun did not make so much difference in Florida as it was generally supposed to make. Since Henry Flagler pushed his bumpy railroad southward to Miami, and the tourists began to seek winter warmth, to millions in the U. S. Florida had become a place to rest, to play, to escape from the year-round realities at home. Up to this week, some 2,000,000 had spent $250,000,000 on that endeavor this season. If, when they headed home again, their winter tans were on the creamy side, they did not greatly mind. Another 500,000 or so were bound to follow, get deeper tans, and further bolster the heretical theory that Florida is a better place to go in the spring than in the winter.

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