December 29, 2005

• Miami Beach Christmas Pageants II

  Opulent wasn't the word. Fleischer Studios, the makers of the popular Popeye cartoons, was just going under and many of their artists were looking for work. My father hired some of them to make the large "Christmassy" cutouts and figures- they looked, as I remember, sort of like mardigras float figures. they also designed some of the displays. When I said 90 feet - that would be the average length - many of the yachts were bigger - the length and draft limited by the waterway depth.

  The layout of the city of Miami Beach was carefully designed so that there was access to much of the in-town waterways without having to go under bridges. I only remember a couple of drawbridges. The early history of that city is pretty interesting and much of it is already lost or fading from memory fast.

  Carl Fisher, the founder of the Indianapolis Speedway among other things, was the developer of this off-shore sandbank - and he thought large! He was a member of the club mentioned in the last post along with a good many of the mid-western auto industry tycoons. They had lots of money for those days (the end of the depression) and enjoyed spending it.

  Fisher, who died broke, was quite the showman. He had among other things, a pet elephant he used for publicity photos. when not posing, Rosy - the elephant- hauled a garbage cart. The Geiger brothers, Fisher's architects, tried to give the beach a Mediterranean flair -even importing some gondolas, complete with gondoliers to pretty the place up. As a child I remember playing on and in the stored gondolas (the gondoliers went back to Venice).

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