The Bramson Archive: What It Is and How It Came To Be – Part IV

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By Seth H. Bramson

In our previous column we enjoyed the walk together from Sears at 15th Street and Biscayne Blvd. down to Flagler Street and then to Richard’s on Northeast 1st Street and First Avenue, but also made mention of the two great hobby shops in downtown Miami, Abbott’s Hobbies in the DuPont Building and Jahn the Magic Man just south of Flagler Street on Southeast Third Avenue.

By the time I was 13, in 1957, I was ready for my trip to Chicago to spend the summer with our dear Aunt Gertrude and Uncle Joe. It would be the first of many made on an annual basis to and through 1964, if I remember correctly.

On several of those Bennett joined me and how I wish now that I had been a better and more attentive brother but as Bubba Cohen once said to me, in describing his parents with the three rough and tumble boys in that house, “they did the best they could and after your parents divorced and your dad died you did the best you could, and you have nothing to regret.” He was right, but still I really do wish I had been kinder and more understanding but with eight years difference, it was more an annoyance (at the time) than anything else. Now, of course, my brother is, like Myrna, my bride of 41 ½ years (and I chased that woman for three years until she caught me!); my two after 41 ½ years of marriage not “step” children any longer but real and true for many years; my two magnificent grandsons and my beautiful and brilliant niece, Dara, Bennett’s daughter, much of what my life revolves around, shared, of course, with the knowledge that history is also part of my life and that (as when Myrna married me) my love for the Florida East Coast Railway and its history remains unabated.

Although I had to fly to Chicago with my dear mom (may she, like Dad, rest in peace) I vowed that I would never do that again and that every trip thereafter would be by train. That vow, of course, was kept, and every summer thereafter within two or three days of the end of school, I was off to Chicago to spend most of the summer with Aunt Gert and Uncle Joe, taking railroad pictures and Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) pictures all over the city and to to—seriously—visit every railroad office in Chicago, collecting “stuff” from all of them and usually being treated with a mix or curiosity and cordiality and wishing now that I could go back to so many of them to say “thank you!”

Now, though, we shift back to May of 1958, by which time I was riding my bicycle—get this!—from Biscayne Point at the north end of Miami Beach to either Buena Vista Yard at Northeast 36th Street and Second Avenue or all the way to the FEC station in downtown Miami via either the 79th Street or MacArthur Causeway because Julia Tuttle had not yet been built. I was a pretty strong kid and I finally summoned up the courage to walk into the FEC City Ticket Office in the Ingraham Building on Southeast Second Avenue. It was as stunning and overpowering as some of the Chicago ticket offices, with a high counter and beautiful FEC photographs of passenger trains on the walls. Large chairs and two beautiful chandeliers along with a large and heavy wooden table were part of the accouterments.

There, behind the counter was a timetable rack and it was at that moment, on that day, sometime in mid-to late-May, 1958 that it all began as I walked up to the counter and asked the ticket seller for timetables, essentially requesting one of each. Now, though, for the moment, we will take a break until next time when I share with you that it was at almost the same time that the Miami memorabilia collecting began. And just as a historic note, this writer is the senior collector of Florida East Coast Railway, Florida transportation memorabilia, Miami memorabilia and Floridiana in America, this past May having begun my sixtieth year of collecting all this junque!
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