The Bramson Archive: How and When It All Began Part V

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By Seth H. Bramson

Hopefully our readers will remember that we concluded the previous column on the day that I walked into the Florida East Coast Railway’s Miami City Ticket Office in the Ingraham Building and asked for timetables. But the collecting would not be fulfilled just with FEC and other railroad stuff because there was a whole world of collateral memorabilia out there and it was to become known (OK, I take credit for naming it!) as Miami memorabilia and Floridiana.

There is a scene in the movie “Patton” where George C. Scott, playing the General, is looking over a battle scene and says to General Bradley, “God, Brad, I love it. I do love it so.” For better or for worse, dear readers, that is exactly how I feel about all of the “stuff” that I have collected for now more than sixty years, from the search to the attainment to the book writing (only 31 so far, all South Florida local and Florida transportation history) to the thirteen talks I give on those same two topics to the meetings and the Presidencies of both the Miami Memorabilia Collectors Club and the Miami Pioneers/Natives of Dade. Yes, along with my beloved family, “….I do love it so.” But I digress.

As time went on, my trips downtown on my bicycle not only became more frequent but I expanded them to the place where it really did begin, the place where Daddy would take me every Sunday from 1947 until 1950, the FEC Railway’s Buena Vista Yard, which you now know as “Midtown.” Sometimes I would go to Buena Vista (I was “armed” with a letter which had been given to me by the FEC passenger traffic department’s Chief Clerk, Roger Barretto, to the Master Mechanic at Buena Vista, John Sims, asking Mr. Sims to “help me out” and that letter became “the key,” allowing me to visit the yard with camera in hand any time I wanted to.

Time was moving on, though, and along with my classmates I went through Nautilus Junior High (“Love and honor to our Nautilus, school both new and grand…”, the opening words of the alma mater) and then on to Miami Beach High School. Our tenth grade year was in the “old” Beach High at 14th and Drexel Avenue and it was during that year that the new Beach High was being built on Prairie Avenue facing Dade Boulevard and Washington Avenue. About two weeks before the end of the school year, the entire school, complete with police escort, walked up Washington Avenue to the new school, primarily so that the Class of 1960 could graduate from the beautiful new campus. My class—1962—was the first class to spend any part of three years in the new school.

Once the move was made the former “Typhoons” became the Hi-Tides and the schools colors of black and gold were changed to scarlet and silver. All of that, of course, will be covered in our being worked on “BEACH IS DYNAMITE! THE HISTORY OF MIAMI BEACH HIGH SCHOOL AND THE MIAMI BEACH SCHOOLS” But let’s face it: what could be more boring than a book about a high school, which would probably be of interest only to the attendees, hence I made a decision early-on that the book would cover not only the history of Beach High beginning in 1926 as Ida M. Fisher High School and continuing to and through the 1935 graduation, the ninth and last from Fisher (Over the summer of ’35 the name was changed and when the former sophomores and juniors came back in September of that year as juniors and seniors they returned to Miami Beach High School) but to and through the present.

In addition, though, and in order to really be a history that would interest the community, the book has been enlarged to cover the six elementary schools and the two junior high schools as well as the Miami Beach private schools (Lear, Oxford, Drexel, Abbott Gardens and others) and the parochial schools, including St. Pat’s, St. Joseph’s and Hebrew Academy. However, in order to bring in the community I really feel and believe that there has to be more—and there will be. The last four chapters will be titled “Where We Stayed,” “Where We Played,” “Where We Shopped,” and “Where We Ate,” all going back to the 1926 beginning of the school.

That will be it for the moment, but do want to close by noting that I started swimming competitively at the age of six so with AAU swimming I was fairly accomplished by the time I got to Beach High, where I swam and lettered for three years, becoming Captain of the swimming team in 11th grade. It was there that lifelong friendships which had begun as far back as Biscayne Elementary School grew and matured and friendships with, among others, Ricky Neross and Charlie Clark continue to the present day.

So, and in closing, won’t forget to note that, all during that time I was collecting and collecting and collecting and more on that next time!

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