Bramson’s Beach & Ballsy Banter

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By Bennett A. Bramson, MPA

The saga of Howie and Sonny continued:

As noted in last week’s column, this week I’m pleased to share another true tale from my days as a Miami Beach Recreation Director (Coach).

In preparation for our enormous summer day camp park programs, Recreation Supervisor Sonny Neham would order equipment and supplies to amply provide for all the parks’ summer needs.

Cases of footballs, basketballs, softballs, archery equipment, ping pong balls and paddles, mancala (or Kalah in our day), jump ropes, volleyballs, soccer balls, bats, and more would be shipped to the storage shed at Flamingo Park in spring.

Sonny always had his ‘favored’ coaches and I considered myself so very fortunate to be included in that group. Favored meant you got to do some heavy lifting, work extra hours, and be available at his beck and call. But it also meant extra pay, first choice for refereeing and umpiring assignments (which resulted in extra income), and extra equipment for our individual parks (a bonus for ‘our kids’).

When the mid-June call came from Sonny that it was time to load the equipment from the shed onto the truck, I was glad to offer my services. Well, offer may be an optimistic view…indentured servitude was a more accurate term.

I was joined by Sonny’s nephew, Howie Berg from Polo Park; Gerry Goldstein, from various parks; Nelson Ferreira, from Crespi Park and Andy “Babalu” Diaz, from South Shore Park.

We gathered on that brutally hot, nearly summer day (though those of you who know Miami Beach know that summer actually starts March 1 and ends February 28 and every four years you have a cool day on February 29), prepared for a full day of lifting, schlepping, perspiring, culminating in total exhaustion.

Sonny opened the shed and we all ventured in, ready to undertake the process of removing the 200 or so heavy boxes and repositioning them on the city truck, where we would then transport them to ALL the city parks and playgrounds across 20 square miles of land, from Tatum, Stillwater, Crespi, Fairway, Normandy, and North Shore in the North; Polo and Muss in the mid-Beach, to South Shore, Washington, and of course Flamingo, in the South.

Something was amiss, though. Something very small but horrendously painful lie in wait for us.

As we all entered the shed, we were attacked, no that may be too gentle a term; we were engulfed and consumed…by fleas. Not a few fleas, like you might see on your dog, but herds, swarms, gaggles, battalions (who knows what the correct term is for a vast army) comprised of several thousand fleas.

Each of us was covered from our sneakers and socks to our necks in a black sheath of hundreds of thousands of the most voracious, blood thirsty little biting bastards you could imagine.

This had all the makings of a Hollywood Grade B horror movie. For those of you unfamiliar with the scientific designation, fleas are of the order: Siphonaptera. Notice the first portion of the word – siphon, and that’s exactly what they do…siphon blood from their host mammals.

We leapt out of the shed and began disrobing as fast as possible, all the while slapping at our attackers and trying unsuccessfully to fend them off. The bites and itching were so pervasive and excruciating on every surface area of our skin we almost developed an immunity. We simply didn’t know how or where to hit, slap, rub, or scratch first.

Eventually, we found hoses and soaked ourselves in water, spraying off the remaining insects (and in fact getting a respite from the heat as well).

When Sonny at first called us, “pussies,” and ordered us back into the shed, that was a command none of us were willing to accept or follow. So, Sonny drove to the nearby hardware store and purchased several insect bombs and sprayers, which were activated inside the shelter, with the door closed.

We were treated to an hour break and lunch at a nearby fast food joint, while we awaited the results of the fumigation mission, all the while scratching furiously at our red welts and inflamed skin.

Cautiously, we opened the shed door again as the remaining fumes wafted their way to the outside fresh air. Piles of fleas lay dead on the floor; the boxes were covered in a black blanket of the little deceased vermin.

Inside we slowly crept, with each cautious stride being concerned for the potential of another vicious onslaught. These are the moments of nightmares.

But the spray had successfully achieved its goal, much to our relief.

Now, we realized that the boxes had been stacked in a perfect square configuration, as high as the ceiling.

Sonny provided two ladders and we determined who would be a ladder assignee and who would be a ‘receiver and transporter.’
As one of the two ladder assignees, I ascended my ladder and with my head touching the ceiling of the shed, I looked over the top of the boxes into the center of the square.

“Oh, shit,” I loudly exclaimed, “you all have to see this!” And one by one each person climbed the ladders to gaze down to the floor for the simple but painful explanation of what led to the flea population explosion.

There on the floor lay the carcass and skeletons of a cat and a bird; the bird was still clenched in the cat’s mouth. The obvious became evident.

When the shed was being loaded, a bird flew in, followed closely by one of the park’s feral cats.

Eventually that cat, not realizing that there was about a 20 foot drop, must have leapt up, caught the bird and come crashing down in the center of the concrete floor. It appeared its leg had been broken and yet the cat would not relinquish the bird, which became its last meal.

With no escape for either, over several weeks in the shed, temperatures over 100, and no more food, the two enemy species died together.

But, the usually relatively clean shed now had a new species brewing and breeding. From death sprouted life anew. This was a real-life version of Alien!

The fleas on the cat had multiplied exponentially and the fleas continued to survive on the blood from their two hosts…until we arrived.

Thirsting vampires and unsuspecting victims rife with blood make a perfect intersection in time and place.

Slowly, we unloaded the boxes and accomplished our original mission, delivering the goods to the various facilities.

But now we had another Miami Beach memory to embrace and while I have just ‘scratched the surface,’ I’ve been ‘itching’ to share it with you.

It was another memorable, albeit true Beach Recreation Department story – one we were truly grateful to flee (flea) from!

Here’s to bantering! See you next week…

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