Dade County FlArchives History - Books .....A Lively Town, Chapter 6 1965
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/fl/flfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 April 3, 2009, 2:38 am

Book Title: Memories Of Old Miami

CHAPTER SIX
A Lively Town

    DAD moved the family from Allapattah to Miami in 1911. For a boy it was like
moving from the country to the city, although Miami at that time was hardly more
than a big town.

    I found myself in the midst of exciting new activities. In 1913 the wooden
Collins Bridge to Miami Beach was opened - the "longest wagon bridge in the
world." There was a big celebration; but we had many celebrations in those days.

    Miami was a very lively place. The overseas railroad to Key West, under
construction at that time, was opened in 1912.

    Soon after we moved to Miami my parents bought a thirteen room home on the
Boulevard, where the Columbus Hotel now stands, and started a boarding house.
They were quite successful. Mother was a good cook and people began to hear
about it.

    The Frazure House, as it was known, got the overflow from the Royal Palm and
Halcyon hotels during the busy winter season. Some liked the Frazure House so
well that they kept coming back every year.

    The three-story frame house - it had only two baths - was built by Anton
Hulman, Terre Haute, Ind., tea and spice merchant, in the 1890's. It was
completed about the same time as the Royal Palm, for when Mr. Flagler went to
Chicago to select the furniture for his hotel. Mr. Hulman accompanied him and
selected the same kind for his home.

    Dad paid $25,000 for the Hulman home just before the price of downtown
property began to skyrocket. We lived there until 1920 when Dad leased the
property to a group that built the Columbus. His offspring still receive lease
payments for the property.

    Before World War I Miami had the character of a frontier town. Most of the
buildings were of frame construction or of native rock. Little brick or concrete
were used.

    Flagler was the main street. Like other important downtown streets was paved
with white limestone. The glare was so bad in the summer that it almost knocked
your eyes out.

    The rock, which came from nearby quarries, was brought into town by wagon
and distributed by shovel. I can't remember a time when men weren't working on
the streets, filling chuck holes and packing down the rock with "dumb Betties,"
made by nailing two shoulder-height handles onto a piece of six-by-eight timber.

    During the rainy season people tracked the white rock into the stores and
into their homes; and during the dry season white dust covered the walls of
buildings and settled on the merchandise in the stores.

    The most important business places were located on Flagler Street between
the railroad track and the Boulevard. Budge's and Railey-Milam's hardware
stores, Girt-man's Grocery Store, W. M. Burdine and Sons, the Red Cross
Pharmacy, Bank of Bay Biscayne and the First National Bank were well known names
then.

    Most of the buildings on Flagler Street had sheet metal awnings over the
sidewalk in front of them. This was to provide shade in summer and to give
protection from showers.

    You saw many horses and buggies, mules and wagons, but few automobiles. I
don't remember seeing hitching posts, like they show in Wild West pictures.
Everyone carried a hitching weight and line in his buggy or wagon. When he
wanted to hitch his animal, he tied the line to the animal's bridle rein and
dropped the weight - it was eight or 10 pounds - on the ground.

    The hardware stores carried large quantities of harness; horse collars,
bridles, bits, hames, trace chains; harness for working mules and draft horses
as well as fine harness for buggy horses.

    You could buy custom-made harness from Mr. Griffith's harness shop in
Railey-Milam's Hardware Store. To advertise his harness, Mr. Griffith kept a
dapple-gray wooden horse in front of his shop. This horse was full sized. Every
morning Mr. Griffith rolled the horse outside beneath the sheet-metal awning and
in the evening he rolled him back into the store. The dapple gray always had a
new set of harness on him. He never wore it out because he never went anywhere.

    The horses and mules wore broadbrimmed straw hats in the summer to protect
their heads from the hot sun. Holes were cut in the hats for the animals' ears
to stick through. A horse likes to have his ears free, so he can turn them to
pick up sounds or wiggle them, if the spirit moves him.

    Mr. Jeffries, the hack driver, put a fringe on the harness of his horse,
much like the fringe along the edge of the top of his hack. The fringe would
shake when the horse moved or flinched and this scared the flies.

    The noise of chirping sparrows filled the air. They stuffed their nests in
every cranny about the eaves of buildings. They even desecrated the Greek
temple-like building of the old Bank of Bay Biscayne, on the northwest corner of
Flagler Street for several years. The sparrow population began to decline when
the automobile age arrived.

    We had two livery stables in the downtown area - Granger's on NW First
Street, where Helmly's Furniture Store is now located, and Wofford's, at the
northeast corner of Miami Avenue and NE First Street, where Richard's Store is
now located.

    You used to see a lot more Indians in Miami than now. As many as 20 canoes
were often pulled up at a landing in the Miami River at the foot of NW First
Street. It was something to see, a string of dugout canoes coming down the
river, each with a brave, dressed in colorful garb, standing in the stern and
weilding a guiding pole in his hands.

    The arrangement of the family in each canoe was always the same - the squaw
sitting forward, the children and the family's possessions occupying the middle.
In the bow was the family's dog, standing there alert, his tongue hanging out
the side of his mouth, ready to jump ashore as soon as the canoe touched land
and set up his guard.

    These dogs guarded the canoes faithfully while the families went uptown to
shop.

    I liked to watch an Indian family walk down the street, always in single
file, with the father in front, followed by the boys according to age, then the
mother, and after the mother, the girls.

    They gathered in Jimmie Girtman's store on West Flagler Street, opposite of
where the Miami Industrial Bank is now located. Mr. Girtman was very popular
with the Indians, and they named their children after him. I remember such names
as Girtman Jimmie, and also Billy Girtman, Girtman Billy and Osceola Girtman.

    No pioneer Miamian could forget Shirt-Tail Charlie. One of his ears - I've
forgotten which one - was notched, just like a farmer would mark a hog. I used
to hear that Charlie was an outcast; that he was not allowed to live with the
Indians.

    Charlie wore a long shirt, the tail of which dangled at his knees.

   He was always dirty; and I used to wonder how he lived and where he lived. I
never saw him work. We thought that Shirt-Tail Charlie was a bit fetched, and I
suppose he was.

    We had two other well known characters at that time, "Colonel" Abe Sawyer,
the midget, and Fatty Palmer, the biggest man I ever saw.

    Col. Sawyer, a native of Key West, seemed to be highly successful, although,
as I recall, he was only about three and one-half feet tall.

    He was crazy about the women; and they seemed to like him, for the younger
ones were always letting him hold their hands, which seemed to be his major
pastime.

    He carried a short walking stick but smoked a full-sized black cigar, which
he tilted rakishly in his mouth. In white suit and flat-topped straw hat, Col.
Sawyer was quite a dude.

    When the circus came to town, Col. Sawyer would disappear. My mother asked
him why.

    "I'm scared they might steal me," he answered in his high, rasping voice.

    He was quite a speaker, always looking for a chance to get on his feet at
celebrations. Eventually he became a preacher; perhaps after hearing William
Jennings Bryan who used to conduct Sunday School and preach from the old band
shell in Royal Palm Park.

    (The park occupied what now is two blocks between East Flagler Street and SE
Second Street, flanked on the east side by the Boulevard.)

    I lost sight of Col. Sawyer during World War I, but some years later when my
wife and I were walking through a Key West cemetery we came upon a fullsized
crypt bearing the name of "General Abe Sawyer."

    Fatty Palmer, who used to hang around the old courthouse and sell pencils,
seemed to be at least a dozen times as big as Col. Sawyer. I called him Mr.
Palmer because no boy in those days was allowed to be disrespectful to his
elders, no matter what his color or condition was.

    I heard a man ask Mr. Palmer why he didn't go to work.

    "I just don't have the strength," Mr. Palmer answered. "You know, it's all
that I can do to get from one side of the courthouse to the other to keep in the
shade."

    (The old courthouse, a domed building constructed of local stone, was
dismantled during the Boom and replaced by the present skyscraper courthouse.)

    When Mr. Palmer became feeble they took him to the county poor house. There
he continued to gain weight, so much that he could no longer get in and out of
his room. After he died they had to tear down a wall to get the body out.

    The time that I lived in the Frazure House were among the best years of my
early life. I saw the great and the rich come and go at Mr. Flagler's luxurious
Royal Palm Hotel. I watched the daily band parades that we used to have every
afternoon in the winter - including the Royal Scotch Highlanders from Canada. I
used to listen to the sermons of the silver-tongued orator, William Jennings
Bryan. He was as impressive as the history books describe him. People were
spellbound by him. Looking back, he seemed to fit perfectly in the Miami scene.

    I didn't realize it then, but Miami was undergoing a change. We were soon to
enter World War I. Miami would never be the same again.

    A plaque which used to be in the lobby of the Roberts Hotel, at 28 West
Flagler Street, which marked the site of Miami's first luxurious saloon and
restaurant, told the story better than I can:

    "The Ye Wee Tappy Tavern, a gaudy gilt cavern, born in champagne in 1911.
Died in lemonade before she was seven."

    The Prohibition Act, passed "while the boys were in the trenches," failed to
make Miami dry; but it did help to make Miami infamous for a brief period during
rum-running days.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

"Memories of Old Miami"
by Hoyt Frazure as told to Nixon Smiley
Reprinted from a series of articles first appearing in Sunday Magazine of The
Miami Herald

Undated, but circa 1965


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/fl/dade/history/1965/memories/alivelyt38nms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/flfiles/

File size: 11.2 Kb