I’ll never forget the first time I met the notorious Jimmy Gillman.

It was late 1986. Anne had just been hired as an RN at the Medicana nursing home in Lake Worth, Fla., a 130-bed facility with a sweeping entrance and simple white frontage columns evocative of the antebellum South. At the time, we lived in a small apartment in Boynton Beach and only had one car so I would drop her off before going to work at the Jewish World newspaper in nearby West Palm Beach. Anne usually ended her shift on time, but occasionally I would have to wait for her in the reception area.

One afternoon while waiting, I spotted a resident in a wheelchair near the reception desk. He had the imperious air of someone accustomed to the finer things in life and having people serve him. He reminded me of Thurston Howell III, the entitled business tycoon on the TV show Gilligan’s Island. He wore an open dark blazer, a dress shirt and slacks atop deck shoes as though at the helm of a yacht or waiting for a table at the country club. The only thing missing was a silken ascot around his thin neck and captain’s cap with gold embroidered life buoy insignia.

I noticed he was staring back at me with curiosity. Relatively new to the facility, I must have seemed a novelty to him so I smiled at him, but instead of smiling back, he greeted me in his own unique way.

“YOU!!!” he shouted in a shrill voice. He pointed his index finger at me and then slapped his forearm down hard into the groove of his right elbow, raising his other forearm into an unmistakable “Up Yours!” complete with bony middle finger at full mast. He delivered this maneuver with such ease as though he had done it dozens of times before.

Confused by this sudden outrage, I looked away but saw that he continued to scowl over at me with contempt. Was I some imaginary foe, I wondered, a Jacob Marley returned from the dead to continue to haunt him from his former pre-nursing home existence?

While driving home, I told Anne about the unusual encounter I had in the reception area.

“Oh, that’s just Jimmy Gillman,” she said with instant recognition. He usually gave someone the “Up Yours!” at least once a day. The irascible former businessman suffered from dementia and was known to have a nasty streak, but was as harmless as a kitten. Anne, who specialized in geriatric care, used to tell me that as people aged, they just became more of whom they were, personality-wise, earlier in life. By that reasoning, Jimmy must have been a real piece of work in his prime.

Jimmy spoke French, too, I would later learn. While being attended to by a male Haitian orderly, he said something in French and the orderly frowned, clearly upset by what was said. This made Jimmy beam with impish delight. Apparently, besides giving unsuspecting guests the occasional “Up Yours!”, he also liked to taunt the Haitian-born staff with an assortment of French curses and invective.

Nursing homes are not known as fun places, especially if you’re a resident, but Medicana was well appointed, clean, and seemed to run efficiently. There were no indications that Jimmy or anyone else was under duress. Jimmy usually sat impassively lost in thought, only appearing to spring to life like an irritable cat whenever anyone, staff or guest, dared rouse him from his peaceful reverie.

Despite its location in urban South Florida, just a few minutes south of West Palm Beach, Medicana had a Third-World feel thanks to the large number of foreign-born workers. The top leadership were all white, but most of the nurses, nurses’ aides, orderlies, as well as custodial and kitchen help came from Caribbean islands and Central and South America, as well as the Philippines, and there was even a nurse from as far away as Kerala, southwest India. Like a mini–United Nations, they spoke in a mix of English, Creole, French, Portuguese and Spanish, as well as—surprisingly—Finnish! Lake Worth, along South Florida’s Atlantic coast, was apparently home to a thriving ex-pat Finnish community, distinctive by their ash-blonde hair, light-colored eyes, high cheekbones and fair skin tone. Indeed, the administrator and the chief financial officer were both Finnish-Americans, and there was another Finn, Osmo, who barely spoke English and was one of the few white nurses’ aides. The remaining staff, mostly black and Hispanic, came from nearby lower-income neighborhoods.

Fortunately, not all the residents were as disagreeable as Jimmy. Some were quite pleasant, reflective, and seemingly happy to share their life stories. Having a young man in his mid-twenties in the reception area must have been a welcome relief from the daily routine, especially for those who rarely received visitors—a common complaint I heard among the residents.

The majority of residents were women, which made sense. Hard-charging, testosterone-fueled men of the mid-Twentieth Century tended to die earlier than their spouses. Anne pointed out another reason, though; that wives were more likely to take care of their aging husbands in the home while men tended to place an aging spouse in a nursing home---that is, if they hadn’t already dumped them earlier for a younger woman.

Besides Jimmy, I only recall two other elderly male residents at Medicana. One was a tall, morose-looking man in his eighties who sat hunched in a wheelchair dressed in a drab grey suit and tie, large black leather shoes and a fedora with a feather tucked in the hatband. He looked like a company man on his morning train commute to headquarters. The only thing missing was a pipe, newspaper, and a dark leather briefcase. I felt sorry for this silent, hulking man, but hoped that somewhere in the recesses of his mind he was happily toiling away on progress reports and spreadsheets, and dreaming of long martini lunches and junkets to Vegas. He was strapped to his wheelchair, which I assumed was for his own safety. But I learned there was another reason: that he sometimes sat with an erection and would wave his arms erratically, mumbling and grabbing wildly at the female staff who found it necessary to protect themselves from this randy, senile man in a business suit.

“Railroad Willie” was the other male resident I recall. Willie, if that was even his name, was found wandering aimlessly along the Florida East Coast Railway tracks one day and social services weren’t able to locate any immediate family. Typically, aging black males and females were cared for by their family members in their homes, not placed in nursing homes, but after no one came to claim him, Willie was eventually placed at Medicana. He wore large jean overalls and suspenders (red and green on Christmas) and a plaid shirt with old work boots and a leather cap, and would shuffle along the corridors, his boot laces dragging behind him as though he were still checking on the switches and rails along gravelly tracks. The staff grew fond of this gentle old soul, who may have once been a train man. Willie mumbled semi-coherently, but he never seemed to cause a stir.

Like Jimmy, most residents were in some stage of advanced dementia. One wisp of a pale woman with long white hair and a mystical glow in her eyes would suddenly appear like a Nordic fairy (Finnish?) in her white nightgown and slippers and timidly glide across the reception area only to stop at a front window. Then she would delicately reach out to touch a pane with the tip of her index finger as if to gauge the temperature, make a faint smile of recognition, and then silently glide back across her frozen mindscape to the forest from whence she came.

Not all of the patients suffered from dementia. Mary Cooper, a tall, slender retired teacher in her early eighties, was as alert as anyone I knew outside of Medicana. I usually found Mary in her wheelchair, her white hair neatly permed, dressed in a floral house dress smoking a cigarette (residents and staff openly smoked in those days). She looked like she has just taken a break from vacuuming and watching soaps on TV. Mary, who had no family, seemed resigned to the fact that Medicana would be her final home. She would complain about not having any visitors, and sometimes roll her eyes in exasperation at some of the more confused residents, but what she really enjoyed doing was engaging staff and guests in conversation. She would ply me for information about my life and work, taking vicarious pleasure from my answers, all the while chain-smoking her cigarettes. It was a shame that someone so vital and positive as Mary would be consigned to such a place, as comfortable as it was, but apparently, she had nowhere else to go.

Within a year, Anne would be promoted to assistant director of nursing, and then, at age 28, she would be named the youngest director of nursing in Medicana’s history. Part of the reason for her rapid advance was that there were only a few RNs on staff; the rest were LPNs (Licensed Practical Nurses), who might have been RNs in their native countries but who couldn’t pass the state RN boards in the U.S. We now lived in a bigger apartment in Lake Worth and had two cars so I no longer drove her to work, but she would continue to tell me stories about how her day went.

For Anne, born and raised in lily-white rural Oconomowoc, Wis., halfway between Milwaukee and Madison, becoming director of nursing at Medicana was an eye-opening experience in racial tolerance and cultural diversity. The first time she ever saw a black person was at age 12 when her mother took her to buy a dress at Marshall Field’s department store outside of Milwaukee. When she was in high school Spanish, Senor Maul’s idea of cultural enrichment was a luncheon field trip to Taco Bell in downtown Oconomowoc. Now she was presiding over a staff of 15 nurses and about 50 nurses’ aides, most of whom were black and brown and who spoke in foreign accents and retained their unique cultural identities.

Her first real peek into this strange new world she now managed was when Roger, a tall, soft-spoken, rail-thin black nurses’ aid from Alabama with heavily Jheri-curled hair came into her office one day.

“Miss Anne, we have a sit-u-ation.” Roger always addressed her politely as “Miss Anne.”

A Haitian aide named Belle had given resident Myrtle Birnbaum a shower with her orthopedic shoes still on, ruining Myrtle’s shoes.

When Anne asked Roger why, he explained Belle feared that Myrtle’s spirits would leave her body through her feet. Apparently, Belle, like the other Haitians on staff, practiced Voodoo. Spirits or not, the home would have to buy Myrtle a new pair of shoes and explain to Myrtle’s family what had happened. Anne kept her cool, though, calmly explaining to Belle that in America we don’t do that sort of thing.

Anne quickly became aware of the tension that had been brewing between the Jamaicans and the Haitians on staff. The nurses and aides worked in teams, but some of the Jamaicans would refuse to work with their Haitian counterparts, whom they considered beneath them. While the Jamaicans had been educated in the more modern healthcare systems in Jamaica, dressed immaculately, prided themselves on their punctuality, and spoke in proper, formal English, the Haitians, many of whom were from poorer, more rural settings, were far less educated, were very timid, spoke in a slower French slur, and seemed to operate on their own sense of time. Unlike the immaculately dressed Jamaicans, their clothes were more raggedy and they had questionable hygienic practices, mostly due to poverty.

No one objected to the Haitians, though, more than Violet, a proud Jamaican nursing assistant who wore her makeup like a fashion model and dressed in crisp white uniforms without a hair out of place. Violet seemed to save her vitriol for Belle, the Haitian who had ruined Myrtle’s shoes.

“I will not work with that woman, Anne Friedman,” Violet would complain to Anne with barely concealed contempt. “She is a crazy, ignorant, dir-ty woman.” Violet would then insist that Anne go and talk to Belle about her personal hygiene.

Things would inevitably reach a boiling point between the Haitians and the Jamaicans.

Anne had just learned that Medicana had passed state inspections with zero deficiencies—a first for the nursing home--which was a major feather in her cap as the new director of nursing. She hardly had any time to celebrate, though, when Jean, the Finnish-American administrator, popped into her office. There was a situation in the back parking lot. Outside, the Haitian and Jamaican staff faced off against each other like two warring tribes, and there was a hint of violence in the air. Anne, a tall, slender blonde whom some had compared to the singer Debbie Boone and the actress Linda Evans in Dynasty, headed out to the parking lot to help defuse the situation. She was quickly joined by Julia, an imposing 250-pound Cuban-born director of kitchen services. Julia, dressed in tight black spandex leggings and a large white kitchen smock, brandished a machete like an Arabic scimitar that she kept above her desk in the kitchen. In the parking lot stood 4 or 5 Haitians and an equal number of Jamaicans. The Haitians clutched small pouches and satchels filled with strange powders, and threatened to cast Voodoo spells, which only inflamed the Jamaicans who were known to carry knives and who hurled insults back at them. Thankfully, all it took was one look at big Julia and her large machete for both camps to quietly slink back to work without any bloodshed.

With harmony somewhat restored between the Jamaicans and the Haitians, things quickly settled back into the normal daily routine. Anne was an interactive director who enjoyed engaging with the residents and staff. Sometimes she felt more like a social worker, listening to the staff’s troubles and experiences. She got a kick out of talking with many of the residents, too.

One of her favorite residents was 103-year-old Charlotte, a spunky, diminutive woman from South Carolina who dressed in formal clothes and spoke with a thick southern accent. Charlotte had long lacquered nails and chain-smoked filter-less Camels. She also had a doctor’s approval for two shots of bourbon whiskey every day at 5 p.m. sharp just before dinner. But those two shots of bourbon apparently weren’t enough.

“I have been taking three shots of bourbon for 83 years and I will not stop now!” Charlotte complained to Anne while chasing after her in her wheelchair.

When Anne reminded her of the doctor’s orders limiting her to just two shots, Charlotte refused to take no for an answer.

“Give it to me!” she demanded. “I’m going to outlive you, little girl!” She eventually broke down Anne’s resistance. After receiving her third shot, Charlotte sat back triumphantly by the nurse’s station in a calm bourbon glow..

One of Anne’s most memorable experiences occurred on Christmas Eve 1988. This was an especially sad time for her because her father had died the previous year and Christmases were now painful without him. Instead of celebrating with her mother back in Wisconsin, she had to work the p.m. shift. While passing out meds to patients in their beds, she came to 100-year-old Astrid Lundgard in her fluffy white gown. Astrid had deep, penetrating blue eyes and long, beautiful thick white hair down to her waist that the aides enjoyed braiding in old Norse styles.

Sensing Anne’s sadness, Astrid asked her how she was doing and Anne told her it was a hard Christmas Eve without her father.

“Oh, I understand,” Astrid said, and placed a comforting hand on top of Anne’s. “I loved my father so much, too. Let me tell you about my favorite Christmas.”

It was Christmas Eve 1900 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Astrid was only 12 years old. Her father had just arrived to pick her up in a horse-drawn carriage, sat her up beside him and covered her in a thick woolen blanket to keep her warm from the gentle flurry. He then lit a pipe filled with cherry-flavored tobacco and they rode at a slow gallop through the snow-covered streets of Copenhagen to the comforting sound of jingling bells attached to the horses’ neck straps to meet her mother back home. As they passed each home, Astrid marveled at the site of housewives lighting candles on glittering Christmas trees adorned with ornaments as well as the glowing fire places and mounds of colorful gift-wrapped presents.

Anne found it difficult to hold back her tears. Her late father, Robert Foster, was a courtly master carpenter/builder of Norwegian ancestry who also smoked a pipe with cherry-flavored tobacco and would regularly bundle her up in thick woolen blankets as a child.

Shortly after Christmas 1988, we got the happy news that Anne was pregnant with our son, Max. She planned to continue to work at Medicana throughout her pregnancy. Upon learning that she was pregnant, the female staff, most of whom were mothers themselves, would adopt a more maternal, protective approach to Anne. Each morning, Julia, the Cuban head of kitchen services, would lovingly place four large strawberries on her desk and encourage her to drink milk. Motherhood was a highly respected rite of passage, especially for the Jamaicans on staff.

One day in the spring 1989, Anne looked up from her desk to find six of the Jamaican nursing assistants staring down at her. Violet, the oldest of the Jamaicans, spoke up for the group.

“Anne Friedman, we would like to talk to you.”

Her first thought was that there was a problem with one of the patients. But that wasn’t it. The Jamaicans had come to stage an intervention.

“Now, Anne Friedman, you are a grown woman,” Violet lectured. “You must now present yourself as a grown woman. But you wear your hair like a child.”

Anne typically wore her long blonde hair in a simple ponytail with short bangs in front to keep her hair out of her eyes. Being an expectant mother, however, this was no longer acceptable to the Jamaicans.

“You should cut your hair and put some curl in it, too,” Violet insisted to the accompanying nods of approval from the other Jamaicans who all kept their hair in immaculate, sleek “up do’s” without a hair out of place. “If you need assistance, we can help.”

Anne politely declined their help. She preferred to keep her hair long, but promised that she would do something about it. Shortly after, she added a slight curl to the tip of her hair, but instead of cutting it short, she began wearing a hairband across her brow like Hillary Clinton’s, a popular woman’s hair style at the time. The Jamaicans reluctantly accepted this compromise.

“It’s a step up, Anne Friedman,” admitted Violet, though not fully satisfied.

Around that time, Anne was stopped for a minor traffic violation outside of Medicana. A Lake Worth police officer activated his flashing lights and followed her into the back parking lot. The officer was a slender white male about 25 with average length blonde hair who looked like he could be her younger brother.

“Ma’am, are you aware you just drove thru a stop sign?” he said brusquely, and then asked her to step out of the vehicle and present him with her driver’s license.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” Anne apologized. While stepping out of the car, she spotted a sea of dark faces pressed to the back window at Medicana. Word had quickly spread that she had been stopped by the police.

Once the officer saw how pregnant she was and that she wore a nurse uniform, his demeanor immediately softened.

Instead of giving her a ticket, he said in a friendly, almost apologetic voice to “Please be more careful, ma’am,” and then got back into his car and drove off.

As soon as Anne entered Medicana, she was surrounded by about eight nurses and aides.

“Are you ok?” one asked with concern. Anne was surprised by how everyone looked so alarmed by something so innocuous as a routine traffic stop.

“Oh, Miss Anne!” said another nurse shaking her head knowingly. “You don’t understand,” which was seconded by nods and “uh-huhs.” The nurse said that she had been stopped one week earlier by a Lake Worth cop for a minor traffic violation and instead of listening to her story, the officer body-slammed her against the side of her vehicle. This was the first time Anne experienced the concept of “white privilege.”

Another time, Roger, the rail-thin nurses’ aide from Alabama, arrived late for work. When she asked why, Roger said he had helped delivery a baby in the middle of the night. Confused, Anne asked why didn’t they call for an ambulance or the police.

“Now, Miss Anne,” Roger answered shaking his head, “you know they don’t send folks to our neighborhood.”

About a month before the birth of our son, Anne was surprised with a baby shower organized, of course, by the Jamaicans. They had decorated the patient dining room with streamers and balloons, and there was a mountain of gifts on a table. Sweet tea was served and Julia had prepared a great big chocolate and vanilla marble cake with white frosting. On the cake were the words, written in blue and green icing: “Good Luck with Child Baring, Anne Friedman!”

For the next hour and a half, Anne opened up each gift, read aloud every card, and thanked everyone individually. Even the resident Mary Cooper had joined the party in her wheelchair, chain-smoking her cigarettes.

She received traditional baby gifts like strollers, boxes of diapers, and a bassinet, but she was especially moved by the gifts from the Haitians, who took the time to sew a homemade quilt and make baby clothes with uneven stitching. She recognized that it was a big deal to give a gift when you’re poor, and some of these women lived without electricity and had husbands who worked in the sugar cane fields of Belle Glade.

Around this time, Anne was offered the position as South Florida Regional Director of Nursing within the Medicana parent organization. This would be a major advance in her career along with a considerable bump in her salary. But it would also require long days of being on the road. She considered the position, but after Max was born in late August, she took six weeks of maternity leave and made the fateful decision to resign as director of nursing. Instead, she took a part-time nursing job at Medicana.

By January 1990, we left Florida for good. We had moved to Florida six years earlier full of optimism amid the sunshine and beaches and were now leaving with a son. We bid adieu, not quite giving Florida a Jimmy Gillman-like “Up Yours!” but we were ready to move on in our lives. We moved back to Wisconsin to live with Anne’s widowed mother in the childhood home that her father had built in Oconomowoc, Wis. Her father’s old study where he enjoyed smoking cherry-flavored tobacco in a pipe while listening to classical music became our son’s new nursery.

A Note about the Alligator with the Cream Cheese on his Head!

The wonderful banner art for my new Substack was created by my pal Rob Sussman, an amazing illustrator whose work has appeared in countless publications including the Nation, the New York Times and more! You can explore more of Rob’s work at:

hhts://www.robsussman.com/

Who knew cockroaches could fly?

I had just set foot inside a motel along North Dixie Highway in Delray Beach, Fla., when I made my first acquaintance with one. Or, more precisely, it bumped into me.

The little fellow was golden russet, about an inch long, and reminded me of the metallic Matchbox cars I played with as a child. A Volkswagen “Love Bug” perhaps? It launched itself like a gymnast from across the room, gently brushing my shoulder and then stuck the landing--a perfect 10 for degree of difficulty, if not style points. Its little wings made flapping noises like one of those flip books you bend to reveal movie-like images within each page. I would have even found it quaint had not a few of his compatriots also showed up to join the party.

Welcome to South Florida!

Floridians don’t call them cockroaches, I learned, preferring instead the more genteel sounding “palmettos” as though ordering a popular beverage at the yacht club: “Waiter, I’ll have another Palmetto, please.” Also called palmetto bugs, they had acquired their name because they mostly lived outdoors and could often be found munching on the ubiquitous palmetto trees that populated the state. Some, I discovered, were perfectly content to squat rent-free within air-conditioned seaside motels.

These were not the sullen, drab cockroaches I remember from my youth in New York City. First off, New York cockroaches didn’t fly--mainly because they didn’t have to. Sure, they might hop aboard a Second Avenue bus or take the downtown subway express, join a morning Long Island Expressway carpool or even bum a checker cab ride. A romantic horse-drawn carriage ride with tourists from Rotterdam through Central Park? No problem. But mostly, New York cockroaches scurried about like the rest of us, heads down, avoiding eye contact. Like many New Yorkers, they were also notorious night owls, preferring to sleep late, waiting until darkness to march out like a barbarian horde across the fertile plains to lay waste to whatever they could find, which often included leftover pizza and anything else left in the sink, the garbage container or on countertops. Wet cat food was a particular favorite of theirs in our apartment, especially ocean fish Fancy Feast, but they weren’t that picky. When the kitchen light went on, they’d scurry like hell back to whatever hole they had been hiding. But once the lights were out, you could hear their Fred Astaire-like tap dance steps as they returned for another helping.

Like most wild creatures I encountered in South Florida, palmettos didn’t seem to sprint anywhere. Instead, they took their good ol’ time like a grey heron gliding majestically across a marsh looking for its next meal. And for good reason. Florida’s wildlife seemed to appreciate the Sunshine State for its subtropical warmth, spectacular sunsets and occasional gentle rainfall, as well as the briny breezes from the nearby Atlantic Ocean. For the more menacing creatures living among us, there was the added bonus of an occasional Fifi or Fido left unattended along a waterfront condo. Weren’t these mostly the same reasons why I chose to leave behind the grey, bone-chilling Wisconsin winters?

In the fall of 1984, Anne and I, newly married, moved into our first apartment in nearby Boca Raton (“mouse mouth” in Spanish, although often mistaken for “rat mouth”). We called our apartment complex the “Dinosaur Garden” because we could imagine extinct monstrous creatures munching on the primitive-looking oversized spiky green foliage and exotic critters that populated our subtropical haven. Our open-air paradise smelled of sweet Bougainville and other tropical flowers, and was often visited by colorful migratory snowbirds passing through the Gulf Stream.

Occasionally, we’d bump into our prickly new neighbors, the Muscovy ducks, while walking along the winding paths that led to several pools within our complex. Unlike the snow-white Long Island ducks I was accustomed to back home with their orange beaks and orange webbed feet (delicious when paired with plum, black berry and wild cherry sauce!), there was nothing appetizing about the burly, ill-tempered Muscovy ducks. They had predominantly black plumage with amorphous white streaks on their wings and backs, long claws on their webbed feet and wide, flat tails. Most distinctive were their black heads covered in warty red splotches like a third-degree burn victim and pale pink skin the color of a tourist from Fargo. I wouldn’t call them handsome (except perhaps to other Muscovy ducks), their dimply rubber faces more akin to a knobby headed turkey or a vulture.

Rather than make way for us, the Muscovies (Muscovites?) would stand their ground in defiance, the larger males issuing low, breathy grunts while the hens emitted more of a high-pitched trilling coo. When I first met one, I made the mistake of reaching out to pet it. It practically barked at me, angrily wagging its tail as though insulted, and waddled off in a huff, hydroplaning to safety within a nearby creek. Afterwards, I gave them the right of way; I was just a renter after all while they were more permanent residents.

My first assignment as a cub reporter at the Boynton Beach News Journal weekly newspaper was a softball piece on a local beekeeper’s visit to an elementary school where I interviewed four- and five-year-olds about their deep insights on honey bees. Not exactly hard-hitting journalism, this was just a tame introduction to the more exotic and sometimes dangerous creatures that I would encounter over my next six years in South Florida.

I soon was introduced to another more colorful creature that lurked just beneath Florida’s surface, the large aquatic mammal, the Manatee, also known affectionately as a “sea cow” for their gentle disposition. This kidney-shaped behemoth herbivore, a distant relative of the elephant, resided in Florida’s coastal waters, rivers and springs, and sought out warmer freshwater during the winter. They had no natural predators, but were still considered an endangered species because of man’s continuous development of the waterways as well as reckless speed boaters who passed too close to their protected mangrove preserves. While reporting on the threat to Boynton’s mangroves along the Intracoastal Waterway, I acquired a bumper sticker that I attached to the back of my car: “I Brake for Manatees,” featuring a drawing of the lovable plump grayish mammal that can typically weigh up to 1,000 pounds, with a few having tipped the scales at over 3,500 pounds!

It wasn’t long before I had my first in a series of increasingly more intimate encounters with the creature most closely associated with the state, the Florida alligator, the official state reptile. Most Floridians didn’t call them alligators, though, preferring the folksy term of endearment “gator,” which was also a popular nickname and the University of Florida’s official mascot (actually “Albert” and “Alberta Gator”). Everyone, it seemed, knew someone named “gator,” which was probably the number one name stitched across an auto repairman’s shirt.

The safest place to view gators in their native habitat was the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge, just seven miles west of the city of Boynton Beach. The 145,188-acre preserve along the state’s northern Everglades wetlands was a nature lover’s paradise with endless miles of waterways and trails for hiking, biking, fishing, canoeing, bird watching, and more. Most visitors were content to simply walk along the boardwalk which took you deep enough into the Cypress swamps to get an up-close look at the alligators lounging about without having to get your feet wet or bitten.

Of course, gators didn’t just reside in the Florida Everglades.

One day, I received a call from a college student on spring break who asked if we wanted to write a story about a baby alligator that he and his buddies had adopted along a drainage canal in west Delray Beach.

The staff photographer, Paul Milette, and I were out there in a flash. This was far more exciting than covering a city council meeting. When we arrived at the canal, we found the college students in T-shirts and shorts sitting along the canal. I wasn’t surprised to also find spent beer cans lined up on a log, with more beer cans in their hands. But there was no sign of the baby gator. The ringleader assured me the little fellow would soon show up. He unwrapped some fragrant deli meat from tin foil, placed it on a paper plate, and we waited. The salty-sweet aroma of ham and bologna filled the air. Within a minute, the canal rippled to life. Two close-set dark yellow marble eyes poked out from the inky water, followed by a long scaly snout with sharp fangs interlaced with slimy green leaves. I tensed up. I had never seen an alligator this close before. Paul began to snap away.

The four-foot-long baby alligator slowly emerged from the water, taking uncertain toddler-like steps onto the soft embankment. His long snout sniffed at the air. The slightly tipsy college students hooted, giving each other high fives while beaming with pride like proud papas watching their child’s first steps. The baby alligator came to a halt in front of the boy holding the deli meat, its long snout now inches from the student’s outstretched hand. I thought he was nuts, imagining the baby alligator taking a bite of the meat as well as most of the student’s forearm. But like a hungry chick in a nest, it gently devoured the meat. The college students vowed to continue to raise him, but I got the strong impression that the baby gator would soon become an orphan following spring break. Florida law prohibits the adoption of dangerous wildlife. I wrote the piece, but our editor killed the story because she didn’t want to give readers the appearance that the paper condoned such behavior.

Another encounter with a gator came while driving across the aptly named Alligator Alley along I-75. We were visiting my father, who was vacationing with his wife, Pat, and their 4-year-old daughter Molly on Sanibel Island along the Gulf Coast. At first, I thought Alligator Alley was just a colorful name that harkened back to a lost time when alligators truly roamed free but had since been supplanted by mankind. As we cut through the swampy Everglades along the 80-mile stretch linking Fort Lauderdale with the west coast, we spotted numerous alligators sunning themselves and doing what gators generally do along the edge of the highway. Occasionally, traffic would come to a crawl as a wayward alligator attempted the treacherous highway crossing, but most gators seemed perfectly content to tan themselves like snowbirds by the poolside.

My next run-in with the official state reptile occurred when Anne had taken a break from hospital floor nursing. She found a part-time job in bookkeeping at an aquatic plant farm in west Delray Beach. The job gave her the opportunity to work outside, tending to the aquatic plant nursery. The nursery raised dozens of varieties of aquatic plants that would be shipped to pet stores across the country.

To say that the aquatic plant farm was off the grid would be an understatement. It was located in the middle of the woods, not far from the Everglades. When I dropped Anne off the first day, I thought we had entered the Manson Family compound and I suggested we leave. But she insisted on checking it out. The office was a double-wide trailer in the middle of a field alongside long rows of open-air covered structures that housed the numerous aquatic plants within concrete boxes.

Sara, the owner of the aquatic plant farm, was a character straight out of a southern gothic story by Flannery O’Connor. She was a slender, sandy-haired woman with a ponytail in her mid-thirties from northern Florida who was pregnant with her first child. But that didn’t stop her from chain-smoking Marlboro’s and drinking wine coolers throughout the day. She was already on her third husband. Her first husband, Howard, a squat, balding Jewish businessman from the East Coast, continued to serve as her business advisor, while her second husband had died under mysterious circumstances. Her third husband was a muscular, golden-haired man whom we called “Bill, the Seed Man,” because he made money stealing valuable seeds from flowering trees on other people’s properties. A shadowy figure, Bill came and went as he pleased in his pick-up truck, typically arriving shirtless in cargo shorts and thick woolen socks and work boots.

Anne’s main job was to keep the books—both sets. One for those who filed income taxes with the government and the other for undocumented illegals who got paid under the table. She also assisted in the packaging and shipment of the plants.

One day, the aquatic plant farm received a large contract from the Palm Beach International Airport to populate the canal around the airport’s sound barrier with aquatic plants, and it was all hands on deck. I took a week off from my newspaper job to help. It felt good to be working outside in the open air after having worked primarily in smoky, air-conditioned offices. We got paid 25 cents apiece for every plant embedded in the canal regardless of the plant’s size. This included lancifolia hostas and latifolia hoyas, both large, thick green leafy shoots that were difficult to plant, as well as the more preferable thin cattail rushes and grasses, which were almost like planting rice shoots.

Each morning, Anne and I joined a motley crew of workers at the airport that Sara had hurriedly assembled to complete the lucrative job. Our co-workers, who seemed to change daily, included a burnt-out chef from a high-end French restaurant; Krishna, a devout Hindu from Trinidad who brought along his vegetarian lunch in round metal tins; and two Puerto Rican teen-age sisters who barely spoke English and seemed more confused about why they were there in the first place. Even “Bill, the Seed Man” would show up shirtless for a few shifts. The work was very demanding as we lugged around shovels and oversized plastic bags filled with various aquatic plants around the canal, but after a few days, it got much easier as we found our rhythm, and we’d return home exhausted. One night following a particularly grueling day in the sun, Anne and I silently ate Italian sausage and peppers and pasta at a restaurant and slept the sleep of angels.

Unbeknownst to us, lurking just around a stretch of the canal was a fully grown mama alligator guarding her babies. When we spotted the gator hovering within the canal like a scaly green submarine, Sara told us not to worry because it wasn’t mating season. To reassure us, she sat on a fold-up chair under an umbrella along the bank smoking her Marlboro’s and sipping wine coolers with a rifle across her pregnant lap. To the casual observer, we must have looked like convicts on a work-release program being watched by a diminutive female guard with a baby bump. Fortunately, Sara didn’t have to use the rifle on the mama gator or us.

One time I was teamed up with Krishna. While wading across the canal with our shovels and large plastic bags filled with plants, I kept a watchful eye out for the mama gator, when Krishna began to sink underwater and he called out for help. I reached him as he was struggling to keep afloat, grabbed him by his arm and dragged him to safety across to the other side, where we continued our planting as though nothing had happened. It turns out Krishna didn’t know how to swim.

By the end of the week, our team had managed to complete the airport job. That’s when Sara admitted that she may have miscalculated about the alligator mating season, but at this point we didn’t care. Still, there was one last job. The airport had asked if we could break limestone rocks along an incline and for the final day, we stood like the chain gang in the movie Cool Hand Luke in the hot sun hammering away at big limestone rocks turning them into smaller ones. This was far more taxing than any of the aquatic planting we had done all week.

We rewarded ourselves with the extra money we earned that week by purchasing a large Indio-Tabriz Persian-style rug of rich blues and reds which covered a crappy teal indoor-outdoor rug in our apartment living room. The beautiful rug has remained with us as an enduring symbol of our marriage as well as a reminder of Sara guarding us with her rifle, wine coolers and Marlboro’s from the big mama gator at the Palm Beach International Airport.

A Note about the Alligator with the Cream Cheese on his Head!

The wonderful banner art for my new Substack was created by my pal Rob Sussman, an amazing illustrator whose work has appeared in countless publications including the Nation, the New York Tines and more! You can explore more of Rob’s work at:

htts://www.robsussman.com/

I remember the exact moment I chose to move to Florida.

I was sitting in a journalism class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison one chilly morning in late 1983 listening to a professor whose claim to fame included a connection to the Kennedy administration. This was a special occasion since the avuncular professor, dressed in Mad Men-era trench coat, rarely attended his own class, instead relying on a fleet of teaching assistants to actually run the class. Such were the perks of being a “star” tenured professor. But Kennedy had been assassinated for over 20 years, and the professor looked a bit stale as though he had just walked out of a cabinet meeting to issue talking points to a press briefing during the Cuban Missile Crisis. All that was missing was a curved pipe stuffed with cherry-flavored tobacco.

I perked up, though, when the good professor removed a letter from his tweed jacket, solemnly adjusted the bifocals on the bridge of his bulbous nose, cleared his throat and began to read aloud. It was a letter from a former student who now worked at a daily newspaper in Cocoa Beach, Fla.

I was six months away from graduation and I still hadn’t a clue where I might wind up in journalism. Madison only had two dallies—The Capital Times and the Wisconsin State Journal--and the local job prospects were bleak. At the time, there was only a 40 percent success rate for new journalism graduates finding any reporting job in newspapers in the U.S. and I didn’t have a back-up plan beyond a food service job at the student Memorial Union. I certainly didn’t relish the thought of continuing to replace 100-pound beer kegs in the Rathskeller or grill dozens of beer- and onion-soaked brats for tipsy alumni dressed in red and white outfits on football Saturdays at the student Union South near Camp Randall Stadium.

The former student waxed on about his new reporting job as well as the professor’s positive influence on his career, but what really hit home was how he said he enjoyed afternoon breaks in the office Jacuzzi and taking dips at the nearby beach along the Atlantic.

Finally, here was proof of a sunny light complete with an ocean-side view at the end of the journalism tunnel.

At the time these seemed like perfectly respectable reasons to pack up and seek a newspaper job in Florida. After all, hadn’t I also chosen to attend UW-Madison largely because of its stellar reputation as one of the top party schools in the nation? And Madison had indeed more than lived up to its reputation.

Why not continue the party in Florida? A Jacuzzi and nearby beach would also be nice.

The trick was to figure out how to get there.

It wasn’t difficult to convince my fiancé, Anne, an Oconomowoc, Wis., native, about resettling in Florida. She was a recent RN grad with experience in geriatric care, so her job prospects were bright, especially in the Sunshine State which was a magnet for retirees and the elderly. Anne was just as eager to escape the Badger state’s brutal winters as I was. We had also considered California, but focused on Florida because I had a cousin, Dr. Charles “Chuck” Messing, a marine biology professor who lived in Coral Gables, a fashionable arts district near Miami.

By the spring, I had lined up job interviews at about a half dozen daily newspapers on both Florida coasts and flew down to Miami to launch my search. I also planned to stay with my cousin Chuck for a few days while I was in the area before making my way over to the west coast of Florida.

Lacking any local connections beyond cousin Chuck, I did have one ace up my sleeve.

Carl Bernstein was one of my job references. Yes, that Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame. The name, along with his celebrated Washington Post writing partner Bob Woodward, that would single-handedly launch a thousand journalism careers in the 1970s and ‘80s. “All the President’s Men” was practically required reading for all journalism hopefuls, right up there with the Associated Press stylebook.

Carl and my dad [the author Bruce Jay Friedman] were friends back in New York and my father had told him I would soon be interviewing for jobs at several newspapers in Florida. Carl happily agreed to be one of my references and requested that I send him some writing samples. I never met Carl, but I was encouraged by a kind note he had sent telling me he enjoyed a story I wrote for the Daily Cardinal student newspaper about an elderly Japanese-American man in Wisconsin who was interned with his family in a concentration camp in California during World War II.

I knew listing Carl as a job reference was a long shot (if anyone even believed it), but it still gave me a glimmer of hope.

My first job interview was at the bustling Fort Lauderdale-based Sun-Sentinel, a large, well-respected daily that served all of Broward and Palm Beach counties. I had also considered interviewing at another smaller daily in the area, the Hollywood Sun-Tattler, but I chose against it. I didn’t go into journalism to tattle on anyone like the corny TV game show “Tattle Tales.” Did Carl Bernstein “tattle” on Richard Nixon? I marveled at the fast-paced environment at the Sun-Sentinel, which took up nearly an entire city block in downtown Fort Lauderdale, but walked away somewhat deflated after a hurried interview with an over-burdened editor who showed no sign of interest in hiring me. I’m sure my resume went into the file cabinet with all the other hopeful applicants.

I had also scheduled an interview at the Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach, but at the last minute, I was invited instead to interview at one of the Post’s sister publications, the Delray Beach/Boynton Beach News Journal, a small weekly community newspaper whose offices were in Delray Beach. I had mixed feelings about interviewing at a weekly, but went ahead with the meeting; my dream was to land a position at a big daily and I had not considered the prospect of working for a small weekly newspaper.

The News Journal offices in Delray Beach were the polar opposite of the hectic Sun-Sentinel’s, which matched the image I had in my mind of what a true newspaper should look like—The Washington Post as depicted in the movie “All the President’s Men” and the “Lou Grant Show” on TV. The News Journal offices were downright sedate by comparison. It felt more like stepping into an insurance company or travel agency. The white ranch-style single-story building was even next door to a family-run insurance agency, with people occasionally coming into the newspaper offices by mistake to seek help with their insurance. It goes without saying there was no office Jacuzzi, but the Atlantic Ocean was only a mile away, close enough to take a lunchtime dip.

I met with the News Journal editor, Jeri Haralson-Kass, a pleasant woman in her mid-30s with unruly swirls of chestnut-brown hair and large round glasses over her plump, freckled face. She was dressed in peach-colored shorts and matching top and flip flops as though she had just returned from the beach. Jeri had a brassy East Coast accent that reminded me of home. Copies of the paper were strewn across her desk. She told me how proud she was of having recently won a journalism award for special-section feature design. Indeed, the papers on her desk were beautifully designed with large colorful photographs highlighting South Florida’s natural wonders of birds, flowers, alligators and the ocean. I was also impressed that the paper was a broadsheet style the size of the New York Times.

The interview seemed to go well. I showed her some of my writing samples, described the two editorial positions I had held while at the student paper and shared more about my background. We ended the meeting cordially. Jeri said there wasn’t a job opening, but that she would keep my name on file in case something materialized. We shook hands and I left, already thinking about my next interview the following morning at the Miami News in downtown Miami. I had failed to score an interview with the more prestigious Miami Herald and had to settle on the smaller Miami News.

The interview at the Miami News went about as well as at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. Perfunctory at best, I felt whisked out the door like a bothersome pest, my resume once again buried in a file with all the others.

After the stress of the three interviews, it was a relief to unwind for a few days with my cousin Chuck whom I hadn’t seen in a while. He lived alone in a white stucco Art Deco-era apartment with rich dark wood paneling and stylish Spanish arches. Coral Gables reminded me of Los Angeles with towering palm trees, old bungalows and brightly colored refurbished old buildings, many with glowing retro neon facades. Chuck showed me around some of his favorite Miami sites including the Vizcaya European-inspired villa and formal gardens as well as the affluent island village of Key Biscayne just off the Miami coast, made famous by former President Nixon who enjoyed visiting his close friend and businessman/confidant “Bebe” Reboso.

Raised in Fairlawn, N.J., Chuck was the Indiana Jones of the family because of his world travels as a marine biologist. There wasn’t a Caribbean island that he hadn’t explored, and he had logged considerable hours within cramped submersibles during deep-sea explorations in such exotic locales as Papua, New Guinea, off the Great Barrier Reefs of northeastern Australia as well as in Borneo, where he had even encountered the famed Borneo headhunters known for shrinking the heads of their enemies. Fortunately, New Jersey-bred marine biologists weren’t on the dinner menu. Despite his worldly travels, often to the deepest, most remote expanses on the planet, his mom--my beloved aunt Dollie--still fretted whenever Chuck as much as set foot near a swimming pool. “Be careful, Charles!”

As handsome as a top model, Chuck looked like a cross between a young Bruce Springsteen and the actor Tom Selleck, yet he was a true nerd at heart. His preferred topics of conversation were crinoids, plankton, coral reefs, trilobites, sea urchins and his many other “critters” that inhabited his ocean realm as well as the mating habits of single-sex organisms, a topic alone which would make even the most stalwart soon glaze over. Chuck fancied himself a renaissance man, too, who longed for a career in the entertainment industry. For fun, he enjoyed dressing up and performing in medieval costumes at fairs. (Anne and I would meet him a few years later at the grand opening of the Boca Raton Town Center mall where he was hired as a greeter, welcoming new arrivals with sweeping arm gestures dressed in his Florentine Renaissance outfit complete with feathered floppy hat.) While staying with Chuck, we had dinner with his uncle Herbie Messing, a longtime New York television and theater stagehand who was visiting from New York. Born and raised in the Bronx, Herbie was the spitting image of his older brother, my beloved uncle Irving back in New Jersey.

Fully rested, I said goodbye to cousin Chuck and set out for Florida’s west coast along the Gulf of Mexico where I had lined up several interviews.

My interview at the Fort Myers News-Press was uneventful. The editor was polite, but quickly informed me that there were no job openings. I submitted my application anyway and left. My lasting impressions were not of the News-Press offices, but of the city of Fort Myers itself, which seemed like one continuous strip mall of fast-food restaurant chains and car dealerships along the Gulf Coast.

I had saved the job interview I was most excited about for last. I met with Andrew Barnes at the St. Petersburg Times, known as the “St. Pete Times,” winner of numerous Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting, national reporting and general excellence. Barnes, a native New Yorker with a B.A. in history from Harvard, had worked himself up from reporter to news editor during a nine-year stint at the Washington Post, rubbing shoulders with such legendary figures as Ben Bradlee and Post founder/owner Katharine Graham, before becoming an editor at the plucky St. Petersburg Times in 1973. I was fairly certain he had also crossed paths with Carl Bernstein while at the Washington Post. When I met with Barnes, he had just assumed the helm as editor-in-chief and president at the St. Pete Times.

The paper was a beehive of activity with reporters and staff coming and going. I sat beside a number of other eager young job applicants waiting to see Barnes outside his office. His tastefully appointed modern office with a commanding view of the city of St. Petersburg was commensurate with his lofty new position as head of the paper. In the competitive world of journalism, he was indeed the reigning newspaper czar of St. Petersburg.

We went through the same formalities that I was used to from my previous job interviews with busy editors. Barnes took a cursory look at my writing samples, scanned my resume and asked a few questions. I don’t think he noticed the Carl Bernstein job reference, or, if he did, he certainly didn’t show it. Midway through the interview, he received a phone call from his secretary.

Apologizing for the interruption, he spoke to her briefly and his face lit up. He sat up straight and said he had to take an important call.

“Carl Bernstein’s on the line!”

Barnes made a face and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, see what important people I get to deal with daily.

“He’s probably calling about me,” I casually responded, which must have caught him by surprise. I certainly had no idea that he would be calling.

He looked at me as though I were joking but then greeted Carl like an old friend. After a few moments, though, his smile had faded when it appeared that I was right.

They spoke for another minute or so when Barnes thanked Carl for congratulating him on his new leadership role at the paper, and they hung up.

The job interview continued. But he didn’t mention Bernstein again. The unexpected call must have put him in a difficult spot.

“You wouldn’t want to work here,” he said almost apologetically, trying to soften the inevitable blow. “You’d be bored silly covering Kmart on Saturday night.”

Maybe Barnes was bored silly by St. Petersburg Saturday nights, but I was willing to take that risk. I should have told him that I would love to cover Kmart on Saturday night, or any other night, if it meant I had a job, but I didn’t. I knew where this was heading. He said there weren’t any current openings but that he would keep my resume on file. We shook hands, he wished me all the best, and then ushered in the next candidate.

After crisscrossing Florida for the last five days, I boarded a Greyhound bus from St. Petersburg bound for Madison empty-handed. I knew I would have to expand my job search to newspapers closer to home in Wisconsin. The bus was packed, but I managed to find a window seat with no one next to me. Jackpot. At least I wouldn’t be hemmed in for the arduous two-day journey home. Then, as chance would have it, my luck ran out. A young black man in overalls who weighed nearly 250 pounds came waddling down the aisle, spotted the empty seat next to me and took a seat, his ample flanks reducing my own seat space in half. I now found myself literally up against the wall, just as I felt in my job search.

“Hi,” I introduced myself to the young man in overalls. “Where you going?”

“Talla-hassee.”

“How far’s that?”

“’Bout two-hundred fifty miles,” he smiled.

I figured that was more than four hours away. With that, I stood up and took an available aisle seat in the row ahead of me next to a very pregnant woman. Rather than take offense, the young man seemed happy to now have both seats to himself.

By the summer, I had graduated and started planning for a September wedding, still without a newspaper job. Then, in July, I got a call from Jeri Haralson-Kass, the editor at the Delray Beach/Boynton Beach News Journal.

“Kipp!” Jeri greeted me excitedly in her raspy East Coast accent, “I’ve got great news! We’d like to offer you a job at the Boynton Beach News Journal!”

I was elated. She told me how much the reporting position paid, which wasn’t much, but it came with a generous benefits package due to the paper’s affiliation with the Palm Beach Post. I didn’t care how little the starting salary was; I finally had a newspaper job offer!

“There’s just one thing,” Jeri added. “The job’s yours if you can be here in two weeks.” Otherwise, she said, she would have to find another applicant. Jeri gave me a couple of days to think it over and get back to her.

This presented a bit of a problem. I didn’t own a car, I was renting an apartment with a roommate in Madison, and I was getting married in less than two months.

After sharing the exciting news with Anne and others, I got back to Jeri the next day telling her I accepted the position and I’d be there on day one. I never found out whether Jeri had contacted Carl Bernstein to check on my job reference.

Five blocks west of the Military Trail intersection, I spotted a small wooden sign on the grass at Haverhill Road with the crudely written words:

“K.K.K. Rally” and an arrow pointing north.

As I turned onto Haverhill Road, as If on cue, Jim Morrison’s voice flooded the airwaves with his final harrowing, primal scream at the end of the song:

“TRY TO SET THE NIGHT ON…FII-ERRRRRR!!!!!!”

Ironic message from the cosmos or mere coincidence? Either way, it made me wonder whether the South Florida skies would truly be set ablaze by the Klan’s cross-burning ceremony scheduled for later that evening. I figured the odds were about fifty-fifty due to the silvery clouds and the occasional flash of lightning in the distance. Then, a light drizzle started to fall and I turned on my wipers.

Attending a Ku Klux Klan rally was not really something one could prepare for as much as experience, and I had no idea what to expect since this was my first rally. One thing was certain, though: I was full of nervous anticipation and dread.

About two months earlier, I had received the second bizarre phone call from the head of the local Ku Klux Klan, Richard Ford, a broken-down former pawn shop owner and television repair man who had proclaimed himself Imperial Wizard of the Fraternal White Knights chapter, or klavern, as they liked to call it (a mashup of the words “Klan” and “cavern.”) This time, he had called to invite me to a Klan rally which would feature his old friend from Marietta, Ga., J.B. Stoner, one of the nation’s most notorious white supremacists and antisemitic agitators. Being a reporter for the Palm Beach Jewish World weekly newspaper, I was more than a little wary of covering a Klan rally. I worried that I would only be giving Ford what he wanted, more publicity. But my journalistic instincts told me that this was an important story to cover. Rather than ignore them, a little sunshine would shed light on why we needed to take their hate-filled rhetoric and ideology seriously. Florida had once been a hotbed of Klan activities, but the Klan in South Florida had been largely dormant in recent years. Was it now experiencing a resurgence? My very pregnant wife as well as concerned family members back in New York wondered whether it was smart of me to attend a Klan rally, but I assured them that it was probably the safest place to be in Florida due to the expected heavy police and media presence. But when I saw that small Klan rally sign outside of West Palm Beach, literally 15 minutes from our doorstep in neighboring Lake Worth, I couldn’t help but feel a little apprehensive.

I pulled up behind a line of cars, pickups, Harleys, TV news crew vans and police vehicles (some unmarked) across the street from a barbed wire fence. I had arrived at the estate of James Chamlee, a seven-acre orange grove and cow pasture, site of the Klan rally and barbecue scheduled from 5 to 8 p.m. A 20-foot cross made of two wooden poles rested within the field like a prone boxer prefight on a dressing room table. Ford had promised a 50-foot wooden cross, but he had obviously exaggerated. He had also predicted up to 150 Klansmen would be in attendance. So far, I hadn’t seen any Klansmen in robes. But the noxious odor of kerosene filled the air coming from the direction of the large wooden cross in the field. A large American flag at the entrance gave the appearance that one had wandered into a patriotic event like a Fourth of July picnic. Country music blaring from a loudspeaker added to the folksy, festive atmosphere. Nothing to see here, just another good old-fashioned country barbecue. What most people failed to notice, though, was the large Confederate flag which lay unfurled on the ground, awaiting its turn next to Old Glory, dispelling any doubt about the true nature of the event.

And then it happened. I caught my first glimpse of a fully robed Klansman. It felt both surreal and menacing, like crossing paths with a polar bear while walking your dog in the park. He was a mountain of a man, perhaps 250 pounds, and he was slowly lumbering toward us from within the compound. Five black stripes on each sleeve indicated his Klan ranking and over his heart was a white gothic cross within a red circle. He was accompanied by two nervous looking bearded dudes with long hair dressed in jeans, dark T-shirts and caps who could easily pass for roadies at an Allman Brothers concert. The thinner of the two had thick, curly hair wrapped around his ears that reminded me, oddly enough, of the side locks worn by my brethren Hasidic Orthodox Jews. The larger of the two Klan roadies held an umbrella above the burly Klansman’s pointy white hood to keep his outfit dry. The hood had two gouged eye holes but did not appear to have mouth or nose holes, which must have made it difficult for the heavyset man to breathe, especially in such humid summer heat. It reminded me of how uncomfortable it was to breathe whenever I wore my latex rubber Frankenstein’s monster mask as a child. It probably didn’t smell any better either.

The police had cordoned off a viewing area in front of the barbed wire fence for the 60 or so spectators who had already gathered, including the members of the press, who started to interview people.

A short, stocky man with a stubbly face sat under an umbrella by a makeshift entrance. He reminded me of Paulie, Sylvester Stallone’s fictional brother-in-law in the Rocky film series. He wore a Harley-Davidson T-shirt with an American flag, a snarling pit bull terrier and a Harley chopper. Atop his head was a Fraternal White Knights cap.

“I choose who comes in or not,” said gatekeeper Paulie with an air of over-officiousness like a doorman with an exclusive guest list at a hot nightclub--the KKK Klub?

A large Klan officer in jeans and a Confederate flag T-shirt who was identified as Mike told reporters that only white people who supported white power would be allowed inside the rally. He then offered to sell us hamburgers at $2 apiece and cheeseburgers at $2.50. No one took him up on his offer to buy a Klan Burger.

Several Klan supporters sported T-shirts from the Iron Horse Tavern, a notorious biker bar in Ormand Beach, Fla., known as a center of Klan activities. Its night manager, Michael Hawkwinds, whose moniker was “Nazi Mike” according to Volusia County sheriff’s officials, was listed as one of three incorporated officers in Richard Ford’s local Fraternal White Knights chapter. However, a month before the rally Ford had told the press that Hawkwinds had received “extreme banishment” from the Knights for committing several violations of the Klan oath. Hawkwinds had been arrested in connection with an assault on his live-in girlfriend, Sheila Reynolds, whom Ford had identified as his national chaplain. Was “Nazi Mike” the same Klan officer who just tried to sell us a burger? If so, then Ford’s banishment was not that extreme after all.

A man with a camera strapped around his neck cautiously approached Paulie the gatekeeper at the entrance. He said he was not a member of the press, just a curiosity seeker.

“We’ll probably let you in,” said Klan officer Mike with a smirk, “if you leave your camera and we blindfold you.”

The man with the camera had a change of heart, and melted back into the crowd.

One thing that the Klan would not tolerate was any alcoholic beverages on the premises. A rough looking man in jeans with a 5 o’clock shadow who had obviously already had a few beers too many held a bottle of beer in one hand as he walked unsteadily toward the entrance gate.

“Sir,” said gatekeeper Paulie politely, “I’d really appreciate it if you’d take that Budweiser and put it somewhere else.” Another Klan supporter chimed in: “Yeah, it might give us a bad name.”

It took a moment for the slightly inebriated man with the beer bottle to process what was said. He frowned, mumbled something unintelligible, then dropped the Budweiser in a garbage bin, smiled, and was promptly ushered in with a welcoming arm gesture from Paulie.

I asked gatekeeper Paulie why carrying a beer, of all things, would give the Klan a bad name?

“We’re not a bunch of alcoholics! We’re not a bunch of fascists!” he answered sharply. “We believe in what we’re doing…We’ve got a lot of people who support what we’re doing.”

Passing through a gauntlet of press, curiosity seekers and protesters, more Klan supporters cautiously approached the entrance gate. The Klan gatekeepers seemed to easily differentiate them from their detractors; absent an entrance fee, a simple nod or wink was all that sufficed to gain entrance. There was just a certain look about them that went beyond the obvious telltale signs like Confederate flags and Harley-Davidson iconography. One might easily dismiss them as low-information white trash, rednecks or trailer park people, but these were our everyday neighbors who lived and worked among us in the rapidly changing landscape of South Florida. Obviously, something about the Klan’s message appealed to them. Or maybe it was simply something fun to do on a Saturday afternoon? Either way, they looked like they could have just as easily been attending a professional wrestling match, the State Fair or a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.

A man and woman in their mid-twenties dressed in matching army fatigue-style pants, the woman clutching the hand of a small towheaded girl about five or six, debated whether to enter as they nervously observed all the police and press.

“Do you want to go in?” said the man, sounding more like he was issuing a statement than a question.

“I don’t know…I guess,” she answered sheepishly, and the gate magically swung open.

Soon after entering, the young family quickly changed into white Klan robes. I didn’t know Klan robes came in child size, too, but I guess hate came in all sizes.

At one point I thought about trying to enter the grounds myself, but decided against it, turning my attention instead to the police, curiosity seekers and protesters behind the wire fence. There were far more of them than the 20 or so Klan supporters. A police officer casually noted that the low turnout was “about what we expected.”

Conspicuous with their walkie-talkies and cameras, a few plainclothes police officers milled about the parking area, away from the reporters and curiosity seekers. An unmarked Ford sedan with engine running sat at the entrance while a young undercover officer in camouflage pants diligently took down license plates for his commanding officer who sat inside the air-conditioned vehicle. Any vehicles that stopped momentarily adjacent to the Chamlee property were promptly shooed away by the police.

“Just in case somebody comes along and starts shooting,” explained the young officer in camo recording the license plates.

Across the street from the barbed wire fence, a group of towheaded men and women stood under a tree to stay dry. They turned out to be Finnish-American college students from nearby Lake Worth, which was known to be home to a small, but flourishing Finnish-American community. A few drank beer right next to the young undercover officer taking down the license plate numbers, who ignored them, obviously having more important things to do.

“I’m just here out of curiosity,” said one of the Finnish-American students who identified himself as Saapo. “I heard about the Ku Klux Klan back in Finland. These people have gone too far. They’re not right in the head.”

I then met a college-age Jewish student named Tim who called the event both comical and dangerous. “There’s nothing sadder than a bunch of cops standing around trying to look like they’re not cops,” he said with a grin, adding the Klan was a dangerous organization just like any other radical group. “Meir Kahane (a Jewish supremacist Orthodox rabbi who called for the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel) is dangerous. Any time you get people who are controlled more by their emotions than their intellect—small though they may be—it’s a dangerous situation.”

Soon, dusk began to settle over the Chamlee estate. I noticed a short, boxy older man dressed in a bright orange jacket, white shirt, big dark bow tie with white polka dots and baggy pants shuffle toward the barbed wire fence from within the Chamlee grounds. I joined the reporters and photographers who surged over to him. He looked like the living embodiment of a cartoon character, perhaps Bugs Bunny’s nemesis Elmer Fudd. It was the rally’s guest speaker, the infamous white supremacist J.B. Stoner. How could someone so clownish and innocuous in appearance inspire so much fear and hatred? With ruddy pink cheeks aglow, Stoner stood and gawked for the journalists. He seemed to bask in the media spotlight as photographers and TV crews filmed away. I stood on a soft dirt mound next to Steven Sims, editor of the weekly Florida Catholic newspaper of the Archdiocese of Palm Beach County. While taking Stoner’s picture, I felt a sudden burning sensation shoot up my ankles as though my legs were on fire. I looked down and noticed I was standing on a fire ant mound. I quickly stepped aside and frantically scratched at my jeans to scrape away the angry red fire ants that were racing up my legs.

By the time I had halted the fire ants’ advance above my knees, Stoner had turned and walked away from the fence. I got my picture, but the itchy red pustules would remain on my lower legs for over a week.

It continued to lightly rain as darkness settled over the Chamlee property, calling into question whether the Klan would carry out the cross-burning ceremony. Eight p.m. came and went without any new developments.

Around 8:30 p.m., a white-robed Klansman who identified himself as an officer of the Fraternal White Knights approached the barbed wire fence, announcing that the cross-burning ceremony had been cancelled due to the rain. He said the rally might be rescheduled in a few months, possibly in the Daytona Beach area further north. Calling himself a separatist, not a supremacist—“I’m not a supreme being; I don’t walk on water”—the Klansman said his goal was to “preserve the heritage of our white bloodline, our genetic capabilities. To keep it carrying on. To enjoy the company of ourselves.”

The editor of the Catholic weekly, Steven Sims, asked the Klansman whether the Klan allowed Catholics, to which another Klansman responded, “That’s strange. I’m Catholic. So that’s an untruth.”

“The Diocese of Palm Beach?” asked Sims.

The Klan member said he wasn’t associated with the diocese, but was simply visiting from out of town.

The crowd started to thin out as several Klansmen took down the American and Confederate flags and rolled them up, placing them in the back of a pickup. People started to exit the premises, but the police maintained their presence. As one officer explained, “We’re going to stay until the last car leaves.” Rather than leave, too, I decided to stick around just in case.

By about 9 p.m. the rain had finally stopped. A half-dozen robed Klansmen suddenly emerged from a garage on the Chamlee property. Three Klansmen stood out in black robes and one in a grey robe, signifying their high Klan ranking. J.B. Stoner stood in the middle, now fully robed himself but with face exposed.

The cross burning was back on.

They huddled in the middle of the dark cow pasture near the wooden cross. A Klansman with a bullhorn then introduced Stoner, handing him the bullhorn.

Stoner welcomed the guests, saying it was his honor to serve as guest speaker because “I love our great white race!” Cheers of applause came from the robed Klansmen and the remaining supporters in the cow pasture. It was difficult to understand everything Stoner said during his five-minute rant because he spoke quickly into the bullhorn in a thick Southern accent. One thing was abundantly clear, though. There was an international conspiracy to destroy the white race and he blamed “Jews, niggers, Catholics and queers” as well as “self-hating liberals” and “Godless Communists.”

Seemingly exhausted, Stoner finally came to a conclusion. He joyfully proclaimed: “Happy days are here at last! Happy days are here at last because of God‘s great miracle of AIDS!” which brought an even greater cheer from the crowd. Several Klansmen then hoisted up the 20-foot wooden cross while the other Klansmen slowly formed a circle around it. Each took hold of a wooden pyre. The pyres were then ignited and each Klansman held his burning stick in the air forming a ring of fire around the wooden cross. It looked like birthday candles atop a great big cake illuminating the South Florida night.

A man’s voice rang out from behind the barbed wire fence.

“Please don’t burn that cross! You guys are probably Christians! At least some of you! You’re burning the symbol of Christianity right before our eyes!”

He was met by jeers of “Jew Beast!” “Communist!” and “Anti-Christ!”

A Klan supporter walked up to the heckler behind the fence and took his picture.

As he was walking away, the heckler asked “Do you want my address, too, sir?” to which the Klan supporter chillingly responded, “We have your address.”

“This is America! United we stand, divided we fall!” shouted another woman from behind the fence, but her words fell on deaf ears.

Ignoring the protester’s pleas, the Klansmen each took their lit pyres and ceremoniously approached the cross. They then rested their burning sticks against the base of the cross. An eerie yellowish-blue flame licked and danced at the bottom of the pole, releasing small plumes of black smoke, but the fire refused to take. They tried again with the same result. After several more failed attempts the flame petered out completely, the late-afternoon rains having completely soaked through the wood. Despite the swampy weekend forecast, no one had the foresight to cover the large wooden cross with a tarp in case of rain. The robed Klansmen seemed uncertain what to do next. Word quickly spread that the event had been called off. There would be no cross-burning ceremony tonight after all.

With the show finally over, the remaining Klan members and their supporters slowly filed out from the field, some promising to return. There was a sense of quiet dejection similar to when you leave a stadium after the home team just lost a baseball game. I admit I also felt a little disappointed following all the anticipation. Part of me also wanted to witness the spectacle of the massive cross light up the South Florida sky like a camp bonfire. Within a few minutes, the field was empty as the remaining protesters and a few intrepid journalists had headed for their vehicles.

As I slowly drove away, I looked back one last time. As promised, the police were the last to leave.

A Note about the Alligator with the Cream Cheese on his Head!

The wonderful banner art for my new Substack was created by my pal Rob Sussman, an amazing illustrator whose work has appeared in countless publications including the Nation, the New York Times and more! You can explore more of Rob’s work at:

https://www.robsussman.com/

“Is this Kipp Friedman of the Jew-ish World newspaper?”

“Yes,” I said, thrown off by the caller’s thick Southern accent and the exaggerated way he pronounced Jew. It sounded like he had said “ewww.” It was early 1989 and I had been a reporter in South Florida for five years and still hadn’t quite grown accustomed to a strong Southern accent; perhaps I never would.

“This is Richard Ford,” he introduced himself, “Imperial Wizard of the Fraternal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”

I froze. I pictured him sitting by a table in a pointy white hood with eye slits and a phone pressed to his covered ear. I’d never spoken to a member of the Klan before nor an Imperial Wizard for that matter, and my only point of reference was the flamboyant turban-wearing professional wrestling manager on TV, the Grand Wizard (aka Irwin Jacob “Ernie” Roth), known for his colorful sequined outfits, feathers and wrap-around glasses.

What does one say to an Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan? This was certainly a first for me in my young journalism career. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts.

I had recently written a small piece based on a Southern Poverty Law Center report about the rise of Klan activities in Florida. The story had identified Ford as the de facto leader of the local affiliation. Was Ford also a Jewish World reader, I wondered? Had he picked up a copy outside one of the area’s delis or synagogues where we regularly distributed the free weekly paper? The thought boggled the mind. Did he enjoy bagels and lox, too? South Florida was proving to a bizarre place to be a reporter in the 1980s.

I jotted down the words “KLAN LEADER” on a notebook and held it up to my colleague, David Bittner, over at the next cubical. When he read my note, David’s eyes widened in alarm and his mouth formed the shape of an “o.”

I tried to regain my composure; I didn’t want to seem flustered.

“How can I help you, Mr. Ford?”

“What do you call the child of an in-jin and a china-man?”

“Pardon?”

My mind went blank. Was this some kind of joke?

Ford repeated the question, sounding irritated.

“I don’t know,” I answered, still confused. “What?”

“UGGGH-LEEEE!!!” he shouted jubilantly into the phone, his squeals of delight quickly turning into a hacking smoker’s cough.

I hadn’t heard that lame joke since grade school and it still wasn’t funny. I waited for Ford to catch his breath and then asked why he was calling. Surely not to share a childish racist joke.

Ford’s voice took on a more serious tone. He said he had read my article in the paper and he called to set the record straight about the Klan. First off, he wanted me to know he was a white separatist, not a white supremacist.

“What’s the difference?” I asked, failing to draw a distinction between the two racially charged terms, each sounding equally reprehensible.

He explained that white supremacists, like the Neo-Nazis and Skinheads, were violent extremists who used drugs and alcohol and believed that white people should dominate other lesser races. He, on the other hand, represented honest, hard-working white Christians who only sought the peaceful separation of the races, something he claimed both blacks and whites desired.

Did Ford think I was ignorant of the Klan’s infamous legacy of lynchings, church bombings, cross burnings and overall domestic terrorism? Or was this some form of self-delusion on his part? Either way, I decided to play along.

“But what if blacks and whites don’t want to be separated?”

He had an easy solution, he said. Black people should be given their own land, in America, or, preferably, back in Africa. That would solve the racial problem in one fell swoop. When I asked what should be done with those still not wishing to be separated, he snickered, and admitted that they would have to be somehow forcibly removed for their own good. Although I didn’t bring it up, I got the strong impression that he wouldn’t be opposed to something akin to concentration camps. He even suggested as much, saying that blacks should be cordoned off (for their own good) to designated areas, which sounded a lot like South African apartheid.

What Ford said next, though, was even more nuts: that, unlike white supremacists, he actually cared about the well-being of black people and to prove his point, he said he had a black neighbor who was his friend. Then, shockingly, he put her on the phone. And I was now, apparently, talking to a middle-aged black woman.

“Hello?” she greeted me in a pleasant singsong voice.

My head was reeling from the surreal direction the call had suddenly taken. At a loss for words, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Hello, Ma’am, do you know who Richard Ford is?”

“Why yes,” she answered cheerfully. ‘Richard’s a good man.” She said he sometimes did home repairs and chores for her and she and her family had gotten along fine with him for years. She added that he was a God-fearing Christian just like her.

“Well…yes,” I stammered, “but do you know he’s also the head of the Ku Klux Klan?” Perhaps she was truly unaware of her neighbor’s ties to the Klan.

I could tell she was starting to grow annoyed with me.

“I don’t care who he is!” she said with an air of righteous indignation. “Richard’s always been a good neighbor.”

I wanted to ask her how she would feel if her good neighbor had her and her family forcefully relocated, but sensing the futility of pushing her any further, I thanked her, and asked instead if she could put him back on the line. She wished me a “blessed day” and handed the phone back to Ford.

When Ford got back on the line, he acted as though this friendship with his black neighbor was indisputable proof of the Klan’s new, altruistic intentions.

At this point, though, I didn’t feel like talking to him anymore. I said I was on deadline and that I had to get back to work. I could tell he wanted to continue the conversation, but I was starting to feel slightly sick.

When I hung up, I slumped back in my chair exhausted; speaking to Ford was a shock to the system and this dull sensation would linger like a tooth ache.

I told my editor, Martin Pomerance, about the call and he had me repeat everything back to him. Sensing my discomfort, he said not to worry, that Ford was probably a frustrated old man simply seeking attention for his pathetic organization. He said to keep him informed if he called back. I assumed Marty would share my notes with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in Miami, which kept track of such incidents. Our nondescript office in West Palm Beach occasionally received anonymous hate calls and threatening letters. Once, someone had even smashed the front windows and spray-painted antisemitic slogans on the front door. Incidents of antisemitism typically spiked whenever Israel was in the headlines.

The next week, I had lunch at the Green Owl restaurant in downtown Delray Beach with my old buddy Bob McClory, an ad rep I had met at my first newspaper out of college, the Delray Beach/Boynton Beach News Journal, which had since gone out of business. Bob now sold mutual funds for a firm in Boca Raton. Bob was a good ol’ boy from South Florida who enjoyed drinking beer at lunchtime and fishing in area canals and along the Atlantic ocean. He got a kick out of my stories of growing up in New York City. When we first met, I commented on a crate of empty Coke bottles he kept in the front seat of his pickup truck, which I assumed he would redeem for extra cash. He corrected me, though, saying they came in handy whenever someone drove too near to him on the road, implying that he would fling them like projectiles from his window. “Redneck traffic control,” he called it. Bob was a trickster and I never knew when he was kidding.

I picked at my meatloaf and gravy with mashed potatoes while Bob tore into a bloody slice of calves’ liver smothered in onions, washed down with a beer.

“Man! Even the liver’s good at the Green Owl!” he said with a look of satisfaction on his cherubic, tanned face, before popping another crimson morsel into his fleshy mouth. “Yum!”

I winced. This was a recurring joke we shared whenever we ate at the Green Owl, stemming from when I told him of my life-long distaste for liver. I was anemic as a child and my parents once bribed me a nickel for every bite I ate of the nutrient-rich meat, which I had associated with cat food because my mother used to feed cooked liver to our cat Piper. I only managed to earn three nickels before retching, and swore to never eat liver again. Bob couldn’t get over the fact that we fed liver to our cat. He said if his parents had offered him that deal, he’d probably be a millionaire.

“Got a call the other day from the head of the Ku Klux Klan,” I said casually, which was the main reason I had invited him to lunch. Bob had been after me for a while to consider buying mutual funds and I figured this was as good an opportunity as any to meet.

“Oh really!” he perked up with interest. “Don’t suppose he was lookin’ for a rabbi?” he said and chuckled. He knew I now worked for the Jewish World newspaper.

Bob laughed when I repeated Ford’s dumb joke, and then I told him about my strange conversation with the older black woman. I said it was unnerving to get a call from the head of the Klan and I asked if this was something that I should be concerned about.

“Don’t worry, son,” he said, reaching over to pat my shoulder reassuringly. “Got a cousin in the Klan, is all. I’ll tell ‘em you’re one of the good ones,” and then stuffed his maw with another slimy piece of liver. About eight years older than me, Bob was the only one I knew who ever referred to me as son, a common term of affection in the South.

“One of the good ones?” I repeated with feigned umbrage, but he ignored my subtle attempt at sarcasm.

He smiled back, took a gulp of beer and then switched the subject to why I should invest in mutual funds. Tech stocks were booming and he didn’t want me to miss the boat (Anne and I would eventually invest about $5000 with him and we promptly lost most of it when the tech sector collapsed several months later.)

Despite my friend’s unique form of reassurance, I wasn’t particularly comforted. Ford’s unexpected call would continue to weigh heavily on my mind.

I decided to do a little more research on the joke-telling Klan leader who advocated for racial tolerance through forced separation. In a strange way, what he called for was the equivalent of the controversial ultra-nationalist Israeli Orthodox rabbi Meir Kahane, who sought the forced removal of all Arabs from the land of Israel.

Ford, 53, lived alone in Lantana, a rural town southwest of West Palm Beach, not 15 minutes from my apartment in Lake Worth. He was a retired pawn shop owner and television repairman who had suffered several heart attacks. Ford had been fired from numerous jobs because of his public involvement in Klan activities. He was said to be a regular at a Lantana pizza parlor, chain-smoking generic brand cigarettes while talking politics with anyone who cared to listen. Reports showed that he had publicly resigned his post as Grand Titan of the Invisible Knights of the KKK in 1983 because he believed that its quest for violence had weakened its broader appeal. He had publicly parted ways with another more extreme Klan member, Bill Wilkinson, who had called for more violent tactics. This occurred after Wilkinson had arranged a rally in Miami’s Bicentennial Park that attracted only eight hooded members and approximately 250 protesters and onlookers. Ford also opposed an attempt to hold a Klan recruitment rally at the John I. Leonard high school in Lake Worth. Ford then formed his own non-violent branch which was later incorporated into the Fraternal White Knights, crowning himself Imperial Wizard. At the time, Klan membership had dwindled down to about 5000 nationally, according to the Alabama-based Klanwatch organization. Largely dormant in South Florida in recent years, the majority of Klan activities now took place further north in central and northern Florida, closer geographically to traditional Klan hotspots in neighboring Georgia and Alabama, lending credence to the popular Florida expression: the further north you go, the further south you get.

Was Ford’s call part of a new public relations charm offensive to soften the Klan’s image here in South Florida? More alarming, was it a harbinger of more Klan activities to come in my adopted hometown?

Several months passed and I didn’t hear another word from Ford, and I slowly forgot all about him. Then, one day in late spring, I picked up the phone and heard his familiar tar-infused scratchy voice.

“Hello, this is Richard Ford, Imperial Wizard of the…”

“I know who you are,” I interrupted, feeling an instant sense of dread. I had thought I’d heard the last of him. “What can I do for you?”

“Got a good one for ya’,” he said playfully.

“Richard, I don’t have time for another one of your jokes!”

“No, this is a good one. How many Jews can ya’ fit in a Volkswagen?” he asked, once again annoyingly pronouncing Jews like he was repulsed or had cleared his throat.

I groaned. “I don’t know,” I answered, bracing for the inevitable Holocaust-related punchline. “How many?”

“FIFTY-FOUR!!! Two in the front, two in the back, and fifty in the ash tray!” Ford howled with delight. “Get it?”

“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “That’s not even funny. Why are you calling me?”

Ford said he had a news scoop for me. He had scheduled a Klan rally and family barbecue with music and a cross-lighting ceremony on Saturday, July 1 to coincide with the Fourth of July weekend. The all-day event would take place on a seven-acre property in Lantana owned by someone named James Chamlee and the guest speaker would be his old friend J.B. Stoner all the way from Marietta, Ga.

I had no idea who Stoner was, but it didn’t sound good.

“Don’t you mean cross burning?” I corrected him.

“We don’t burn crosses, we light ‘em,” Ford snapped. “That’s the light of God.”

I had to stop myself from responding: “You mean, like a Christmas tree?”

Ford then launched into a dizzying rant on a host of warped conspiracy theories that ranged from eugenics and white Christian superiority to the evils of Jew-run communism and the ethnic origins of blacks and Jews, calling blacks “mud people” from Africa and claiming that Jews had “negro tracer genes.” He railed against Israel and the Zionist Occupation Government, which he called “ZOG.” He called Catholics and the Pope “fake Christians” in league with the devil. His emphysemic voice rose with a biblical fervor, but by then I was hardly paying attention. I found it impossible to keep up with his bizarre, disjointed rants, and I finally had to interrupt him to tell him I had to get back to work. He seemed to be only just getting warmed up, but I had already grown weary. Listening to his hate-filled tirades had left my body flush like from a sudden heat wave.

After we hung up, I told my editor about Ford’s latest call and soon learned more about his old buddy, Jesse Benjamin Stoner Jr., aka J.B. Stoner.

Deemed a domestic terrorist, Stoner, now 64, was one of the nation’s most infamous white supremacists and antisemitic agitators. A lawyer and failed politician (he had launched an unsuccessful bid as Governor of Georgia in 1970, failing to future President Jimmy Carter), Stoner had spent three years in a federal prison for the 1958 bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Ala. He was also a suspect in numerous other bombings and attempted bombings of black churches and synagogues throughout the South. And now, in less than two months he would be headlining a Klan rally in nearby Lantana. This didn’t sound anything like the new, benign Ku Klux Klan that Ford had previously described.

I prepared the story for the following week’s paper, hoping to be the first to break the news. But before my story would appear, I would read about Stoner and the upcoming Klan rally in various other Florida news outlets. The news spread like wildfire. Apparently, Ford had been talking to other reporters all along. That’s when it dawned on me that I’d been played by Ford.

And I really thought I was one of the good ones.

Stay Tuned for the Part 2 Conclusion in May!

“Try to Set the Night on Fire”

A Note about the Alligator with the Cream Cheese on his Head!

The wonderful banner art for my new Substack was created by my pal Rob Sussman, an amazing illustrator whose work has appeared in countless publications including the Nation, the New York Times and more! You can explore more of Rob’s work at: https://www.robsussman.com/

In the summer of 1986, U.S. Attorney in Manhattan Rudy Giuliani and New York Sen. Al D’Amato made headlines with a high-profile purchase of crack cocaine in the Washington Heights section of upper Manhattan to call attention to the drug epidemic sweeping the nation. Looking more like a couple of lawyers at a Yankees game, Giuliani wore dark sunglasses and a Hell’s Angels black leather vest with patches that said “Dirty Thirty” and “Filthy Few” over a white dress shirt and gold belt buckle while D’Amato sported an ARMY cap, windbreaker and tasseled black loafers. Trailing behind were a fleet of federal agents and undercover police officers, there to ensure that nothing went wrong. Within minutes, Rudy and Al easily made purchases of crack from the safety of their vehicles and left unharmed, followed by the all-important press conference which I read about in my local paper.

Inspired by the two New York crime fighters, I naively believed that I, too, could make a difference in the war on drugs right where I lived in South Florida, and it nearly got me killed.

At the time, I was an idealistic young reporter at the Boynton Beach News Journal weekly newspaper. When Black faith leaders appealed to the city to do more to stem the flow of drugs plaguing their community, I thought of Giuliani and D’Amato. This wasn’t the kind of story my paper typically covered. We favored advertiser-friendly profiles of local businesses, community events and inspiring human-interest features that put the city in a good light. The kind of stories that would make any Chamber of Commerce proud. While the city was slowly changing, Boynton Beach remained a sleepy retirement community and popular winter vacation destination along the Atlantic coast. Coverage of street drug sales was just not good for business, but I still wanted to do something about it.

Channeling the spirit of the famed journalist muckrakers of the early 20^th Century, I chose to launch my investigation on a slow Friday afternoon in the fall when my editor, Mary Thurwachter, had conveniently left town early for the weekend. I did not tell her of my plans, figuring it was better to seek forgiveness than to ask for permission. Besides, what could possibly go wrong? I had no difficulty convincing our staff photographer, Paul Milette, a lanky, soft-spoken 28-year-old from Connecticut. Paul and I had worked well together for nearly two years, and I sensed that he, too, was excited about the prospect of covering something a little bit more challenging that could also pad his portfolio.

We set out in Paul’s black Chevy pickup truck. Instead of wearing black leather Hell’s Angels vests or ARMY caps, we chose blue jeans and plaid shirts, hoping to pass ourselves off as a couple of good ol’ boys out for a quick weekend score. Our plan was simple, but not particularly well thought out: we’d attempt to make a small purchase, see if Paul could then snap a few pictures from afar, and then get out. Just like Rudy and Al. I had a general idea of where some of the trouble spots were in the city based on recent police reports. I carried $20 in my wallet (the same amount Rudy had spent for two crack cocaine purchases) and brought along my trusty spiral reporter’s notebook while Paul had placed his camera gear on the seat between us, buried beneath some papers. But unlike the two New York crime fighters, we would have no undercover police protection

Around 5 p.m., we pulled up alongside an elementary school on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a few blocks north of City Hall and the police department. Country music softly played on the radio. It was a pleasant sunny afternoon so we kept the windows down. School had already let out and there no longer were any students around, just a wiry, old black custodian in a slate gray uniform who reminded me of the actor Scatman Crothers. He stopped what he was doing momentarily to eye us warily.

“Say, what you two white boys doin’ in that truck?”

We smiled back sheepishly, but before we could think of something to say, the custodian added:

“You the po-lice? Wanna get shot!” He shook his head as though we were a couple of damn fools and resumed his chores.

I tried to dismiss the old man’s admonition as just hyperbole, but it introduced an element of doubt that was hard to shake off. It was the first hint that something could actually go wrong. Nevertheless, we decided to press on. I suggested to Paul that we look for another location, and we drove off.

After a few minutes of searching, we came to a small convenience store across the street from an elementary school in a quiet neighborhood of tree-lined modest ranch homes near North Seacrest Avenue. This neighborhood had also been cited for drug-related activity. It looked like as good a spot as any to stop so we parked near the convenience store and waited. Not knowing what to expect, we kept our conversation to a minimum while nervously awaiting what was to come. Something told me that this wasn’t going to be as easy as it was for Rudy and Al. I thought of the time when I was walking through Central Park in Manhattan with my cousin Andy Franco and a genial Rastafarian approached us like a restaurant waiter to ask: “Pardon me, Sir, would you care for some sinsemilla?” I wondered if Boynton Beach drug dealers would be as courteous.

A handful of children played on a school swing set across the street while a car occasionally drove by. The gentle buzz of insects filled the air like an electrical current. Several minutes passed and nothing had changed. Had we struck out again? Perhaps the old custodian was right, that we were simply too conspicuous--a couple of white boys sitting in a black Chevy pickup in the heart of Boynton Beach’s black community? We thought about calling the whole thing off. It was starting to get a little hazy out. Paul had a wife and two small kids waiting for him back home, while my wife was out of town visiting her ill father back in Wisconsin (I hadn’t informed her either about my investigation, not wishing to worry her unnecessarily).

Just as we were about to leave, the screen door to the convenience store swung open and out spilled teens and young adults. They were soon joined by others who had apparently been hanging out behind the store. They must have been surveilling us the whole time, deciding to make their move when they were satisfied that we were not undercover police. Before we knew it, Paul’s pickup truck was surrounded. It felt surreal, like we were watching a movie. It reminded me of a scene from the popular movie “Under Fire” when Nicaraguan rebels emerged ghost-like from the jungle to encircle some unsuspecting American journalists. So this is what it felt like to be ambushed by rebels in a war zone.

“Yo! Base Rock! Crack! Blow! Weed!” came a chorus of competing voices like merchants hawking their wares at a fish market, only this was a pop-up open-air drug market. They waved plastic baggies with clear vials and sealed packets containing off-white powders and small yellowish rocks, greenish-brown marijuana buds and colored capsules. The air grew thick with a heady mix of skunky marijuana and acidic, ammonia-like crack cocaine that nearly made me gag. One of the young men—they were all male--seemed to be the ringleader. He smiled menacingly beside Paul’s driver-side front window, a gold tooth in his mouth glittering in the late-afternoon light. In one hand he held bags of drugs and in the other he clutched a wad of cash like a bank teller.

Unsure what to do next, but trying to maintain my composure, I reached for the $20 in my wallet when someone must have spotted Paul’s camera gear poking out from under the papers in the front seat and sounded the alarm.

“SHIT! PO-LICE!!!”

Our eyes met briefly in what can only be described as an “Oh Shit!” moment and I began to roll up my window while Paul reached for the truck’s ignition. But before we could leave, a terrible crash rocked the truck, jolting us forward in our seats. The rear window exploded and a burst of glass sprayed us within the cabin. When I opened my eyes, through the glassy mist lay a fist-sized limestone rock on the dashboard; above the rock, a spider-web crack had formed on the front windshield.

Paul somehow managed to start the engine. But as soon as we pulled out, another car appeared out of nowhere, blocking our escape, forcing him to slam on the brakes. Unsure whether it was one of the youths trying to stop us from leaving or simply a random motorist who happened to be passing by, Paul swerved the truck onto the sidewalk, we lurched forward along the grass and then landed with a thud back on the street, now out of the way of the blocking vehicle. He slammed down on the accelerator and we finally took off down the street. I turned to look back through the jagged glass crater behind our heads. Several teens were chasing after us including the ringleader with the gold tooth who was pointing what appeared to be a small gun in our direction.

“I’ll bust a cap in yo’ ass, mutha fuck-ahhh!” gold tooth shouted like a triumphant rebel leader, his voice trailing off as we sped away. I couldn’t tell if he had actually fired.

Miraculously, neither of us were injured, but we were both in a state of shock as we made our way to the Boynton Beach Police Department. Glass particles floated in the air like fairy dust as we plucked larger chunks of glass from our hair and collars. The car seats and the floor were covered in shards of glass.

We were met at the police station by Capt. Carl Dixon, a burly good ol’ boy with a pencil-thin mustache and a slight drawl whom I had first met when I began reporting for the paper in 1984, fresh out of college. Dixon, who occasionally served as a community liaison officer providing helpful tips to concerned homeowners on how best to prevent home invasions (get a small yippy dog, keep the lights, tv and radio on when not home), listened patiently as we recounted our story. This must have been a highlight to an otherwise slow night at the station.

“Man!” he said, shaking his rosy, suntanned cheeks in disbelief after we had finished, “You shoulda’ bought what they was sellin’.” I didn’t know how to respond to that. I’m sure he’d have a good laugh about this later with his colleagues. (“You’ll never believe what these two dumb journalists did!”)

Dixon told us we were fortunate that neither one of us had been injured, robbed or worse. He related how he had once parked a new red corvette in the same neighborhood only to find his tires missing less than five minutes later. He then proceeded to lecture us on what a dumb idea it was to report on street drug sales, a dangerous matter that should be strictly left up to the police. Feeling contrite, we assured him that it wouldn’t happen again.

It was dark out when we finally left the police station, still dazed but thankfully unharmed. Both of us worried about how we would break it to our wives. I felt guilty that I had involved Paul in such a reckless endeavor, but he didn’t seem mad at me. Instead, Paul wondered whether he could file an insurance claim for the damage to his truck—a costly repair on a weekly newspaper photographer’s salary. I’m sure it was awkward for him driving home in the dark with a large crack in his front windshield and a crater in the rear window with bits of glass everywhere.

As for me, I couldn’t shake off the image of that gnarled white rock resting on the truck’s dashboard like a misshapen baseball. It must have passed cleanly between our heads. Whoever threw it had one helluva arm.

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A Note about the Alligator with the Cream Cheese on his Head!

The wonderful banner art for my new Substack was created by my pal and brother from another mother Rob Sussman, an amazing illustrator whose work has appeared in countless publications including the Nation, the New York Times and more! You can explore more of Rob’s art at: https://www.robsussman.com/

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