MEMORY LANE
The Miami of my childhood, the city of the mid-1900s, was a wondrous place to me. My world was Riverside, a part of what is today East Little Havana. Stretching from the west bank of the Miami River to today's Southwest/Northwest 17th Avenue (nee Osceola Avenue), Riverside was an early 20th century Miami ''suburb'' in which many homes were graced with manicured lawns and gardens. I especially remember the wood-frame homes with their open porches and second-level dormers beckoning to the street below.
I got a close look at the area's buildings, and the institutions and businesses in them, through frequent walks with my dad, who told me the stories about them.
Our apartment stood behind my grandmother's Belvedere Bungalow on Southwest Fourth Street, just west of 12th Avenue. Nearby was a former supper club serving as the first home of the Jewish Home for the Aged.
The neighborhood's most imposing landmark was the large Firestone store at West Flagler Street and Southwest 12th Avenue. There were stories that Thomas Edison, a close friend of owner Harvey Firestone's, was on hand for its opening in the late 1920s. Now it's a Walgreens drugstore.
