Today, of course, the Watson Island fish shacks are no more. And their disappearance points to other, deeper losses. Time, relentless, irrevocable, moves us constantly forward.
Last year, I returned to Miami after 10 years away. In some ways, the city hadn't changed. In others, it was almost unrecognizable. The rhetoric was still the same; the problems remained familiar. But many of the old landmarks were gone or altered. Coral Way, in particular, seemed stripped and cleaned of all its history. South Beach had sprouted giant glass buildings.
Somewhere along the way, Watson Island had been spruced up and made respectable. There's a museum there now, and parking. In the strange way that memory (or at least my memory) works, I can't be sure where exactly the fishing shacks stood. I have half a feeling that if someone were to make a good case that they never existed, I could be persuaded to doubt my own recollection.
More and more I've come to understand when we mourn what a place used to be, we are also mourning what we used to be.
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