"Disembarking in New York on the evening of January 14 [1946], Churchill and Clementine went at once by train to Miami Beach where, on their arrival during the morning of January 16, Churchill was asked to give a press conference. It was held on the patio of the house that was to be his home for nearly three weeks, 5905 North Bay Road, which had its own access to the ocean. Asked by a newsreel cameraman to say ten words into the microphone, Churchill replied: "I have been asked to say just ten words, but haven't been told what ten words they should be. The ten that come to mind are 'The great pleasure I feel in enjoying the genial sunshine of Miami Beach.'"
-Churchill: A Life, Martin Gilbert, (863).
I stared at the page. I blinked. "No," I smiled. I looked at the bottle to my left to see how much I had drunk. I read it again.
Google's swine Generation-X'ers are not good about putting up things that happened before they invented Google. There was no image of 5905 North Bay Road, Miami Beach, Florida, then or now. I google-mapped the address, street view. Nothing. There was no biographical entry for Churchill's host Frank Clarke; nor for Frank W. Clarke, nor F.W. Clarke, Col. Frank Clarke, Lt. Col. Frank Clarke, or "Frank Clarke house Miami Beach." I googled "Churchill Miami Beach" and got a pub. "Winston Churchill Miami Beach" and "Winston Churchill Florida:"
I'll be goddamned. To reprise something I wrote in a very different context in 2010, "I could not have been more surprised if I had seen Winston Churchill sitting there in miniskirt and high heels."
So I put on my shoes and drove the eighteen blocks to 5905 North Bay Road. The street numbers, odd on one side, even on the other, oddly reversed from the 5800-block to the 5900-block. On the water side, it had to have been on the water side, there was a 5900 North Bay Road, stone fenced, didn't seem like there'd be an old Florida wooden house behind the stone fence, then a metal-gated "930" address. Thinking I'd made a mistake and 5900 was 900 I backed up and turned around. No, the stone-fenced residence was 5900. I then pulled into the cut-out of "930." The "5" had fallen off the gate support on the left and I saw behind some palm fronds on the right the address "5930." 5930 was abandoned. I could see past the gated cut-out down the driveway to the mansion, in front of which was a statue I recognized as Winged Victory of Samothrace. The mansion was wooden but of recent construction, clearly not built in 1936, not in the old-Florida style. However, there was a sign on the gate supports that identified the property as "Whitehall."
Miami is a city without a history. It is where people come to forget their histories. Churchill had come to Miami Beach to "hide" after his shock defeat in 1945. History is erased in Miami and I reasoned that Frank Clarke's old Florida house had been torn down and replaced with the modernized, undistinguished structure now there, built for an owner who knew the history and slapped "Whitehall" on the gate and then abandoned it.
-Churchill: A Life, Martin Gilbert, (863).
I stared at the page. I blinked. "No," I smiled. I looked at the bottle to my left to see how much I had drunk. I read it again.
Google's swine Generation-X'ers are not good about putting up things that happened before they invented Google. There was no image of 5905 North Bay Road, Miami Beach, Florida, then or now. I google-mapped the address, street view. Nothing. There was no biographical entry for Churchill's host Frank Clarke; nor for Frank W. Clarke, nor F.W. Clarke, Col. Frank Clarke, Lt. Col. Frank Clarke, or "Frank Clarke house Miami Beach." I googled "Churchill Miami Beach" and got a pub. "Winston Churchill Miami Beach" and "Winston Churchill Florida:"
So I put on my shoes and drove the eighteen blocks to 5905 North Bay Road. The street numbers, odd on one side, even on the other, oddly reversed from the 5800-block to the 5900-block. On the water side, it had to have been on the water side, there was a 5900 North Bay Road, stone fenced, didn't seem like there'd be an old Florida wooden house behind the stone fence, then a metal-gated "930" address. Thinking I'd made a mistake and 5900 was 900 I backed up and turned around. No, the stone-fenced residence was 5900. I then pulled into the cut-out of "930." The "5" had fallen off the gate support on the left and I saw behind some palm fronds on the right the address "5930." 5930 was abandoned. I could see past the gated cut-out down the driveway to the mansion, in front of which was a statue I recognized as Winged Victory of Samothrace. The mansion was wooden but of recent construction, clearly not built in 1936, not in the old-Florida style. However, there was a sign on the gate supports that identified the property as "Whitehall."
Miami is a city without a history. It is where people come to forget their histories. Churchill had come to Miami Beach to "hide" after his shock defeat in 1945. History is erased in Miami and I reasoned that Frank Clarke's old Florida house had been torn down and replaced with the modernized, undistinguished structure now there, built for an owner who knew the history and slapped "Whitehall" on the gate and then abandoned it.
