July 26, 2010

Most Americans and Europeans choose the relatively short flight to Miami’s environs in order to escape the north’s wintry blasts.

Not so the author who chose a permanent residence in the exclusive island off the eastern coast of Florida as a place to pursue a journalistic career in a climate that seemed to invite both warmth and contemplation. However, after encountering a "welcoming committee" of sorts that questioned the absence of curtains on his and his wife’s new condominium duplex, he turned instead to an examination of his family’s immediate surroundings. Palm Beach, where an inheritance of $250 million is a launching pad rather than a sheltered given, is an island within an island, and like no other, even for an experienced reporter and writer who had previously succumbed to the social delights of the south of France.

The book offers a chatty introduction to a different, hard to enter world. There are charitable galas where the object of attendance leans more towards self- promotion than to medical or social work goals. There are the Megamansions overlooking calm beaches and ocean, often second and third homes bought initially for investment’s sake at a time of upwardly spiraling property values by those whose original habitats can be traced to small towns in the northeast of the United States. Looking outward across the waterway is West Palm Beach where employees and workers reside, their children brought daily in yellow buses to a public school which shares a sports field with Palm Beach’s private school, but with whose children they never get to play. Across the proverbial bay are the uncomfortable facets of life that are necessary, yet best left unseen – hospitals, electronic goods stores and, of course, funeral parlors.

Life seems to go on forever, an endless push towards ever higher social acceptance within a relatively stable demography. The island was once home to a few well-situated abodes. Travel became easier, and the wealthy of the northeast migrated there. Having staked out a claim, they became wary of equally wealthy newcomers, many of a religious minority, who finding little acceptance in the now rarified, gentrified world, set out to build their own homes and their own country clubs in equally favored places. Thus a distinct division entered the sociological equation that appears to permeate most aspects of daily life. One can, for example, imagine those who down a series of obligatory glasses of Scotch that precede the usually bland slices of chicken and a few damp pieces of squash, looking down, but nevertheless longingly, at those who have abandoned rituals and are enjoying an occasional lobster fra diavolo, an ample cheese tray, and a modest glass or two of Veuve Cliquot, depending on mood or time of day. East is East, and after a few generations, never the culinary twain shall meet.

There are, of course, ways to cross the essential divide. Friendships and partnerships are one of these, as is human attractiveness that invites younger men and women to enter into ties with elders who then prime them for the next season’s coming jaunts and celebrity parties. There is also a common sense of exclusivity in the face of the more mundane, outside world. Beaches are open to the public, but only in an impenetrable fashion. There are, after all, no public toilets available for employees and outsiders. Nor are there any food concessions or changing rooms that would allow even a quotidian entry.

This is Palm Beach B.B.M., before Bernie Madoff, a time when some, though not many, had not lost a lot of their fortunes, or at least a goodly part of them, and their sense of trust and continuity as well. Here and there, however, there is already a hint of coming decline amidst the plenty—trials for murder and vehicular manslaughter, alcoholism, fires that scorch and bring to ruin stately, gated mansions, and a quest on the part of some families to send their children northward to learn a trade in the event of worst case, financial scenarios.

Might as well stick to Miami Beach. There, along the Strip, as the main drag is called, one can find affordable rooms fronting the beaches and the palm trees – even a site once termed the Dunes, after its grand brown camel with a Beduoin-like statuary atop, that colorfully fronts the lighted entryway to the modest motel. Across the Strip, in plain view, there are plentiful eateries of ethnic and not-so-ethnic design—from traditional steak and hamburger outlets to those with abundant Pu Pu Platters, seafood, and an almost exact replica of a fabled New York delicatessen. Everything is as exclusive or inclusive as you want it to be, and the hazy warmth of the Atlantic manages to engender a mood that inhabits an interstitial spot situated somewhere between glitz and utter astonishment.

Fortunately, for most of the rest of us, Florida is a place that is always larger than it used to be.