"Letters from Heaven" Miami 1960's

[lilabner]

We lived on 122 st just east of Palmetto..Mom walked through the woods every day, where the Temple is now..late 50's early 60's

[BUIZILLA]

my blowboat days ended in my late teens, I now own 3 Donzi's and a 302 Scarab.... I just may get a Bullet, Allison or Triton if my latest Donzi experiment doesn't pan out...

JH

[lilabner]

Cool boats..I've got a 33 Oceanhawk with ETECs and a 22 Velocity with a Monte V8 on it..Maybe we will cross paths out there someday..You can't miss a yellow Velocity..
Butch

[velox]

I have a pretty good scrap book from Miami boat races back then.
Problem is, I am in Utah for my annual ski trip. My trip goes from mid December until mid April.
If you have not found out who the trophy belongs to by then I will try and see if I have the newspaper results whrn I get back to Florida

[velox]

How many of the old Miami guys remember the Bikini Club?
This was an old 100' long abandoned work boat. Some guys drug it over to the sand flats, off the end of Key Biscayne and sunk it. They made a 24/7 bar out of it. It was no mans land, as there was no police or other offical governmental representation. The Booze flowed and food such as hamburgers were served. Sometimes you could even get fresh lobster!
Back then the two piece bathing suit was considered risque'. Any girs that wore a Bikini got free drinks. Needless to say a lot of wild activity went on.
Everybody that went boating stopped there including government officials.
For a couple of years they just had a blind eye and looked the other way to let it stay in business. I even saw Aranow there a couple of times. Once he had just won an offshore race in Key West. He and a couple of other off shore boats stopped by. Of course while drinking, a discussion came up as to how fast the off shore boats were. I challanged them to a race with our twin merc 1000 powered Glastron. They all claimed to be able to go 80 + MPH and our Glastron with stock lower units would only go 64 MPH. Al lof you outboard guys will appreciate that I blew them away. I don't think any of them could go over 60 back then.
I have a lot of other Bikini club stories, but can't tell them on the forum.
Maybe when we have an oldtimers get together we can exchange some of than information.
The Bikini Club only operated for about 2 years, but it became famous for years after it closed!

[moparbarn]

velox, thanks for your offer, but someone wanted that worse than i did. tried to check the miami herald online, but they only go back to '82. i remember the bikini club, but never went there, i was only 10 or 12 at the time. i can recall my parents, the swings, and the harrisons talking about it-and going there. anybody remember the harrisons? mo and mae(?). lived on 97th or 98th, east of the blvd. owned m.r. harrison construction-had 2 sons mo jr. and mike, i think. they were members of c.r.y.c. . i know when we fished south bay or featherbed area, my dad would cruise by the bikini club. not stop, just point it out, as long as my mom wasn't with us. now that 2us70 mentions it, i do remember looking at the fake 12 cyl up at maule lake, and seeing the upper cowling empty. has anyone heard from lee emerson, doug and wayne coyner or the sextons lately? after i moved to tallahassee, i ran into the sextons one time up there. i had stopped at mcdonalds for breakfast, on the way to go fishing. look over, and there is mark and and the middlebrother(not paul) in the parking lot. they were in town for paul's wedding. must have been 74 or 75. last time i saw them. how about ronnie russell, or did he drop off the face of the earth also?

AIRWALK

[lilabner]

John Harrison ran M R Harrison in the late sixtys early 70's. His wife Crutcher was on the school board..They lived in the Pinecrest area..he had a 13 car garage filled with Cords and other neat old stuff..most of which were antique outboards and boats..You can find an earlier thread on him by searching..At that time he was considered to be the antique outboard authority in the US..After he died his large collection was either loaned or given to the City of Miami..they have displayed it a few times at different places. He was a really neat person, great to talk to..He also had a collection of racing lower units hanging in the rafters..had 29 of them I think. They lived around SW 126 st east of 67 ave.

[moparbarn]

the harrisons i am talking about lived on the sw corner of 97th or 98th st and ne 12th ave-miami shores. our families were very good freinds. he didn't have any racing connections that i'm aware of. you have to be talking about a brother of his i didn't know. mr harrison construction was named for him- at least the m part-his name (or nickname) was mo. this was earlier 60's. his sons were older than me by about 5 or 6 years-more my sister's age. also stokes was probably wrong (oldtimers disease), stocks sounds right. this is all a looong time ago-and a lot of brain cells later. like i have said, i left miami in 72, and lost contact with most everybody when i moved. anybody have any pictures of mike gordon in any of his "fish peddler" sk's. i can still remember him keeping some of them hanging on davits behind his house, next to the restaurant off 79th st. when he wanted to go play, he would just lower them down, and off he went.

AIRWALK

[2us70]

It does look like Ronnie Russel has indeed fallen over the edge of the earth. I think after leaving the Navy he had a complete lifestyle change. He and I had little in common after that and we just lost touch. I also lost touch with his dad when he moved to Central Florida. Most of my early education in boat racing came from Brooke Russel and I probably never thanked him for all he taught me. By the way Ronnie's Mom was one of the sweetest and most patient ladies I ever knew.

[BUIZILLA]

Lee Emerson is an accountant and still lives local, Sierra Club heavyweight, they HATE manatee's...
Wayne Coyner was the best man in my wedding, but had his own marital strife, and shot himself in the head a few years later... Doug moved to north Atlanta after he got married, then got divorced, I saw him a few times but lost touch in the early eighty's, no clue where he or the Sexton's are now... if you were a CRYC member and remember Ding Schoonmaker and his 28 Cary open cockpit??? he owned it since new in 1972, that boat is now mine as of today, a 35 year love affair brought together today, I am VERY patient ...

JH

[lilabner]

That's a beautiful older boat..when I worked for Holman-Moody Marine we had 2 of them to work on..one belonged to Jim Kimberly (Kleenex) and one belonged to Buck Fulp..both famous sports car racers..both had 427 power...This was 68-70 era..

[velox]

the harrisons i am talking about lived on the sw corner of 97th or 98th st and ne 12th ave-miami shores. our families were very good freinds. he didn't have any racing connections that i'm aware of. you have to be talking about a brother of his i didn't know. mr harrison construction was named for him- at least the m part-his name (or nickname) was mo. this was earlier 60's. his sons were older than me by about 5 or 6 years-more my sister's age. also stokes was probably wrong (oldtimers disease), stocks sounds right. this is all a looong time ago-and a lot of brain cells later. like i have said, i left miami in 72, and lost contact with most everybody when i moved. anybody have any pictures of mike gordon in any of his "fish peddler" sk's. i can still remember him keeping some of them hanging on davits behind his house, next to the restaurant off 79th st. when he wanted to go play, he would just lower them down, and off he went.

My wife's stepdad was Andy Ferendino. AIRWALK

Andy was senior partrner in the largest architectual firm in the south.
Mo Harrison of MR Harrison Construction, was one of his buddies.
Andy used to have a gin rummy game at his house and Mo would come over then and to many of the parties Andy used to have.
Even though Andy had nothing to do with boats, several of the better known racers also attend these games from time to time. Lew Kohler was there often.
Butch AKA Lilabner, talked about Holman Moody in an earlier post. Denny Phipps of Kentucky derby fame owned HM. Lew was drving Denny's SK boat at the Miami Outboard Club one day when I told Lew I had never been over 100 MPH on the water. He said jump in and we can correct that problem. Lew took me over the Century mark and I owe him one! Lew is dead now, but I will never forget that day. To a lot of you guys 100 is nothing, but this was in the early 60's and that was considered fast. The best I ever did in an outboard was in the low 90's

[Jeff_G]

My family moved to Bird and 102 when 107th Ave. was the edge of the glades. Only thing further west was the old Tamiami Airport, where they were flying old warbirds, Pipers and Cessnas, and Sweetwater with the wood bridge and the circus midgets.
My first introduction to any racing was an old classmates dad raced stock outboards and after the big war surplus duck boats came through the canals to clean out the weeds he would test his boats in the canal behind his house. We would take one of his boats every day and paddle by hand across the canal to and from school. Saved a lot of walking. Miami when it was paradise.

[velox]

My family moved to Bird and 102 when 107th Ave. was the edge of the glades. Only thing further west was the old Tamiami Airport, where they were flying old warbirds, Pipers and Cessnas, and Sweetwater with the wood bridge and the circus midgets.
My first introduction to any racing was an old classmates dad raced stock outboards and after the big war surplus duck boats came through the canals to clean out the weeds he would test his boats in the canal behind his house. We would take one of his boats every day and paddle by hand across the canal to and from school. Saved a lot of walking. Miami when it was paradise.

I learned to fly at the Old Tamiami airport. Not too many remember it now.
In my late teens .The Sweetwater bar was a wild, cowboy hangout. It was no-mans territory and was ruled by an outlaw/Sheriff named Jack Knight.
He would rule with an iron hand, kick your ass if it pleased him and toss you in an old chiken coop-jail to rot.
One Night around midnight, a group of guys and I got chased by Knight . He caught everyone but me. I ran around the bar and jumped into the Tamiami canal and swam across . Once across I got to the swamp across highway 41 and ran, swam and slogged my way back to the out skirts of Miami.
Along HW 41 , that was just east of the Palmetto Expressway.
All night long Knight went up and down the highway in his car with a searchlight looking for me! How I got 5 miles through the swamp without getting bit by a snake or gator , I will never know.
Got home around 4 AM climbed into a window and showered and washed my clothes about 10 times. Never got all the mud out of them and threw them away!
Miami was paradise back then and how we lived through it I will never understand.

[Jeff_G]

On the east side of the airport were some long, low hangers. Behind the hangers they kept old military planes from WWII, Thunderbolts, P51, Texans etc. They used them for spare parts. Most had their wings removed, they all pointed towards the road. On the other side of the road was a horse farm. As kids we used those old planes like most climbed in jungle gyms. We "shot" every "German" horse there!

The cafe in Sweetwater, was run by an old fat woman that hated us kids. Used to charge us a nickel for a glass of water. A coke was only .12 cents then.

Got into a old shed there during the Cuban Missile Crisis and we found boxes of 50 caliber ammo. FBI sure was interested. All of us went home with pockets full!

Enough! Back to the boat stories!