Month: August 2016

“We the People of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.”

In my 8^th grade American History class, we had to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution, and recite it to the class. I can mostly still do it.

Peter has recently read several books on the U.S. Constitution. And we have been talking about what we know, and what we don’t know and what we probably used to know but don’t quite remember. When the news people say First amendment or Fourth amendment, I think, ”OK, which one was that?“

Here’s a little reminder. “We the People”, not the legislature or the educated, or the wealthy, or the king or the president, but “We, the people “are the real sovereigns and are setting up a form of self-government that ensures that all people are treated fairly under the law. Of course now we know that wasn’t exactly true and in the nineteenth century, we fought a Civil War that tested our nation mightily. The nation held. But it might have healed more quickly if President Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated shortly after the War ended. So we are still struggling here well into the 21^st century.

In 1789, the Constitution was amended by a Bill of Rights based on comments made during the ratification process. I guess the thought was that despite being inherent in the document and in the ratification process, they really needed to be enumerated. For example, freedom of speech and the right to assemble and the right to petition the government were instrumental to the creation and ordainment of the Constitution. Here’s the not so short version of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution:

1. No establishment of religion, no abridgement of freedom of speech and the right to assemble peaceably and petition the government for redress of grievances.
2. The right of the people to keep and bear arms.
3. In peacetime no soldier quartered in any house without the consent of the owner.
4. Right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
5. Right to not be held for any crime without an indictment by a Grand Jury, nor be held for any offense twice, or compelled to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.
6. In all criminal prosecutions, the right to a speedy and public trial.
7. In common law suits, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.
8. No excessive bail, or fines or cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
9. The enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People.
10. The powers not relegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the People.

In order to protect the minority, the amendment process was designed so that the Constitution could not easily be changed by an ambitious single-issue majority. The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress or a Constitutional Convention called for by two-thirds of the State Legislatures. Ratification is by the legislature or by ratifying convention of at least three-fourths of the states. In recent years the Equal Rights Amendment failed largely because people did not want women drafted. Now women voluntarily volunteer for the Armed Forces.

A lesson in unintended consequences ensued with the ratification of the 18^th Amendment in January of 1920. It soon became evident that a law meant to encourage temperance instead encouraged intemperance and excess. The law had made the problem of alcohol abuse worse. People were drinking more. State revenue fell because of no liquor taxes. Income tax increased to make up for the shortfall and never decreased when the law was repealed. (Well, it wouldn’t, would it?) Corruption in federal and state agents set up to monitor things was rampant. Bootlegging and speakeasies were everywhere even or especially in Key West. Sloppy Joe’s was famously a speakeasy for a time in the 20’s.

One has to be careful when solving problems. Solutions can turn out to be worse than the problem. The Constitution was probably not the best place for this experiment. The 18^th amendment was repealed in the early thirties by the 21^st Amendment.

Then there was the separate but equal problem that came to a head when I was a child. I think World War II really awakened a generation. Our parents held to the old ways of separate but equal, but the children of the fifties did not quite understand the concept of separate drinking fountains. We would secretly drink from both. I played with the maid’s daughter across the street until my mother told me I was doing nothing wrong, but the neighbors might talk. None of it made sense. The Civil Rights movement ensued. We have come a long way and have a ways to go still.

What was begun in the arguments between the drafters of the Constitution in 1787 continued with the Thirteenth Amendment (abolished slavery), Fourteenth (persons born or naturalized in the United States are full citizens,) Fifteenth (the right to vote shall not be denied based on race, color or previous servitude), Nineteenth (women’s suffrage), and Twenty-fourth (no poll taxes). In a way it was summarized in the mid-Nineteenth Century when President Abraham Lincoln gave this address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ”all men are created equal.”

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died, that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow this ground – The Brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

 

When I was young in the mid fifties, during the summers we would get out our canvas folding camp chairs after supper and a good group of us would head down to the trailer park on United Street a few blocks from our neighborhood. Most nights they would show a movie on their outdoor large movie screen. I guess in retrospect it was for the residents of the trailer park, but no one ever seemed to mind us kids showing up. We called it The Free Show. The movies were mostly old and B-rated. We probably went mostly for something to do and the popcorn and sodas, which they were glad to sell us. We would get home around ten or so. I marvel today that we were allowed by our parents to do that. Back then it was considered safe enough to allow kids to explore and taste their environment. On the way home, we would stop to see if the Night Blooming Cereus Cactus on the corner was blooming, and we were thrilled when it was. Some of these species only bloom once a year for one night. I think this was one of them.

We children of the fifties had intimate connections with the flora and fauna in our play environs. We were hardly ever inside and when outside almost always exploring. There were many tropical fruit trees in our neighborhood. Spanish Limes were a favorite. There was a huge Spanish Lime tree down the street. In August we would climb the tree and collect bagfuls. You cracked the skin of the lime with your teeth. It came off easily and you would suck on the seed pulling the flesh off and spit the seed out. They were rather tart especially if we picked them too early, which we were want to do. Mom would ask, “How are the Spanish Limes?” We would say, “Sweet as sugar” as we puckered our mouths. Our mothers hated them as they left large brown stains on all our clothes. The best place to eat them was in the ocean. Those trees were all over the island back then. But sadly not so today, too many have been cut down.

In the vacant lot across the street was a large tamarind tree. It had 4 inch pods that cracked open easily revealing a brown fruit that we would suck on. It was rather sour. We didn’t do it too often, only when we could think of nothing else to do. In our own yard, we had a Guava Tree. My Aunt Nellie would gather the fruit when they came in and make Guava Duff and there was a Sugar Apple tree. The Sugar Apple had a segmented skin, and I remember it had a white flesh surrounding each big black seed. Both those trees are long gone. The Tamarind tree also. The vacant lot it was in has a huge house on it.

Down the block there were two Barbados Cherry trees. Not too large so the fruit was easy to pick. One was in Mrs. Hood’s yard. We had to knock on the door and ask permission to get those. They were really good and worth the trouble. The other tree we just took from. It was near the street and I guess we thought fair game.

In my friend’s yard there was a large Sapodilla tree. I remember eating one once, and never did that again. It’s a wonder that we didn’t poison ourselves. Someone must have told us they were edible. And they were, just not by me.

In the yard next door was a Sour Orange tree. My Mother would marinate a pork roast in the juice and use some juice in the gravy. The oranges had lots of seeds. I guess most wild fruit does. It’s gone too, people buying houses, fixing them up, adding new landscaping. I was horrified to find the tree gone which was not too long ago.

Of course Key Lime trees were all over. Our mothers made pies. We kids would pick them off the trees and peel them and eat them. That ended when my mother told us to stop because the acid was wearing the enamel off our teeth.

Coconut trees were also ubiquitous, several if not more in most yards. The brown coconuts that had just fallen off a tree, we would bounce on the asphalt street until they started to come apart and then with brute strength peel the husk off the coconut. You could then punch some holes in the soft eyes of the baseball-sized seed and drink the coconut milk. Then you could break open the nut and eat the white meat, which didn’t come too easily off the nut, or shred the meat for use in baking. One summer we kids opened a whole bunch of coconuts and put them in our little red wagons to sell. I don’t remember making any money off the endeavor. But we probably learned a lesson in supply and demand.

As we got older, we kids moved from Monroe County (now Higgs Beach) over to the other side of the White Street Pier and started exploring Rest Beach, which at that time was abandoned, overgrown with weeds and pretty raw, a daring adventure into the wild. What child of the fifties could resist. There is a postcard picture in the Florida Archives. It is undated; I think it must have been pre-war. It was not that way when I was exploring the risky unknown.  After consulting with the Key West Historian at the library, I learned the Rest Beach name was first mentioned in tourist blurbs advertising cabanas in the late thirties; cabanas being places to rest from the hot sun.  The cabanas might have been washed away by the hurricane in 1948.

In the early fifties Navy Housing was on the corner of White Street and Atlantic Boulevard. I remember it being a number of rows of attached units. The children attended Truman Elementary School also, and I remember having school friends who lived there: 75 units for Officers and their families.

Further down the beach, there must have been a garbage dump for the city in the late 19th, early 20^th century. After the hippies had invaded Key West in the 60’s a lot of people started digging up the beach and unearthing and collecting old bottles. One house even made a fence with them (State of Florida Archives/McDonald).

Then, when in my very early twenties and teaching school, one of my friends had a sailboat and on a Sunday afternoon we were sailing along Rest Beach. Often we would jump ship and swim and snorkel. I remember stepping on or startling a small sand shark about two feet long. He scooted, but he must have scared me enough that I remember it, although they are really pretty innocuous.  Picture (Archives of Florida/McDonald).

Today, along Rest Beach next to the White Street Pier, there is a park. The Navy Housing on the other side of Atlantic Boulevard was torn down years ago. There are well used lighted Bocce Ball Courts with bleachers and parking there now and team competition is fierce. The League has a neat web page. It’s at www.southernmostbocce.org ; the names of the teams alone are fun to read. Click on teams at the bottom.

Now, there are oceanfront 3-4 story condos along a lot of Atlantic Boulevard cutting off the view and breeze from the houses on the other side of the road. Once the city had offered to sell the beach land to the residents along Atlantic for I think about $200,000, a lot of money in the 70’s. The residents tried to get everyone to pony up in splitting the cost evenly among them. So what were the chances of that succeeding? It didn’t. Most of the citizens didn’t think the beach could be built on anyhow. So the condos were built much to the consternation of many.

There is a path in front of the condos along Atlantic, which is much used by bicyclists, runners, and walkers. It is a pathway to Smathers Beach, the scene of the crime, and a whole nother blog.