1607-1675 36 Howard Kleinberg Fonds OLLIE TROUT'S TRAILER PARK
107th Ot. & Biscayne Blvd. ,
f5-.'`:) Miami, Florida.
Thursday Night, Feb. 25th, '737
Dear Grandpa,
Just a fey; lines to let you know how it goes with us.
I saw Yr. Fancoast, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Miami
Beach today. . .and he approves of the whole idea of a book on Miami
Peach. In fact he said that he would eventually have written one
himself if I hadn' t come along. He made an appointment with me for
.2.30 Saturday morning, at which time he is going to give me as much
information as he possibly can. He had been to Beach Haven and was
very much interested in the Lure of Long Beach. He knew Bert Engle
and I think the name of Mr. Lalorce and the fact that the Beck Ena-
ravinr Company did the plates and color printing in the Geographic
Magazine impressed him ver favorably. So the Miami Beach book idea
has been approved and berinninr tommorrow morning I am going to gather
all the material I can lay my hands on. I am naturally tickled to
death.
You would never recognize either Miami or Miami Beach,
both have gone up like a skyrocket. You never saw so many people or
^•,^h t,va,s. arr1 A;77v traffic in vou_ur life. It is like Atlantic City
and Coney Island and Fifth Avenue all rolled into one. There are so
- many huge new hotels that the old Edgewater Beach , for instance, is
literally swamped and dwarfed into an apartment house. Millions of
Kikes have monopolized all the beaches on the south part of the island,.
and many fine hotels bear signs NO GENTILES. . .how' s that for a hot one?.
The islands between Miami Beach and the mainland, which
used to be have sand and shells pumped out of Biscayne Bay are now
heavily covered with forests of palms and other tropical trees and
gorgeous mansions, with yachts riding at the docks in front of them
peep out from the verdure every few hundred feet.
I would not want to come here regularly on a bet, but this place
is undoubtedly one of the wonders of the modern world. America' s hivier
and the winter playground of the rich and the spenders in all walks of
life. Carl Fisher may be on the down grade through too much drinking,
but he certainly had a marvelous foresight when he envisioned such a
city for that mangrove island which was no more attractive than Mordeca
Island to begin with.
The stores here would pub many on the finest in the north to
shame. Sears, Loebuck has a skyscraper in Miami which is far and away
the best store in their whole nation-wide organization. All the New
York stores of prominence have branches here . Best and Company, Lady
Esther, Bonwit, Teller and scores of others are here. Jack Dempsey
has an enormous restaurant and he was sitting on the lawn as we passed
today. . .we were not ten feet away from him and you could not miss that
wavy black hair and lantern jaw.
We arrived here last night a little before six dclock after
spending two nights at Rockledge, where we were very nicely parked
behind your hotel on the property of a man by the name of W. C. Tuttle
who lived right behind the hotel property to' the south. Mother had a
nice visit with Martha and in the afternoon I took Mother and Gessner
out to Canaveral Beach pier. I baithd up a line for Gessner out on the
pier and, believe it or not, he caught two fish at once on his first
cast. They were whiting weighing about a pound apiece and he caught the
before his line had been in the water half a minute. I was a hundred
feet away from him when he hooked them, so he really caught them himsel
About half an hour ago a $15,000 trailer outfit pulled up be-
hind us. It belongs to the eon of the owner of the largest hotel in
imileef anlebu f ler weighs FIVE TONS and is towed by a specially
designed and built streamline International truck. The owner of this
outfit has taken it all over Europe and other parts of the world. It
has so many instruments on the dashboard that it looks like a tri-
motor airplane. It seems to be the owner' s hobby and he must have more
money than brains. He is twenty-nine years old and wears a Van Dyke
beard.
We are nc - camped in what is probably the finest trailer camp-
ground in America. Some 250 odd trailers are here now. Each trailerite
has a lot of his own, with running water and electric lights. Two palms
and two hibiscus bushes in bloom are on every lot. The cost is $5.50
per week. We are within the city limits, but about five miles from
the center of town. You can reach us here (at the address given at the
beginning of this letter) by letter or telephone until we leave, which
will certainly not be doin- for several weeks because the book idea
seems to be exactly right. And I might add, that if we put out the
kind of a book I want to . . •in the Miami of today its sale should be
phenomenal. I would not be surprised it the sale exceeds 100,000
before it is through, without exacreration.
Will write you later, but cannot exactly give you all the
news in one letter. The sun came out today after a rainy night and it
was as hot as blazes. We are keeping informed on all the doings up
nottbLby radio. It is wonderful and we are able, with the special
aerial WE have erected, td bring in all the stations we want, inclu-
ding the Philadelphia stations . All the Cuban and south American
stations come in like dynamite, because we are so near to them.
Hope you are all weel and happy. Mother and Gessner are
really enjoying trailer life, if I am any judge. We bough an awning
today, only several weeks old, but second-hand, from another trailer-
ite (from Ohio) , Which we have erected in front of the trailer door.
this keeps us cool on the sunny side during the day and we run the
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car under it at night. Well, goodnight and God be with you. Our
trip has been and will be very well worth while . Mother and Tessner
send their best love. The next letter will ccme from Mother and in
the meantime we hope that all goes well along the Potomac .
OALO .
ani 1 (.!) c,l, / °�-