It's no wonder I am confused and cynical

Yesterday I reminisced about my childhood... well, pre-teen and teen years. Some of them. Most of them. Anyway, in the magic that is synchronicity, I came across this story about missing manholes in North Miami Beach, FL. I didn't go searching for this story, it just happened to catch my eye in a sidebar as I was reading a rather old Dave Barry column about his daughter. As usual, it was humorous and poignant and showed how children are so much more adult than adults are.

I digress. North Miami Beach, FL is my adopted home town. It should be Farmingdale, NY where I spent the first 9 ¹/₂ years of my miserable life. And I would say that, except I wasn't born there (there was no hospital there then and so I was born in Copaigue, NY) so I had no subliminal ties to the town. My formative years were all spent in, or near, North Miami Beach.

Now, North Miami Beach has no beach but is north of Miami and west of Sunny Isles, where the closest beach actually is. It is actually north of North Miami but I suppose they rejected North North Miami as a name when they split up the original town which was once called Fulford By The Sea which also didn't have a beach because it was all west of the Intracoastal Waterway. So they annexed a place called Sunny Isles which was on the ocean (and, therefore, did have a beach) which they later un-annexed, leaving North Miami Beach without a beach. All of this happened long before I was born (back up there in New York) but there were any number of reminders in fountains, park and school names, and the like.


What NMB (as we soon learned to call it) did have was shady opportunists who sold a lot of low land to northerners. I think they also ran the town which set the pattern for city government. So I am not overly surprised about the story of the Manhole Mystery. My bet... even the manholes are missing, a prospect hinted at in the story.

I love the subtitle...

"Police are investigating the case of missing utility tunnels in North Miami Beach. Meanwhile, the city manager was fired for unrelated reasons."

As you read the story, you find that no one seems to be available for comment. Another thing I am not surprised about. And if the police are anything like the ones who were there when I was a teen then I don't expect they'll ever get to the bottom of that Manhole Mystery.