Wise Words from a Wise Little Monster in Miami

Because sometimes the places we hope to visit, only exist in our memories…

Here’s how a nostalgic trip to Miami helped me appreciate VHS movies, family fishing trips, and all the other things of my childhood.

“Why don’t you just stay?” Asks the woman with the kind eyes and the sympathetic smile. “Why don’t you just stay?” And so begins the story of the rest of Raimund Gregorius’ life in the film Night Train to Lisbon, based on the novel by Swiss author Pascal Mercier, in which a bored teacher has a chance encounter with a mystery woman who will forever change both of their lives. Along the way, he befriends an optician named Mariana, the one with the kind eyes and sympathetic smile, and as his journey in Lisbon comes to an end, she poses the question we all face whenever we travel to a different place that makes our heart content. The kind of places that enlighten us and make us feel something – complete or alive perhaps – places that for whatever reason seem more appealing than the one from which we came.

“Why don’t you just stay?”

It’s tempting, but I won’t keep you here. Miami is only the beginning.

Travel begins in the mind. In the warm nostalgic memories of favorite places we once visited and loved and in the excitement of dreaming about all the new places we’d hope to see and explore.

Today we arrive in Miami and I hope to be able to retrace my past….where I had been, who I had met, and somehow relive every experience. I find that the soul of Miami never changes although its landscape often reinvents itself, leaving some of our favorite places only faintly alive in our memories.

On this trip, I hope to find the old taxidermy store at Bayside Marketplace. The one where you walk in past the monstrous stuffed bear, ogle the razor-sharp alligator teeth, and dig through crates of rainbow-colored mineral stones, making sure to duck past the large antlers near the exit.

I hope to visit Flea Market USA on my old block if only for a spin on the Chuck E. Cheese chair ride and a peek at the (now illegal) tiny red-eared slider turtles that, unbeknownst to parents, spread Salmonella bacteria to turtle-obsessed children everywhere.

I hope to take that ride up Florida State Road A1A – in the backseat of course for old times sake – and look out of the side window because all of the buildings look tallest that way.

I hope to take a look at the old hotels whose lights twinkle, windows glow, and musical melodies waft out onto the street amongst the chatter of lively guests.

I hope to drive to and park under Bal Harbor Bridge then walk along the long concrete wall that, even several decades later, I still can’t see over.

I hope to walk out onto the jetty where I’d spend so many nights sitting in a small folding chair, wrapped in a blanket, reading a book, while my parents debated with boisterous strangers about Fidel Castro, rehashed sexist jokes from the Spanish-language variety show, Sabado Gigante, drank their Budweisers, and reeled in fish of many colors and sizes.

I hope to visit the jetty at night because that’s the only way you get to see the moon play with the waves as they slap against the surrounding rocks and the salty seawater splashes on your face.

I hope to look up and see a swooping pelican attempting to steal his next meal.

I hope to walk around and notice the water-filled chips and craters on the concrete walkway, being careful not to trip any of the fishing lines of the regulars who gather there with their daily bait, shouting and egging each other on to catch “the big one!”

And I hope to end the trip as I have so many times before, at Sundays on the Bay, with a basket of fried shrimp and french fries, while looking out over the parade of boats lined up along the length of the Haulover Marina.

When you leave a place and later come back to it, you expect to find things as they were and hope that not much has changed. On this particular trip, we quickly realize that our hopes have been dashed. 

Like my childhood home, Sundays on the Bay has disappeared. If you looked closely at the dry patch of land that now covers the area, you could see the imprint – a least for a little while longer – of the structure that once stood in its place. The restaurant had been renamed on numerous occasions, swapped owners often, and nearly landed in the hands of drug dealers that intended to use it for money laundering schemes until the federal government stepped in. Hurricane Wilma then wore it down and squatters took up residence. And finally in 2008, flanked by over 100 Miami-Dade firefighters, this place whose fried shrimp I’ve had a strong habitual liking for since the early 1980s…this place where I’d sit with my legs dangling over the water; this place where I’d bob my head up and down as a cover band on the floating stage rocked out to Miami Sound Machine’s Conga…burned to the ground in a massive fire.

I estimate the exact the spot where our favorite table used to be and we sit there at the edge of the water for a while.

With nothing left to lose, I decide that I wanted to search for another one of my favorite places. We drive around the general vicinity of where I thought I had left it but, much like the days of VHS tapes, it too was long gone. I had hoped to follow my old Saturday night routine of taking the drive with my dad to Flagler Video.

Today, any old darkened strip mall parking lot would have done the trick to cure my nostalgia. And so we park the car and I imagine for a bit what it would be to re-experience the unbuckling of my seatbelt and the sudden excitement of rushing out of the car, pushing past the glass door covered in oversized movie posters, and the jingle of bells on the door as I dash toward a towering wall of all my favorite movies: Splash (1984), Big (1988), Batman (1989) and – gasp! What is this? A new one? On the cover of the nearly 1 inch thick plastic case was a heavily made-up, blue faced, young Howie Mandel and the title: Little Monsters. A movie about an entire world of children-turned-monsters that live under our bed, play all day, and have lots of fun. Boy, do I remember that movie – and the clerk at the counter who kindly reminds me to always rewind.

But tonight there is no video store. No VHS tape. No posters. No jingle. Only a dim street lamp, our lonely rental car and – if I keep dragging you to places that no longer exist – the possibility that you might kick me out of the car and hit the power locks.

Nostalgia has one main and deliberate side effect: disappointment.

I am suddenly reminded of a poignant scene in the movie Little Monsters. In an attempt to save his little brother Eric (an adorable and tiny Ben Savage), his older brother Brian (tough-talking, fluffy-haired Fred Savage) gathers a few friends to help him defeat the bullies that have held his brother captive in the underworld of little monsters. As they huddle together ready for battle, Brian’s friends curiously watch as he sets the alarm on his wristwatch. “When this goes off we have 3 to 5 minutes. If we’re not out before sunrise, we turn into monsters.”

The kids rescue little Eric and head up the staircase that leads to the darkened opening underneath their bed, except this time their heads thud against long wooden floorboards. The sun has risen over Massachusetts and their gateway to reality has been shut. As much fun as it had been spending time with their new monster friend Maurice (Howie Mandel) they realized sometimes you just need to go back home.

They rush from one stairway to the next seeking for that place where the sun would still be sleeping. They travel from New York City to Death Valley and everywhere in between until they finally reach Los Angeles, where a small gap existed underneath a man snoring on a Malibu beach chair.

A tearful and gut wrenching good-bye between best friends ensues then Brian echoes our very own sentiment, “I wish I could stay.” Maurice attempts to sway Brian’s decision. He downplays the fact that Brian’s arm briefly shrunk down to a lump of fabric and, how given more time, he too may succumb to little monsterhood.

“Don’t worry about that. You’ll sleep that off. Nothing is permanent unless you get trapped down here, bud.

Wise words… from a wise little monster.

While we won’t be turning into monsters any time soon, it is best to recognize that a little daydreaming and reminiscing are good mood lifters, but in high doses, nostalgia can be dangerous.

Author and historian, Stephanie Coontz detailed in The New York Times article, Beware of Social Nostalgia, the circumstance of Civil War doctors that diagnosed 5,000 soldiers with a bad case of nostalgia, to the extent that, Army bands couldn’t even play the song “Home, Sweet Home.” Seventy four of them died from the affliction.

Some day (even soon) we may come back to Miami. We must…because as Pascal Mercier’s philosophical character, Amadeu de Prado, reminds us in the film Night Train to Lisbon, “We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”

For now, I have just what I need to move on.

There are more places to see, more people to meet. But enough talk…roll down the windows and crank up the radio, will ya’? I think I hear the Talking Heads singing “Road to Nowhere.”

Closing credits of LITTLE MONSTERS (1989; Davis Entertainment/ United Artists). Brian, Eric, and friends rush the beach at sunrise as Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere” plays.