In the 1940s I lived in Miami, Florida. Miami was an odd place then. (It is an odd place now, but in different ways.) In 1940 Miami was a diverse town in a mostly-Bible Belt state. "Jim Crow" laws prevailed, but the city was Southern and not-Southern at the same time. Many downtown shop-owners displayed signs indicating Spanish was spoken. Visits to and from Cuba were common. The nearby Seminole community pretty much kept to itself, but about twice a year a Seminole man visited my grandparent's shop to sell alligator hides. There was a large American-Jewish community, and a broad range of recent European immigrants who had left for the U.S. while they still could. There were churches and places of worship of every stripe. I don't remember if there were any local "blue laws." My little sister and I had visited the Hialeah race-track on a Sunday when the horses weren't running. Children weren't allowed where gambling was taking place. We had also visited a bustling casino with roulette wheels and "one-armed bandits" (slot machines). The casino was illegal anyway, so the law banning children wasn't necessarily enforced there. There was a more or less openly acknowledged "mob" presence.
My grandmother, who ruled our family, was born in Mississippi around 1883. Her parents had been well-to-do compared to most people in that place and time. She considered herself an aristocrat and looked down on that large percentage of humanity whom she believed ranked beneath her. She was also, in her opinion, very modern and up-to-date. She was pretentious, inadequately educated, extremely confident, very energetic, and hot-tempered. The phrase "hell on wheels" comes to mind.
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