My "Mob" Memories. . .

The Miami Herald has an article today on "Vegas Celebrates Its Mob Roots" with two new "gangsta" attractions. Reading it took me back to my "mob" experiences in the late fifties.

Pre-Castro, my pr firm represented Cuba's famed Tropicana Nightclub in the US. Those were the days when all Havana's casinos were mob controlled.

Post-Castro, I was hired to do publicity for a very upscale new motel on Miami Beach's Gold Coast. (See picture postcard of Motel Row in this era.) I was vaguely aware that The Aristocrat, as it was called, was owned by mob VIP, Meyer Lansky, who had also owned the Tropicana, but my dealings were only with Mike Wassell, the resort's very gentlemanly front man. The government, propelled by Senator Estes Kefauver, was after Lansky in those days and was attempting to try him in a Hollywood (FL) courtroom, but according to the Miami papers, Meyer was in a local hospital and much too sick to appear.

I came home from visiting my client one day and remarked to my husband that Lansky wasn't sick in the hospital. I had just seen him, playing gin rummy, as usual, in the back office at The Aristocrat. My husband, who was a New York boy, and more savvy about such things than I, said "Joan, you saw no one." When I protested, he said "Believe me.You saw no one."

I was aware that whenever Lansky was at the resort a great bear of a man we called Philly was always around, seemingly as his body guard. The older men called him Farvel, but he was always very nice to me in a grandfatherly kind of way. The resort's social director was a popular young stand-up commedian named Bobby Collins and he and I became great friends. Bobby later became a very successful criminal attorney.

I was young and cute (you'll have to believe me on that!) and one day a male guest was really annoying me. Philly came over to ask me if the guy was bothering me. Before I could say anything, Bobby rushed over and assured Philly that he wasn't. As Philly walked away, Bobby whispered to me "Never tell Philly someone is bothering you. Are you looking to get the guy's legs broken??"

That evening my mother and dad were visiting from New York and I was telling them the story over dinner. My dad said, "Did you say they call him Farvel???" When I said yes, he got visibly upset. "Oh my God, Joan," my father sputtered,"Farvel is Murder Inc.'s executioner! That's the mob's killer you're friendly with."

I guess my dad knew what he was talking about,because in 1961,the cut up body of nice grandfatherly Philly, aka Little Farvel, was found floating in a steel drum in a local rock pit. Apparently, somebody didn't like something he did.

So much for my life with the "mob". Let's face it, I've had some interesting clients over the years. Wouldn't have missed all those crazy memories for the world.

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A walk down Memory Lane. . .

He lived to be 100, this strange, odd man who "mesmerized generations of paying customers from 1947 to 1983 by extracting venom from deadly snakes at his Miami Serpentarium as a spine-tingling Florida attraction".

The quotation marks are from the Miami Herald's front page story this morning reporting that legendary Bill Haast had died of natural causes in his home on Florida's west coast. I finished reading the article and picked up the phone to call my friend Marilyn to reminisce. We handled publicity for Bill Haast and his Serpentarium in the early '60s. It was an unforgettable experience,ranging from trying to secure a prosthetic leg for a three-legged Galapagos turtle so it could mate, to sitting gingerly in auditoriums with a straw basket full of non-poisonous (I prayed!) snakes on my lap at speaking engagements with Haast's wife Clarita.

When I started writing this blog in 2009, I wrote a short piece about one of my favorite memories of Marilyn's and my efforts for the Serp as we referred to it. The fact that both of us were scared to death of snakes and not too crazy about large lizzards and other crawly creatures, did not keep us from enjoying the more than one year we worked for this one-of-a-kind man who truly believed in the curative properties of snake venom. According to the paper today, he was bitten a total of 172 times in his efforts to prove it.

Herewith, one of my favorite Haast memories, from my blog written in April 2009. . .

Like the time when I represented the Miami Serpentarium and we discovered that the markings on the hood of the very dangerous King Cobra looked exactly like the “eye” of the CBS logo. My colleague Marilyn and I decided to dub it the “Cronkite Cobra” after the venerable CBS newscaster, Walter Cronkite. A quick call to the news department at the local CBS TV station and we were off and running. One small problem. The cobra only flared his hood when he was angry or when Bill Haast, the famed snake man and owner of the Serp, was attempting to extract venom from the deadly creature. Actually, that made the creature pretty angry also.

When the TV cameraman sent by the station realized he would have to lie on his stomach to get a good view of the cobra as he reared up towards Haast’s outstretched hand, he panicked and admitted he was deathly afraid of snakes. We assured him that so were we, but that Haast had it totally under control. Then we stepped back. . far back. . and prayed that things would go well. Fortunately, the snake obliged and we got national coverage, including an on-air comment from Cronkite himself. That was a real winner and the client loved us..

PR is a different game these days, a lot more serious, and not half as much fun. Bill Haast was just one of a long list of quirky clients over the past fifty years.
But it did make me sad to hear of his passing.

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Dr. David Fairchild. . .here I come!

Have I mentioned I was an English major in college? I read a lot of Shakespeare and can still parse a sentence, but I avoided science and math classes like the plague. That's what made my day on Saturday such an anomaly.

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens insists that all volunteers take a one time intensive botany class. Saturday's began at 9:30am and lasted until 4pm, with a half hour off for a quick lunch. I went with a slight chip on my shoulder. I can barely pronounce photosynthesis, much less care how it occurs. So far, no one on any of my tram tours has asked me to explain the difference between dicotlyledons and monocotyledons, so why waste a good Saturday, I wondered.

I stand corrected. It was a fascinating experience. I partnered up with an old friend named Diane, and together we were unstoppable on the Scavenger Hunt through the Arid Garden and the Rain Forest, identifying and classifying the plants pictured on sheets of colored photos everyone received. Favorite answer from one of our classmates to the question, "This plant can reproduce asexually because it is both male and female. Why would that be beneficial?" Her response:"It could answer its own ad on Match.com."

You get the picture that the class was not all serious stuff. However, we did learn an incredible amount about plants and how they reproduce. We created slides from a slice of onion that we then viewed under a microscope to help us understand cell structure. And we carefully dissected flowers to identify their parts with little hand-held magnifying glasses. My partner Diane became so obsessed with the ovaries of a lilly she was dissecting, I had to literally drag her away to the next project. (See accompanying photo of Diane dissecting.)

I'm not quite qualified to call myself a botanist from one day in the classroom, but I find I still really enjoy learning. Rather than a wasted day, it gave me a whole new view of this fabulous botanical garden that has added a new dimension to my life. (Thank you, Benard, for introducing me to this place.)

OK, so I've become a volunteer junkie. I admit it. But how many of you out there know the difference between a dicot and a monocot plant cell? Now, if someone on my tram tour will just ask me. . . .

I'm in love. . .

I'm back from getting acquainted with Grayson Max Anker, my new (and only) great grandson. It is easy to understand why his grandmother (that's my daughter Andrea) is totally besotted with this adorable little guy who is already very much his own person. Not surprizingly, I'm pretty crazy about him myself.

When you are just 5 1/2 weeks old, everything you do is a "first". . .first visit to Home Depot to buy a new kitchen fixture. . first dinner out at a restaurant (TGI Friday's)with Mom, Dad, Grandma and Great Grandma. Grayson was so impressed with this significant event he slept through the entire meal.

To be honest, I've forgotten what it's like to hold an infant in my arms. My last experience was 32 years ago with Grayson's daddy. I know one thing. If some entrepreneur could figure out a way to bottle the delicious scent of a baby, they could make a fortune.

I am mind boggled at how easy and casual both Amy and Adam are in handling the baby. I can assure you that in my day husbands didn't change diapers, make formula and casually burp their little ones while simultaneously checking their iphone for text messages and keeping track of a baseball game on the TV. At least my husband of the moment didn't and I'm pretty sure none of my friends' mates did either. It's a different,and more equal,world these days. And I think it's great.

I took a few thousands photos of Grayson during the four days I was getting to know him. He is major adorable and you are right, I am totally biased. That's my job. And I can tell already, I'm going to do it well.

Take a look at the accompanying photo of three generations of Spector/Ankers. The one in the middle is Grayson.
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