On another beach

Hey. What's going on here? Who's that at the edge of the beach lifting his leg like a puppy?

Me. I was 5. That was just 69 years ago. We lived in one of those white cottages on my left. You had to feed coins into the stove to make it work. That was a drag on our livelihood because my mother made "Mrs. Horner's famous Key Lime Pies" to help with the finances.

This was Florida. My father, who I think took this picture, was still working in New York and my mother, my sister Britt and I were in Florida for the winter.

I don't know whether my parents were separating or whether my mother was there for her health. She had been in a sanatorium in the Adirondacks with TB for more than a year when I was just a year or two old.

Rosalie took care of me when mom had TB. According to my mother, Rosalie told her before she was sick, "Mrs. Horner, you got the widest hips in all of Scarsdale."

We were kids and that always made us howl with laughter. I think my mother took what Rosalie said as a compliment, just as I expect it was intended.

Here's a shot of my mother - hips and all - taken that Florida winter. She must have been the best looking woman in the lime pie business on the Gulf that year. I can't remember how they tasted. My mother confided that she had never made one before we got there.

So how do you explain the "famous" on the posters that we used to walk up the road nailing to utility poles? My father was in advertising, that's how come.

(For more on my mother, see my August 18 post.)