My mom is Martha Chism, born Martha Nichols, in Ames, Iowa. He father was professor of Civil Engineering at Iowa State University in Ames. At one point he left the ivory tower and took up a position as chief engineer in the burgeoning little town of Miami. This would have been in the early 20's. Charles Nichols was his name. He was responsible for laying out the streets, the sewers, the airport, just about anything civil in the early Miami--upon which everything has been built since. The first Miami airport was named "Nichols Airport" in his honor. She has stories about prohibition in Miami, and racism in Miami. For instance, how some corrupting influences would "stop by their house" and just happen to leave whiskey at the back door, hoping to influence the chief engineer--and how Grandma would take it all and dump it down the drain before Grandpa got home. And the story about how Grandpa was out at some worksite and witnessed some foreman abusing a black workman and calling him--the 'n' word--and how Grandpa fired the foreman on the spot.

But my favorite of her stories is what happened shortly after the family arrived in Miami from Ames--following along some months after the dad arrived, started work, and prepared a place for the family. I expect it was about in 1926, when Mom was about 12 (get it exact later). They had house just a couple blocks from the beach--which was just an empty beach at the time, of course. A nice stout brick house. They were still getting to know their environs. Grandpa wouldn't let the kids range too far from the house alone just yet, as they didn't know what might be lurking there. One day a huge storm blew in. It was such a violent storm that they got scared and all huddled in a corner room of this brick house. The storm went on for about 12 hours. They'd never seen anything like it. Then all of a sudden the sky cleared, and it was beautiful and calm. They were amazed. They went outside to look around. They all decided to go together down to the beach, which was still completely novel to them, and look around. Coming the beach they ran across a pelican flopping around. It seemed to be injured. Mom's oldest brother, Sabin, took pity on it, and wanted to bring it home and nurse it back to health. Give it a box to live in till it got better. He apparently talked his folks into trying it. They picked up the injured pelican and...now what? Now you recall how Grandpa insisted that the family stick together....well, he didn't want to split up this family of 4 kids, and have them half at the beach and half at home, so he insisted that they all go back to the house together. Not sure what he was worried about. Well they had gone the few blocks back to the house, and were all just approaching the front steps when the OTHER side of the hurricane hit like a wall. It was all they could do to get inside and get the door closed. Of COURSE it was a hurricane. But they didn't know it. Nobody had ever told them about hurricanes. What if they had still been down on the beach? They huddled in the house for another 12 hours. Don't know what happened to the pelican.

W. Chism
By: placeandmemory