Lift Off

Lift Off
NO KOOKS ALLOWED! - It is a tribute to my childhood and coming of age in Cocoa Beach, Fl. I grew up with a mafia last name in a port town during the Space Age raised by a strict Catholic rocket scientist, known as "The Music Man", one block from a bikini beach in a little place where legend says beautiful genies and/or Jesus granted our wishes. Disney was an hours drive in our turquoise blue metallic convertible. We ate red hibiscus flowers, the symbol of passion, fragility, and life, and avoided the "Devils Vine", papery bougainvillea whose attractive flowers hid dangerous thorns. We held parades for astronauts. Manatees were real life mermaids we tried to pet from our canoes. When it was cold we made out and mentally sparred with boys in baggies and Ron Jon shirts around a bonfire in the sand and drank Boonsfarm because it made our kisses taste like strawberries. When hurricanes threatened, we grabbed our boards and skinned our noses in the shore pound... sand in our hair. Then we learned. Tiki's, like our fathers, protected us from evil spirits. This collage is made from National Geographic magazines from 1968 and '69 and Cosmopolitan from 1986-'88.