Last week, Nathan Lipschultz sealed a gutter, repaired a screen door, installed a garbage disposal, and then headed to a meeting with two members of the Sun-Sentinel’s editorial board. He made the trek from his home in Boca Raton to the headquarters of a newspaper that he considers a citadel…
Carol Roberts still gets THE REACTION, two years after Palm Beach County’s dangling and dimpled chads became world-beamed symbols of the 2000 presidential election morass. While W. Bush does his John Wayne thang in the White House, preparing to finish off his daddy’s business with Saddam, the formerly most-reviled villain…
This is a story about people who drive hundreds of miles in blazing heat to walk along dirt roads ragged with wildflowers and weeds, who swat helplessly at the hordes of bloodthirsty mosquitoes, who completely upturn their lives, their lawns, the interiors of their homes, who even change their paths…
“Donate Your Wheels for Meals” read a recent advertisement wedged into the “Autos Wanted” section of the Sun-Sentinel’s classified ads. “Don’t let your neighbor go hungry.” As anyone who has watched an old car deteriorate into a pile of rust in the driveway knows, the idea of unloading that burden…
For 32 years, Luise Buettner marked the beginning of the tourist season with the arrival of the Joessmans, the Uoesers, Inga Koetz, and Karl Heinz. The Nuremberg-born motel owner catered to vacationers from her homeland. Herzlich Willkommen, read a sign in the office window of the Noble Motel Apartments, 3110…
Barbara Whiteman snagged an original Sara Lee doll about 15 years ago. Created by Belle Glade florist Sara Lee Creech and produced briefly from Christmas 1951 to 1953, the sweet-faced replica of an African-American baby was a find. It was prized among collectors because its history mirrors America’s entrenched and…
From deep in the land of the hanging chad, where a tabloid empire made tabloid-like headlines when anthrax was discovered in its Boca Raton headquarters, where terrorist cells have standing orders for submarine sandwiches, a voice cries. Not in the wilderness exactly. It cries in Palm Beach County, on the…
A half century ago, before the arrival of mega-toy emporiums Toys “R” Us and FAO Schwarz, the Sears, Roebuck and Co. Christmas catalog fed the fledgling consumer fantasies of American children. Hefty in size. Usually an image of jolly red-suited Santa Claus on the glossy cover. And filled with all…
Monday afternoon. Mid-April. And it’s already blazing hot. In these brief hours of freedom between the last school bell and suppertime, black children in northwest Hallandale Beach hop on bikes, chase one another, throw on skates, and glide down neighborhood sidewalks. Some make the mile-long trek across busy, six-lane Hallandale…
The clock says 5. Above a dish rack stacked with black-and-white dinner plates, above a small sink and a window shaded with deep green vertical blinds, is an old-fashioned, schoolhouse-style clock, round with big numbers and circled in brown trim, moving through the minutes, the hours, the days, the months,…
The brothers Cosinero Cux have to make a tough decision. Deadline: today. The options: Scrape together $1800 to pay off a Miami shipping company. Hope the state steps in. Pray for last-minute divine intervention. Or say good-bye to 90 pairs of cowboy boots, 210 women’s blouses, 102 pairs of men’s…
Rosa is crying.She is wearing a stretchy, blue-striped T-top, a stretchy skirt with blue stripes colliding in clashing patterns, and a wide, stretchy red headband. The jumble of stripes and the headband looked jaunty on the pretty 19-year-old when she answered the door on a late January afternoon, but now…
A cool wind has kicked up, shaking the limbs of this November night with anticipation. But in the chutes, where 33 bull riders are gathered for the Crown Royal 61st Annual Sunshine State Championship Bull Riding competition, it’s hot as the devil’s barnyard. Five Star Rodeo has trucked in 40…
If Troy Weekley hadn’t gone to the rodeo in Davie in 1956, his son might not rock at night in a hammock on the porch of a cedar-covered cottage overlooking a rock pit, breed bucking bulls, or stick plugs of Skoal chew inside his lower lip. Troy Jr. has always…
Paula had mail duty. Just after 3 p.m. on October 15, she slipped her hands into a pair of clear, plastic medical gloves, walked into the tan-and-blue waiting room, and opened a door in the Planned Parenthood clinic at 3457 N. Dixie Hwy. in Fort Lauderdale. She passed through the…
They met at Western High. Richard Clark was the big man on campus — six-foot-two, 250 pounds of big. He was big like that, even in high school. A star linebacker on the lousy Wildcats. Until the fight with his coach. Proud but not arrogant proud. Quiet proud. Distinguished…
Florida’s Hate Man is elbow-deep in battle in the bowels of his girlfriend’s 1995 Chevy Astro van. The brakes are mucked up, and he has decided to fix them. But as balmy, breezy morning turns to sunny afternoon, Hate Man has to admit defeat. And he is pissed. After removing…
It happened in the waning days of one of the greatest orgies of conspicuous consumption in American history, an era when investors threw millions at baby-faced dot-comers, where the stock market reached stratospheric heights, and boomers saw their retirement nests get super-sized to Jurassic proportions. It happened with terrifying ease…
