It was , and my father-in-law, David Berg, was still a hard-working kosher butcher in Hillcrest, Queens. My mother-in-law, Elka Berg, worked tirelessly beside him, though they were 79 and 69, respectively. That winter, my husband, Allen, decided to buy them tickets to Miami Beach and book them into a suite at the Saxony, complete with a kitchen so Mom could continue to cook the simple, healthy foods Dad, who had a high sugar count, was allowed on his limited diet.
In fact, we bought an apartment down here. Now, my in-laws are wonderful people. In fact, Dad started his own successful butcher business from nothing when they arrived in New York. So this was a startling development indeed. My in-laws came home that spring, worked in the store all week and spent weekends in the summer in a bungalow in the Catskills, just the way they had for over 30 years.
Winter rolled around and off they went to sunny Miami. By this time, Allen had to see just what they purchased. So en route home from a trade show in Atlanta, he detoured to Miami Beach to surprise his parents.
Unfortunately, it turned out that Allen was the one who was surprised. And not so pleasantly. The apartment Mom and Dad bought was on the top floor of a three-story low-rise building on the corner of 41st Street and Collins Avenue β the busiest intersection in Miami Beach.
Not only could you hardly hear yourself talk over the constant noise of the traffic below, but there were buckets all over the place collecting the water from the leaks on the roof. Dad was nursing his bout of walking pneumonia with tea and honey, and Mom was continually emptying the buckets filled with rainwater. After getting Dad to the doctor to cure his pneumonia and trying to convince his parents to move, Allen came back to New York with promises that the roof was going to be fixed by next winter and all would be well.
