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Miami Adventure

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       It's Spring of 1970, I'm nineteen years old and hungry and homeless in Miami Beach, running a shoeshine stand making about $5 a day in front of a barbershop near the Fountainbleau Hotel. One day a young black guy comes along and asks me to shine his $100 alligator shoes. He climbs up and sits in the chair and after a couple of minutes he says to me “Haven't you ever shined shoes before?”       “No,” I admit to him and he offers to show me how to shine shoes the right way, and we trade places. So I'm sitting there high in the chair, looking out on Collins A venue, while this guy is shining his own $100 alligator shoes which I'm wearing and I see this big old black Cadillac pull up and double park in front of us. I'm watching the scene unfolding - it seemed like it was happening in slow motion - and I'm thinking 'Oh, this is gonna be good.' A big guy smoking a cigar gets out of the driver's seat and looks over at us and says “...
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Ed King S e p t e m b e r   1 1 ,   2 0 1 5    ·  Shared with Public A Peddler's License in Washington, DC By ED KING I arrived in Washington, DC from Boston in the fall of 1972 intending to start a street-peddling operation selling handmade Moroccan sheepskin wallets from my supplier in New York. Street-peddling in New York and Boston the previous two years had been a free-wheeling, anything-goes sort of affair, but I soon found out that Washington was a little different. Attempting to play by the rules, I went to the government office where they issued street peddlers' licenses. I filled out the application I was given and turned it back to the clerk who told me that it would take three or four weeks to process my application. She didn't seem moved by my story that I had just arrived in town and needed to get out on the street right away to start making a living. I looked around the office and there must have been fifty workers sitting at their desk...
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