Spitzer, Mindy - interviewed by Barbara Ester
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Here we go. | 0:00 |
So, (chuckles) this is fun. | 0:04 | |
- | Yeah, and I'm gonna try to just relax about it, | 0:07 |
because this is a lesbian herstory project, | 0:10 | |
and the reason it's come about | 0:14 | |
is because Merrell suggested that so little | 0:15 | |
of Southern lesbian herstory has been documented. | 0:20 | |
So as you're willing and I am willing | 0:25 | |
we'll share our story | 0:27 | |
of our Miami lesbian dyke experience. | 0:29 | |
You landed there in what year? | 0:34 | |
- | October of 1975. | 0:37 |
- | October of '75. | 0:41 |
And how, what drew you there in the first place, | 0:45 | |
besides work, finding lesbian community, | 0:47 | |
how did you even go about that? | 0:50 | |
First of all, you are a New York dyke, | 0:52 | |
so you are going to search for lesbians naturally. | 0:55 | |
- | Absolutely because I cannot live | 0:57 |
without lesbian family around me. | 1:00 | |
- | We're you in a relationship at the time? | 1:04 |
- | No. | 1:06 |
- | And how involved were you in lesbian, | 1:07 |
what they called lesbian feminist politics | 1:09 | |
at the time? | 1:11 | |
- | Very involved I was leaving New York City | 1:12 |
where I was still working on the lesbian switchboard, | 1:15 | |
and in the Women's Center and I was very involved | 1:19 | |
in the women's community in New York. | 1:23 | |
And when I got down here, within a week, | 1:26 | |
I needed to find some lesbians, somewhere. | 1:29 | |
- | What was the first step you took then? | 1:32 |
- | I called the National Organization for Women, | 1:34 |
I called NOW, and I asked them | 1:36 | |
if they had any lesbians | 1:39 | |
within their local organization, | 1:43 | |
and if they knew of any lesbians | 1:45 | |
or bars or bookstores or anywhere | 1:47 | |
where I might find a lesbian. | 1:50 | |
- | Was NOW pretty forthcoming with all that? | 1:53 |
- | Oh, they were very good. | 1:54 |
They told me right away about the Lesbian Task Force | 1:56 | |
and Maryanne and Louise. | 1:59 | |
And I asked them if they had their phone number. | 2:00 | |
- | So they mentioned their names right away? | 2:03 |
- | Oh yes, definitely. | 2:04 |
And they said that there are other lesbians, | 2:07 | |
a huge group of lesbians involved | 2:08 | |
with the Lesbian Task Force, | 2:12 | |
and to call Maryanne and Louise. | 2:14 | |
So I remember it was a Saturday night, | 2:16 | |
and it was probably around | 2:20 | |
four or five in the afternoon. | 2:22 | |
And I called up and Maryanne got on the phone | 2:24 | |
and I said hi I'm a New York dyke | 2:29 | |
and I just moved down here and I'm looking for lesbians. | 2:32 | |
I called NOW and they gave me your phone number. | 2:36 | |
Are you are you the dykes I'm looking for? | 2:38 | |
And she said we are. | 2:41 | |
And they invited me over that night, | 2:43 | |
and I drove over there and met them | 2:47 | |
and had a good time with them, | 2:49 | |
and they told me about other dykes | 2:51 | |
and invited me to a meeting, | 2:55 | |
of a gay Task Force | 3:00 | |
it was a mixed Task Force. | 3:02 | |
- | Was it through NOW, too? | 3:05 |
- | No. | 3:07 |
- | Okay. | 3:08 |
- | And I went with them and I met, Holly Holcomb. | 3:09 |
- | So you didn't meet them through | 3:15 |
the NOW lesbian chapter of NOW lesbians? | 3:16 | |
You met them through a gay Task Force? | 3:19 | |
- | No, I met, I met Maryanne and Louise through the NOW. | 3:21 |
- | But when you went to this meeting, | 3:26 |
now you're meeting other lesbians | 3:27 | |
but you're meeting them at a gay | 3:29 | |
- | Yes | 3:30 |
- | Task force meeting. | |
- | Yes. | 3:31 |
- | Where was that at? | 3:32 |
- | Some place downtown, it was near Holly's apartment, | 3:34 |
which I think she lives somewhere around Temple Israel, | 3:40 | |
off of Biscayne or Northeast Second and 19th. | 3:42 | |
- | What was their reason for existing? | 3:46 |
what was their mo, did they have a political action | 3:48 | |
or anything that they were doing at the time? | 3:50 | |
What did you get out of going to the meeting? | 3:52 | |
- | Well, I got out of the fact that I am not | 3:56 |
used to being around gay men, | 3:59 | |
- | Oh, you weren't? | |
- | I don't and I still don't like it. | 4:01 |
And that I could see that they wanted | 4:04 | |
to take over the conversation, | 4:07 | |
and that the dykes weren't letting them. | 4:09 | |
But I didn't really get much out of it. | 4:12 | |
I wasn't real interested in working with them. | 4:15 | |
But I did meet Holly. | 4:20 | |
And I met uh, it's hard to remember | 4:23 | |
who I met were, you know? | 4:29 | |
- | Don't worry about that. | 4:31 |
- | But I met. | 4:32 |
- | Did you go back. | 4:33 |
- | Ingrid Hunter. | 4:34 |
- | Ingrid hunter, yeah, yeah. | 4:37 |
- | And I met | 4:38 |
- | Now didn't all these... | |
- | Sybil Adams. | 4:43 |
- | All these, these lesbians you're talking about, | 4:44 |
Do they have like, weren't they in positions of, | 4:47 | |
because the Task Force was a lesbian, | 4:49 | |
the Lesbian Task force of NOW | 4:51 | |
had like chairs or treasuries or secretaries | 4:53 | |
or whatever that those things are. | 4:59 | |
Wasn't Ingrid or Maryanne and Louise part of that? | 5:01 | |
- | Well they claim that there was no leader, | 5:04 |
- | Okay. | 5:07 |
- | I remember specifically. | 5:08 |
- | Now specifically that's the Lesbian Task force of NOW/ | 5:10 |
- | Yes. | 5:11 |
- | No leader? | 5:13 |
- | No leader, although Maryanne and Louise | 5:14 |
really were the leaders, | 5:16 | |
but they didn't want to say they were the leaders. | 5:19 | |
- | You felt they were the leaders? | 5:22 |
- | Oh, absolutely. | 5:23 |
- | Oh, well, so, how did you get from, | 5:25 |
was that the only time you went to the gay... | 5:27 | |
- | Yeah, that was the only gay meeting I went to. | 5:29 |
- | I wound up working with gay men again, | 5:33 |
when Anita Bryant came in. | 5:38 | |
- | Oh good question, that was later. | 5:40 |
- | A little bit later. | 5:42 |
Note that though, because that was | 5:43 | |
kind of an amazing time. | 5:46 | |
- | Yeah. | 5:49 |
- | What, so, from that meeting with Maryanne and Louise | 5:50 |
and the social connection that you made with them. | 5:52 | |
what was the next step to you | 5:55 | |
for getting to the Lesbian Task Force and, | 5:57 | |
was that next and did you do other things in between? | 5:59 | |
- | Well, they told me when the next meeting was | 6:02 |
and it was shortly after I had met them | 6:05 | |
and I showed up there. | 6:07 | |
And it was meeting at the Y. | 6:09 | |
And I met most of my friends there. | 6:12 | |
And after the Y we would go out | 6:20 | |
and go have a couple of drinks and go dancing. | 6:23 | |
- | Where'd you go, then? | 6:27 |
- | To the Nook, this little bar in Coral Gables. | 6:30 |
- | No kidding, wow, I've heard talk of it, | 6:33 |
I've never been there. | 6:35 | |
I don't think we ever got there. | 6:36 | |
- | We would go over to the Nook | 6:37 |
and get a couple of pitchers of beer and dance. | 6:39 | |
And I got to know more people. | 6:42 | |
I got to know Morgana, who was still Morgan. | 6:45 | |
Jeez, it's so hard to remember who was around. | 6:53 | |
- | But the characters | 6:56 |
of our bar-going to Miami, | 6:58 | |
it seems to me that the highlights | 7:02 | |
that I come up with too, | 7:04 | |
when I think about going there now, | 7:06 | |
you were there quite a bit, | 7:08 | |
like probably the fall, before I was there in the spring. | 7:10 | |
But actually, when we got there, | 7:13 | |
and I'd ride with Joan, we were directed | 7:15 | |
to the Lesbian Task Force and Maryanne as well. | 7:18 | |
Through Martha and Lucy, | 7:22 | |
they'd give us Maryanne's phone number. | 7:24 | |
But you had already been part of the Task Force | 7:26 | |
and were they doing any kind of political action? | 7:29 | |
Or what was the formation | 7:31 | |
of the Task Force's purpose, | 7:33 | |
did you have, was there anything | 7:36 | |
that you recollect that you were all organizing | 7:38 | |
for other than just bring yourselves together? | 7:41 | |
- | No, and NOW weren't really already | 7:43 |
politically motivated to do anything | 7:44 | |
except to grow more lesbians | 7:45 | |
and be bigger and do more fun things together. | 7:52 | |
- | So it was a... | 7:57 |
Would you consider socializing as lesbians | 7:58 | |
coming together as lesbians in community, | 8:02 | |
a political action? | 8:03 | |
- | Oh, absolutely anything that I do as a lesbian | 8:06 |
is a political statement. | 8:09 | |
- | But yeah, sure it was a political action | 8:12 |
and just creating those spaces | 8:15 | |
is a political action. | 8:17 | |
- | Excellent, yeah, so yeah I agree with you. | 8:19 |
- | And we did, we had art shows on the river walk. | 8:21 |
- | Now you talking about my time, | 8:29 |
because when I came, after Joan and I arrived, | 8:30 | |
and we arrived into this huge, huge circle of lesbians | 8:33 | |
and, in, and it probably was | 8:38 | |
in the beginning of May of '76. | 8:40 | |
I'm sure you were there, | 8:44 | |
Maryanne and Louise were there. | 8:45 | |
I didn't sense that anyone was a leader either, | 8:46 | |
except that I sensed that they were organizing | 8:48 | |
for Dyke Pride Week. | 8:50 | |
- | Yes. | 8:54 |
- | Can you say more about that? | 8:56 |
So you were organizing for a special event, | 8:57 | |
and it wasn't gay pride. | 8:59 | |
- | No, no, no, we didn't want to do gay pride, | 9:01 |
- | Say more about that. | 9:04 |
How did they come to be? | 9:05 | |
- | Well I had spoken to them | 9:07 |
about Lesbian Pride Week in New York, | 9:09 | |
and that we had split off from the gay men completely, | 9:11 | |
and we demanded that we walk first | 9:15 | |
in the parade too, in the New York, lesbian. | 9:19 | |
We called it the Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade. | 9:22 | |
And the lesbians marched first, | 9:26 | |
because we were tired of being behind the men | 9:29 | |
and the men really didn't represent, who we were. | 9:31 | |
They would get all dressed up in their costumes | 9:37 | |
is what I call them. | 9:42 | |
Their drag queen costumes and carry on | 9:44 | |
on their roller skates with their feathers and boas, | 9:48 | |
and that was not us. | 9:51 | |
We were the dykes. | 9:54 | |
And so we did that. | 9:55 | |
We organized and decided | 9:58 | |
we were not going to march with them. | 9:59 | |
We were going to do our own march, and they followed. | 10:02 | |
And so, when it came to gay pride time down here, | 10:05 | |
it was the same thing, I mean Miami | 10:09 | |
really didn't have a Gay Pride parade. | 10:12 | |
Fort Lauderdale did, but there was really | 10:17 | |
not much Gay Pride going on in Miami. | 10:20 | |
And we decided that we were going to have | 10:24 | |
a Lesbian Pride Week of all different kinds of events. | 10:26 | |
And we had a dance, I remember we had a dance. | 10:32 | |
And we had the art show. | 10:33 | |
- | And No Man's Band played. | |
- | Um hm. | 10:37 |
- | It was an all women's band called No Man's Band. | 10:38 |
I remember that dance, | 10:41 | |
- | Is that your recollection as well? | 10:42 |
- | Yes, yes, and we just, | 10:45 |
I remember I organized. | 10:52 | |
I wanted to just be around lesbians | 10:56 | |
all the time, I still do. | 10:58 | |
So I had heard that there was going to be | 11:00 | |
a bluegrass festival on the grounds off of Coral Way, | 11:04 | |
and about in the 70s, not the year 70s, | 11:12 | |
but the streets, at a fairground. | 11:17 | |
And so I called up all the dykes that I knew | 11:21 | |
and I said, let's have a picnic | 11:23 | |
at this music bluegrass festival. | 11:26 | |
It's free to get in and we'll just make our own. | 11:29 | |
And I made a big flag. | 11:33 | |
And I stuck it in the ground. | 11:36 | |
And all the dykes knew to come looking for the flag. | 11:38 | |
And they did and I got great pictures. | 11:42 | |
- | What'd the flag say, or what was it, colored? | 11:44 |
- | It was lavender and purple | 11:46 |
and it had women's, double women's symbols | 11:48 | |
all over it in the stars of the stripes. | 11:50 | |
And everyone knew to come there | 11:54 | |
and there must have been about 25-35 of us, | 11:58 | |
and we just sat and listened to their music | 12:03 | |
and everybody brought food and just had | 12:06 | |
our own little, little bluegrass festival there. | 12:08 | |
And soon our important political action | 12:11 | |
was creating our own space as lesbians. | 12:13 | |
And you were to continue some of this | 12:16 | |
and bring some of your knowledge | 12:20 | |
and wisdom from New York, and your spark. | 12:21 | |
Because during that week, I also remember | 12:24 | |
that there was one evening of, like arts, music, | 12:26 | |
presentations, and movement. | 12:32 | |
And I remember Morgana dancing or moving | 12:35 | |
and Suess who did some kind of, you know, | 12:37 | |
could have been Tai Chi or some kind of movement | 12:40 | |
that was very mellow music-wise | 12:45 | |
and mellow, slow movements and we all | 12:48 | |
were in an audience kind of sense of watching. | 12:51 | |
They were, maybe, those are only two names | 12:55 | |
I remember but there were probably | 12:57 | |
four or five different modalities of movement, | 12:58 | |
and then we were in another room. | 13:03 | |
I think this was all at the YWCA. | 13:05 | |
And we're another room | 13:06 | |
and Joan happened to bring her guitar. | 13:09 | |
Now I don't know why Joan brought her guitar. | 13:11 | |
I don't know she sang anything or planned on singing. | 13:13 | |
Do you remember her singing anything, | 13:15 | |
or playing her guitar? | 13:17 | |
- | No, I remember I was playing it. | 13:18 |
- | You borrowed her guitar, | 13:20 |
and you went on with song after song after song | 13:22 | |
and everybody was glued to the fact that | 13:26 | |
except for Joan who was going, wow, that woman's | 13:28 | |
just taking a long time with my guitar, | 13:30 | |
but she didn't take it away. | 13:32 | |
You just kept going, and you had song | 13:35 | |
after song and lesbian songs. | 13:37 | |
You had carried songs in your pocket from some of them, | 13:39 | |
did you remember, if you sang any of yours, at that time? | 13:42 | |
I know you were singing friends' and Alix's. | 13:46 | |
- | Yes, I was. | 13:48 |
- | Do you remember what other music you were singing? | 13:49 |
- | I might have been singing a couple of mine. | 13:51 |
- | I don't remember any one else doing that that night, | 13:54 |
other than you, there might have been. | 13:58 | |
But you were the person that I remember | 14:00 | |
being the star attraction, so to speak. | 14:01 | |
- | Hm, I'm trying to recall | 14:05 |
if I remember anyone else playing. | 14:06 | |
- | I know there was an opportunity | 14:11 |
because it wasn't like Mindy, | 14:12 | |
and how would you call, | 14:13 | |
did you use your last name | 14:15 | |
or were you already Mindy Dyke at the time? | 14:17 | |
- | I was already Mindy Dyke. | 14:20 |
- | So, as far as you recall, | 14:22 |
you were the only one and as far as I recall | 14:26 | |
you were the only one who did any music, | 14:28 | |
sharing at that gathering. | 14:30 | |
Did you know, if any others knew those songs | 14:32 | |
and sang along? | 14:34 | |
- | No, nobody knew them, nobody knew them. | 14:35 |
- | So musically speaking, did you think Miami | 14:39 |
had not gotten on the wagon | 14:42 | |
of women's or lesbian music at the time? | 14:45 | |
- | Yeah, that's what I thought, | 14:48 |
because I didn't, even in the conversations | 14:50 | |
amongst the lesbians I didn't really hear them | 14:53 | |
speaking about women's music. | 14:58 | |
I didn't hear like Maryanne and Louise, | 15:01 | |
talking about women's music. | 15:03 | |
No one had really brought it up until I did. | 15:06 | |
I don't, I mean they may have, but I don't remember that. | 15:12 | |
- | But not to your awareness, | 15:15 |
because when you sang some songs | 15:16 | |
and you knew about Olivia and everything. | 15:18 | |
- | Oh, absolutely. | 15:20 |
- | And you know Joan was distributing Olivia Records | 15:21 |
in Miami when she arrived? | 15:24 | |
- | No, I didn't. | 15:25 |
- | Joan and I were, she was the distributor, | 15:26 |
I was her helper so to speak. | 15:28 | |
In San Diego, she got involved with Olivia | 15:30 | |
so when she came to Miami, | 15:32 | |
she continued to do Olivia Records. | 15:34 | |
Now we had a few of them, we had Kay Gardener | 15:38 | |
and you knew of Kay Gardener from... | 15:39 | |
- | (in unison) New York. | 15:41 |
- | And you know Alix from the same place, | 15:42 |
and your knew Olivia. | 15:45 | |
- | And I knew of... | 15:46 |
- | Lewis Williamson, Meg Christian at the time, | 15:49 |
- | And Lucy and Martha, because they were | 15:52 |
on that same album from the New York women. | 15:55 | |
And I was there when they were recording that. | 16:00 | |
- | So you were there when Martha and Lucy arrived | 16:02 |
at the Miami Lesbian Task Force too. | 16:04 | |
- | Yeah. | 16:08 |
- | Were you there then before they came back to Miami? | 16:09 |
- | I believe so. | 16:12 |
- | I'm thinking you were too. | 16:13 |
I believe so, I remember running into them | 16:15 | |
and thinking wow, that's really far out. | 16:18 | |
You know, I didn't even know that they were down here. | 16:20 | |
- | My story goes that I was living in San Diego | 16:23 |
and Joan and I pulled up to Las Hermanas, | 16:26 | |
the woman's coffeehouse. | 16:29 | |
- | I was there. | 16:30 |
Not when we were there. | 16:32 | |
No, no but I have pictures of me there with Meg Christian. | 16:33 | |
- | Really? | 16:37 |
- | At Las Hermanas. | 16:38 |
- | But that was much years and years later. | 16:39 |
- | Ah that was... | 16:41 |
- | The '80s then, somewhere in there. | 16:42 |
- | No, no, in the 70s. | 16:43 |
- | No kidding. | 16:45 |
- | I was absolutely there in the 70s, | 16:47 |
it was the first year that I went to Michigan. | 16:49 | |
It must have been... | 16:56 | |
- | '78 or '79, '77? | 16:57 |
- | Maybe '77. | 17:02 |
Well 1975, in the fall, | 17:03 | |
there was a music festival in San Diego. | 17:06 | |
Hardly anybody knows about Holly nearly wrote about it. | 17:08 | |
But we also had a very close access to LA | 17:11 | |
and we went to meet Ginny Berson | 17:16 | |
and Joan decided to distribute Olivia Records. | 17:19 | |
And so we were doing it all over San Diego. | 17:24 | |
All of a sudden she came to Miami | 17:26 | |
and no one, I agree with you | 17:27 | |
that no one that we connected with in Miami | 17:29 | |
at the time at least knew of Olivia Records, | 17:32 | |
knew of Kay Gardener, we bought Alix Dobkin, | 17:35 | |
and we would play it loud, | 17:39 | |
Joan would play it loud at Joyce's house, | 17:42 | |
when we started living at Joyce's house | 17:44 | |
and she'd just blast, she'd just blast, | 17:46 | |
all over Alix Dobkin's records | 17:48 | |
and she had the one where she changed the cover. | 17:50 | |
So it was probably the first album or something | 17:53 | |
but it wasn't the one | 17:54 | |
that she had to change | 17:55 | |
the cover because- | 17:56 | |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Woodhul didn't like the dykes | 17:57 |
on the cover or something? | 17:58 | |
- | Yeah. | 18:00 |
- | Look, Living with Women. | 18:00 |
- | Living with Women, yeah. | 18:01 |
Or is it Living with Lesbians? | 18:03 | |
Did she do Living with Women | 18:05 | |
or Living with Lesbians at the time? | 18:07 | |
I don't know, that's a good question. | 18:10 | |
I think was Living with Women. | 18:12 | |
Or Lavender Jane Loves Women. | 18:13 | |
- | Lavender Jane Loves Women. | 18:14 |
- | That's it. | 18:16 |
- | We found it through Ms. magazine in San Diego, | 18:17 |
San Diego when we're living there. | 18:19 | |
And we ordered it right away. | 18:21 | |
- | Yeah, I knew, Alix before the album came out. | 18:22 |
- | Was she out already then too? | 18:27 |
- | Oh yeah. | 18:29 |
- | And how did you meet her? | 18:29 |
- | At the... | |
- | Just to backtrack here. | 18:32 |
- | At the, there was a lesbian group | 18:33 |
that was a spinoff of the Gay Activist Alliance. | 18:37 | |
And it was like the Lesbian Committee | 18:42 | |
of the Gay Activist Alliance. | 18:44 | |
And again, we were not satisfied with being, | 18:47 | |
you know, behind the boys. | 18:50 | |
So we split off from them, and we became LFL, | 18:52 | |
Lesbian Feminist Liberation. | 18:57 | |
And we met in the same place that the boys met, | 19:01 | |
which was at 99 Wooster St. in Soho in old, | 19:04 | |
it was called the firehouse because | 19:08 | |
it was an old firehouse and LFL met there. | 19:11 | |
And I met, Alix through that, | 19:17 | |
and then I started working on the lesbian switchboard. | 19:21 | |
And I would publicize all of her concerts. | 19:24 | |
Anytime anybody called, we had a huge calendar | 19:27 | |
on the wall and we would tell them | 19:32 | |
what was going on for lesbians in New York City. | 19:34 | |
And so I became good friends with her | 19:39 | |
because I was publicizing her concerts. | 19:42 | |
- | And did you know Martha and Lucy back then, | 19:46 |
or just because of the album? | 19:47 | |
- | No, I knew them because | 19:49 |
they used to be there all the time. | 19:51 | |
- | So they were there all the time too? | 19:52 |
- | Yeah, and and all the women | 19:54 |
who sang on that first album | 19:56 | |
of the lesbian collective, yes, | 19:59 | |
were they are all the time. | 20:02 | |
They sang all the time. | 20:05 | |
So when you went to Miami, | 20:06 | |
did you meet any of these lesbian performers | 20:07 | |
or did you, have that, or did you, | 20:09 | |
you were just inspired by them then | 20:12 | |
because you brought music to Miami? | 20:13 | |
- | Right, but I knew them all. | 20:15 |
I knew them all because we met every Sunday, | 20:18 | |
- | So you were probably one of the largest influences | 20:21 |
on I'm bringing live, lesbian music to Miami. | 20:27 | |
- | Oh absolutely, or recorded. | 20:31 |
- | Because, | 20:33 |
- | Okay. | |
- | They didn't know about the recordings either. | 20:36 |
- | So is that something that you got | 20:38 |
an opportunity to share in holding gatherings? | 20:40 | |
- | Absolutely. | 20:42 |
- | You brought records too, who did you bring? | 20:43 |
- | I brought whatever was out at the time. | 20:45 |
I had the Chicago and New Haven | 20:48 | |
Women's Liberation Rock Band, | 20:53 | |
the album was already out. | 20:55 | |
Alix's album was already out. | 20:57 | |
The Changer and the Changed, Chris Williamson | 20:59 | |
was already out. | 21:02 | |
Meg Christian, I know You Know was already out, | 21:04 | |
and the New York group of women's collective-- | 21:07 | |
- | So you brought all this music to lesbians in Miami? | 21:12 |
- | Oh, yeah, and then, Fran's music and poetry. | 21:15 |
I brought her books down. | 21:18 | |
- | Yeah, I remember getting a book from you. | 21:20 |
Yeah, You Know Me by My Teeth, I think it was called. | 21:23 | |
Is that what it was, her first book? | 21:26 | |
Her first book was worth Dyke Jacket. | 21:28 | |
- | Dyke Jacket, yes. | 21:29 |
- | Yeah. | 21:31 |
- | Yeah, actually, that was her second book. | 21:32 |
Her first book was-- | 21:34 | |
- | You Know Me by My Teeth? | 21:35 |
Wasn't that one of them? | 21:37 | |
- | No. | 21:38 |
- | Okay. | 21:40 |
- | What was it? | 21:41 |
- | I'm thinking of the gal in California. | 21:43 |
- | Okay, Fran's, anyway so you brought some of this art. | 21:45 |
Yes, the culture of lesbian culture. | 21:50 | |
And if anyone doesn't think | 21:55 | |
that that's political and radical. | 21:56 | |
I don't know what is. | 21:58 | |
Now I'm just going to do a pause to track two. | 22:00 | |
- | Aw right. | 22:04 |
- | So when we're getting into the future thoughts here | 22:07 |
did I say future? | 22:11 | |
- | Um hm. | 22:15 |
- | Our future that began in Miami | 22:16 |
of a different time of our lives. | 22:19 | |
How old were you when you went to Miami, anyway? | 22:21 | |
How old were you? | 22:24 | |
- | I had just turned. 22. | 22:25 |
- | Okay, yeah September so you went there. | 22:29 |
You got the job, did you apply | 22:31 | |
from New York, by the way? | 22:34 | |
- | No we just came down, | 22:35 |
me and my two best friends from x-ray school. | 22:37 | |
We lived with my parents who were already here. | 22:41 | |
And we found jobs. | 22:44 | |
The problem was in New York, there were no jobs. | 22:48 | |
Too many x-ray tech schools let out at the same time | 22:51 | |
and the New York Times was on strike. | 22:55 | |
So between all of that, we had no jobs | 22:58 | |
and we had to move back to the dorm | 23:02 | |
that we were living in | 23:03 | |
because we were no longer students. | 23:05 | |
- | Had you been to Miami before? | 23:08 |
- | To visit. | 23:10 |
- | Your parents moved down there. | 23:11 |
- | Right so we came down on on spring break, all of us. | 23:13 |
- | Did you ever discover lesbian culture in that time? | 23:18 |
- | No, not at all. | 23:20 |
So now you know you're going to be | 23:22 | |
permanently down in Miami, or you didn't know that yet | 23:24 | |
until you've got a job. | 23:25 | |
Did you contact lesbians and NOW, | 23:26 | |
before you got your job? | 23:30 | |
- | No, oh, yeah. | 23:31 |
- | In other words did you know | 23:33 |
you're kind of settled there | 23:34 | |
before you started searching for community, | 23:35 | |
you know what I mean? | 23:37 | |
- | Oh no, as soon as I got here | 23:38 |
I started searching for community | 23:39 | |
because I knew that there were jobs | 23:41 | |
because my father was also an x-ray tech | 23:43 | |
and he used to mail me the Sunday want ads | 23:46 | |
from the Miami Herald. | 23:51 | |
And there wasn't one job or two jobs, | 23:52 | |
there was three columns of jobs, | 23:55 | |
as opposed to no jobs in New York. | 23:59 | |
So when we came down here, | 24:01 | |
we went and applied at different places | 24:03 | |
and people, the hospitals were so interested in us | 24:06 | |
because we trained at a very well-known school. | 24:11 | |
We trained at Cornell University in New York. | 24:14 | |
So they knew we had a good education. | 24:17 | |
And so, we would apply one hospital | 24:22 | |
and then go to the next one | 24:25 | |
and tell them that we were offered a position | 24:27 | |
and how much they were paying. | 24:30 | |
And the next place would up up the price. | 24:32 | |
We'll pay you 20 cents more an hour | 24:36 | |
and we'll pay is 40 cents more an hour. | 24:39 | |
So we went from no jobs to hospitals fighting over us. | 24:42 | |
I mean it was wonderful. | 24:47 | |
So the three of us got jobs in different places. | 24:49 | |
And we did that so that we could meet more people. | 24:51 | |
Now my two roommates were straight. | 24:57 | |
They certainly knew about me | 24:59 | |
and accepted me and love me. | 25:01 | |
But they were straight at the time. | 25:03 | |
One of them is still straight | 25:07 | |
and the other one has been | 25:08 | |
in a lesbian relationship | 25:10 | |
with the same woman for the last 35 years. | 25:11 | |
- | She live in Miami? | 25:12 |
- | She lives in my apartment building. | 25:15 |
That's Connie, right? | 25:17 | |
- | Connie and Lynn. | 25:18 |
Well Lynn is who I went to school with. | 25:19 | |
Connie I also went to school with | 25:22 | |
but that's the straight one | 25:24 | |
that's in New York with twins. | 25:26 | |
- | There's two Connies? | 25:29 |
- | There's two Connies. | 25:30 |
Connie, Lynn's lover of 35 years, | 25:32 | |
so it's also an x-ray tech, | 25:35 | |
and she was the one who was working | 25:37 | |
with Lynn and Patti Jo West. | 25:40 | |
The three of them worked in the same hospital, | 25:43 | |
and my other roommate Connie, | 25:46 | |
was working with that Connie's lover named Lele. | 25:49 | |
And that's when we had the big party. | 25:52 | |
And everybody showed up | 25:54 | |
and all the dyke's you know, got to meet each other | 25:56 | |
and that was another way of meeting lesbians. | 26:01 | |
A whole different group of lesbians. | 26:06 | |
There was a whole different group of lesbians | 26:09 | |
in the medical field, | 26:11 | |
who did not participate in lesbian culture. | 26:13 | |
- | So lesbian culture, then how are you, | 26:18 |
what's that line that you would call | 26:20 | |
lesbian culture and not? | 26:22 | |
Well, define the way they are saying they were not. | 26:25 | |
- | Right. | 26:28 |
- | What are they-- | 26:29 |
- | Connie and Lele, really didn't have | 26:30 |
that many friends and most of them were straight. | 26:33 | |
And in the medical field. | 26:39 | |
And yet they were lesbians, they were a couple, | 26:42 | |
they moved here from, they moved to Miami | 26:44 | |
from Michigan together. | 26:47 | |
And they wound up breaking up, | 26:49 | |
and Connie and Lynn got together | 26:51 | |
and they've been together for 35 years. | 26:53 | |
- | So define that difference that you're saying, | 26:55 |
so, did you feel that the Lesbian Task Force | 26:58 | |
and NOW, that group of lesbians were, | 27:01 | |
what, more political or? | 27:03 | |
- | Absolutely. | 27:07 |
- | How would you define that, the difference. | 27:08 |
Just by feeling comfortable around lesbians. | 27:13 | |
Being dykes, being strong Amazons, | 27:17 | |
having read or now heard women's music, | 27:22 | |
being introduced to lesbian literature, | 27:32 | |
Naiad press. | 27:35 | |
- | Were you involved with NOW | 27:37 |
or was it the Task Force that drew you? | 27:38 | |
- | Oh, it was the Task Force. | 27:40 |
I wasn't a nowee-wowee. | 27:41 | |
- | A nowee-wowee, why? | 27:43 |
- | Why, because I didn't feel | 27:45 |
I had that much in common | 27:48 | |
with straight women, even though | 27:50 | |
I was living with two of them. | 27:53 | |
But that's because we had a different thing, | 27:54 | |
in common, we had the x-ray thing in common. | 27:56 | |
We lived together for two years in New York | 27:58 | |
in the dorm and they loved me and accepted me. | 28:01 | |
So that was different. | 28:05 | |
- | So you figured there was, and you've met, | 28:08 |
a whole group of lesbians, | 28:11 | |
that revolved in your field in your work. | 28:12 | |
- | Yeah! | 28:14 |
- | And you figured this was a less, | 28:15 |
what was that word, you used? | 28:17 | |
A less what crowd than the Lesbian Task Force crowd? | 28:19 | |
- | They certainly were less aware | 28:22 |
of any lesbian movement. | 28:25 | |
- | Are you including feminism in this, somehow? | 28:30 |
- | Yeah, they weren't really involved | 28:34 |
in any kind of women's or gay or lesbian movement. | 28:36 | |
- | Oh, any of them, okay. | 28:43 |
- | The medical crowd that were gay and lesbians | 28:45 |
certainly knew of each other, | 28:50 | |
certainly acknowledged each other, | 28:52 | |
maybe went to the bars together once in awhile, | 28:55 | |
maybe partied with each other but certainly not | 28:59 | |
in any kind of lesbian-feminist thought awareness. | 29:06 | |
- | Okay. | 29:15 |
- | It was much more of the x-ray connection. | 29:16 |
- | But it's also, but you also created spaces | 29:20 |
that you were all together. | 29:22 | |
So you were still making connections | 29:24 | |
and community in some ways too, right? | 29:26 | |
- | Right. | 29:28 |
- | And is that not again, | 29:29 |
not a political action of some sort? | 29:30 | |
Oh sure, but I tried to intermingle. | 29:32 | |
- | Oh, you did? | 29:35 |
- | Oh I did, I, you know, having Patti Jo in both places. | 29:37 |
You know, being on both sides, | 29:42 | |
being in the x-ray lesbian side | 29:45 | |
and being in the circle of dykes | 29:49 | |
that I was hanging out with. | 29:53 | |
That opened it up more. | 29:54 | |
My roommates were hanging out | 29:57 | |
with the lesbians, | 30:00 | |
because the lesbians | 30:01 | |
would come to the house and hang out. | 30:03 | |
And so, you know, they felt very comfortable with them | 30:05 | |
because they felt very comfortable with me | 30:08 | |
and they're very open-minded women. | 30:11 | |
- | So besides this week of Lesbian Pride, Dyke Pride | 30:14 |
and what's called Dyke Pride Week | 30:19 | |
or Lesbian Pride whatever it was. | 30:21 | |
And after that, what I recall is that | 30:23 | |
there was a dance once a month. | 30:26 | |
- | Um hm. | 30:28 |
- | And it was organized by the Task Force. | 30:29 |
- | Um hm. | 30:31 |
- | Now somewhere in these months, | 30:31 |
you met certain ones. | 30:34 | |
You were talking to Sandra Redwood | 30:35 | |
in a story about Sandra Redwood. | 30:37 | |
Was that in the earlier months | 30:39 | |
or was that later, later too? | 30:40 | |
- | Probably later, I think Sandra Redwood | 30:43 |
was part of that but it was-- | 30:46 | |
- | She was a part of when I met the Task Force. | 30:48 |
- | But I was specifically talking about | 30:50 |
we had gone over, either to Maryanne and Louise's | 30:52 | |
or to Mary Sims house. | 30:57 | |
- | So Maryanne and Louise, and Mary Sims, | 30:59 |
as far as I'm aware they both open their homes, | 31:01 | |
so that if I wanted to go to a music night, | 31:04 | |
I could walk into Maryanne and Louise's house, | 31:07 | |
and there was a whole slew of lesbians | 31:09 | |
sitting there playing anything from pots and pans | 31:13 | |
to guitars and flutes. | 31:15 | |
Is this true? | 31:16 | |
Do you have that, the memories? | 31:18 | |
- | Oh, absolutely. | 31:19 |
- | And did they do that more than one time? | 31:21 |
- | Oh, all the time, you never knew | 31:22 |
who was going to be there. | 31:24 | |
- | But they always had their home open. | 31:26 |
- | Yes, and Lynne Blustein too, | 31:27 |
which was a whole other group of lesbians. | 31:30 | |
That was a little bit later. | 31:34 | |
Okay that was more like in the late, late '70s | 31:35 | |
or early 80s. | 31:40 | |
But that was, but I remember Maryanne and Louise | 31:43 | |
being there at Lynne Blustein's house | 31:46 | |
and Patti Jo for sure, being at Blustein's. | 31:48 | |
- | I think you took me there and it was before | 31:53 |
I met Barbara, so it must have been | 31:55 | |
somewhere in '78. | 31:56 | |
- | Um hm. | 31:57 |
- | So Morgana moved up to Pagoda, | 31:59 |
somewhere in there too. | 32:03 | |
- | Right. | 32:04 |
- | And then I remember you coming over to my apartment, | 32:06 |
and we were singing and I had the apartment | 32:08 | |
because that was after I moved away from Joyce's. | 32:10 | |
- | Tenant? | 32:12 |
- | In her yard, and there's a lot of other things | 32:13 |
probably in here, and Sandra Redwood | 32:16 | |
was someone that I was hanging out with | 32:19 | |
a little bit with Joan. | 32:22 | |
She was showing Joan and I how to harvest coconuts | 32:23 | |
and Mary Sims was telling us | 32:25 | |
how to pick up cans in the park or bottles | 32:27 | |
to make a little extra money on the side | 32:30 | |
because we were not working at the time. | 32:32 | |
- | Right. | 32:34 |
- | And so, they both were helping us survive | 32:34 |
even down in Homesteads. | 32:37 | |
Helise lived there and there was | 32:40 | |
this beautiful coconut tree | 32:40 | |
out in front of Helise's house | 32:42 | |
and she said come on down, | 32:43 | |
help me move some books and records and stuff | 32:44 | |
and she had records. | 32:46 | |
And she had records, I don't know, | 32:48 | |
did you remember if she was aware | 32:49 | |
of some of the lesbian and women's music | 32:50 | |
that you were? | 32:53 | |
- | Oh, absolutely. | 32:53 |
- | Really, and did you know her through the Task Force? | 32:55 |
- | I believe that she and I met in New York, | 32:58 |
in upstate New York. | 33:01 | |
- | Really? | 33:03 |
- | Right around Woodstock, I think. | 33:03 |
- | So did she come and migrate to Miami too or... | 33:05 |
- | Yes. | 33:09 |
- | Ooh. | 33:10 |
- | And I just spent time with her, | 33:11 |
right before we came here, | 33:14 | |
going through some of her records. | 33:16 | |
- | No way. | 33:19 |
- | Yeah, so they were old ones too, like-- | 33:19 |
- | Yes. | 33:20 |
Like you knew and so you had. | 33:22 | |
- | Yes. | |
- | Did you ever know that at the time | 33:24 |
that you had this in common, when you met? | 33:26 | |
I think Helise was there the night | 33:28 | |
that we met you and Joan. | 33:31 | |
- | I think so too. | 33:33 |
- | And I think Helise played some music on that guitar. | 33:34 |
- | You may be correct, and she might've had her own. | 33:37 |
- | Yes. | 33:40 |
- | She had her own guitar | 33:41 |
and she had had her own songs she wrote. | 33:42 | |
- | Yes. | 33:43 |
- | Oh, you think she was there that, you know, | 33:44 |
- | I do. | 33:46 |
- | That's very strongly possible, | 33:47 |
I'll check in with her about it too. | 33:48 | |
I will check in with her about it, wow. | 33:49 | |
- | I just spent time with her. | 33:53 |
- | Getting rid of those records, | 33:55 |
so she had some of the older records too. | 33:57 | |
- | Yeah. | 33:59 |
- | Wow, wow, huh, your collections were similar. | 34:00 |
- | Yeah. | 34:04 |
- | She trying to go through stuff I know now isn't she? | 34:05 |
- | Yeah. | 34:08 |
- | Hard job, she has Susan's stuff, | 34:09 |
and she's got Sherry Cooper's stuff | 34:11 | |
and she's got her own stuff. | 34:16 | |
And she's considering moving out West, | 34:18 | |
to Arizona, New Mexico. | 34:20 | |
- | Yeah, she's thinking about that. | 34:23 |
- | She's trying to get rid of it, | 34:25 |
because she's got stuff in different rental warehouses. | 34:27 | |
She's got like three different ones, yeah. | 34:34 | |
- | Alrighty, so we're at the Task Force, | 34:39 |
and then there was some point in time | 34:42 | |
that this co-group that Joan and I met. | 34:44 | |
Morgan, Morgan, not Morgana. | 34:47 | |
Morgan, Una, Justine and they were all | 34:50 | |
staying in Joyce's house. | 34:52 | |
- | Right. | 34:54 |
- | And they were all from up in the northeast, | 34:54 |
but they, and through somehow, | 34:57 | |
and I think Louise Griffin was on one side of the road. | 34:59 | |
Louise Caseon was on another side of the road, | 35:03 | |
and being in the medical profession, | 35:06 | |
there were several in the medical profession, | 35:08 | |
Ingrid was another one. | 35:10 | |
And they all seem like very powerful lesbians | 35:11 | |
in the Task Force. | 35:13 | |
However, there was a split that happened. | 35:15 | |
Do you remember that? | 35:18 | |
Do you remember there was a split | 35:19 | |
in the lesbian Task Force? | 35:21 | |
- | No. | 35:24 |
- | Yeah, one of the reasons was | 35:25 |
that to be in the Task Force | 35:28 | |
you now had to become a member of NOW. | 35:30 | |
And some of the lesbians, | 35:35 | |
like the ones I just mentioned | 35:36 | |
were resisting being members of NOW, | 35:38 | |
and yet some of them already were members of NOW | 35:41 | |
and they were not resisting it at all. | 35:43 | |
They figured well, we're members of NOW | 35:44 | |
and we have a Lesbian Task Force. | 35:46 | |
But nothing like that came up to you? | 35:48 | |
- | I don't ever remember that. | 35:51 |
- | Okay. | 35:56 |
- | It might have happened. | 35:57 |
- | It did happen, yeah. | 35:58 |
- | I don't, I think I was probably a member of NOW. | 35:59 |
- | Did you split from my Miami, at some point in time | 36:04 |
and then come back? | 36:08 | |
- | I did. | 36:09 |
- | Was that earlier on then? | 36:11 |
??? Years perhaps or no, later? | 36:11 | |
- | I left for less than one year. | 36:15 |
In at the end of 1978, | 36:20 | |
and in the winter of '78 | 36:27 | |
I was in New York. | 36:30 | |
I moved back to New York | 36:31 | |
and I moved back to Miami in the fall. | 36:34 | |
- | Okay. | 36:42 |
- | So before this time, when I had my apartment, | 36:43 |
you came over one time and you asked me, | 36:45 | |
well, there were two things | 36:47 | |
that I remember, adventures with you. | 36:49 | |
Wanna go see Donna Summer? | 36:50 | |
Let's smoke a doobie | 36:52 | |
and go on up to see Donna Summer. | 36:54 | |
Which was Donna Summer, | 36:56 | |
and all that music was happening | 36:57 | |
in particularly at Sebastian's. | 37:00 | |
- | Right. | 37:02 |
- | And many of us to go to Sebastian's | 37:02 |
and dance to disco. | 37:04 | |
- | Yes. | 37:06 |
- | And disco and Donna Summer we're synonymous, hot, hot. | 37:07 |
- | Yes, then another time you came and said, | 37:10 |
there's this place called Pagoda. | 37:13 | |
- | Um hm. | 37:16 |
- | And how did you hear about Pagoda? | 37:17 |
And what was that year. | 37:20 | |
Do you remember that year, | 37:21 | |
you were going to tell me to see, | 37:21 | |
we're going to go up to see | 37:23 | |
Berkeley Women's Music Collective. | 37:24 | |
We're going to see the opening of Pagoda, | 37:25 | |
I believe it was the first time | 37:27 | |
there was any performance. | 37:28 | |
We saw Morgana do belly dancing. | 37:29 | |
You wore balloons. | 37:31 | |
You wore balloons. | 37:33 | |
We saw Flash and Pandora. | 37:36 | |
We saw the Berkeley Women's Music Collective. | 37:38 | |
Those were the particular highlights that I remember. | 37:40 | |
- | I think Flash called me and told me about it. | 37:42 |
- | Flash called you? | 37:45 |
- | I was very, very good friends | 37:46 |
with Flash and Pan, in New York | 37:48 | |
And I think Flash called me to tell about it. | 37:52 | |
- | So you stayed connected | 37:55 |
as you both all moved to Flo-- | 37:56 | |
- | Oh yeah, we're still all connected. | 37:58 |
- | Yeah, I know that's right. | 37:59 |
- | Oh, yeah, and especially now with Facebook. | 38:01 |
I mean, we Facebook each other, | 38:04 | |
at least once a week. | 38:06 | |
But yeah, so Flash and I are connected | 38:08 | |
in really special ways.. | 38:12 | |
- | So it wasn't through Morgana, | 38:14 |
and that whole experience | 38:16 | |
that you knew that she had started | 38:18 | |
or was part of the founding of Pagoda. | 38:19 | |
It was Flash that got you up to Pagoda. | 38:21 | |
- | I don't think so. | 38:23 |
- | And it would be you Deanna, Ramona and me, | 38:25 |
the four of us and I think it was wasn't my car | 38:28 | |
I didn't have none. | 38:31 | |
- | No, it was my car. | 38:32 |
- | Was it your car? | 38:33 |
- | We all drove up, stayed at the motel and had | 38:34 |
a marvelous experience at this place called Pagoda, | 38:38 | |
the theater, and there was all this music-making. | 38:43 | |
- | Yes. | 38:46 |
- | Wonderful. | 38:47 |
- | Yes, I still have pictures of that. | 38:48 |
- | I have the couple pictures on the beach, | 38:50 |
do you have others in that? | 38:52 | |
- | Yeah, I think i have pictures | 38:53 |
of the Berkeley Women's Music Collective | 38:54 | |
- | Oh wow. | 38:56 |
- | And I'd heard them in Michigan. | 38:58 |
- | See, I heard them at that, | 39:02 |
I was talking about the San Diego Music Festival, | 39:04 | |
years ago, in the fall of '75 that's, they were there. | 39:06 | |
They were there too, with many of the other performers | 39:12 | |
but that was amazing, and it was amazing to see | 39:15 | |
Flash and Pandora they were just amazing musicians | 39:18 | |
and powerful, | 39:20 | |
Flash was, powerful, powerful singer. | 39:22 | |
And it was just amazing. | 39:25 | |
You are just delighted to share this, | 39:27 | |
as well and, you know, hearing the music | 39:29 | |
and everything else and being at Pagoda. | 39:31 | |
And I think you and I went up several times | 39:33 | |
or at least one of them that I remember. | 39:36 | |
- | Oh, I remember going up with Nancy and Barb, | 39:37 |
and you and me. | 39:41 | |
- | When we did our performances at Pagoda | 39:42 |
and being upstairs in that loft | 39:44 | |
and having to climb down the ladder | 39:47 | |
to go to the bathroom and Barb said, | 39:49 | |
"Can't we just pee out the window." | 39:51 | |
(chuckles) | 39:52 | |
- | Yeah, but you took me there one other time to see | 39:53 |
Linda Shear too, whom I'd known from Chicago. | 39:57 | |
And you knew Linda Shear from where? | 39:59 | |
- | Michigan. | 40:02 |
- | From Michigan, too. | 40:03 |
- | Her lover, Trina was a sign-language interpreter. | 40:04 |
- | Ahhh, and the connection there too came. | 40:10 |
- | Yeah. | 40:12 |
- | For you. | 40:13 |
- | Yeah. | 40:13 |
So you kept connection with Pagoda, how? | 40:14 | |
Because I didn't have that connection | 40:18 | |
to know Linda Shear was going to be there. | 40:20 | |
How did you stay connected to Pagoda? | 40:21 | |
- | Probably Morgan. | 40:23 |
- | Through Morgan, yeah, okay, yeah. | 40:25 |
So, Michigan, you went up in '78, | 40:29 | |
I know that. | 40:33 | |
- | Yeah, I, my first one I'm pretty sure was | 40:34 |
'70 either '76 or '77. | 40:42 | |
- | And were you were there for the first? | 40:47 |
- | I think so that's why I think it was '76. | 40:51 |
And I think it was the first, | 40:55 | |
it was on the old land for sure. | 40:56 | |
- | So it's was the '78 one, '78 was on the old land. | 40:59 |
But yeah, you had been there before. | 41:01 | |
- | Yeah, | 41:04 |
- | '78 because you tell a story-- | 41:05 |
- | I had been to the old land | 41:07 |
for at least three festivals. | 41:09 | |
Because I remember three different things happening. | 41:12 | |
- | Well there's a story that you tell | 41:16 |
about a woman that's passed away. | 41:17 | |
Did she pass away in Miami? | 41:20 | |
- | It was my friends, grandmother. | 41:24 |
- | A grandmother, passed away in Miami? | 41:27 |
- | No, in New Mexico. | 41:29 |
My friend, who used to live in New York, | 41:32 | |
moved to New Mexico. | 41:36 | |
Her grandmother passed away. | 41:38 | |
And she wanted to bury her on women's space. | 41:41 | |
And so she put her in a blue wooden box | 41:47 | |
on top of her truck and drove her to Michigan. | 41:54 | |
And when I found my friends in Michigan, | 41:59 | |
at the festival, she told me that her grandmother | 42:02 | |
had passed and I remember her telling me stories | 42:05 | |
about her grandmother for years. | 42:09 | |
And she said were going have a little ceremony, | 42:12 | |
you know, to bury her. | 42:15 | |
And so I thought, you know she had the ashes or something. | 42:19 | |
And she said we're going to meet | 42:24 | |
at this particular spot at midnight. | 42:26 | |
And would you be part of the ceremony? | 42:29 | |
And I was honored, of course, sure. | 42:31 | |
Well, as I started getting closer and closer | 42:34 | |
something started smelling worse and worse. | 42:38 | |
And when I got there, | 42:42 | |
I said oh my god, what is that smell. | 42:44 | |
And she said oh that's Granny. | 42:47 | |
I said, What do you mean it's Granny? | 42:49 | |
I said, you didn't bring | 42:52 | |
your dead grandmother here, like in one piece | 42:57 | |
did you, she said, "Yeah, on top of the truck." | 43:02 | |
I said, oh Sue, Oh my goodness, | 43:06 | |
I mean you can smell it for miles. | 43:10 | |
And we did, we buried her grandmother. | 43:13 | |
- | It didn't bother you though, did it, | 43:16 |
that that was the case? | 43:18 | |
- | Well, it didn't bother me that we were doing it. | 43:19 |
But the smell bothered me. | 43:23 | |
But nothing else bothered me about it. | 43:23 | |
- | So, yeah, I mean you have some amazing stories | 43:26 |
in your whole life and in Miami. | 43:31 | |
What, is there any highlights | 43:34 | |
in those days of '70s and '80s? | 43:35 | |
- | Oh absolutely, the day, that Sandy McFarlane , | 43:38 |
the night that Sandy McFarlane , | 43:41 | |
had a flat tire on her Volkswagen | 43:43 | |
on 17th Avenue and 69th Street | 43:47 | |
in the heart of Liberty City. | 43:50 | |
And there were at least five cars | 43:53 | |
making a dyke caravan, | 44:02 | |
and none of us had a jack. | 44:04 | |
- | Five cars and no jack, wow. | 44:06 |
- | Five cars, no jack, lots of dykes. | 44:08 |
Lots of spare tires but no jack. | 44:11 | |
And so, we all pulled over, | 44:15 | |
got out of our cars and held up | 44:18 | |
the back end of the woman's Volkswagen in mid-air. | 44:21 | |
until she changed the tire. | 44:26 | |
Because she had a tire iron. | 44:30 | |
She just didn't have the jack | 44:31 | |
to pump it up with. | 44:33 | |
And we stood there in the middle of the street | 44:36 | |
and cops were going by, just like screeching | 44:39 | |
to look by didn't stop to help, | 44:42 | |
they just would stop and look and keep going. | 44:44 | |
But that had to be one of the funniest things | 44:49 | |
that and we decided we were really hot one Sunday. | 44:52 | |
And we wanted to go swimming. | 45:00 | |
So, Maryanne and Louise knew of this entrance | 45:02 | |
to Miller Lake, before Tropical Park was ever built. | 45:07 | |
Miller Lake, went from Miller Drive to Bird Rd. | 45:12 | |
And there was this man-made lake. | 45:17 | |
And so, we all drove over there, | 45:22 | |
parked our cars, took off our clothes, | 45:26 | |
and we're jumping into the lake. | 45:29 | |
And there must have been 15 naked dykes in the water | 45:31 | |
when the police showed up. | 45:36 | |
And they're like, | 45:39 | |
You ladies are going to have to | 45:41 | |
get out of that lake. | 45:43 | |
And we're like, we're not getting out | 45:45 | |
until you leave, we'll leave. | 45:47 | |
But we're not coming out of this water | 45:49 | |
until you go, oh god it was so funny. | 45:51 | |
We laughed, for hours and days | 45:56 | |
about when we got caught in Miller Lake. | 45:59 | |
And then another time. | 46:02 | |
I don't know what we were looking for | 46:04 | |
me and Maryanne and Louise were driving on Bird Rd., | 46:07 | |
like in around Galloway and 87th Avenue | 46:11 | |
or something I don't remember | 46:17 | |
what we were out there looking for. | 46:18 | |
But we pulled into this strip mall. | 46:20 | |
And there was a Jamaican restaurant there, | 46:23 | |
that's not where we were going, though. | 46:27 | |
And in the window, there was a sign that said | 46:29 | |
We sell Jamaican Moon Pies. | 46:33 | |
And Louise said to me, "What's a Jamaican Moon Pie." | 46:37 | |
And I said, I don't know. | 46:40 | |
But it was broad daylight, | 46:43 | |
I pulled my pants down and I said, | 46:45 | |
but this is a Jewish moon pie. | 46:47 | |
And she laughed till the day she died. | 46:49 | |
Even when she was dying, literally I said. | 46:53 | |
- | You want to hear that story? | 46:58 |
- | You wanna see a Jewish moon pie, Louise? | 47:01 |
- | Oh, you showed her your Jewish moon pie. | 47:03 |
- | I showed her your Jewish moon pie. | 47:05 |
- | Aww, my god. | 47:07 |
- | May she rest in peace, | 47:08 |
she did get to see my Jewish moon pie. | 47:09 | |
And I must say that Louise's | 47:12 | |
passing was another event | 47:15 | |
that was so devastating. | 47:18 | |
But yet, so incredibly lesbian. | 47:21 | |
There were, sometimes in her room, 30 - 40 lesbians | 47:26 | |
in this hospice nursing center. | 47:34 | |
And she was never alone as she was transitioning | 47:42 | |
and she knew we were there. | 47:49 | |
And Maryanne felt like she could go home | 47:52 | |
and get some sleep because she knew | 47:55 | |
Louise wouldn't be alone. | 47:56 | |
Yeah, you know, we took turns in shifts, | 47:58 | |
Maryanne, on my end, myself | 48:01 | |
and another friend of ours, Amal. | 48:03 | |
We were just all there, all the time. | 48:11 | |
- | Do you recall when Maryanne and Louise | 48:13 |
decided to open Something Special? | 48:15 | |
- | I do. | 48:18 |
- | Yeah? | 48:19 |
- | Yes, I do. | 48:19 |
- | What was the circumstances around that? | 48:20 |
- | It was just about the same time | 48:21 |
that I was trying to open Bagelgrams. | 48:24 | |
- | Oh, really? | 48:27 |
- | And Eli was opening up a new Zum Alten Fritz. | 48:28 |
So all of us were involved in these new adventures | 48:33 | |
- | Was that before or after Charlotte being involved | 48:38 |
in the Women's Preservation Society. | 48:42 | |
Do you remember that? | 48:43 | |
- | Yes. | 48:44 |
- | So this was, Something Special | 48:45 |
came after the Women's Preservation Society. | 48:46 | |
- | Yes, yes, and I went to them to ask them about | 48:49 |
do I report this to the taxes | 48:57 | |
or you know how to how they do it, what should I do. | 49:02 | |
What about licenses. | 49:07 | |
- | This is for your business? | 49:08 |
- | For my business because | 49:09 |
they had just started Something Special. | 49:11 | |
And they were open for lunch. | 49:15 | |
I remember, on Wednesdays, and Thursdays or something. | 49:16 | |
And I was taking some classes | 49:23 | |
at Miami Dade North and I would leave there | 49:25 | |
and come over and have lunch with them. | 49:29 | |
They would fix me a big ole salad. | 49:31 | |
And they stopped doing that | 49:35 | |
but they would do, they were doing that | 49:38 | |
and take out orders, at that time. | 49:40 | |
So that had to be... | 49:43 | |
Ah, God I don't even remember. | 49:49 | |
I was working 11 to seven. | 49:50 | |
- | I think I have that written down somewhere | 49:52 |
about when they started Something. | 49:54 | |
- | I was working, I know I was working | 49:56 |
11 to seven, because I would get off work, | 49:59 | |
and drive up to Miami Dade | 50:03 | |
and take that class and then stop back there, | 50:06 | |
eat lunch and go home and go to sleep. | 50:10 | |
And I don't remember where I was working. | 50:14 | |
- | How about the Bizarres? | 50:16 |
Oh yes, the Bizarres, they were fun. | 50:18 | |
We would just set up | 50:22 | |
in the backyard of Something Special. | 50:25 | |
Tables and racks and you could buy anything, | 50:28 | |
exchange anything from sheets to close to crafts. | 50:32 | |
I remember Lilly doing massages. | 50:38 | |
- | Oh yeah. | 50:40 |
- | Lilly was doing the massages | 50:42 |
- | And her massage chair. | 50:43 |
oh they were fun, they were fun times. | 50:48 | |
- | Yeah, a sackful of those. | 50:51 |
- | Yeah. | 50:53 |
- | Yeah and then I had that moment I was thinking about | 50:54 |
Charlotte doing this Women's Preservation Society | 50:57 | |
and I forget which, somewhere near Bird Rd. | 50:58 | |
- | Yes, it was off Bird Rd. | 51:00 |
- | And Charlotte came into your life too early on. | 51:02 |
I recall you being with Charlotte, somewhat. | 51:06 | |
I don't know how exactly, and how-- | 51:08 | |
- | I met Charlotte. | 51:12 |
- | She came to the Task Force too, | 51:13 |
she was involved? | 51:15 | |
- | Yes, she came to the Task Force. | 51:16 |
And we started talking. | 51:19 | |
And then we exchanged phone numbers, | 51:23 | |
and I remember our first sort of date. | 51:27 | |
We had gone bike riding or something. | 51:40 | |
And I hurt my ankle. | 51:43 | |
And she came over the next day to see | 51:47 | |
how I was doing, she came over to my apartment. | 51:51 | |
I was living with Connie and Lynne. | 51:54 | |
And she had biked over | 51:56 | |
and wound up making love that day, | 51:59 | |
and we were together for about three years. | 52:05 | |
- | Oh. | 52:07 |
- | And that was interesting times, to say the least. | 52:08 |
- | She had a whole other perspective | 52:16 |
too when she named this group | 52:18 | |
Women's Preservation Society. | 52:20 | |
What I think, I remember about that, | 52:23 | |
is that what she wanted to do again | 52:26 | |
was create a community space. | 52:28 | |
- | Right. | 52:30 |
- | For lesbians to have meetings, | 52:31 |
and to do display their arts, their crafts | 52:32 | |
and have music-making and so on. | 52:36 | |
Do you remember anything else | 52:39 | |
about the Women's Preservation Society, | 52:40 | |
because it didn't last very long. | 52:42 | |
And that was always something | 52:44 | |
that Louise would say, | 52:45 | |
and I don't think, | 52:47 | |
I don't know if it came before or after | 52:48 | |
the Friday night, women's group. | 52:49 | |
I think it came after Friday night women's group, | 52:53 | |
but I'm not sure. | 52:54 | |
- | I think it came after Friday night women's group | 52:56 |
- | But every time Louise would say something like, | 52:57 |
something ended, something else began, | 53:00 | |
something ended and something else. | 53:02 | |
Because the Task Force itself, | 53:03 | |
I don't recall it lasting very long, | 53:05 | |
and when the split happened. | 53:07 | |
I remember Mary, we going over to Mary Sims | 53:09 | |
and doing, arts and crafts, | 53:11 | |
still continuing to do some music-making | 53:13 | |
at Louise and Maryanne's or somewhere else. | 53:16 | |
I think Sandra McFarlane house | 53:21 | |
was also a place of lesbian activity. | 53:24 | |
- | Yeah, she lived up the hill by the Orange Bowl, | 53:26 |
- | Somewhere in there, yeah, yeah. | 53:29 |
So I think some of the shifts | 53:32 | |
always took place and then it was | 53:34 | |
hard to know where to connect with lesbians again | 53:36 | |
but softball also was a place. | 53:39 | |
- | Yeah, down by Ruby Grove they called it, Grooby Grove. | 53:41 |
And one of the lesbians I met at Women Writes, | 53:45 | |
Deb, Debbie, can't recall her last name at the moment, | 53:47 | |
but she ended up knowing, Patti Jo. | 53:52 | |
- | Debbie DeMars? | 53:56 |
- | No it wasn't Debbie DeMar. | 53:58 |
I'd have to look her name up | 54:01 | |
but she was a softball player. | 54:03 | |
Butch as can be, just a young, | 54:05 | |
young guy-looking softball player | 54:06 | |
and she thought softball was maybe not as political | 54:09 | |
and organizing is radical. | 54:12 | |
However, I tend to think that-- | 54:16 | |
- | You're not thinking of Diane Shepherd? | 54:17 |
- | No, I'm thinking of a Debbie, Debbie. | 54:18 |
I'll get you a picture out later | 54:21 | |
to see you know who she was. | 54:22 | |
She couldn't remember you, | 54:25 | |
but she remembered Patty Jo very well | 54:26 | |
because Patty Joe organized a lot of the baseball. | 54:29 | |
- | Oh, her and Carol Cotton. | 54:31 |
- | Yeah, and not only around the area of Coral Gables | 54:34 |
but also up in, when she moved | 54:38 | |
up towards Fort Lauderdale way. | 54:39 | |
So I'm seeing about, | 54:41 | |
maybe I'll do it one more time. | 54:45 | |
So, it seems that Patti Jo was also a shaker and mover. | 54:47 | |
- | Oh yeah, but definitely around the softball courts. | 54:52 |
- | And you remember Blackies. | 54:59 |
- | Oh, absolutely. | 55:01 |
- | But you remember Sebastian's, remember Tops. | 55:03 |
- | Oh yeah. | 55:05 |
- | The Nook, did that close after a while? | 55:06 |
- | Yeah I recall, and was there anything, | 55:08 |
what do you remember about Blackies specifically? | 55:11 | |
- | Well, 'cause you I were there, | 55:13 |
we'd go to Blackies. | 55:15 | |
- | She had a couple of different places. | 55:16 |
- | The first one, upstairs. | 55:18 |
- | Right, on Coral Way. | 55:18 |
- | Right, well she, she was | 55:21 |
also involved in the Cherry Grove. | 55:23 | |
- | Ahhh! | 55:27 |
- | She was a bartender there. | 55:28 |
- | So downstairs, that was downstairs. | 55:30 |
- | Yeah, on 17th, on 17th Avenue, | 55:31 |
across from way you used to live. | 55:37 | |
- | I know about what you're talking about now, yeah. | 55:39 |
- | And then she opened up the place with the upstairs. | 55:41 |
And then when that closed, she moved it | 55:44 | |
to off of, it was on Southwest Eighth Street. | 55:49 | |
A little bit south of Lejeune. | 55:54 | |
- | Yeah, I went to a wedding there. | 55:56 |
Now I remember that you performed at Blackies, | 55:58 | |
the little one upstairs. | 56:02 | |
And you sang, you brought your guitar. | 56:03 | |
And again, you were singing songs. | 56:06 | |
And I don't know if it was a special evening | 56:09 | |
I don't recall how that was put together. | 56:11 | |
But I remember that Blackies was first bar | 56:14 | |
I knew that that played women's lesbian music | 56:16 | |
on the jukebox. | 56:20 | |
- | Yeah because Tops wasn't doing it. | 56:23 |
- | No, Josh wasn't doing it. | 56:25 |
Tops was strictly for let's go dancing. | 56:27 | |
- | I remember that freaky looking clown like at Tops. | 56:30 |
That's what I remember most about Tops, | 56:34 | |
was that they had this clown-like | 56:36 | |
that was just scary looking. | 56:39 | |
It was a lamp. | 56:41 | |
How about Lou's Back Door. | 56:44 | |
- | Oh my god, yes, Lou's Back Door, | 56:46 |
- | And were you around for that time when Louise? | 56:47 |
It was some incident that happened, based on | 56:53 | |
race and lesbian, Louise being a black woman, | 56:55 | |
lesbian being up there, and something about that. | 57:00 | |
I don't recall the details, | 57:04 | |
but I remember several of us saying | 57:06 | |
well we weren't going back to Lou's after that. | 57:08 | |
Remember anything about that? | 57:11 | |
That plot's starting to sound familiar | 57:13 | |
because I remember not going there anymore. | 57:15 | |
Yeah, we all some of us stopped going there, because-- | 57:18 | |
- | And that would certainly not surprise me | 57:21 |
because racism really wasn't tolerated by any of us. | 57:24 | |
Do you remember any other incidences | 57:30 | |
about that with lesbians specifically, | 57:32 | |
that occurred that you are aware of? | 57:34 | |
- | In Miami? | 57:37 |
- | Um hum. | 57:38 |
- | Around the lesbians that we knew? | 57:42 |
I mean, you remember, Mary Sims getting arrested? | 57:48 | |
She was driving down the road with Judy. | 57:52 | |
- | No. | 57:54 |
- | She had an arrest tacked onto her | 57:56 |
and Louise got in jail for carrying a pocket knife. | 57:57 | |
- | Yeah, I remember Louise. | 58:00 |
Yes, I remember that. | 58:01 | |
- | What do you remember about that? | 58:06 |
- | Oh, gee. | 58:07 |
- | But you remember it happening? | 58:09 |
- | Yeah, I do. | 58:10 |
- | But you don't remember the details, | 58:11 |
the details are kind of-- | 58:13 | |
- | But I don't remember | 58:15 |
Mary Sims and Judy getting into something. | 58:16 | |
- | Yeah, I don't know if it was just Mary | 58:19 |
or Judy went to jail too, I'm not sure. | 58:20 | |
- | Well I remember Judy going to jail but it wasn't for that. | 58:21 |
- | Yeah, I heard about that later on (laughs). | 58:24 |
Okay, so what else could come to your mind | 58:29 | |
and if you want to just let this rest. | 58:32 | |
There's a lot here and we can elaborate | 58:34 | |
and share as we go along. | 58:36 | |
As I kind of put this together | 58:39 | |
some other things might come up | 58:40 | |
and you say, hey add this, or whatever, | 58:41 | |
you know, or call me and say hey this is-- | 58:43 | |
- | Yeah, I'm trying to think if there any-- | 58:46 |
- | Highlights that brought me into | 58:48 |
a sense of politics and political connection | 58:50 | |
that you felt were building your self-esteem as a lesbian. | 58:54 | |
- | Well certainly, Anita Bryant. | 58:58 |
- | Ah, say more about that. | 59:01 |
cause I don't know anything about-- | 59:02 | |
- | Anita Bryant cannot be left out. | 59:04 |
- | Tell me, what time period was that? | 59:05 |
Seven, eighties, wasn't it? | 59:07 | |
- | No, it was, it was in '78, I think. | 59:09 |
- | Okay, that would make sense. | 59:13 |
- | And that was when we were trying | 59:15 |
to get the legislation passed in Dade County | 59:18 | |
to, what did we call it, it will come to me. | 59:26 | |
- | Yeah, but how did you get involved? | 59:36 |
- | Charlotte and I were still together. | 59:39 |
- | Okay. | 59:42 |
- | And a lot of the lesbians | 59:43 |
within the Task Force, Scabby. | 59:45 | |
- | Scabby! Oh, wow. | 59:49 |
- | And Mary Beth. | 59:50 |
- | Yeah. | 59:51 |
- | Etta Cemino. | 59:52 |
- | Etta. Oh wow. | 59:54 |
- | Yeah. | 59:56 |
- | Charlotte, myself, Marianne, Louise, | 59:58 |
a bunch of us worked on the phone banks, | 1:00:03 | |
calling up registered Democrats. | 1:00:06 | |
And as has been, explaining-- | 1:00:08 | |
- | But how did you get the ball rolling | 1:00:11 |
these phone banks, how did that all get formed. | 1:00:13 | |
Do you have any thoughts, knowing about that. | 1:00:16 | |
You just heard about it and you went over? | 1:00:18 | |
- | Yeah, Jack Campbell, who was the owner | 1:00:20 |
of the gay man's baths, | 1:00:27 | |
was also running for city council, okay. | 1:00:30 | |
And he organized a lot of it. | 1:00:35 | |
And he had a lot of the money. | 1:00:39 | |
- | Okay. | 1:00:42 |
- | And paid for a lot of the phone banks | 1:00:43 |
that were set up. | 1:00:46 | |
Mostly, there was a gay men's like hotel | 1:00:48 | |
on Biscayne Boulevard and in the 50s. | 1:00:53 | |
I think it was 5500 Biscayne or something like that. | 1:00:59 | |
And that's where one of the phone banks was. | 1:01:03 | |
And we would go out there at night | 1:01:08 | |
and called registered democrats | 1:01:09 | |
and explain the referendum to them. | 1:01:11 | |
Because if you voted no, you were voting yes | 1:01:13 | |
and if you were voting against the gays you voted no, | 1:01:19 | |
it was a horrible referendum. | 1:01:24 | |
But I remember Charlotte and I | 1:01:27 | |
following a car that was putting up posters, | 1:01:31 | |
against the gay people. | 1:01:37 | |
And we were like one block behind them | 1:01:41 | |
and as they would put it up, we would pull it down. | 1:01:43 | |
(laughing) | 1:01:46 | |
And every single one that they put up, | 1:01:47 | |
We pulled down until they figured it out. | 1:01:49 | |
And then they started chasing us. | 1:01:52 | |
Oh, we were really scared that night | 1:01:55 | |
that we were going to get killed. | 1:01:58 | |
- | Um, um, um. | 1:01:59 |
- | Because they, it took them a long time | 1:02:00 |
to figure it out and then when they did | 1:02:05 | |
they figured out that everything | 1:02:07 | |
that they had just done for the last three hours | 1:02:09 | |
was in the back of our car. | 1:02:12 | |
But you'd be sitting in a traffic jam, | 1:02:16 | |
like at five o'clock going home from work, | 1:02:20 | |
which was bumper to bumper and you could be | 1:02:23 | |
on A36 or an hour trying to get home from work. | 1:02:25 | |
And the person in front of you would be | 1:02:31 | |
the person who was in front of you for an hour | 1:02:34 | |
with a bumper sticker that would say, | 1:02:36 | |
kill a queer for Christ, | 1:02:38 | |
or the only good gay is a dead gay, | 1:02:40 | |
and you'd be sitting behind them | 1:02:43 | |
for a fuckin' hour? | 1:02:45 | |
It was insane. | 1:02:47 | |
And that was a very hot political time yeah. | 1:02:51 | |
It was when I was working at Jackson for sure, | 1:02:56 | |
positively, and remember, we were talking yesterday | 1:03:01 | |
I think about, oh no, this morning. | 1:03:06 | |
You were resting and Beth and Robin and I | 1:03:09 | |
were talking about having a little powwow | 1:03:12 | |
with people at work. | 1:03:15 | |
When you just needed that extra bit of support | 1:03:17 | |
from people who understood you. | 1:03:20 | |
Robin was saying that there was | 1:03:25 | |
a Jewish group of women that would powwow | 1:03:26 | |
with each other when they needed | 1:03:30 | |
that support from each other. | 1:03:32 | |
While I was working at Jackson | 1:03:34 | |
and all of the gay x-ray techs | 1:03:37 | |
would go into this little tiny bathroom. | 1:03:40 | |
And we would have like a gay hug. | 1:03:43 | |
And then we would come out | 1:03:45 | |
and go and do more work and then | 1:03:47 | |
somebody else would say, | 1:03:48 | |
Okay, time for the gays to hit the bathroom again. | 1:03:50 | |
We'd all go in and hug each other. | 1:03:54 | |
The faggots and the dykes, it didn't matter, | 1:03:56 | |
We just would go in | 1:03:59 | |
and and hug each other and come out. | 1:04:00 | |
- | Wow. And some needed. | 1:04:02 |
Yeah. Because the political climate, | 1:04:06 | |
everywhere, it was everywhere. | 1:04:10 | |
The doctors were talking about it. | 1:04:12 | |
The patients were talking about it. | 1:04:14 | |
Everybody, it was all over the news. | 1:04:17 | |
It was really a very hot climate in New York. | 1:04:19 | |
- | In New York and Miami. | 1:04:23 |
- | In Miami, about that. | 1:04:26 |
And the night of the vote, | 1:04:27 | |
I was at the Fontainebleau Hotel, | 1:04:30 | |
waiting for the vote to come in. | 1:04:33 | |
And I was there by myself. | 1:04:36 | |
I was sitting at a table. | 1:04:39 | |
And on the table was a platter of olives | 1:04:41 | |
and pickles and, and those kinds of things. | 1:04:47 | |
And this reporter came up to me | 1:04:52 | |
and he stuck his microphone in my face. | 1:04:55 | |
And he said, "And what do you think about this," | 1:04:58 | |
and I grabbed a pickle, | 1:05:01 | |
and I shoved it in his face and said, | 1:05:02 | |
and what do you think about this? | 1:05:04 | |
And the cameraman, got it. | 1:05:07 | |
And the next day I remember going to work, | 1:05:09 | |
and one of the radiologists, | 1:05:12 | |
one of the doctors came up to me. | 1:05:14 | |
She's still a friend of mine | 1:05:17 | |
and I just spent time with her | 1:05:18 | |
these holidays with her. | 1:05:20 | |
And she was married to a cardiologist, | 1:05:23 | |
who also worked at Jackson, | 1:05:28 | |
and she said Mindy, you know what happened last night? | 1:05:30 | |
I was sound asleep. | 1:05:32 | |
And my husband woke me up, | 1:05:35 | |
he said "Margie, Margie, look at the TV", | 1:05:37 | |
and I opened my eyes and there you were. | 1:05:39 | |
On television sticking a pickle in some man's face. | 1:05:42 | |
And my husband said "Isn't that Mindy?" | 1:05:46 | |
And there you were. | 1:05:48 | |
Why were you on TV sticking a pickle in some man's face? | 1:05:50 | |
And I said, Well Dr. Sanders, | 1:05:54 | |
if they fire me, you know why. | 1:05:57 | |
And I told her, you know, | 1:06:00 | |
I was there against Anita Bryant | 1:06:02 | |
and she said, Oh Mindy, they love you too much here. | 1:06:03 | |
They're not gonna fire you over anything. | 1:06:07 | |
And to this day, we are still friends, | 1:06:09 | |
I worked with her somewhere else. | 1:06:14 | |
After that, many years after that. | 1:06:16 | |
And we're still very, very dear friends. | 1:06:19 | |
- | So how did you feel then when that film came out? | 1:06:22 |
- | Oh I was devastated. | 1:06:24 |
- | Yeah. | 1:06:26 |
- | I was just devastated, I felt like, | 1:06:27 |
how can these people buy this crock of crap | 1:06:28 | |
from, you know, and who the fuck was Anita Bryant. | 1:06:35 | |
And we boycotted, woman-cotted Florida orange juice. | 1:06:38 | |
She lost her job. | 1:06:45 | |
- | Oh yeah. | 1:06:47 |
- | She lost the endorsement. | 1:06:48 |
- | Yes. | 1:06:49 |
- | And you couldn't get orange juice | 1:06:51 |
in a gay bar in Miami for years. | 1:06:52 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:06:56 |
- | For years, forget about ordering a screwdriver | 1:06:57 |
or any drink that contained orange juice | 1:06:59 | |
and there was signs everywhere in every gay bar. | 1:07:03 | |
Men's bars, women's bars, bike bars, dyke bars. | 1:07:06 | |
It didn't matter with orange, and the no sign, | 1:07:12 | |
the international no sign, no oranges. | 1:07:17 | |
And a lot of people did not know | 1:07:22 | |
that Florence Henderson | 1:07:24 | |
was almost as much involved with that | 1:07:26 | |
as Anita Bryant, but her name was not out there. | 1:07:30 | |
And she was in that television show, | 1:07:34 | |
The Brady Bunch, and her co-actor, | 1:07:38 | |
her husband in that show | 1:07:42 | |
was actually gay and wound up dying of AIDS. | 1:07:46 | |
And she basically had this change of heart | 1:07:50 | |
and started, you know trying to support | 1:07:55 | |
AIDS movements and stuff. | 1:07:57 | |
But that was way after she was right alongside | 1:08:00 | |
Anita Bryant, trying to kick us into the ground. | 1:08:03 | |
- | Um um um. | 1:08:06 |
- | So I've never been Florence Henderson fan either. | 1:08:07 |
- | I don't remember that because | 1:08:10 |
Brady Bunch was a little after, wow. | 1:08:12 | |
- | Wow. | 1:08:15 |
But yeah, you can't talk about Miami and any kind-- | 1:08:16 |
Item Info
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