I recently finished reading Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time, a beautiful memoir that has the added attraction of covering the author’s childhood in Broward. His family moved in the ’40s to a place called Chula Vista, which, on googling, I found just south of Davie Boulevard and west of I-95. The area then was wooded wilderness that a socialist from Wisconsin dreamed of turning into a workers’ community; if you were willing to build your own house, he gave you a plot of land.
Most of the Florida action takes place in this subtropical Arcadia – at least that’s how it appeared to an adventurous young boy – but there are a few scenes from Fort Lauderdale beach, where a cousin lives, and a few from downtown, to which the young Conroy sometimes rides his bike. One day he grabs the tailgate of a chicken truck, “peeling off at the foot of Los Olas Boulevard” to catch a movie at the Sunset Theater.
The misspelling pained me. That a writer who took such care with his choice of words, and their placement in his sentences, didn’t bother to check the correct name of the street seemed insulting, as if the street were one detail that was too insignificant to bother with. At the same time, there was an undeniable thrill in seeing even the incorrect name of our main street – the one I drive down at least once a week – in a work of literature. It gave Las Olas an unimagined, transcendent importance.
An importance that is recognized by very few – but now at least one – of the city’s residents.
