Palm Beach Recap

The Palm Beach Democrats flew me down to talk to them about WAIW? on Monday. It was an interesting time.

* I walked on the beach for 1 1/2 hours. Nose got a little burnt; I blame TSC for not allowing me to bring on a bottle of sunscreen. Of course, everyone knows that any lotion higher than SPF 15 is highly explosive.

* My host was a 93-year-old woman whose husband acted as pediatrician to RFK’s (yes, that RFK) kids. She also recalled seeing JFK (yep, that one) cruising around Palm Beach in a convertible. She bought her home after WWII for $35K. Today, it’s worth millions. It’s an art deco home and one of the few in the area that doesn’t have 20’ high hedges. She keeps it real and marvels at the wealth and the hedges that surround her. Her neighbors include a Ford widow who lives in a 50-room home alone and Bernie Madoff.

She’s the best type of wealthy person – loaded but doesn’t act like it.

* The fella who invited me down and took me to dinner before the talk was scheduled to have dinner with JFK the day he was shot. He also worked with John Connelly, the Governor of Texas, who was also injured during the assassination. Years after the incident, Connelly showed him his bullet wounds and told him that there had to be more than one shooter because shots were coming from every direction.

So take that and put it in your own conspiracy theory pipe and smoke it.

* The average age at the talk was probably about 70. Before the talk one of the ladies asked me what I’d be talking about. When I told her about my book and my worldwide clothes adventure she said, “Well, that’s not as interesting as politics, now is it?”

* My host’s nurse/driver was from Haiti. His daughter was about to graduate from college and soon he would have a few extra thousand dollars per year lying around. When I asked him about what he was going to do with all of that extra money, he told me that he was going to go back to school. In his heavy island accent, he went into a long spiel about how important education is. Then he told me about how he was at the Post Office the other day and the rich man in front of him (most in Palm Beach are loaded) couldn’t read. “That really freaked me out, man!” He told me. “This man lived in America and couldn’t read!”