Read Online Year in Palm Beach by Pamela Acheson, Richard B. Myers - Free Book Online

streets just north of Worth are mostly residential, with a real estate office or a restaurant or a dry cleaner here and there, plus The Chesterfield Hotel and The Brazilian Court Hotel.

    Just south of Worth Avenue is also residential, with the exception of the exclusive Everglades Club and The Colony hotel. Near the center of town, a handful of five- or six-story condominiums border the lake and the ocean, but the rest of the area is made up mostly of one- or two-story houses.
    Although our walking routes are random, Dick and I mostly stay within a rectangle that extends from the Breakers resort south to Hammon, and from the ocean beach to the lake.
    There are little cottages like ours here and there, but most of the houses range from about 3,000 to 10,000 square feet, though some are much larger, and virtually all the houses facing the lake or the ocean are immense.
    Most houses have at least one guesthouse and a pool and are frequently hidden by twenty- or thirty-foot tall hedges. Wrought iron gates open to driveways of coquina or brick.
    Many are Spanish Mediterranean in style, with barrel-tile roofs, balconies, and loggias. Others are Italian Renaissance, or Bermuda-style, or even New England clapboard. All are immaculate. Many were created in the 1920s and 1930s by a handful of influential architects, including Addison Mizner and Maurice Fatio. The town has a dizzying set of strictly enforced renovation and new construction rules. No garish McMansions allowed.
    To the west, from certain vantage points, skyscrapers are visible in the distance. These are on the far side of the Lake Worth Lagoon, in the city of West Palm Beach.
    Saturday, October 10
    We take our morning papers over to Victor’s Café, in the Gucci courtyard off Worth Avenue. It has a tiny dining room and alfresco tables set among flowers. As we approach, a delicious aroma mingles with the scent of tropical flowers. Victor stands at the entrance, dressed in his signature Bermuda shorts and golf shirt.
    â€œVictor, what smells so good?” Dick asks.
    â€œScones,” he replies. “Blueberry ones are baking right now.” He looks at his watch. “They’ll be ready in one minute.”
    Dick orders one for us to split, plus two espressos, and we settle at an outdoor table. I break open the scone. It’s warm, slightly crusty, soft inside, with lots of blueberries. Dick reaches for
The Wall Street Journal
so I take
The New York Times
, but instead of reading, I look around the courtyard.
    Brilliant bougainvillea blossoms cover some walls. There’s a little sculpture garden with enchanting life-size sculptures of children playing, picking apples, and climbing trees. Several small birds swoop down from a tall, slender cypress tree and land at my feet, hoping for a crumb. Other birds are perched on a tree branch, singing.
    It feels far away from our house and our computers and could almost pass for somewhere near the Mediterranean except, of course, we didn’t have to go to various airports and stand in lines and take off our shoes and belts and jackets.
    Dick looks up from the Shiny Sheet. “It says here, ‘A Palm Beach business owner contacted the police to report harassing phone calls he has been receiving for a year.’ A year?” he says. “I might have reported this a bit sooner.”
    Sunday, October 11
    Today we discover several blocks not far from us where most of the houses seem to be lived in, apparently by families with school-age children. Although there aren’t any people around, simple toys and tricycles and basketballs and even a couple of pogo sticks are on the porches and in the yards. Cars are parked in the driveways. Street signs along these family blocks read, “Children at Play.”
    This reminds me of the way life was when I was a child, before kids were being snatched right and left, before video games kept children inside all day, before toys became complex and