This recording features Perry Alexander discussing his life in Miami Shores, Florida, beginning with his family's arrival from New York in 1962. Alexander describes his mother's tenacious effort to purchase and maintain the family home — a 1925 Mediterranean Revival structure built for an executive of the Shoreland Development Corporation, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places — while raising seven children largely on her own after his father's departure. He recalls the social geography of mid-century Miami Shores in vivid detail: the commercial district along Northeast Second Avenue, the Miami Shores Elementary School, the community center sports leagues, and informal childhood adventures along the Little River Canal. Alexander recounts attending Miami Edison High School during a period of racial unrest and his subsequent enrollment in the Oceanics program, an alternative education initiative in which he spent eight months as a sail training cadet aboard a Norwegian tall ship, traveling from Bergen to West Africa, Brazil, and the Azores. He also describes working as a teenager in the lobster trade in the Bahamas, and his eventual purchase and ongoing preservation of the family's historic home. The interview offers a ground-level view of Miami Shores community life, urban change in Miami-Dade County, and the challenges of historic preservation. The interview was conducted by John Bachay.