The Legend of Leafy Way
It was the late 1960s, and like so many places, Coconut Grove had lost something it would never get back. We lived on Stewart Avenue, a quiet, shaded street where a canal, we called the Genie Bottle, slipped off into Biscayne Bay. Its distinctive round boat basin at the end gave it the shape and the name.
The neighborhoods felt darker then, the rain more frequent, the trees thick with shade. The Vietnam War was still raging, and Lyndon Johnson had not yet left the White House. Traffic was sparse. The stories whispered between kids and passed down from older brothers felt real in the way only legends can.
And on nearby Leafy Way, we found one of those legends. Or at least, we thought we did.
It all started with my older brother Mike and his best friend Scott. They spent countless summer evenings riding the shadowy, quiet backroads of the Grove in Scott’s purple Morris Minor convertible. That night, as they drove past a house on Leafy Way, something in the front window made them stop. A long, pale shape, softly glowing just behind the sheer, drawn curtains.
Whether Mike and Scott invented or inherited the story, we didn’t care. It had the echo of truth and the weight of tragedy. A story that felt too real not to believe.
It went like this… The family who lived in that house had lost their son, a decorated war veteran who took his own life a few years after returning from Vietnam, likely tormented by PTSD.
“They haven’t buried him yet. They’re keeping him in the house, and that’s his coffin in the living room behind the curtains.”
We listened, and we believed them. We didn’t question our older brothers or their friends. They were our mentors and our idols. And so, we set out to see it for ourselves.
The Ritual
We piled into Ralph’s beige Ford Falcon station wagon. Ralph was a creeper. Older than us, mid-thirties maybe. And he always seemed eager to drive us around. He wanted to be called Raif, the Old English pronunciation, but he wasn’t from the UK and surely didn’t attend Eton. A narc? A pedo? Killer? We weren’t sure. Something about him felt off, but he never gave us any reason to stop the free rides. After all, we were only teens. We didn’t care. Ralph had a car, we were invulnerable, had strength in numbers, and looked out for each other. But no driver’s licenses, and no ride of our own.
As we pulled onto Leafy Way, we’d start chanting: “We’re off to see the coffin! We’re off to see the coffin!” And it wasn’t just us anymore. The Grove was a small town back then and the story spread like mosquitoes at dusk.
As the word spread, It soon became a ritual, but not only ours. Just a few weeks later, more cars showed up. On Friday and Saturday nights, the quiet, winding lane became a slow-moving procession of headlights creeping beneath the thick banyan canopy. Each vehicle carried a pack of kids, drinking, stoned, car stereos blasting, tripping, all rolling toward the same destination. Every set of eyes fixed on that window, waiting for a glimpse of what shouldn’t be there.
Returning week after week, and every time we passed the house, it was still there. That eerie, elongated glowing shape behind the curtains, never moving, never changing, never proving us wrong.
One Fateful Evening
One Friday evening, everything started the same. Ralph picked us up at our usual hangout; an ancient banyan tree by the lake next to the Student Union at the University of Miami. Dubbed the “tripping tree,” and it’s still there today. Back then, UM’s sprawling campus was our playground, never crowded, and no one cared what we were doing or why we were there.
We loaded into the Falcon wagon and headed east up Sunset Drive, passing my old elementary school from which I had graduated just a few years prior. Around the traffic circle, over the Gables Waterway on LeJeune Bridge, up Ingraham Highway to Douglas, and turned onto Leafy Way. Taillights ahead flickered through the trees – we weren’t alone. The chant started as we crept our way along. We all leaned forward, ready to see it again. Ralph slowed the car. We squinted toward the window.
And then the trees came alive.
Ambushed
We never saw it coming. The residents in the neighborhood had had enough of their quiet little lane turning into a freak show. Especially the folks who lived in the house with the infamous coffin. For months, they put up with the cars creeping by, the voices, the music, the laughter. But that night, they all weren’t inside.
They were waiting in the trees, at least six of them.
Then… THUMP, THUD
Before we could react, they dropped out of the trees. Big guys, bearded, in their twenties, looking like giants to our scrawny little band of long-haired teens, and of course, Ralph who fit in like a screen door on a submarine.
Quick, quiet, seriously pissed off, and oddly enough, all wearing raccoon skin hats. Then the chaos: car doors flew open and huge hands grabbed us, yanking us out of the Falcon wagon like rag dolls.
“You wanna see it? Fine. Let’s go!”
One second, we were watching from the safety of the station wagon, The next, we were part of the story. It was already mayhem.
Then… BOOM
A gunshot. Loud with a blinding flash. It could have been a warning shot meant as a message to the other vehicles. We didn’t know, but the line of cars behind us knew. Tires screeched, and kids were screaming. The whole slow-rolling funeral procession turned into a fire drill.
But us? We were still there, detained – captured by a giant bearded dude who looked like Davy Crockett with his badass posse alongside.
Revelations
Then, a flicker of recognition. It was one of the Sterns, named Mike, who was now looking at us, and narrowing his eyes.
“Wait… I know you.”
And just like that, it all made sense. A few years earlier, our family was selling our place in nearby Sunrise Harbor and house-hunting in the Grove. Mom was a realtor and happened to meet the Sterns at her office, they were looking for a home in Sunrise Harbor and living on Stewart in the Grove. A house swap worked for everyone, and that’s how I knew Mike.
Mike, as it happened, was over at a friend’s place on Leafy Way that evening lending a hand with some neighborhood traffic problems.
If fixer had been a job title back then, he would’ve had it printed on a business card. I didn’t recognize him with the coonskin hat, but now, standing in the middle of Leafy Way, it hit me. I was face-to-face with a guy who lived in our old house, and we’d been living in theirs.
Regardless of the connection, they were determined to show us the error of our ways.
We might not die after all we thought, as they scruffed us like whimpering puppies. We knew better than to put up a fight. We were too stunned, too freaked out to do anything but shuffle along. They marched us from the open garage, through the kitchen, and into the living room, where the homeowners were waiting.
“Look real close.”
Not a coffin. Not a beloved son who was a war hero waiting for burial. Just a huge rectangular illuminated saltwater fish tank. The glow behind the curtain. The shape that never moved. And inside? A couple of clownfish, darting in and out of an anemone, unaware that they had just ended one of Coconut Grove’s greatest urban legends.
Ralph’s Last Ride
Mike and his Merry Men eventually released us, ordering us to spread the word: there was no coffin. Still in shock, we climbed back into Ralph’s car. Nobody spoke. Not us. Not even Ralph, who was shaking so hard I thought he might run off the road and kill us. The ritual was dead. Leafy Way went back to being just another quiet neighborhood. No more creeping down the street. No more chanting. No more coffin.
After dropping us off at nearby Merrie Christmas Park, Ralph drove off into the night like a man fleeing a crime scene, except the only thing that was murdered was his enthusiasm for our company. We never saw him again. Maybe he left town? A serial killer on the lam? Maybe in prison? We’ll never know.
Now, Years Later
These days, Leafy Way has changed. The banyan-shrouded street that once concealed Mike Stern and his friends waiting in the trees and birthed an urban legend, has transformed into an exclusive, gated enclave – Its mystery has traded for security.
The homes here were considered expensive back then, ranging from 50 to 100K, far beyond what most middle-class families could afford, yet only a fraction of what they cost now. Today prices in Leafy Way have skyrocketed, with some selling up to ten million.
The Grove was already shifting from a bohemian haven to an upscale residential area. The hippies, head shops, concerts, Hare Krishnas, and VW vans were slowly giving way to so-called wealth and order. But at least in those days, kids like us could still roam freely. Legends could still take root and the neighborhood still had a little wildness.
Now the gates are locked. The streets are quiet. No one piles into a stranger’s Falcon wagon to chant their way toward a mystery. No one slows down to see a coffin in the window.