The big controversy in Burnsville, county seat of Yancey County just outside Asheville is whether or not the state is doing a good thing widening US Highway 19 that runs from Interstate 26 to Spruce Pine and points east. The idea would be for Burnsville commuters to be able to drive all the way to Asheville at their speed, leaving tourists and slow pokes to dawdle in the slow lane. Personally I sometimes wouldn't mind such forward thinking on Highway One through the Keys, even though the Bonneville makes tourist passing an enjoyable pastime for me most days... My brother in law (retired) is incensed about the road widening and has been fulminating about it for years, and now it's happening so the sight of the earth moving equipment just makes him morose, a bad loser. The dude who sold us some craft pottery in downtown Burnsville was quietly delighted. He commutes an hour to Asheville airport to his day job and the road widening from his crafts store/home will be a lot easier.
Burnsville benefited hugely from the boom years of the 1990s, and the by-pass Highway 19 East collected the fast food joints and light industrial sheds and the car repair shops, while downtown Burnsville became a tourist mecca of cute stores and restored old buildings, with a core residential area spreading up the hill behind the main square:
Burnsville promotes itself as "home," the place where everyone wants to be, small town America, where you know your neighbors and you go shopping on foot from little store to little store and say 'howdy' as you go. It does a creditable job of recreating Mayberry:
This is the town everyone can love, warm (short) summers of leafy green trees, and miles of hiking trails with gated communities popping up like toadstools all through the woods, this is retirement and tourist country. Burnsville boomed in the 1990s when lots of people came to live in a quiet backwater and, not yet retired, earned their living by running a small store in the town while their other halves commuted forty minutes to Asheville. Burnsville these days has an abundance of small stores struggling to cope with a failing tourist economy. I was reminded, as I always am when we leave Key West how deprived we are in our choices. There were more stores with greater variety in this little mountain town than in our "major city" at the end of the Keys.
And the weather is what a lot of people enjoy,people who are not as heat obsessed as am I...
Nephew #2 was trying to convince me to buy a parka like his against the chill winter weather. I just snorted. My proposal is that next year we celebrate Christmas at our house in the Lower Keys, because I don't propose to ever need such a jacket in my life:
He grew up just outside Burnsville and remembers coming to the Yancey theater with his family. Unhappily the theater was closed "due to icy conditions" a sign proclaimed in it's window. However the film was Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler so I probably wouldn't have needed to go, had the family let me off the Christmas leash.
As it was we strolled and shopped and heard tales of woe from shopkeepers lamenting lack of trade in the high tourist summer months and a dead Christmas season so I am predicting a very much less vibrant Burnsville to come...We stopped for tea in the tea shop that lives off foreign orders for fancy paper invitations...weird but true. They make paper and ship it round the world, a profitable endeavor that allows them to operate a low key and delicious tea room upstairs:
Yet even the tea shop owners lamented the fact their suppliers of fancy paper are drying up, preferring to make more money selling their paper abroad in their countries of origin, rather than bothering to ship it overseas to Burnsville. The tea shop is a labor of love supported by the profitable paper sales... We walked past the tractor shop, a healthy reminder that some people still do cultivate luscious lawns in the appropriate time of year:
Burnsville, unlike the in-laws' remote mountain home, is served by cellular telephones, and I got to photograph at least one coward huddling out of the freezing wind making a call:
We paid homage to Otway Burns after whom the city was named. The city was founded around 1833 and Otway apparently made a name for himself and his state in the war of 1812, so he got the town named for him:
And there he stands hovering over his city which will in some form, weather the tough times ahead as best it can. Appalachia is no stranger to economic downturns and doubtless they will grow the food we townies in the Keys will only dream about as we fish for grunt and serve them with bland grits.
Even though Appalachia and the Keys are as different as possible they do have something in common. I have seen this same plaque on the corner of Peacon Lane and Caroline Street in Key West:
Pretty soon I shall be back in Key West and be able to touch, with ungloved hand, that same message and not get frostbite. What joy.
The first time I went to visit the sister and brother in-law at their home outside 
I remember stumbling in, out of the cool autumnal night and being greeted by a wood paneled room, a fireplace, a stove and a massive old fashioned kitchen all apparently pumping out heat simultaneously. They took my bags and then an unaccustomed sound rang out, like a clarion call. "You have a phone out here?" I asked incredulously as I struggled to acknowledge where I actually was. That I had called them at the phone many times previously did not occur to me till everyone had stopped laughing. "And we have wine too," my brother in law the connoisseur, reminded me as he poured.
Celebrating Hanukkah there this month seemed particularly appropriate in light of the exceptional cold hitting much of the nation, and not sparing western North Carolina. We lit candles this year with especial meaning as the wind howled down the mountains and through the trees giving us the impression we were about to be run down by a truck. When we retreated to our electrically warmed room at the 
It's the style around here this German fairy tale architecture, all gables and wooden beams, and at this time of year dead looking deciduous trees. Another guest at the Inn admitted it was her first visit and I encouraged her to come up from Florida in the summer when it is glorious in green. "It's just another kind of beauty," the Innkeeper remarked when I talked about how alive the trees are in summer. So it is another kind of beauty, but I just like green better than dead:
The winding mountain roads around here are lined with leafless trees this time of year...
...as is the Little Toe River, which runs through the valley:
From my in-laws front yard one can see Mount Mitchell, reported on elsewhere in this blog as the highest point in the eastern United States:
My brother-in-law and his wife are among the oldest members of 
The style of most homes in the area are rural mountain cabins, home to artists and artisans, painters and recluses and gregarious people and tough people in shirt sleeves when it's freezing cold:
One of the two great institutions of 
When my sister-in-law the physician worked there it was a little wooden house and now they have built this magnificent brick structure. Back in the old days before roads, communications and cell phones (which still mostly don't work around here), the health center was a blessing to the locals who lived in Appalachian isolation, and the clinic still serves a profound community need. One road heads off in front of the clinic all paved and modern:
The other, all gravel and dirt and pot holed and wet, turns into the main body of the community, the communal land:
And off that winding "main road" that the State wants to modernize and widen and pave with all offsets and sidewalks and stuff that the residents are leery of, there are side roads and paths...
...with cryptic signs and odd sign posts:
And the road winds past open spaces backing into mountain valleys that North 
The main road through the community branches off past more of these little houses, whose occupants are all known to my family members. It's a bit 
This is quite the other world compared to the rushing suburban scene just forty minutes away in 
Along the line where my Quaker brother-in-laws' garden backs up against the outside world he made up these signs:
He was brought up to be polite. I took the dog for a walk, that and updating my blog were easy ways to get away from the pressure cooker of the organizational chaos of ten more or less related people celebrating a holiday. Mason who lives in 
The centerpiece of 
You have a school with youngsters being taught not just to read and write but how to get along in these unremarkable school buildings, the focus of much attention at community meetings:
That spirit of easy going tolerance is exemplified by the Volkswagen bus parked under a shelter nearby. It's not running and hasn't been running for years, as long as I remember. It just sits there. My brother in law said he spoke to the owner recently who, with some embarrassment explained it was a restoration project (the perfect non conformist symbol of course!) and he hadn't quite "got around to it."
Procrastination drives me nuts, especially when I see it in myself, and that alone is a good explanation for why I would never do well in 
The author says this lane used to be known as Garrison owing to it's proximity to the base that is still there across White Street. Nowadays it's known as 
Part of Stump Lane's charm is the slightly dishevelled appearance it presents to the world, including this rural appurtenance:
I half expected a pony to stick it's snout out of the bushes but no such luck.
My wife loves skylights and almost reflexively when we moved into a our canal side cabin she asked the builder to put in a skylight over the kitchen, to reproduce the airy kitchen she'd had in California. He demurred saying skylights don't do well in 
I haven't missed the skylight in our house, but I am reassured by the expanse of uninterrupted sheet metal every time the weather turns nasty. Stump Lane also boasts an example of the magnificent and pointless eyebrow homes, designed to allow upper windows to remain open in all weathers:
In fact they found the homes with this design managed instead to keep hot air trapped under the eaves and so they stopped building them. The lane also shows off less eccentric styles of architecture:
And as usual, life in Old Town would be incomplete without a bicycle, not as a toy or hobby but as transportation :
And there are my favorite old Florida shutters:
Some other artwork here and there caught my eye on Stump Lane as I walked. I liked the sea horse designs on the turquoise shutters, the sort of thing I would never end up with on my own house through sheer indolence or lack of artistic impulse or something:
And this is way out of my range:
I have aspirations for my 
But I'm not holding my breath, it will take me time to develop the patience to train a bush to grow like this. In the simplest of worlds some of us can hope to see a nice tall tree around our homes, and though I have 
It hardly looks tropical at all, such a grasping coniferous tree. A tree trunk worthy of the name "stump" were it ever cut down. 
Then we started laughing, as the bubbles blew over our cars and drifted into the pine woods. Excellent! I still needed to pee but this was now an adventure and not an ordeal. Someone else spotted a break in the fence and soon we were in a small group of adventurers making a break for freedom across a ditch onto a muddy side road and bound post haste for the nearest loo. That 
"Dinner?"I asked laconically as one does when one has become intimately bonded on a road trip. "Sure" my wife said. And we spotted a barbecue sign so we pulled off the freeway. The rule is that there is no good food within a mile of an interstate highway so we hoped for the best, expected the worst and stopped at the only local, non chain restaurant we could see. Inside it was bright and Formica and Naugahyde and cheerful. A tall black waitress in a rayon apron took our drink orders with perfect southern grace. I felt like I was in a movie set, stereotyping southern roadhouses of the 1950s. The menu offered the usual southern stuff, fried boiled and delicious all of it until we spotted mustard Bar B Q. What's that? we asked. "Local," she replied shortly. We nodded, never heard of it- let's try it! She took the order and strode away leaving us to sip sweet iced tea and contemplate the road just driven.
The waitress came back and said, "you know this is Maurice's barbecue?" No we said, never heard of it. She nodded and walked back to her station. I like to read the local newspaper where I travel so I had taken a copy of the Columbia State into the restaurant. I unfolded the paper and there was the banner headline across the top of the paper: "Maurice Boycott Grows: Sales Rise." Say, what? I read on. It turned out the 
And Imagine my surprise returning to that same stretch of interstate to find a couple of billboards still proclaiming the benefits of Maurice's racist 
If I were to tell you that Mount Mitchell is the highest point in the eastern United states, you would suck your breath in, in appreciation of the enormity of the lump of rock rising up out of the Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina. Were I foolish enough to show you a picture of said mountain from the front lawn of my in-laws cabin in Celo, North Carolina you might wonder what I was talking about.
The unhappy fact is that the Highest Point in the Eastern United States is a mere 6,684 feet above sea level, and I once rode my old Vespa 200 to withing a whisker of ten thousand feet in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. And there were many trails for me to explore on foot from there. I took this next picture while standing next to my Nissan in a vast spacious empty parking lot two days before Christmas, 2008.
Despite it's lack of elevation in absolute terms, and despite the childish simplicity of it's approaches Mount Mitchell is a lovely place. Or it would be were the temperature not hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit with the winds howling lank banshees across the exposed summit...
Mount Mitchell is well sign posted because it is the major attraction after all and as far as getting there goes we headed up the valley of State Highway 80 from Burnsville:
Until we reached the stone bridge, characteristic crossing points of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a federal depression era public work that winds across the mountains as far north as Virginia I believe.In any event we were somewhere around Mile Marker 480 around here just north of Asheville:
The parkway is a delightful drive limited supposedly to forty five miles per hour lined with views right and left and requiring no more speed than that if sightseeing is what you are there to do. Speeding on a motorcycle would be delightful given the right time of year of course...
But even at a modest 3500 feet, or so, this clearly wasn't the right place to ride a motorcycle at this time of year, for someone who usually only sees ice in his drinks:
The road surface was mostly dry and clean so we rolled along without a worry. And we stopped to try to capture the views, though I have to say their beauty goes far beyond what I could capture:
The parkway was closed right at the entrance to Mount Mitchell making an approach directly from Asheville impossible but we turned up the state highway towards the park with no problems at all. The road winds up between pine forests, stunted by the elevation and lack of soil...
...past the ranger station...
...to the vast spacious empty parking lot at the top:
I left my wife in the car and took off for the last 980 feet to the top, along a brand new paved highway that faintly resembled a path hacked through the pine trees lining the way:
There were non-accessible (to wheel chairs) trails off to the sides from this main highway, as I hiked my solitary way up:
To the top itself finally:
Apparently the old concrete tower much beloved by my brother-in-law has been replaced by a much more stylish accessible round observation platform flanked by the grave of Elisha Mitchell, the North Carolina University professor who suffered a fatal accident on the mountain negotiating a waterfall. He was 64 and completing some scientific study of the mountain, the year was 1857, he died. His remains are in the tomb like contraption alongside the observation platform, which was marked with a compass rose and benches to sit upon:
Happily for me the heated Maxima was in the parking lot with my patient wife inside. her arthritis doesn't agree at all with this weather, even less than i do, and I was glad she had chosen to wait inside, alone in the giant parking lot:
On a previous visit to Asheville many years ago in our previous Maxima I had taken a detour and we had gone for a tour of the very western tip of North Carolina through the mountains. That was the time I forgot to use the automatic gearbox to maximum effect and we had suffered a nasty case of burning brake pad syndrome. This time as we descended the mountain I prudently put the gearbox into second and we descended at a stately 29 mph without touching the brakes:
And so we descended back to reality, one hairpin at a time and left behind the magnificent views to a few stray cars coming up behind us. I wondered if this might be the outcrop known bluntly on the topo maps as "Celo Knob":
It has always struck me as very old fashioned to stop at a Florida roadside stand and buy citrus fruit. Why bother to haul Florida grapefruit 1500 miles in the 
We left 
"We should stop," I said. "No," she said. "We'll stop at the next one we see." But I knew better so we pulled a (legal) U-turn and headed in. In to the stupid old fashioned citrus stand that has been 
It was a blast actually. We bought two bags of grapefruit for five bucks and for another five we got a bag of tangerines, all piled up and ready to go:
I'm pretty sure if you shop a lot you wouldn't be surprised by the interior of the store, cookies, jams, 
I wasn't about to be seen walking around in one but I took a quick picture to remind myself where I was:
And the old fashioned truck might look cute but orange processing has apparently moved along a bit with the times:
When I lived in Fort Myers almost twenty years ago (oops!) I used to ride across the state to visit a friend in Palm Beach and a half hour out in the country I would ride towards 
Take that you ski fanatics hoping for snow and ice this Christmas Day. Put me in an orange grove when the fruit are ripening and I will be happy.
We got back in the car clutching a quart (liter) of sweet fresh orange juice snagged for just three bucks and set off again down the highway.
That was definitely not my last stop at an orange shop on a Florida highway. But next time I'm going without my wife because I have a feeling an orange flavored chocolate something might taste good while on the seat of a Bonneville. It's worth remembering too, not a hundred years ago, oranges were so rare and 
Except perhaps not so much around Christmas time as the crowds are monstrous, and we got a taste of the crowding on the long drive in, past the carriage house photographed above:
Inside the massive mansion we got lost and separated all eight of us (including two infants) so we paused to regroup, and as we paused we realised the house was packed, people were streaming through in an endless crocodile of gawping visitors, bundled up against the frigid air outside:
And barely warmer inside the cool, somewhat heated interior of the Vanderbilt mansion. Which as they were celebrating Christmas like everybody else in Asheville, was decorated for the season:
And in the sun room just inside the entrance three hardy women sat at the piano and tinkled bravely away at Tchaikovsky as the Arctic blasts blew through the entranceway crowded with visitors filing slowly inside. I tell you, Charles Dickens wasn't in it, it was all pure nostalgia and quite wonderful :
The Vanderbilt mansion outside Asheville is a national landmark, like the Vizcaya Mansion I wrote up earlier on a visit to Miami. It has all the miles of corridors and rooms and crazy luxuries of the golden ages of decades past. It also has a website of it's own for those interested in hunting down facts and figures; goggle it and rejoice in what you find. Ours was a family visit, and pretty soon we found we had come at the wrong time of year, it was just too crowded:
The Biltmore House was supposed to exist as a working farm and it is still surrounded by acres of land. It is a major employer in Asheville, and it produces all manner of food products, not least wine:
The Mansion is the centerpiece of course with its heavy dark furniture, it's medieval tapestries, paintings and carvings.It brings a piece of Old Europe, to the wild rugged mountains of western North Carolina. Call it a civilizing influence, which wouldn't be exactly true, but the wealthy of years past wanted to take the fresh mountain air in the summer as much as the masses did. It is our good fortune the spires and towers are now open to all:
This immense block of granite is plunked down in the middle of the mountains with incredible views in all directions:
Inside, where photography is forbidden apparently there are miles of rooms worth viewing. We, the experienced visitors, decided to skip the formal tour and made a beeline for the basement where we figured only the hardiest visitors would penetrate after circling the drawing rooms and bedrooms in the floors above.
The basement is a world apart, long corridors lined with laundry rooms and sewing rooms, a bakery, a machine room with an electrical generator and a steam room with a heating plant. there's a two lane bowling alley and a magnificent tile lined swimming pool (empty) complete with diving platforms and submerged lights. And there are larders with meat, vegetables and fruit and cheese, bottling rooms and you name it, the farm provided it. And then there is my favorite room, the kitchen, a vast spacious room with a separate grill room and magnificent views out across the valley:
And there are the grounds which don't look at their best in my opinion on a twelve degree winter day be it ever so sunny:
What the flock of geese did on these wild cold nights I can't imagine. What we did was to leave the cafe area after a quick wine and chocolate tasting and a couple of purchases in the huge gift shop area (two bottles of Biltmore red actually). The crowds made it impossible to enjoy the Bistro which I had been looking forward to, farm produce in the Biltmore restaurant, but there we were. We went into Asheville instead to get cold and see the city, another essay entirely of course.
If you are in Asheville or riding this section of the Blue Ridge Parkway don't miss the Biltmore Mansion. I was frozen but still glad I went:
My joy is hard to discern I know. To those lighting candles, like my in-laws, Shalom...
Unusually High Level Of STDs the banner headline of the local newspaper was screaming last night as we strolled into the grocery store. New Reports of Syphilis Oddly High continued the paper speaking of Buncombe county, of which Asheville is the seat. "Higher proportion of gays," my sister-in-law said laconically, as only a physician can when speaking of something as bizarre as syphilis. I guess that sums up Asheville's place in rural western North Carolina, oddly syphilictic. It is, though a divine city, one of those places whose fame precedes it and is becoming annoyingly popular, much to the chagrin of local residents:
My sister-in-law (the physician) hankers after a low income apartment in the middle of the city though with some chagrin my brother-in-law (a retired University professor) is forced to confess his income is low enough but he has too many assets. Perhaps the melt down will take care of that. These units are centered where people can walk to almost anything they need downtown:
"Good idea coming here," my wife said to me after we completed our first brief visit to the pile shown above. It's a house dating back to the First World War that was built for the pleasure of a man who,as far as I can tell was a confirmed bachelor. There is no mention in the literature of a Mrs James Dearing, so what we have here is the product of the fevered imaginations of four men.
Apparently the three designers, Messers Hoffman Suarez and Chalfin were charged by the Vice President of International Harvester with creating a villa that was to have appeared to have been lived in for 400 years but was actually constructed from scratch in two...The whole thing covered almost 200 acres on the shores of Biscayne Bay and included a farm modeled on an Italian village. All this extravagance lasted less than ten years for James Dearing who went to a better place (where, one wonders? He had Earthly homes in Chicago, New York Paris and here in pioneering Miami) in 1925.
Nowadays $10 gets a Dade county residence inside the grounds, and it costs other plebs from elsewhere fully fifteen dollars. However one might consider it well worthwhile if rococo limestone is to your taste:
Josh and Lisa appeared to find this place as fascinating as my wife and I did:
For some people the Viscaya mansion, named for a Spanish province, is just another day at the office:
In the literature this building is compared favorably to Hearst castle in California, which is not unreasonable given the emphasis on artistry and overly elaborate decorations. Personally I thought Viscaya looked quite a bit like the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina. However neither of the other famous mansions faces onto Biscayne Bay:
And it just so happens that James Dearing's private suite of rooms, upstairs inside the mansion happened to overlook this "venetian yacht harbor" a location that Josh thought might be quite the spot to lounge on the balcony and smoke a large cigar, his recurring fantasy:
The house apparently fell into some disrepair after the owner's death before it was opened to the public in 1953. Nowadays the place is quite magnificent and my pictures really don't do it justice. The place has to be seen, a magnificent courtyard in the center surrounded by a magnificent series of rooms decorated, over decorated perhaps for my taste with tapestries, paintings statuary and elaborate candelabras and chandeliers framed in gilt.
Lisa told me that National Geographic rated the gardens as the best formal gardens in North America, which is high accolades indeed,though I have no clue how one rates such things. There's no doubt the gardens that remain (the vegetable farm has long since disappeared) are outstanding and beautifully maintained. Apparently they represent classical European gardens adapted to the sub tropics which seems reasonable enough to me. Villa D'Este outside Rome should feel the competition, I think:
In the midst of this beauty we came across a wedding photographer doing his thing. We were quite surprised when the "groom" dashed past us, a child in an ill fitting man's suit. It seemed beyond his ability to have got the bride in the family way to have forced the issue of marriage on one so young...
Until we figured this was a Latin quinceanera, the celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday to mark her accession to womanhood and all the responsibility that entails. Marriage would come later. Lisa started pondering what a young girl might do to top this event in this spectacular location when marriage in fact rears its head for her. "Can't do better than Viscaya," was the general sentiment. At which point the Latin inscription on the sundial comes into play:
Accept the gifts of the hour joyfully and relinquish them stoically, which it should be noted is easier said than done in real life. In our world jet aircraft speed us on our way at six hundred miles per hour, a speed that makes it easy for us not to notice the jewels in our midst.
I've known about this place for the better part of twenty years yet this was my first visit, thanks in part to too much jetting around. I hope it won't be my last.
And then I saw this simple juxtaposition of traditional pine needle and palm with the red stuff:
And I thought this gutter ball was imaginative. My sisters would have slapped me had I had the imagination to suggest putting Christmas ornaments outside the house (they were the Gauleiters in charge of decorations in my childhood):
On White Street I spotted more Xmas ribbon alongside a strong sartorial statement from the hip youth:
And then I got bored. So I thought what about just celebrating the Christmas decorative season with photos of red stuff? Like these red shorts on a person I'm guessing wears a parka at home this time of year:
And while I'm busy guessing I'm going to stick this dude in the same category. People come to Key West to let it all hang out and tie dyed may have gone out of fashion long enough ago that even I am aware of it's passing, but so what?
On a more traditional note I figured Old Glory at the White Street Armory gave the picture enough red to be included:
And it seems I am not the only fan of Netflix. I wanted to borrow the envelope and see what this stranger enjoys watching but I limited myself to a picture of the red bordered envelope bound for their Fort Lauderdale warehouse:
This next is a bit of a stretch but there is something vaguely pink about this formal interior spotted as I walked by:
The figurehead on the old sponge warehouse on Fleming Street is a redhead I think. The convenient green stuff is algae or seaweed or something:
I have learned to despise publicly the ubiquitous bougainvillea thanks to the contempt expressed by a Man who rides a scooter in Turkey, but secretly I still like these bushes: 
I added to my collection of kids art on city fireplugs:
And the Haitian Art Gallery on Southard Street is still going out of business slowly, slowly. I keep telling my wife pretty soon he'll be gone for good but she is resisting making another purchase for now. Not that a suppurating crucifixion would be likely to find it's way into our home, but I can add it here as the figure bleeds red. I am going to miss the gallery when it finally goes:
In my pursuit of red of an afternoon I thought a simple old fashioned stop sign said something particular against a blue and green background:
I saw this card in the window and though I don't know who Molly might be, she has to have done something right to be greeted like this when she arrives: 
What this contraption might be, found loitering next to the library I have no idea. A parrot's gymnasium perhaps:
A Fleming Street view with a red bumper sticker. I took my self imposed "red mandate" fairly lightly: 
And a red brick chimney on top of the Spottswood building at the corner of Fleming and Simonton Streets:
You never know what you'll see when you look up in Key West. This next one I think must be some sort of chain store coming to the 400 block of Eaton Street. It was just getting stocked as I strolled by and I believe all the merchandise is stuff...advertised on the box. I guess someone must care about that sort of thing:
And in closing something I prefer over another doodad made in China, is a prickly pear made in Key West:
Which reminds me I need to go out and fight the doves for some of the rapidly ripening sea grapes in my yard.
The streets of Ocala's historic district are a pleasant place to walk a dog, with lots of Live Oak trees, dangling the Spanish Moss beloved of horror movies to give that macabre look to a neighborhood:
The cold front hadn't reached North Florida by last night so the temperatures, it has to be said, were quite pleasant, hovering just below seventy degrees. I had on a sweatshirt as a precaution but I might have been able to get quite aways round the block without getting knocked down by the dreaded mainland night time frost. Rosie and I spent about an hour wandering hither and yon and just like Key west we saw some houses:
Some in better shape than others:
And we watched the sun set over the...no not the Straits of Florida, but the plains...of somewhere...Anyway I watched it get dark while Rosie ploughed a furrow through some bushes with her nose:
Rosie showed no signs of flagging, not surprising as Nancy's idea of a foundling dog is a super energetic beagle, so we kept walking. And walking. And walking and to my profound relief she never did take a dump, as Nancy had promised me she wouldn't. I've quit picking up after dogs ever since Emma died, so Rosie was exemplary in that regard (I am a responsible dog walker even 400 miles from home). And as it got dark the houses lit up:
Deck the palms...even the stubby little ones. Especially the stubby little ones.... 
She is house proud of her historic home in Ocala, a home that cost a good deal less than it would have in Key West or on her favorite island Big Pine Key:
We brought her a Conch Republic flag for Hanukkah.
I can't imagine working in a police department in Dade or Broward counties, but we do see officers leave the bucolic overpriced home market of our fair city and come to Miami or Fort Lauderdale to get a home and build a big city career. And they seem happy enough when I run into them, as they return for a viist to their alma mater at Key West PD.
Tami thought about moving north and they'd have been happy to have her, but she is a senior officer in Key West and respected and in the end she opted to stay and raise her young daughter here. She told me this picture of her was too severe so I waited for her to smile one night when she was helping us out in dispatch:
"What a relief ," she said when she came up to give Noel a break, as she took off her gun belt. "That thing weighs far too much." It does too, and I can't imagine what a nuisance it is walking around all night with that albatross tied around one's hips:
Just taking it off to go to the bathroom is a prolonged operation, and officers can't let the paraphernalia out of their sight so you can hear them clanking around in the toilet stalls like the ghost of Hamlet's father as they disrobe. They carry handcuffs in a little pouch, a folding night stick, rubber gloves for those moments of intimate contact with the unwashed masses, spare ammunition, a flashlight, police grade pepper spray (very strong stuff) and of course the gun a massive metal lump they hope never to use. Having all that ironmongery lying around in dispatch is a reminder of how nasty it can get out on the streets, and makes me glad I'm upstairs behind locked doors, using my modest belt to do no more than keep my trousers up. Noel was glad of the break as it happened because he was feeling poorly and instead of going downstairs to the gym I woke him up after an hour's doze in the dispatch recliner, my home away from home for an hour every night I'm working. He seemed to enjoy it too:
Hard to imagine but two minutes later he was back on the job wide awake and ready to take a phone call...
I stood upstairs outside her building marvelling at the peace and serenity of the hour. In a big city a stairwell like this might be the scene of an urban ambush but here it's just...a college stairwell:
Down below the north was picking up promising cooler temperatures, again! as another cold front blew into town. For the camera the breeze was just another way to play with color and light:
And we're almost at the solstice so next week the days will start to lengthen again the promise of summer will be just around the corner, another summer of hurricane watches and hot humid days and nights, in the southernmost village.
This is my first return visit to the Blue Hole on Big Pine Key,since I was there earlier this year, a time when there was an alligator lurking in the water. Since then the animal which was either seven feet long and had lived there nine years or was nine feet long and had lived there seven years has expired thanks to ingesting a child's toy dropped in the water. Apparently the animal, named Bacardi for some obscure reason, was unable to digest the toy and got terminal stomach ache. Thus no alligator pictures this time except for this:
The last time I was here there were signs of construction and things getting torn up and now the parking area is all spiffed up with cement and bike racks and everything, even some slight shade. Shade is the definition of a good parking spot in Florida, and in winter you just seek out shade from force of habit:
They've cleaned up the paths and the area is entirely accessible now:
With the requisite warnings of course. Signage is everywhere:
The Blue Hole is a disused quarry filled with freshwater and thus ideal alligator habitat, which makes it a shame there is no alligator anymore but people kept showing up to have a look. 
I met one guy at the viewing area and I remarked on the missing Bacardi (I can't get over what a silly name that is for a dinosaur but none of my acquaintances agreed when I ran it by them) and he sounded rather like a Blue Hole volunteer or something when he expounded that "they" had found 75 freshwater holes on Big Pine and No Name Keys which were likely habitats for alligators. That gave me, the back country explorer self styled, pause. Then I wondered if they might import a couple back to the Blue Hole and he sucked air through his teeth in disapproval.
Apparently it is no longer the done thing to mess around the wildlife and they are simply going to hope that perhaps an alligator might migrate back to the hole on its own, like a lost hitch hiker or something:
I saw this dude strolling up Key Deer Boulevard from"downtown" Big Pine Key and I wondered where he was headed as there are only a few scattered housing subdivisions out in these parts. Then I saw him taking a pause that refreshes at the Blue Hole.Perhaps he was hoping for an alligator to liven up his day. It's hard to be disappointed when you are in a pretty little spot like this:
I think they've done a nice job of cleaning the place up. clearing the trails, painting the post-and-rails and putting up all the usual verbiage, without making the experience too suburban. It's worth a visit and to get here take the left hand street from the light at Highway One in Big Pine. The left-hand street is Key Deer Boulevard,straight as an arrow:
It's 
I'm exaggerating a bit. This place didn't look nearly so nice back then but he had asked to see the least 
The usual mixture of well to do restored and massive:
And the 
A bit of early spring cleaning underway perhaps or someone moving in or moving out. Homes tend to be small in Key West so when it's time to rearrange the furniture for whatever reason it generally has to go out in the road in front of God and Everybody, as there aren't massive suburban garages around here to hide one's stuff:
The resident cat looking imperious as usual:
And look here what do we have. Why I do 
I don't miss snow or frost or seasons or any of that kind of stuff. But a nice sun warmed lawn is a fine thing 
Nassau Lane at Christmas, which you would only know 
I wonder if I would still like Key West had we wedged ourselves, mortgage free, into that tiny little shoe box on Nassau Lane?
The High School was rebuilt a few years ago on the same site as the old school on Flagler Avenue, and happily for us, the community at large, they included a modern theater facility on the campus. The auditorium is used as a performance space of all kinds, music, theater and of course the band:
They call it a Winter Concert but it's not the solstice they are marking:
I have to say the program was varied far beyond anything we attempted when I was in High School. The Director of Bands Ashby Goldstein had the band perform the usual holiday fare which is really Christmas carols and Tchaikovsky but we also got some Kwanzaa music which I had never heard, Imani by Sean O'Loughlin.
It was abundantly clear Goldstein, himself a graduate of key West High, was having a great time with his youngsters:
I like the fact that the High School is an open campus, in a nation where students in big cities have to pass through gates and metal detectors to get to work, the students here can come and go as they please. of course Key West is such a small town truancy isn't as easy to pull off as it might at first appear as everyone has a tendency to know their neighbor's business...MY wife's buddy Cathy lives up the Keys near us and she was keeping a close eye on her daughter who was playing a saxophone buried almost out of sight in the bowels of the band. The proud parents had their camera out for the occasion and Phil was working hard to pull his teenager out of the crowd:
The band's performance brings out the village atmosphere in this small town and during the intermission neighbors took the time to to catch up with each other:
Whenever I attend a gathering like this in Key West I think about how far out on a limb we are down here, sticking out like a finger into the Straits of Florida. if we could get in the car and drive south to Havana we would be there easily in ninety minutes, and what a world apart it would be! Yet here we are firmly anchored, under our palm trees and the star studded tropical sky, in America. This may be rhe southernmost High School but its still the band in the land of Sousa and glittering instruments and a particular musical history:
Cathy said the young musicians had been hard at work practicing for this public display of their artall semester long. She said band practice was a daily affair and treated with utmost seriousness by the musicians. Mnay years ago I was in my high school band in England where I was sent to boarding school. Looking back I feel rather as though I am seeing someone entirely different:
The vest tradition lived on I was glad to see including this young timpanist clacking his wood blocks:
And how can one not approve of a female tuba player? Call me prejudiced but I've always felt the piccolo, valuable though its music may be, is an instrument foir wussies...
The concert highlight was a performance of the inevitable Nutcracker Suite, holiday music par excellence, but as Mr Goldstein himself pointed out, one cannot hear the Nutcracker and not think of ballet... So we were privileged to witness the debut of a new and exciting corps de ballet whose name I forget. However their performance, brought to us by means of a video recording was unforgettable. Indeed they brought the house down:
They were, it turned out, hairy members of the band itself, unafraid to make fools of themselves in tutus and slippers, diving, pas de deuxing and pirouetting with no aplomb but plenty of vigor. You had to be there to listen to the whoops and hollering and gales of laughter as the boys flung themselves into their roles as swans of a bygone age trying to be graceful and failing with determination. They took their bows from the wildly appreciative house:
Cathy was as flabbergasted as anyone by the tightly kept secret of the special performance, no was to know ahead of time. The evening ended a little earlier for my wife and I as we left before the community singalong. My wife is a Jew and despite her protestations she has but the vaguest idea about the Christian traditions of Christmas and I couldn't bear to hear her mangle Christmas carols. Aside from which I loathe audience participation and singalongs so she was the perfect excuse for me to get us out of there. As we left we found a youngster perched on the auditorium steps:
He was unable or unwilling to articulate to strangers passing by why he was sitting out there missing a great evening's entertainment warming his hands with his breath. And I know 68 degrees isn't really cold in a lot of places, but it is in Key West, keeper of the southernmost flame of small town American traditions. Be not afraid, we here at 24 degrees North Latitude know what needs to be done this time of year even if frost and snow never put in an appearance. I'm only sorry I couldn't get to the Christmas parade down Truman Avenue, the other winter tradition that will have to wait till next year. Same time same place I hope. 
There is a street off Highway One called Morris Avenue and it is, as far as I can tell the northernmost street in the Keys. Or possibly not. In the above photograph the US flag flying above Pirate Hat Marina is in Monroe County, but the green bushes beyond it are most likely across the county line in Dade County. Which means this is definitely the end of Highway One in Monroe County. Pirate Hat Marina (which is for sale incidentally if you know how to get a bank loan) claims it is in Key Largo:
It's certainly at Mile Marker 112.5 but as far as I can tell technically speaking Key Largo doesn't extend north of Jewfish Creek, so this place is in Monroe County for sure but not technically in the Keys. I think I am being pedantic, and I can't help myself. It certainly feels like the Keys. This is Morris Avenue winding a half mile from Highway One: 
With mysterious boat views: 
And trailers hidden behind bougainvillea and the like at Pelican Cay Harbor:
And that sign is pure Keys overkill. On the subject of pedantry the word "cay" is pronounced "key" across the Caribbean. In the US the Florida Cays were changed to Keys because Americans apparently had trouble bending their brains enough to pronounce "cay"as "key." When I hear Cay pronounced as it is written it sets my teeth on edge. I should be on tranquilisers if that's the sort of stuff I worry about.... In any event Morris Avenue ends abruptly at the water's edge which is hidden by development (another feature of life in the cays/Keys):
And looking back more of the same:
Some boats:
And then there is the road winding gently back towards Highway One:
On the north side there is the Pirate Hat Marina a haul out place welcoming to liveaboards and their homey touches on their boats:
And on the south side a rather more substantial gate than the hurricane fencing surrounding the other private property:
Manatee Bay also has marina facilities on the north side of Morris Avenue and claims they are "Number One in the Keys" whatever that means (especially as they aren't really in Keys, any of them except in spirit, but I'm not into marketing apparently). And then after a short break away from the traffic back out onto the newly refurbished Highway One pointing to Key Largo and the Keys to the south:
108 miles to Key West, about 80 miles to my home. An hour and three quarters if I'm lucky. Endless hours if there is a wreck blocking the road...
A 1957 BMW, which aside from some rather sporting repairs to the exhaust looked in fine fettle, especially considering both it and I were born in the same year. I have this recurring fantasy of owning a classic motorcycle which will never happen because while I don't have a garage, I do have a wife and I have no discernible reason to own a classic motorcycle. Which doesn't stop me from pulling over and taking a random picture when I see one of the rare ones in Key West. I have this fine fake classic:
And it serves my purposes perfectly. Of course it is possible if you live right in Key West to do fine with a great deal less than me. Take this for instance, an RV on two wheels in front of Fausto's on White Street:
What I ask myself do homeless people do while they pedal around town all day hauling their bulging plastic bags? On the other hand what else might they do? I think boredom must be their greatest enemy.
1200 square feet (110 sq meters) with three bedrooms, including one created in the loft, no garden and a tiny back deck, no parking no pool no nothing is offered for $850,000. One has to doubt such an offer to sell is serious. Then, looking across the street a home converted to condos has a unit for sale. Substantially cheaper, but does a one bedroom 650 square foot apartment sound like a deal at $299,000?
There's a house near my home in the Lower Keys suburbs, offered for sale at $550,000; a reduced price they say for a 1200 square foot home on stilts, no canal access making it a so called "dry lot." There's an easy way to get underwater with your mortgage. All you have to do is overpay for your house out the gate. I did, but luckily we like living there, and we still have our jobs to feed our fixed rate, 25% down, mortgage. This is not a good time to get a divorce or to want to move someplace different. These times are good for hunkering.
I must sound like a fuddy duddy but I preferred the less fashionable, and more Old Keys style roofing of Hogsfish as it was before. I expect the new fancy Ramada will be better all round and I shall get used to it. But at the moment I prefer this, from my essay last July 23rd:
Meanwhile the main drag on Big Pine Key is finally getting a small face lift. The new bank is opening next to the traffic light and a big hurricane catching sign was being hoisted into view while I was stopped at said light:
I am not overly fond of bank architecture, what with weird roof lines and and ghastly modern art styling but this one looks relatively restrained. Perhaps a little too mainland shopping mall, but I need to stop being critical and be glad the corner will look tidy at last.
Probably because in real life Tom Walker is actually a Sergeant with the Sheriff's Department. He holds out some hope we may see the column again when he gets things worked out. Which would be nice. 
I have excellent health insurance, as does my wife, through our jobs but it's for people like these I want some national coverage plan. Too often there appears to be no immediate need and then when illness strikes its too late to get insurance which is generally costly in an already expensive town. And if you get over the cancer as more and more people do these days not only do you have horrendous bills, but you are also ineligible for private insurance as you have become an appalling economic risk. Call me soft but I think we can do better.
When the weather turns cold local pigeons have to get inventive too, like this lot enjoying some free electric heat:
It spells out "Gordon Foodservice" in case you were wondering, with room for lots more birds. There are other lights going up around the city because it's that time of year:
The Angelina guesthouse getting festive. The newspaper reported that bookings for accommodations in Key West are down twenty percent so as the snows tighten their grip there is room for one or more extra tourists this winter. Me? I don't miss cold weather at all:
I have a thermos for hot tea if I need it while traveling the highway:
It's true the road is a bit straight, but what a magnificent highway it is.
Sea of Cortez, Baja California, Mexico November 1998.
Cuba's North Coast Inside The Reef. February 2000
Approaching Miraflores Locks, Panama, Summer 1999
Rinsing Debs Off. Cuba February 2000
On The Beach For Maintenance. Costa Rica Spring 1999 
Emma Was Always Hungry. Miki G's cabin. Somewhere.
Emma And Our Solar Panel. Gun Cay, Bahamas. Spring 2003
Miki G, Gemini 105, Hull Number 529, Warderick Wells, Bahamas.
Calais Lane crosses three blocks, from Amelia to United streets and it is a real weirdo of a street. At the Amelia end it looks like this more or less:
The fashionable refurbished home with the pink shutters is on Amelia and so far the lane looks fairly normal. But here it follows its own outlandish pattern. 
The cyclist is actually riding on the bank parking lot and Calais Lane is hidden behind the low white wall, like this:
The First State Bank on Simonton Street has a large parking lot:
Calais Lane itself isn't really residential (someone will pop up and say that of course they spent most of the 70's on Calais Lane in a drug induced haze, just to prove me wrong!) but there are houses nearby:
They've also just built a new pocket park alongside the lane. These little gardens have been popping up all over town, but this one is still a little sparsely decorated:
The plan is for a facade of a cigar factory worker's home to be erected inside the park. This location was the site of worker housing for the nearby Gato cigar factory, which is now county offices on Simonton Street. This area was known as Gatoville thanks to the high proportion of Gato's dependants who lived here before the cigar factories decamped and went north to Tampa. I guess Key west was expensive even in those days. Who knows maybe a hundred years ago these two youngsters could have been cigar workers wending their way home down United Street: 
Dion's is actually a fairly innocuous chain of inconvenience stores in the Lower Keys offering the usual mish mash of convenience items at inconvenient prices, but Dion's has a very special arrow in it's quiver.
This particular store is on the corner of Truman and White in Key West, located at the Citgo gas station:
Gas prices have been coming down in the Keys like they have everywhere else though in the city gas isn't as low as it might be; it never is. It's a bone of contention that Key West prices are generally 20 or more cents higher than elsewhere in the Lower Keys:
And the Chevron across the street follows suit, or vice versa:
I've heard rumors the Chevron might be changing hands and become something else but that's a noise that's been floating around for a while and so far nothing has changed, except they got a mobile seafood vendor on their lot. But this isn't an essay about fresh fish (I've done that one too lately), this is about chicken.
Walk in and turn left and there it is heaps and piles of fried goodness. Well, not actually goodness so much as stuff that tastes pretty darn good. I am probably going to get a talking to when my wife gets around to reading this but with any luck it won't be until next week as the weekend looks pretty busy. She's a bit fussy about what I'm supposed to eat and fried chicken isn't on the list.
They offer combinations of fried chicken wings, legs and breasts. Some people prefer wings because they have more crispy coating and less meat but for the purposes of this demonstration, strictly for the camera I ordered a single breast. Which cost me just under $2.50. I repaired to the Triumph for a quick demonstration of how to eat a Dion's chicken breast:
There are a couple of things you need to know about Dion's chicken if you are an amateur. I have seen grilled breasts at the Stock island store on Highway One and they do taste good without the artery clogging deep fried effect, but if you are a Dion's novice, fried chicken is the way to go. A well fried breast is a work of art, crispy outside, moist inside but properly cooked all the way through. No salmonella thanks:
I carry my own utensils, of course though Dion's does offer the plastic kind along with paper napkins, which I usually forget to pick up. Personally I eat this stuff with my fingers, trying not to burn myself if the meat is just out of the fryer. The best Dion's is obviously the fresh stuff and sometimes you can get a cooled rubbery chicken part that doesn't taste so great, which may be why you will meet some people who actually don't like Dion's, but they probably are weird in other more private ways as well. My colleague Noel for example prefers Kentucky Fried saying Dion's skin tastes like chicken unlike the Colonel's which apparently tastes of something else. I like Dion's and a picture is worth a thousand words, to coin a phrase:
And that, sadly, completes the experiment. I have to insist that first timers try the fried chicken, but there are other foods available for old timers:
I prefer the Jamaican beef patties myself over bait fish, and the poppers aren't bad either. It's up to you to branch out and see what works. Exciting exploration awaits at Dions. Lots of people stop by:
These people aren't necessarily buying chicken, weird but true, but Dion's has every kind of processed food product in bright colors:
Dion's has stores on the bigger islands between Key West and Marathon and also a store in Florida City on Krome Avenue at Palm Avenue and I've heard there may be one in Homestead somewhere.
Hard times are upon us so these are the times a piping hot crispy breast from Dion's hits the spot, and calories be damned.
Of course one also is forced to wonder how come I showed up at the park completely unprepared for what I was to find there, having done no research at all. I have ridden past this imposing gateway a million times and always thought about stopping until Jeffrey made a comment about it a while back. Then I had to ride up to the mainland on unrelated business and so there I stopped early Monday morning, and met a wheezing jogger who breezed past my motorcycle:
On the third hand a quick search found nothing about why this park got this name. It offers six miles of trails (quite a few requiring a permit apparently) and 2400 acres of land which includes tons of wild and endangered animals and insects. A piffling dollar fifty charge gains you admission to this botanical garden, but I skipped the honor box as I had no change and I hold a park pass (with the Monroe County endorsement which costs extra of course!). The state parks website points out that this was to have been a condo development, as though there was actually a square inch of Florida that has ever avoided that dread designation? The condo thing may account for the remarkable paved roadway, two separate lanes no less that lead into the park.
With a freeway like this through the woods I might have done better to have brought my bicycle, but that would have shrunk the expedition to ten minutes from the 45 I actually spent wandering and getting lost. The state parks website also mentions a self guided tour which I think involves those little plaques visible above and below:
Or this substantial name tag:
Having knowingly encountered my first and possibly last Jamaican dogwood I feel no great uplift or satisfaction of knowledge. I am not, by inclination a collector. I like butterflies well enough but there weren't any in evidence even at the butterfly garden, an excellent place for a picnic were one so inclined:
And those extravagant condo developers did like to show off their roadways and traffic circles with decorative masonry:
There were intriguing trails branching off, unpaved paths that were closed even to permit holders apparently:
I could not resist a quick peek round the corner where I saw nothing startling:
The state parks website mentions this is the best time of year to visit owing to fewer mosquitoes and cooler temperatures. They were right on that even though a couple of mossies did land on me, luckily I was wearing my mesh motorcycle jacket as the temperature was a brisk 68 (18C) and the sun was still low in the winter sky. Some people delight in telling you Florida is flat and boring. Flat may it be, but boring never, not if you know where to look. In the Florida Keys even, despite the lack of land mass there is still plenty of mysterious beauty, if you bother to find it. Lots of people will tell you there is nothing to do in the Florida Keys and nowhere to go but they just haven't even tried in my opinion. Granted this isn't majestically awesome like Yosemite or Denali National Parks, but these are still places that will delight you with their own brand of magic:
I am happy there are many people who like snow and ice because if they were all down here this little park would have been packed with noisy nosey people. As it was I was alone with my thoughts and my camera and some rather intrusive signs:
Naturally I was too law abiding and polite to trespass, but it so happened that around the corner the post and rails were on the ground and there were no signs at all, so I stepped through and found my way to the intriguing cement structure visible, barely, in the distance:
A bonafide tunnel built for cars, looking more like an overpass though from where to where is anybody's guess. The inside was creepy and dark with pools of light shining down from overhead:
There was a fence at the other end but it was wide open so... I went on through, only to find myself I knew not where. Had there been a white rabbit checking his timepiece and tut-tutting I'd have followed along blindly, I'm sure. As it was I had to make my own way and instead of coming across a Mad Hatter's tea party I found a cement house, possibly never occupied or long abandoned:
And beyond it the abomination of desolation with all greenery swept impressively aside:
Of the ocean a little to the south there was no sign, just the gentle sea breeze and...off to the left the sounds of construction, a beeping of reverse gear, rumbling engines and clanking. I went to explore and passed what seemed like an idyllic canal to the left:
Though it may just have been a rock quarry for all I know. I wanted to wander along its banks but time was speeding by and I had an appointment in Fort Lauderdale so I walked rapidly on towards the sounds of clanking construction machinery:
I never did see the machinery itself but I saw this: 
Which was sufficient to indicate to me that I had probably strayed well beyond the park boundaries and perhaps it was time to get out while the going was good. I plunged into the shrubbery on a side trail as I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. Imagine my surprise when i walked past this construction sitting out in the woods all by itself:
Should it ever get frosty in South Florida this is where I will come to stock up on seasoned firewood. Heaven only knows what the story is behind this place, a crumbling ruin of wooden beams and tar paper roof yielding slowly to the ravages of time. I made my way back towards the park itself, back through the tunnel and out into the paved highway where...Good heavens above! People! He and she were from Orlando down on a bird watching expedition though they were dressed like Park Rangers who had lost their guns, though it's possible that interpretation of their appearance was just a product of my guilty conscience:
He was garrulous and keen apparently seeking out a blue shouldered cuckoo (I think; it sounded very odd whatever it was,) while his sidekick stood patiently like a Sherpa waiting for us to finish our pointless conversation. I have no understanding about the mad desire to look at birds. They clumped off asking hopefully if they were close to the sea. I shook my head.
I did see a bird though, and I suspect it was actually checking out the nearby landfill on Card Sound Road. I think its a buzzard or a vulture or something like that:
When I prodded the Triumph into gear on Card Sound Road I did come across the entrance to a construction site so I suppose buildings will soon infest those quiet areas I walked around. I also got quite a selection of mud specks on my pants as I rode through their mess in the road. I had my revenge though because little did they know the mud under my boots came from inside their super secret building zone. Ha, I get everywhere and I'm neither a bird nor a plane. Nor a white rabbit come to that. I'm just an explorer in the Keys.
The sentiment left me cold but the bad grammr was deliteful. Get used to it indeed. So from the bad grammarian on the Boulevard I started to think maybe there was an essay in there somewhere. And a short walk in the parking lot in front of Kmart gave me the notion that perhaps I was right:
Bit late for that one but this one below seemed timely enough:
Or if you prefer a more ecumenical message I've seen this one around quite a bit:
The one human family motto gets mangled from time to time and sometimes quite nicely (with apologies to the Stop sign which makes this one not strictly speaking a bumper sticker):
The Almighty is apparently presumed to be quite the reader according to the flock driving cars on Earth. Here's another one rendered less apocalyptic by the smiley face:
On the subject there is a rather peculiar habit in the Keys of sticking the names of the recently deceased on the back of their vehicles. I'm guessing its a Cuban thing, though they aren't exactly well equipped in the car department on their island. Cubans in Key West make up the shortfall:
The other Key West thing is those chickens, which some people like:
And some people really like them:
Or perhaps not:
I used to like this one a lot, but now that I work for the dominant paradigm perhaps I shouldn't?
There are lots of anti-war stickers around town but this one is less frequently seen. I got the impression the vehicle owner was a military guy judging by the other more boring stickers on his Suzuki:
And there's this oldie but goodie which serves almost any purpose you could imagine:
A little nihilism never hurt, and these days quite a few consumers are wondering what the point is:
Might as well do it in the Keys, I say. This next one I have no clue what it means, but it sounds Canadian, cold, and most likely painful. Curling with attitude perhaps?:
I've never heard of some sports, silly me, but others seem designed specifically for Key West:
Lets not forget old Key West landmarks that provided sport for drivers:
The Tunnel was nothing more than a drive through convenience store on North roosevelt Boulevard but they got a lot of mileage out of those bumper stickers.
This last was a 51st birthday present. How do I know? Because it's on my Nissan, silly.
Kids playing, parents supervising and ancient stones overseeing:
Lots of Conch cottages, painted with inimitable style:
Some of these older homes have the 19th century touches like storm shutters from another era: 
And Terry Lane has it's share of remodeled, refurbished, expensive homes as well, with the necessary off street parking:
Terry Lane makes no concessions to the needs of modern automobiles, and the paved roadway is narrow as it ever was when this part of town was just a warren of narrow lanes and alleys:
Which doesn't stop people negotiating the street with a big SUV or two, especially now that gas is back down around $2 a gallon, but the best way to get around is like this:
In addition to the private homes the Robert Gabriel Public Housing Complex backs up to Terry Lane also:
And further along at the half way mark lies a church, very Caribbean in style of course at Olivia Street:
A touch of the sea is hanging around to remind us that this is a town with deep nautical roots. The wild kudzu stuff is something else:
And so is the wildlife:
I saw this wooden thing and wondered what it was or had been with it's Hurricane Chic roofing style:
More refurbished apartments, clean and tidy and rather dull for the camera to take in:
And across the street, the juxtaposition that is pure Key West, an old style cottage not the least bit out of place. This is not the town to buy an expensive new home if you want to live in a similarly equipped neighborhood:
And in place of this hole who knows what is coming or when it may come now that construction is the way it is. The harbor house condos next to Schooner Wharf are officially "on hold" which probably means the whole$25 million project has bitten the recessionary dust:
In one of the photos of the Robert Gabriel complex the Key west Lighthouse can be seen peeking over the rooftop. And to prove the point here is the back wall of the lighthouse running along the last stretch of Terry Lane: 
And so to Truman Avenue where one of those big SUVs is swinging into the lane to run me and my bicycle down. 
do we have left? Private industry? I had a conversation many years ago with an ex-friend, a friend at the time, who insisted with a totally straight face that the leaders of industry were good, well intentioned people who left to their own devices would keep the ship of state afloat and prosperous. This from a man who had, at the time been awarded the largest settlement in history for blowing the whistle on a corporation cheating the government of around 15o million dollars. According to the news reports from the time my ex-friend walked away with around 22 million dollars (of which one third must have gone to his attorney who decided to use the proceeds to fund pro-bono defense of capital murder cases). My ex-friend and I fell apart finally when I accused Colin Powell of lying during his famous uranium speech at the UN. "Lying? You think the Secretary of State is lying?" my ex-friend spluttered. "That or he is reading a speech written by liars," I said, and we parted ways. The fact that history proved me right was not much comfort. I lost a friend and the country lost thousands dead and injured and trillions in treasure. 
There really is no reason to know why this lane exists unless one happened to live or work there. It has little of special significance, and even the architecture isn't much. I guess I just needed a break from impossibly cute lanes in the pretty parts of town. It's not that Villa Mill is ugly or anything, there is lots of greenery and stuff:
And this, though what this is exactly I'm not too sure. It looks like a brightly colored fish made out of cloth, serving an indefinable purpose:
The entrance to the lane is marked by these poles bright scarlet and very visible:
And there are pretty enough homes of course, some scarred by the intrusion of modern technology:
And then there was the cat, imperiously licking itself clean in a public place:
And that was 
I think there were about 25 of us gathered around the table in the expansive home in Cudjoe Gardens. Everyone brought dishes as is the way, and of course there was too much to eat but I found my favorites in the corn pudding and baked mushrooms, even though my wife's spicy sweet potatoes elicited some interested enquiries.
As the sun set across the canal I heard voices raised, alongside wine glasses, in optimistic promises of whatever the future "we will pull through" and in quieter conversations I heard from people afraid of what may be to come in the next year. My buddy Robert, our host, is one of those that tend towards the optimistic side of the scale and he sat back after the round of thanksgiving with a beatific smile on his face as he watched his friends dig in.
I have been viewing my neighborhood through the lens of distorted economics through which we are currently living and it seems as though the grasses are growing more rank by the day, "For Sale" signs are drooping and my sense of unease makes me excessively sensitive to these negative signs sprouting around the canals of the Lower Keys. This was a Thanksgiving that made me especially sensitive to how well off I am these days. I'm not alone:
It's funny to me that I am chewing my lip worrying about the economy and a house up the street has a big hole alongside waiting for an in ground pool to be dropped in.More power to them I say, it is a job and work and money into the local economy for construction workers who aren't over worked these days. I keep seeing cement stilts on empty lots sitting there waiting for a home to be placed on them,and so far...nothing. The serenity of a Thanksgiving evening can't be that serene if you don't have a job.
We decorated for a while and the wretched little lights worked just fine, which they never seemed to when I was a kid (before Lisa and Jacques were born) so we sat down and drank wine and ate some rather toothsome pumpkin trifle and wondered about the state of the world.
I like their company because they are a happy couple and they make a serene and safe place to visit even at the holidays when tensions rise and people get short with each other. I can let my guard down and that for me is the value of Christmas. I hate the expectations of consumer shopping and I hate the misery that poverty brings with it at this time of year when parents are supposed to go over the top for their kids. I read somewhere that the average age of a homeless person in the US is ten years of age and that is so wrong it takes one's breath away.
Jacques is a powerhouse, not just of wine drinking but also bio-diesel and his contribution to the greening of the Keys is development of a bio-diesel program for the school district. He has several degrees and a background in science and he managed to give me some modest explanation of bio diesel involving fat and lye and precipitation, which made me want to go out and buy a US military diesel powered motorcycle. I tried a chocolate cup cake instead.
We said good bye to Keith yesterday, one more step on the road to dissolution in the bond between our world and his. It was a beautiful day in the Keys, warming up under hazy sunshine as a massive crowd gathered outside and in, at the church on William Street, with law enforcement from every agency showing up to help in the process of letting go:
It was a slow shuffle into the church, trying to keep one's mind on higher things, allowing the mind to veer away and not to let slip the feelings that have been swirling the past several days. Its a strange way we have of attending these kinds of functions in the western world. I've seen Indian widows on the sidelines of their husbands funeral pyres throwing up their arms in a whirlwind of emotion, casting out the inner demons in shrieks of despair that rend the air. In Latin America I've seen similar volcanic eruptions of feral anger and sorrow. We, on the other hand stand around like mannequins and pretend it's just another sunny day in paradise. If, God forbid, tears start to roll we apologize, embarrassed and turn away. Stupid, I know, but I'm as bad as all the rest and wear my mask of silent indifference.
I stood over Keith's mortal remains a moment, marveling at his composure in the face of so much love, so much emotion all through the church as he lay in his final resting place, his dark blue K9 uniform solid in contrast to the clouds of white silk surrounding his body. Then I marched out stoically in proper mannequin style to the sunshine outside. 
Sergeant Brandenberg, his fellow K9 officer caught me admiring the display and asked what I thought. Overwhelming was my response and he smiled. "It took them two days to make that," he said with pride pointing to the particular wreath:
"Will you do that for me, when my time comes?" I asked, trying to lighten the tone. "You can't have the K9," said the canine sergeant. "That's ours. But we'll think of something for dispatch." I'll bet they will too. They flew flags across the county at half staff for Keith, making room as is the way, for the flag of Death to fly at the top of the pole:
I nearly broke down when I saw Keith's patrol car parked in front of the church, his partner's name Daxo, printed on the side. The older I get the more I prefer dogs to the company of humans which reminded me of the times Keith came into dispatch with Daxo. "Don't do that!"Keith would yell at me when I went to pet Daxo. "I keep telling people not to touch a K9's head. He's going to hurt you!" Bugger off Keith, I said, dogs like me, and Daxo did, nuzzling my crotch offering me his nose and behaving like a pet which perhaps may have pissed off his handler ever so slightly. It was a distraction having a large panting German Shepherd sloping round the computers while we tried to dispatch, and it was all too easy to mind Daxo when it was Keith and one of his stories wanting attention.
There is something very fetching about the fact that the city of Key West hires sign writers who can't spell. I always get a grin out of Galvaston Lane, and Carsten is in the singular at one end and in the genitive (or plural for all I know) at the other end of its lane. Schippens Lane is to be found off Fleming Street near Margaret and even though city sign writers disagree with me over the placement of the vowels I'm pretty sure the sign has it wrong:
And on the subject of signs there is this, which hardly seems necessary considering the width of this particular lane.
However...
It wasn't really parked as the owner was doing clean up work and the truck was actually just waiting, or standing or something. Schippens is tiny and ends ignominiously in a gate and a dead end:
Ignominiously I say because I wanted more, some mysterious curves or corners, an extension of the half block of canyon land that is Schippens:
That last is I think the backside (so to speak) of the Island House for Men, a raucous place by reputation whose entrance I have never sullied being as I am rather uninterested in the goings on among more or less clad men of my gender. On the other hand Schippens was quiet and peaceful that afternoon as a tiny Key West alley should be. 
Schippens (or Scheppins for those more pedantic than myself) is short straight and mysterious for all that. It offers glimpses through the trees and around the corners of the massive buildings that dominate it:
I look for signs of Art or something offbeat when I take photos in these lanes but in this case I was pretty much stymied. This was the best I could do. A tropical egg on a knife edge (and I didn't pose it):
So by way of compensation I have appended two views of Fleming Street, outside the lane, one looking east towards Margaret Street:
And the old sponge warehouse on the left which merits a photo of its own. And to the west, towards the setting sun and the library:
Key West really is quite lovely and these daylight hours foreshortened by winter give us an opportunity to enjoy the effects of the lowering sun on it all.
I was in town for my weekly class at the college, my wife got a proper lunch break today (the girls were looking for Santa at the airport I believe) and we went off for lunch. "The new place!" my wife announced her choice and so it was. Actually the fish market opened a while ago, even though the eatery part is a bit newer. This is no frills cuisine, with fresh fish on offer up front for take away as it were:
Yesterday they had shrimp and scallops and a few of these guys on offer, fresh off the boat:
It is not a piece of hyperbole to say "fresh off the boat" even though it's used so much by so many restaurants it is a phrase that has become a cliche. Not here; these are the docks:
And here's the boat, ready to tie up and unload your lunch:
And if you want to know which boat your lunch did come off, why, here's a list:
Which if my math is any good spells something like 106,500 pounds of Key West pink shrimp landed yesterday. Which is probably more than most people could eat at one sitting. However if one happened to order a $14 shrimp and lobster Philly sandwich it might come to the outdoor table looking something like this:
An outdoor table you say, in December? Well yes it is rough following in the wake of a particularly cold front that blew through. Though the sun was out in force and afternoon temperatures were up in the mid seventies (25C). The interior of Fishbusterz is all business, and the business is that of landing and preparing fish for market not offering frou frou seating arrangements for diners. This is the real thing, a fish house :
This is the restaurant business no frills style:
And if the dude taking the order looks more like a fisherman than a maitre d' that's more than likely because he is:
Dining with attitude:
I hate the word "authentic" because every time I see it used it's a synonym for "fake" but at Fishbusterz you are eating fish among fishermen and this is their land. The picnic tables are outside on the dock:
And there's a constant stream of burly men in white rubber boots trundling back and forth doing manly seaman like things with hoses and buckets and all things fishy:
Fishbusterz is a bit of a local miracle. A fish house owner got it together to buy this corner of Safe Harbor and provide dockage for fishing boats, an ice house and an outlet for the fish, both wholesale and retail. This is supposed to be a working waterfront that will be here forever, and even though forever is a very long time it seems likely that as long as there are commercial fishermen this small corner will be here for them in a world that has been changing too fast to support their industry. Even if the food was crap that would be reason enough to come and shop at Fishbusterz. However the food is exquisite which is an absurd adjective for a place as rough-and-ready as this, but I know what we will have next time we drop in:
They don't just chase the fish and cook it when caught, they have someone on staff who can paint with a piece of chalk. Pretty amazing really. And the views are pleasing on a hot winter afternoon:
It's been a rough week one way and another, with a colleague committing suicide and a memorial service to deal with tomorrow, but sitting on the dock watching life go on in the Keys, as basic and true as ever, it's a healthy reminder that there is a lot to live for, and taking pleasure in something as simple as a plate of fish, be it ever so cliched, is a fine thing. I wish Keith were around for me to encourage him to go and try Fishbusterz, because it is well worth it.
Really. Sit, eat and contemplate, and may your thoughts be more cheerful than mine at the moment.
There are many many misconceptions about dispatchers and their jobs and perhaps one day I shall list them all, but suffice it to say that though I must have dispatched half a thousand fire engines over the past years I have never been at the scene when a city fire truck was actually putting out a fire. I did happen upon a fire on Stock Island one night on a lunch break but the destruction of some lobster traps doesn't measure up to a fire in a city building. Who knew for instance that a fire truck carries it's own generator?
Silly me, I nearly missed this fire as it turned out. Usually when I am out and about minding my own business and I hear the sirens I think to myself: "Oh good I'm off today, let someone else do the worrying," and I do my best to avoid any contact with a fire or an ambulance or a wrecked car. Aside from anything else I would just be getting in the way. So it was that I was ambling around Petronia Street and Terry Lane pushing my bicycle and thinking about photographs when I was ambushed by a posse of men in blue. We were chatting of this and that and community policing and stuff and then the radio crackled and there was that familiar emotion: "Excellent! It's Stephanie's problem, not mine to deal with." Indeed Key West's finest scattered down Petronia on word of smoke visible on Emma Street as I listened to Stephanie order them on their way. It's nice to be off duty:
I went back to doing what I was doing before I was so rudely interrupted and took off down Terry Lane taking pictures and getting some filthy looks from residents who wondered what possible evil I could be up to, pushing a perfectly serviceable bicycle and taking pictures of the sky, the roof lines and their children chasing a football. Then I had a thought and it went like this: what the hell am I doing here when I could have some off duty fun and find out what exactly happens when a fire truck meets a fire? So I hot footed off to Emma Street to see the action, of which there wasn't much at that stage:
But there was a crowd, actually two crowds, one of civilians:
Of whom some but not all gave me the evil eye. This woman was clowning around for her friends:
And there was a crowd of cops, the aforementioned community patrol now making sure the firefighters had room to work uninterrupted:
I've met Key West firefighters quite a few times and once we had a fire alarm go off inside the police station itself and I found myself in the odd position of dispatching them to myself and being my own reporting party. We wandered the building checking for smoke and I wondered how gruesome it must be clumping around a building dressed in impossibly cumbersome fire retardant clothing. I was forced to the conclusion I had discovered another profession that isn't for me. Watching the fire officers cope with the fire at the old VFW building on Emma reinforced the notion. 
The cold front was getting set to sweep across town with even colder temperatures as the sun set, and though I grant you 60 degrees (15C) doesn't sound like much it feels cold, unless you are humping heavy clothing round a fire scene. The support crew outside stuck to tee shirts despite the chilly breeze:
The other misconception about dispatchers is that we in any way have a clue what's actually going on at a scene. Granted I wasn't working but even had I been I doubt there would have been much explained, it just isn't a job that ever seems to reach a conclusion, and personally I like it that way. It's a reflection of life itself, a series of incidents, possibly random, that offer no definitive answers. Its a great job unless of course you need explanations and reasons to make everything appear to make sense. If you are one of those you probably would rather be a police officer, like Politoski and Gallo seen here waiting for the fire department to finish their ministrations:
Or their boss Sergeant Rodriguez seen here sporting the Department's heavy duty winter issue clothing, a windproof jacket. Nobody ever said Key West is North Dakota:
I amused myself with some artsy pictures:
And with the fire safely out civilians could assess the damage and report back to whoever needed to know. 
The Key West Fire Department merits a very high fire safety rating which is good news for city fire insurance rates, and good news for the city too. Key West, built of seasoned wood with homes stuck extremely close together has always been a fire hazard ready to burn to the ground. And don't think it hasn't happened, but in the 19th century such dangers were common considering the widespread use of candles and oil lamps and the pathetic technology used by firefighters of the day. And even though I spend my time sitting upstairs in a climate controlled room far from the action I am glad to play a small part in keeping the flames away from the tinder these days. I much prefer being the person that wakes the sleeping firefighters up in the dead of night, rather than being the person rudely awoken from a deep and dreamless sleep. 
The San Juans are astonishing lumps of land filled with a continent's worth of geography, forests, mountains, bodies of water, winding roads that stretch further in the imagination than they do on the ground. Their residents are of the woolly hatted variety, hardy and unfazed by drizzle and gray skies. And there's the rub: gray skies. Washington State gets bad press for having too much rain. I have found in my visits that Seattle is too frequently gray and overcast, not wet necessarily. 
The Keys offer what is not on tap elsewhere, and that is milder temperatures and more sunshine surrounded by accessible salt water. One wouldn't put up with the lack of topographic variety if the sun weren't shining. The absence of lakes, rivers, hills, forests or even deserts would make the islands highly undesirable were it not for the climate. Perennial sun, always around the corner if not actually shining, makes it easy to forgive the fabulous Florida Keys their monotony.
That perceived monotony attracts people of a certain ilk. Explorers need not apply for residence. Travelers come and live and take off and travel, but not many people live in the islands to explore the islands. I find it astonishing how many people say there is nothing to do in the Keys. They lack money or the will to own a boat and remain land bound. They live in Key West to avoid the dreaded commute. They walk or cycle and circle the rock, rarely leaving and only driving up the Keys under pressure.
I suppose it makes little sense to be a hiker and to choose to live where it's flat and the best views are snatched from the tops of bridges. Mountain bikers need not apply. Walkers will see endless miles of identical shrubbery, bush after spindly bush of mangroves, mostly impassable. Anglers will rejoice, fans of downhill skiing would cringe.
I like wandering the Keys, I enjoy getting to know the islands outside Key West, a city that offers plenty especially in relation to it's size but it is neither the be-all nor the end-all of life in the Keys. Perhaps for me the Keys retain value as destinations in and of themselves as I have washed up after spending decades in endless pursuit of the horizon. Seeking out the minor variants provides a more durable satisfaction when one knows there is nothing left to prove. I take pleasure in being if not doing all the time.
It was about a year ago, in the heart of the dread "holiday season" that I met a visiting long distance motorcyclist regaling a Christmas party with tales of derring-do on the road with his huge long distance motorcycle. He remarked that on his last visit he had rented a scooter for a week's stay and barely managed to put 60 miles on the machine. "There was nowhere to go!" he laughed, contemptuous of someone who could live restricted within these narrow boundaries. I could put 60 miles on in a day because there is everywhere to go.
Island living requires some adjustments and living in the Lower Keys is much closer to being on a true island than one might at first imagine. When it takes two hours to reach a fork in the highway one has to think twice before taking off for the mainland. Effectively it takes as long, if not longer than getting ashore from Friday Harbor in the San Juan's. It was especially true in the brief period of four-and-a-half dollar gas that the mainland seemed so far away, separated not only by time and distance (100 miles from my house) but also suddenly we were separated by the dollar cost of the trip to Homestead. 
I roll out my bicycle most days for a ride and each trip is a reminder of some place in a prior life, rolling silently through neighborhoods or past mangrove mazes my mind is free to wander, to fix the problems of the world, to contemplate why this or why that. A ride through Key West can be a pleasure too but suburbia is serenity of a different order of magnitude. I found an empty television box by the side of the road on the Torch Keys and it made me think of the decrepitude of civilization that the prophets of gloom offer up constantly. We'll be television-less and pedalling for our lives, and they tell us happier for it, which seems dubious to me:
One of my small town pleasure sis checking the Citizen of the Day photograph in the Citizen newspaper. They don't seem to pick wildly articulate or thought provoking citizens but perhaps if they did it would ruin the artless flavor of the daily photo. Invariably (almost invariably!) they remark on the weather as the primary reason they came to the Keys, and continue living in the Keys. Conchs cite family as their primary reason. Fishing or boating come close seconds. Exploring is never on the list though using a bicycle as primary transportation does come up from time to time.
I recall a comment from Sal in New York remarking how his Bonneville is better off than mine because he gets to ride in it's natural habitat, curvy mountain roads whereas my poor thing grinds long straight miles day after day. He is right, but in my head I am riding all the curves I've ever ridden, yesterday Corsica, today Umbria, tomorrow the Atlas mountains or perhaps the Sierra Nevada. It's all in the mind.
The Bonneville may look like its parked in Key West, but in my head as I sit smiling and sipping coffee at the White Street Deli, La Poderosa may be getting ready for a ride to Ushuaia. Or to Fort Zachary Taylor to stare out at the turquoise waters. And the weather really is great, no matter how little land or curiosity or variety there may appear to be in the southernmost peninsula islands.
The US Postal Service is an institution I have long admired. Which puts me in a decided minority in the US, a nation that makes a national sport of mocking the postal system. I guess you have to have lived elsewhere to appreciate the USPS and its customer service attitude. These days the mails are transported by a semi-autonomous branch of the US government. As far as I can tell that means the postal service has to deliver the mails and not lose money because none will be forthcoming from the Federal Budget. I guess they will declare themselves a bank if they end up needing a cash infusion.
Key West has two post offices, a nondescript hole in the wall next to Winn Dixie in New Town and the main post office a splendid brick structure whose official address is 400 Whitehead Street, but it actually exists in park-like grounds wedged between Eaton, Whitehead and Fleming Streets:
The rear of the Post Office nudges up against the Truman Annex and its where the big trucks load up with the mails and haul them up to Homestead to be sorted. The weird thing is that of you post a letter to Cudjoe Key, 33042, which is served by the Summerland Key Post Office, the letter will go to Homestead for sorting and will come back down the next day for delivery, covering 200 miles to go 25...Whatever works I guess.
When I'm at work we often get calls from people living in islands ten or more miles up the Keys, convinced they do live in the city when they are far outside city limits. That's because their address reflects the fact they are served by this post office and are considered to be part of zip code 33040- the city of Key West.
When I used to live on sailboats the first thing I did when I settled in a city was to get a PO Box, it was my way of establishing residence and getting settled. In Santa Cruz, California, in 1983 there was a wait for a box as I recall, and I felt I had arrived when I got my slot in the main post office.
In St Petersburg when I got a slip at the city marina in Demen's Landing I was enchanted to discover my little brass box lived al fresco in an indoor-outdoor post office. Key West has a similar arrangement:
The fenced walkway around the front of the post office is usually open, but there are shutters that can be lowered ( in case of heavy weather of course):
This a post office subjected to massive rains too so the gutters and downspouts are solid. Too bad they aren't directed into some sort of receptacle to store the rainwater:
The post office has a light airy feel, its a place weirdly enough I enjoy visiting just for the hell of it. The parking lot is vast, and it has chickens too, but human visitors are strictly regulated of course:
The post office parking lot is very convenient to downtown and the postal employees get testy when people park there in the day and don't use the facilities, so cars do end up getting towed. After hours though it's a different story. There used to be a parking lot attendant at night who took money to let people park and boy, he was as mean as a snake. I never used to go anywhere near him. Now he's gone and someone else will have to claim the title of meanest person in Old Town.
That last picture I took on a night time lunch break, last winter. Always pretty the post office on Whitehead Street.
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