PS

I was somewhat surprised to find a photograph and a paragraph on the Coconut Telegraph this fine sunny morning, both lifted from my essay on the Key West airport, with one last sentence added by the borrower. Anyone is free to copy or quote anything from this diary, it is after all on a free service on the World Wide Web, and nothing in it is published that would embarrass my late mother. However attribution used to be a journalistic rule and would be polite.

I did not write the opening entry on the Big Pine Key Coconut Telegraph on August 13th 2008, nor do I necessarily disagree with it.

Thank You.

Harbor Nights

I wanted a break. Saturday night had been Hell on Wheels in the city and the emergency lines rang all night. I was dispatching police and we never had enough officers to cover all calls all night long. No matter how experienced you are and no matter how often this happens every night when we get too many calls and have too few officers it gets to stressing out the Police dispatcher. So Sunday night when we were not overwhelmed I was ready to walk out of the police station and go for a walk at three in the morning.

It is in some way ironic that on the night with fewer calls I was ready to get out of the building but on the night we were barely able to keep a lid on it all I was glued to my seat. I think it's a matter of being so tuned in you don't really noticed the time passing and by the time I was ready for a lunch break all I wanted to do was lay down and sleep in the recliner in the lounge. Sunday night I wanted to breath the fresh moist warm night air and the plan was to go for a walk around Garrison Bight, the body of water that forms an almost entirely enclosed marina on the north side of the island.

When I'm at work I can see the docks and the Fly Navy building in the distance. During Hurricane Wilma the boats in Garrison Bight were tugging at their mooring lines as the waters rose but they were barely visible from my work station as the wind was blowing the water horizontally across the harbor in big white clouds of spume. Most nights its not like that at all, lights reflect off the waters and boats sit in their slips.

The summer air at night in Key West is just right for me. Its warm but not suffocating and damp enough to feel pleasant against the air conditioned dryness of the office, and walking makes a pleasant break from sitting.Across the street is the Tropic Dive Shop and next to the police station is the other means of locomotion, the place with the big blue sign known as Duncan Autos:When people want to meet at the police station I tell them we're next to the Ford dealership because that sign is easy to spot on the Boulevard. Duncan also sells Toyotas while Niles, further up the street sells GM and Nissan, and the "other" dealership is a Kia in between the two. Want to buy another kind of car? Head North...

North Roosevelt Boulevard is the land of strip mauls and modern shopping but at night its just a row of empty storefronts and away from the city's street lights it's a case of economy lighting for small businesses. Keys Energy has raised prices by 5% for each of the last two months. Its one of those energy surcharge things:There's a building that is supposedly undergoing refurbishment and every time I go by I see this raw, naked cement and it reminds me of third world semi-constructed buildings. It's occupied but has no plaster or paint on the exterior and it looks like an Albanian customs post, functional but graceless.Times are hard and foreclosures lurk around every corner. Captain Runaground's floating restaurant is no more and I didn't even notice it's passing. I never ate there but it was there on Key West's industrial waterfront and now it is a a Thai restaurant, garrison Bight's second such restaurant:The funky cover is gone with all the dangling bric-a-brac. My wife shrugged when I asked her if she knew about the change; "Of course," she said and I wonder how many other abrupt reversals have gone unnoticed by me. Some things don't change, bus stops as trash cans (drinking on buses is not allowed):One of the great things about scooters is that you can always find some unnoticed spot to abandon them in. Here's one covered in dust, parked and forgotten, and likely only to be noticed if there is a fire in the neighborhood:On my hour long lunch break I had intended to stroll all the way round the bight but such is the attraction of the unconsidered trifle I got about one third of the way round, as far as the light tackle charter fleet dock near the harbor master's hut:Personally I prefer my fish alive and vital in the water but taxidermy is apparently alive and well and advertising in Key West:I had a brief chat with the Security Guard in his golf cart and it was time to head back to the office and my computer screen. Ah, but before I go George Street is begging for a picture.For some reason Key West streets manage to stretch to infinity. This must all be in the eye of the beholder (they aren't really infinitely long!) and I think it has something to do with the lack of land on all sides, and this knowledge inside my head makes what there is look longer. Which is of course the male human condition. Anyway that's George Street stretching south towards Havana at three fifty in the morning.