Hitched

To see my new-to-me car up on a ramp was a little disconcerting but the hitch needed to be installed. A trailer is a way of life in the Keys to haul crap around or to tow a boat, a sedan and a trailer are the way to go, if like me, you prefer to drive something mor eagile than a truck. There is a place on Big Coppitt Key where they do the work so I took myself off to Mile Marker Ten to get the job done. The week prior I had forked over $333 and they ordered a hitch suitable for my Ford Fusion. Then it was just a matter of sweating and grunting and sticking one's backside up on the air.This is a place that always fills me with dread. The owner went to charm school I tghink but they refunded his fee because clearly it didn't take. It's one of those places where they say "monopoly" by making you stand around and feel like a dork but in the interests of getting the job done it's tghis or driving miles up Highway One with no certainty of better treatment.If you can stand being made to feel like a worm they do, or at leats have done, good work. The hitch they put on my Maxima worked fine and never gave me a problem. And in the end that's what counts. We went for a walk after I dropped the car off. The charming owner took one look at Cheyenne and spread his arms across the office door-"You can't come in here!" he screeched as though we were bearers of some vile bacilli. "No need," I said tossing him the Keys from a safe distance. After we got back I read the paper for a while in the shade then I spotted the fan. Cheyenne took to it like a duck to water. She became more immobile than usual. She was an excellent reason not to share air conditioned office space for the remainder of the wait with Grumpy and his yappy rat dog. We waited in the shed and Cheyenne panted while i took pictures. And listened, weirdly enough to the Bizarre Bazar on US One radio.

The take calls from people with stuff to sell or give away and they give out phone numbers for listeners to call. Naturally there was nothing I wanted but we listened anyway. A machine shop is a thing of beauty when you are standing around trying to avoid 100 degree heat outside.

It has been a bloistering ht start to June, more like the sort of heat and humidity you get in August or September, not this early in the hurricane season... The job dragged on, the guy struggling with the wiring, me standing over my dog with a well read paper and a camera.I wondered why we didn't back the car into the shade but some people are too butch for their own good. Grumpy came by to give some advice on routing the wiring.

I saw a papaya tree that looked scrumptious. I could smell bacon cooking at the Cuban Coffee shop down the street.We hit eleven o'clock and the Biz Baz show on the radio ended. Cheyenne stretched out content in the flow of air. I saw shrivelled coconuts on top of an old trailer. I would make a terrible junk yard owner as I have this awful compulsion to tidy up. Truck sans engine.

Ford Fusion with hitch. Happy employee, smiling for a job well done or a ten dollar tip -"Won't say no!" he said cheerfully. He's a California transplant anxiously plotting a return to Los Angeles. Can't stand the heat, the bugs or the humidity he said plaintively. That's okay, I said to myself, the Keys aren't for everyone.