Higgs Night

I got to work early Sunday morning, so early I took the time to visit my favorite beach area. I like Higgs beach not because I like to sit in the sand toasting myself but because this small patch of sand encompasses variety.

I love the toilet building at Higgs, a circular cement shed designed to please Salvador  Dali's taste for eccentric architecture with interior nooks and crannies for the various toilet stalls. It is the hardest interior to photograph because who wants to meet a creep with a camera tiptoeing inside a public loo? I don't and I'm pretty sure anyone seeing me oohing and aaahing at the compound curves wouldn't want to encounter me. And at this hour of the night its locked.

I have attempted this socially awkward feat over the years to bring you the most up-to-date perspective on public toilets in Key West but my efforts have failed to inspire even me:

You can't really see how odd the interior of this building really is.

If you are in the area you should walk through this maze disguised as a toilet and enjoy the eccentric architecture inadequately displayed here.

Back to the Sunday morning exterior and I spent twenty minutes wandering  around looking at light and shadows.

The bums used to camp out at the tables under the ramadas until people with power got fed up with receiving complaints. They took the initiative and put up a fence saying only parents with children could hang out here. That solved the bum problem but a tree limb nearly fell on a little dear so they cut down the trees and replaced with with shade sails. Which is still better than enjoying afternoon performances daily of bum drama at the tables.

It's rainy season so I spent some time avoiding puddles. I spent more time framing a photograph of same:

The Key West tractor. For one as me who grew up in farming country for part of his childhood the absence of farm equipment took a while to get used to but I was relieved to see the beach cleaning was carried out by a farm implement. Rather than harrowing the soil the trailer towed by the tractor brushes the sand and sweeps up debris and leave neat parallel lines in the sand for human feet ot mess up.

Seagrape leaf study 100 thousand and seventy eight. These dinner plates on branches fascinate me.

I want you to know I crouched in a  swamp of rich rotting food smells to get this glimpse of a mural. The gate must hide the trash cans because I was very glad to get the frame and get away.

I am looking forward to Mexico this winter - deus vult - but for now I found Mexico not just in my fevered imagination but also in the back of Salute restaurant at Higgs Beach.

Clarence Samuel Higgs died in 1961 at the age of 57 unexpectedly at home on Grinnell Street. He had had heart issues apparently but his death wasn't expected.  They named this beach for him because as county commissioner he was responsible for the push to build the modern White Street Pier. He was also head of the carpenters union and belonged to every civic group he could find in Key West. Doubtless the sort of model citizen and mover and shaker who could be useful today in this city. Remembering him through the beach is helpful to remind us the good our leaders can accomplish.

After The Storm

I can tell you this: if the morning after a  tropical event everything is back to normal it wasn't a hurricane you survived; it was just some wind and rain. Higgs Beach the morning after Tropical Storm Elsa blew through town at 65 miles per hour looked like this:

It was a lovely sunny day, typical of the scene left behind by a hurricane, however flooding had receded electricity was flowing and the Internet never left town. 

At first I was puzzled by all the ventilating in public about the weather system's arrival and then I was exposed to some of the reporting by people whose job it is to report boring stuff

Tropical Storm Elsa was clearly not going to derange our lives much if at all, so even though my family in Europe (!) started sending me messages of consolation I declined to get ramped up about this thing.

I wonder if (when?) we face a true test of our collective mettle whether people who survived Tropical Storm Elsa unscathed will brag about their hurricane expertise and their survival credentials? And how many people exposed to television nonsense about this rains storm will keep their fears in proportion to the next tropical storm? Fear and urgency are entirely appropriate for certain conditions, having lived through them, but worrying about 65 mile per hour winds makes you unqualified to enjoy life in these latitudes.

A quick walk along the waterfront illustrated my point that things were entirely back to normal so I spent the short time remaining on my lunch break to take a  quick walk through the Garden Club.

                                   

I dropped off five bucks in the donation bucket.  There is no entry fee nor any required donation, which when it is required or suggested removes the notion of donation from my mind. So when I visit I like to drop off some cash for this most genteel and serene public spaces.

I am not a botanist, I have never been one and it is far too late to turn me into one. I enjoy plants and trees and flowers for what they bring to the world and the idea that I should fill my rather small brain with a filing system to name plants seems absurd to me.

                  

I dislike cutting trees down, I honestly don't much like to prune plants however good it may be for them. 

I see perfectly manicured gardens around town and I know were I to live in such a place I would need an expensive contract to keep a landscape company well supplied with work as I am totally uninterested in gardening as a hobby.

                                   

I told my wife that when we sold the sailboat with plans to move ashore if she wanted a lawn she would have to hire someone to maintain it. I love the summer sound of lawnmowers droning but I would rather eat crushed glass than be tied to a schedule of lawn mowing all summer long.

                                     

And yet, for as much as I know myself to be a Philistine in these matters I never skip a chance to enjoy the Garden Club and form time to time the Botanical Gardens on Stock Island. Indeed I am overdue a visit there and I only have 276 days left to get another walk done there.

The Garden Club is an excellent spot to spend time in the shade looking out at the water. A book, a thermos flask of Yorkshire Gold and a winter cold front can make this spot ideal. 

Of course in winter it is much more crowded, not only with people who have "flown onto the island" for the winter, as they tend to say rather grandiloquently, but also with lots of colorful flowers whose names escape me of course.

Summer is low season for birds and plants and people which is when I come out of my hiding place and wander round.

This time next year I hope to be in British Columbia, one hopes not in a 120 degree heat wave, though I haven't yet made the case to my wife that we should detour by ferry to Victoria for high tea at The Empress...

                                

...and a visit to Butchart Gardens where even Rusty is welcome. 

But for all that other cities have more land and bigger gardens and vast expanses of green, Key West does pretty well by its location.

                                   

The West Martello Tower was built as part o the coastal defenses of this border town but it was never actually used in war. Instead the gunners at Fort Zachary Taylor trained their artillery pieces on it and used it for practice! Which is why it so much more deteriorated than the perfectly maintained East Martello Tower at the airport.

                                   

It should give us some pause to picture Key West after the Civil War when you had a line of sight from Fort Zachary to Higgs Beach and didn't have to gun down the Reach Resort or the Casa Marina to lay your sights on the Martello Tower. 

                                     

The Martello Tower was popularized by the British around the world as a small coastal defense point with a  flat roof giving a cannon a wide range of fire. 

However it was an Italian who designed the first one in Corsica ( a colony of Genova at the time) in a place called Mortella in 1565. And here they still are in Key West. 

Rather than blowing up passing traffic this old wreck makes for an excellent viewing platform over the glorious colors in the Straits of Florida, from behind a secure iron fence...

A place to sit and contemplate the glories of nature.

No such luck for me. I had to go back to work.

                            

Heaven Sent Cold Weather

To say overnight temperatures below sixty degrees indicate cold weather generates sarcasm and ridicule but as I never tire of explaining cold in the Keys is different.

Not only are people not used to cool temperatures, cold weather here is frequently accompanied by strong winds and a great deal of numbing humidity.

People who think of themselves as being hardy and tough will express surprise if they find themselves in Key West on a 55 degree day. Oh, they say, it does actually feel a lot colder than it does at home in these temperatures.  Yes, I say not being given to patience, look around and see cold water and strong winds. Feels colder than you expect? Science. Actually I don't know why it feels colder than it is in winter around here but I guess its like blowing on a cup of tea to cool it down or something. Not that I ever did anything so gauche. My mother had seven different kinds of fits if I put my elbows on the table or blew on my excessively hot food. Anyway it feels cold around here when it's cold.

Then there is the lack of protective clothing. The small dog above was out wearing a coat that needed adjusting in the arctic blast over the White Street Pier.

The aircraft was probably bringing people previously yanked out of snowdrifts who were about to get out of the plane and imagine themselves in a tropical paradise.

Not quite but the forecast is set to improve inasmuch as daytime highs should hit 70 under bright sunny skies putting an end one hopes to an excessively long damp hot humid nasty brutish summer.

I am not known to complain about the heat but this year summer was long and ferocious and I am glad to feel cold for a few days while walking Rusty. Really, I am.

The shrimp fleet takes cover south of Key West when strong north winds are forecast and we have had those winds for a bit now. 

The other day our cellphone went all warbly and weird as winds gusted more and more ferociously. To make phone calls we went downstairs to the van to use the cellphone booster which helps us get a signal on the road. It was excellent.

By the weekend days will be 80 degrees again and nights will be around 70 and things will be back to winter normal, clear skies, few clouds and lots of pleasant days ahead.

For now we hang on and ride out the cold. 

And enjoy winter as it should be enjoyed.