We had a homeless dude on Ramrod Key last week. He approached me while I was launching my boat at the community boat ramp, a time when I carried no money. He looked lost and mistrustful like a stray dog, and I wondered what his story was but he had only one thought: alcohol. I think he may have arrived on a jalopy with Illinois tags that is still parked in the dirt across from the gas station (and source of beer) but he has gone, and I never did get a picture of him, wandering the gas station forecourt like the ghost of Hamlet's father.
Ramrod Key is a lump of land, a blip on the highway really at Mile marker 27, and I doubt most people with the wild light of Key West in their eyes even notice the place on their headlong flight south. Don't think that bothers me because I like living here and the fewer the better as far as I am concerned. I'm not actually the official curmudgeon of Ramrod Key but I do like to point out that I live on the least friendly street in the Lower Keys. My neighbors glower when I roll by and I don't even have loud exhausts on my Bonneville! Suburbia has its drawbacks.
Boondocks is Ramrod's greatest claim to fame probably, it's a tiki bar with a fried food restaurant and periodic events to draw in the punters. On a night with a north wind blowing I can hear the thumping band noises from my home a mile away. That's when I've got the windows open and the air conditioning off. The cool part of Boondocks is the miniature golf course, the only one of its kind in the Middle or Lower Keys, and like anyone who lives close to an attraction I rarely go to play over there:
Yesterday Boondoocks was holding a MG car show, which was pretty enough:
I'm thinking it was a secret plot to decimate the population of elderly MGs in the southeastern United States. How else do you explain the offer of free beer for their owners:
The negative about living in the 'burbs is that one's friends who live in the Big City 25 miles away tend to be reluctant to get in their cars and drive out to visit and tipple and find themselves subsequently unable to drive home. I enjoy the commute, not least because it gives me a reason to ride the Bonneville. When I lived in Key West I got rock fever, with nary an excuse to get out and see the bridges and the waters alongside Highway One. Besides Ramrod Has most of what one needs day to day. Plants:
...quiet back streets, with my bicycle substituting ably for my Triumph:
Not forgetting the best deli north of Key West for a good long ways. It's part of the Five Brothers empire, an "empire" of two stores, the other being the deli on Southard Street in Key West. This one is named rather unimaginatively, Five Brothers Two:
Open seven days and serving strong dark Cuban coffee which any self respecting visitor should tank up on for the half hour drive to Key West. Of course for those with "wet lots" ( houses on canals, with which the island is criss-crossed) there is boating too:
For those without docks of their own the Looe Key Resort will provide a bed waterside overlooking the motel's own docks. Or better yet for those seeking a snorkeling experience Looe Key has a boat, what captain's call a head boat:
I don't pay a lot of attention to all this stuff, seeing as how I live here (not at the dive shop) but there;s plenty going on, on Ramrod Key:
And if Boondocks isn't enough bikers (and cage drivers) can stop in here for live music from time to time:
And booze in the other World Famous Tiki Bar:
And, in between pouring the beer they advocate paying attention to motorcyclists, because we are everywhere, sometimes on pedal bikes too:
When I decided to settle in the Keys it seemed obvious that one would want to live in Key West, in Old Town of course, caught up in the romance and beauty of the narrow streets, greenery and cute houses and all that. The reality is that Key west is noisy and cramped and crowded and romantic but I like riding my motorcycle, I like the peace and quiet of my neighborhood and I like having lots of shaded parking for my Bonneville, even if underneath my stilt house isn't a proper garage:
Gas is around $3:75 for a gallon of regular, pretty much the same as elsewhere and living in Old Town within cycling distance makes sense if your only alternative is a cage. For a lot of people that convenience, and the excitement of urban life is enough. For everyone else God knows, there's lots of real estate for sale, on every street:
Prices aren't dropping though which is a little weird. Sellers still expect to get more than half a million for a two bedroom twelve hundred square foot house. I don't see many of them getting sold. Any of them, anywhere.
This is my neighborhood, well away from my employers at the Key West Police Department, far from Mallory Square and Sloppy Joe's, no jets circling overhead, and for whatever reason no barking dogs, squawking chickens or squalling children on my island. Its an oasis for me, with pizza delivery, a decent hardware store on Summerland Key, next to a video rental alongside a post office. What more could a suburbanite want? A fishmongers on Cudjoe Key four miles away and a couple of decent (and several indecently cruddy) restaurants.
There's a bench on my street where the drunk hung out for a while but the neighbor across the way was raking it up recently, reordering the plants so we can ride by and admire the symmetry, not that I've ever see anyone else actually use it. It looks nice.
Which should be enough for all of us.
The first thing people remark on about the lighthouse is how far it lies from the beach. There is method to the madness because the original wooden structure was washed off the beach in 1847 so they then decided to build the brick one a little bit inland. And here it is at the corner of Whitehead and Truman in the middle of Old Town. The tower is supposedly somewhere near 90 feet tall and the light inside still works, powered by a solar panel, but it is a tourist attraction these days:
Its a ten dollar admission fee (10%off for local ID) and with that you get a chance to go shopping for gee-gaws:
You get to peer at the old Fresnel lense that sits inside the admissions building looking very glassy and fierce:
The lighthouse museum complex is quite the little compound, a grassy, tree-covered complex of buildings which includes an 1887 lighthouse keeper's house:
Its a wooden home with luscious honey colored tongue and groove paneling all round inside:
There's the usual audio-visual presentation along with a ton of knick-knacks from the period, including clothing, household items and the like to illustrate the life and times of 19th century residents. The dark interior contrasts nicely with the sunburned exterior:
There are 88 steps to the viewing balcony at the top of he lighthouse, and it comes as something of a surprise to me that the place is wide open and anyone can stumble all the way up to the top. There is a sign advising children under 16 need an adult in tow, which isn't a prospect I would relish, what with all those steps winding their way up the tower, keeping up with a youthful bundle of energy:
The copper hose next to the stairway was installed when the light converted from kerosene to acetylene which must have seemed like an improvement to all concerned. I took the steps by storm, and happily didn't meet anyone half way up. There is no room to pass, it would be an intimate affair and these people are tourists so they have no clue how to alleviate social discomfort with small talk in awkward situations...But in the fullness of time one reaches the top and there one finds a fresh breeze and safety wires strung everywhere:
I lucked out on the day I chose to climb the tower as there was a fresh westerly breeze blowing and the air was cool and invigorating. It was on the west side where one can see the lump of La Concha Hotel rising about the little houses of the city. I took a picture of a cute Conch cottage...
...a church (with La Concha bigger in the background)...
...the roof of the Hemingway House...
There is a fair bit of greenery all around the city even after the heavy hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 wiped out a number of trees, but there are spots that show a lot less trees:
And in the distance always the beautiful blue waters around the city:
Back on Earth after a harrowing enough descent even without meeting anyone down below, there was shade to enjoy in the grounds:
And a little traffic watching on Whitehead Street:
We're not quite there but we are definitely getting close. Last week I put the boat in the water and tied it up at the dock behind my house. Having a house on a canal is a wonderful thing, and sea waters are close enough to 80 degrees now that swimming will be an almost daily activity till the second cold front of the Fall. Choosing between the motorcycle and the boat for recreation will cause me some severe indecision between now and November.
My house lies about a quarter mile from the open waters of Newfound Harbor along a canal that is bordered by quite a few homes and mangrove bushes. It seems crowded but it's quite wide enough for the snorkeling boat that leaves from Looe Key Resort each day and takes a few dozen people out to the reef 7 miles south of Newfound Harbor. My neighbors keep some pretty impressive boats at their docks:
When we bought the house my wife and I decided we wanted to scale back and get something small and simple to tie up at our dock, a boat that we could use with very little effort or preparation each day. We ended up with a 14-foot used Dusky self bailing center console, and it has no lights or electronics. We have a 25 horsepower Yamaha that can push the boat up to 23 miles per hour, as I have measured it. For a sailor used to lumbering along at 6 mph such speeds still seem astronomical. The Yamaha also uses very little fuel which these days makes casual boating very easy to enjoy:
In addition to not enjoying getting blind drunk every day I dislike fishing which puts me in the minority camp in the Keys as far as recreation goes! I love to swim though and having the ability to jump in the boat and go for a quick swim any day of the week is a big part of the pleasure of summer for me. My wife gets home at say 3, we get in the boat and go swim till 4:30 and I have time to shower off the salt water and get to work by 6 pm. That's another great reason to work nights, the afternoons are still mine to go swimming... On my days off it stays light till past 8pm this time of year so we can be out on the water for a long time in the evenings. This is the corner of the canal as it turns out into the open waters:
That's Newfound Harbor beyond the channel markers, an almost circular body of water whose shores give wave protection from any direction the wind blows. Our neighborhood association planted a bunch of official looking channel markers after Hurricane Wilma trashed the old ones. The channel is cut from coral rock and is only wide enough for one boat at a time:
But once out there is an abundance of places to drop the anchor and enjoy the water:
In the distance here is Little Palm Resort, at the entrance to Newfound Harbor, where they charge up to $1200 for one night in one of their cabins. It's a resort where wealthy famous people sometimes commandeer the whole island all for themselves to live for a week in privacy the way I live all the time...You can see a big white blob which is a boat tied up to their docks:
Little Palm is actually a very cool spot, much nicer than I imagined it would be before I went there. And for $125 a person you too can take a ride out on their launches (only overnight guests can use their docks) and have a bang up brunch on a Sunday morning. Its sounds grossly extravagant and it is, but once a year we treat ourselves (with a locals discount. Hey my wife is an absolute bulldog when it comes to sniffing out those discounts!). You get the usual buffet choices and the chef cooks up as many sampler breakfasts as you can order and eat. Unlimited gluttony, as it were.
Ten minutes away from my house. 
I worked the weekend, Saturday night, Sunday night and Monday night and my afternoon hours on the weekend I spent at home with my wife before I came into work. 
Old City Hall is a church-like brick building facing Greene Street with wide sweeping stairs, a clock tower and windows and doors of institutional proportions. This was never built as a home but as a place where important decisions are taken, a place where communities gather and hear their leaders. Which is lucky because that is precisely what it is. Upstairs there is a typical formal chamber with the city commission's seats set in the classic oval on a dais, and we the people sit below in orderly rows of chairs. Old City Hall was replaced by City Hall on Angela Street (a collection of buildings that have become ramshackle and are scheduled for replacement), but the commission itself still meets here on a couple of Tuesdays a month, as there is no meeting room at New City Hall on Angela Street. 
The side doors open to offices underneath the meeting chamber upstairs. This used to be the offices of the marine Sanctuary until the Eco center was built on the waterfront a couple of years ago. I find the handicap parking stickers on the doors to look rather odd, and I wonder why they couldn't have stuck them on their own poles. The exterior is imposing but 
I circled the block, walking down Ann Street to Caroline Street and form there down to 
Back on Caroline Street I paused to snatch a picture of the home of Florida's first millionaire, the house that carries his name, Curry Mansion Inn. Wrecking and trade were good businesses for Key West's 19
They rent out 22 rooms by the night and offer tours all day long for the curious. The blue ceilings on the 
Back at Old City Hall I had time to take a gratuitous motorcycle picture just to prove I rode there I suppose, as though that makes a difference:
I think this was an 
I am not a collector, except perhaps of stories. 
What a mysterious looking city!