If I live another 19 summers I shall have completed the traditional Biblical lifespan for a human being- three score years and ten. At this point I find it hard to conceive that my original plan to take retirement at that point, a mixture of two pensions social security and my own careful investments (ha!), along with winters sailing while renting my house to snowbirds, all seem to be pie in the sky. I am glad I have a job that allows me to work in a manner that an 80 year old could manage physically, even though with the most optimistic view it's hard to picture myself still enthusiastic after another three decades of 9-1-1 calls!
.I have been pondering this dilemma of aging in view of a widening appreciation for the fact that we are slipping into the Great Depression 2 that has been denied and avoided, as usual, by our leaders and influential commentators. It seems likely then as we humans tend to ignore history and thus repeat it, that we shall enter a decade of no growth and minimal expectations followed by a massive war to re-set the economy and start another round of prosperity. If that actually happened it seems the remainder of my active life is to be spent in a scramble for survival followed by a period of living in some manner on the Home Front while a generation of youngsters gets it's innocence blown away at the hands of old people fighting by proxy (Iraq comes to mind right now...). This is not a cheerful thought, even for a child free adult like me.
.These reflections came to me from reading the Naked Capitalism column (in my Alphabetical Web List,) wherein I read the comments of one Enrique Mendoza an economist from the University of Maryland who suggests Irving Fisher, a Depression Era economist may have supplied the formula to relieve us of our current economic chaos. Fisher who is credited by some smart people with understanding the mechanism that created the Great Depression has advice for us in our hour of catastrophe says Mendoza:
The worst of the Great Depression was not so much the initial economic collapse, as dramatic as that was, but its persistence for several years. This is what we still have time to avoid and where our energy should be invested. The political spin about pushing for reforms and bailouts to “avert disaster” needs to be corrected, so that everyone’s expectations are not biased towards thinking that a trillion dollars of fiscal stimulus means back to business as usual. The emergency is real and present, but not to escape catastrophe. All the numbers we have about employment, production, world trade, the financial system, etc. show that we are already in a catastrophe. The emergency is to avoid the persistence of the stagnation that occurred during the Depression. The emergency is to prevent most of the next decade from looking like 2008.
.If the next decade does end up looking like 2008 I shall be sixty years of age when we get out of our Great Depression 2. That's a dreary thought. And what's even more dreary is that our current crop of leaders have no idea how to get us out of this mess and the prospects for prolonged misery look inevitable, as long as the Treasury Secretary keeps pushing on the financial string.
.Fisher suggested work for people in distress, support for asset stabilisation (which means help homeowners not banks) and better regulations and oversight in the future. Continuing to pour money into the banking system simply means we keep creating debt, wasting the money and failing to take our medicine and restart the economy. How far down this path will they take us? Or will we let them take us?
When I was a child in England it wasn't at all uncommon to drive past clumps of vegetables on the outskirts of small towns. They were little gardens on common land called allotments a place for city dwellers to get back in touch with nature, and subsequently eat it. The little tool sheds were also, by reputation, places where manly men could go and do manly man types of things away from the eyes of their all seeing wives. You could smoke a pipe, sharpen a blade, read the sports pages, and not get interrupted. Which is something I don't suppose anyone needs to bring up in the context of the new community garden in back of May Sands School on United Street, not least because the tool shed is small enough a man standing in it might be grounds for calling the fire department to extricate him.
The garden is a thing of wonder to someone such as myself who is struggling to get vegetables to sprout at home. I was at May Sands doing a chore for my teacher wife when I spotted what had been a wasteland a few weeks ago. I had seen the raised beds going in but this was the first time I was exposed to such vigorous growth:
This tomato plant is about as big as I am:
And quite large enough to swallow a small boy whole:
His proud grandfather confided in me, when I expressed my unbridled envy of such prowess, that he too couldn't grow a tomato to save his life. His grandson though had become an avid gardener thanks to the communal plots behind May Sands School.
It was an educational experience wandering the rows of vegetables (and flowers) checking out techniques and ways of doing things:
I was particularly fascinated by the beds made of cement blocks. Where I had built movable beds out of plywood and planks they seemed simple and solid and offered a strange and interesting new way to plant, in the blocks themselves:
I like my wooden planters not least because they are portable as I am still looking for their final location around my house. No such doubts here apparently, and I will be back in the heat of summer to see what they are planting and what's growing. I saw a mother and two children picking up food as well as a woman silently and industriously plucking the evening meal out of the ground:
I hate to say it, but there something very un-Key West about the community garden. In a city where hedonism is the superficial prevailing culture there is something sturdily peasant like and not Key West about the food on the table culture of this garden. I felt less alone in my quixotic attempt to grow my own food when I stood in the midst of all this successful effort:
And there was no one to ask when I saw this, but I am glad someone is honoring this unknown gardener if he has anything at all to do with the creation of the project:
The sun was setting and it was getting time to go, but it was hard to tear myself away and I wasn't alone in that:
I checked the shed for unhappily married men but none were in evidence, and of course I admired the rain barrel collecting that precious rain water. Such a simple way to not waste water and so rare in the Keys, land of tropical rainfall:
I have no idea which architect deserves to be shot for designing the abomination that is May Sands School, a building that resembles a nightmarish nuclear bunker with all its cement and bizarre roof supports and impossible angles:
The building looks ugly but the garden has done a lot to cheer it up, make it look pretty in a way no architect seems able. Call it the Triumph of Nature.
An old road, barely more than a track that runs through the mangroves is meat and drink to me, a mouse for a mouser, the source of the Nile for Speake and Burton. I had to go see what was what. Trash was to be my portion, my reward for my curiosity:
Someone with a can of spray paint had taken the time to describe in some graphic detail how much better he was at certain acts than any woman could possibly be. It was left to me, not one to ignore a challenging thought, to wonder how lonely this Summerland man must be, to find himself just 25 miles from the fleshpots of Key West and reduced to this to get attention:
The trail wound it's way under a leaden sky, a muddy rocky trail underfoot and an unpromising sky overhead, full of gray foreboding:
Taken on foot the trail seemed long, but it's probably a half mile, easily ridden on a bicycle to a deep square pool of what appears to be freshwater, possibly an old quarry. The building in the distance sits alongside Highway One:
There were signs of trash all the way:
Until I turned a corner and came across the treasure trove!
This looked like an innocent wonderland to me, a place that would have ignited the imagination of a 13 year old me. I parked the bicycle and took a stroll:
The parental cry of frustration that rings across the Keys is that there is nothing for children to do in these islands. I have no children, I rejoice in that newly minted status described as "Child Free" yet in my memory I keep the seeds of a very active outdoor childhood. This collection of unused concrete pipes would have served me very well 38 years ago.
Upon my arrival at home in Italy from my English boarding school Diego and I (in the stylish hat) would have broken loose from the grip of his parents and my older sisters and we would have made slingshots for ourselves out of Y-shaped tree branches, bicycle inner tubes and patches of leather begged from the local shoe maker.
And we would have run through this splendid array of trash turning it into a wonderland worthy of the multi-colored plastic Ronald MacDonald. It even has its own enemy dirigible (the very innocent Fat Albert checking for intruders in the Straits of Florida):
I must be bacterium resistant after spending so much of my youth running around most unsanitary places. We had a blast. I was however alone on Summerland Key that afternoon free to wander and wonder. I have no doubt someone will be able to identify this reeking lump of rust:
Or this old trailer, I wonder how and why it found it's way out here to dissolve slowly into a pile of rust alongside a load of roofing tiles:
Of course I had to climb up and enjoy the view from atop the rusty heap. I may be 51 years old but I still feel some sort of kinship with the little boy pictured above. The view across the mangroves was hardly startling:
There was more artwork to admire among the ruined fort of my imagination:
While I was amusing myself taking pictures and enjoying the view someone was sneaking up on me. He turned tail and scooted as soon as I spotted him. Perhaps he was the author of the rude scribblings I found earlier. Or perhaps, even more titillating, he thought I was the author the doodles and he turned tail through the bushes to escape my horrid intent.
I made my way back through the trash to the start of this little adventure:
But when I looked up the street and spotted his broad brimmed hat the last I saw was the mystery cyclist pedaling hard to get away from the weird dude photographing rubbish.
Even the trash piled up in people's yards.
Jim took me on a fabulous tour of Boca Chica which is the largest military facility in the Lower Keys. They train huge numbers of fighter pilots there with the most up to date facilities and it was a tremendous privilege to get to ride the Bonneville around the base. Things being the way they are photos aren't allowed, but I retain fond memories of Bombfarm Road, Old Highway One running through the middle of the base, the much lusted after bowling alley (the only one in the Keys!) and of course the astonishing main runway, a place whose size makes Key West "International" look very rural indeed. Thanks to Jim and his very flash V-Star for an excellent ride. 
I'm not sure which trees exactly are slated for destruction, perhaps all of the non natives, because the debate about their worthyness has returned to that intractable desire to maintain forests wherever they may be of native plantings only. And despite every tourist's ardent desire, coconut palms, among others, are not natives. Just as at Fort Zachary where casuarinas were the issue, supporters of palm trees argue their beauty outweighs their non native status:
Unlike Fort Zachary's pines which were spared after years of arduous debate, it looks as though the palms are going to be cut down. Perhaps it's their fate, but there is to be a discussion about this on Wednesday in the city commission and perhaps they will reveal which trees exactly are slated for destruction :
As I made clear in my essay on the cemetery, I like the palms, but these days what do I know? 
There is a house in the Lower Keys built after Hurricane Wilma flooded the islands, that developed a personal response to hurricane threats. It seems like a nice idea but horribly expensive.
It's a bit hard to photograph as the greenery is abundant and the front gate not very welcoming, and I am not one to go trespassing for the sake of a picture. The owner of this newly built home decided the vehicle was worth saving in the event there might be another flood. So the garage was built up in the air on the same level as the house:
I've pondered this idea a bit and though it isn't practical for me, lacking as I do the lot size or the money to build it, I wonder who exactly it is practical for. After all for a regular vehicle, even a Bonneville (gasp!) it makes more economic sense to replace the wheels than to pay to build an elevated garage with all the costs involved.
Parking one's car 15 feet above ground level (4.5meters) may have more to do with sentiment than hard headed economic sense. Me? I try to rent a ground level storage locker when a hurricane threatens for a modest $200 a month and put my machines there for good or ill...Good, so far. 
There is a canal alongside Highway One in this neighborhood that accommodates more of the commercial type boats and less of the recreational:
I'm not sure if this fisherman is tired of the lifestyle or unable to make a decent living but he has turned to selling the tools of his trade as ornaments:
It struck me as sad. 
But across the Overseas Highway, chicken done right is still going gangbusters:
I read a comment a while back that someone actually tried my recommendation and liked the fried chicken. I was quite surprised. This one is at Mile Marker 25, at the Mobil gas station ($2.11 for a gallon of regular). 
So much for getting my zincs and spark plugs here... Hurricane season is also a reminder that pretty soon the waters will be warm enough for swimming so I want my skiff ready to launch in a couple of months. Boyz N Their Toyz was all boarded up, boats on trailers for sale, everything despondent and abandoned:
Well I guess they hadn't been open that long and in this economic climate it's the longer established businesses that tend to hold on (sez I rationalising magnificently). However this company has been around for a while:
I'd like to think it's just the land up for sale but it doesn't look that way. And the space between those two businesses is also available:
Come on down the weather's lovely!
The good life, at least for the dog.