A Strange Coincidence

So I'm sitting in dispatch settling in for another 12-hour night with Paula when she gets a call from a hotel receptionist on the island. She has some tourists with a problem, they don't speak English and she thinks they may be Germans. We put in a call for police assistance at the hotel and wait for officers to clear briefing so we can dispatch them to find out what's happening.

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As I sit there I start to wonder about this call, after all whoever heard of a German tourist who couldn't speak at least some English? So, with time on my hands I called the hotel back and asked to speak to the tourists. I was wondering if maybe they have an urgent problem that can't wait for briefing to clear...Perhaps they are Slavs, but lots of hotel employees in Key West are Russians or Ukrainians or Lithuanians so it would seem likely someone on scene could speak to these mysterious callers.

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"No English" The voice says immediately.

"What language do you speak?" I asked. "Huh?" she says back.

"Language?" I said, waiting for the penny to drop. "Idioma?"

She paused and said uncertainly, "...Spagnolo?" which is the Italian word for Spanish. Then the penny quickly dropped for me. Her uncertainty turned to stunned amazement and she passed the phone to another Italian woman who got over her amazement in short order and started firing off questions to me. By the time I got her reined in I had the story pretty much figured out. They had missed their tour bus, all their belongings had gone to Miami where they were staying and they were stranded and destitute in Key West. The story ends well, as evidence here by a shared lunch at Shrimp Shack the next day but it was an arduous road. Francesca is sucking on an ice cold glass of water, Lucia is hunting grouper on her plate.

They were a mess the prior evening. I called on Officer Young for help. I explained the situation and I told him the truth, this call needed someone armed with patience and persistence and he was the best officer for the job. I could interpret for him over the phone. He put down his paperwork and got ready to get on the road. His preparations consisted of rounding up Officer Wood, trained in dispatch, to take over my radio duties and stuff me in his police car for a ride to the Days Inn. "It's good to get out of the office occasionally," he said tersely. Good for him maybe but I'm a dispatcher, I like my office. The third member of the bedraggled trio lives in Milan. Rita works for the fashion house of Dolce and Gabbana. She looks rather severe in this picture:

Boy, these women were in a pickle, standing in the parking lot of the hotel with nothing but the clothes they stood up in, which included swimsuits in the place of underwear as they had been out snorkeling for the day. They misunderstood their rendezvous time, and the bus, with their cards ID and money were all on the road to Miami. They didn't know the name of the tour company or the phone number or anything useful at all. Except that it was on Collins Avenue in South Beach. Officer Young got to work figuring out who was what and where.While Officer Young was trying to put the pieces together with help from a colleague Up North a Key West man approached and said:

"I couldn't help but overhear that you are looking for a driver called Peter. My boat works sometimes with a guy called Peter. Do you need his number?" That was the breakthrough and somehow we got Peter to call another hotel where he read off one of their credit card numbers and the Radisson kindly put them up for the night and got them dinner at the restaurant. After better than two hours struggling with this intractable issue I got back to my desk and my headset. "Well" I told Paula, "that was exhausting. Who wants to be a cop?"

Officer Keohane likes being a cop and she volunteered to pose with the tourists on their visit to the Police Station next day. I dutifully lined them up and clicked once each with their three camera. Rita from Milan on the left, then Francesca and Lucia who live in Rome.

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They called and offered me lunch next day so I drove in early, picked them up and gave them a quick tour of Key West which they had never seen in all the hassle of the snorkeling and losing their ride. The reef? Well, it wasn't worth all that trouble for sure. these women are travelers and our modest little reef doesn't measure up to those they've seen in the Maldive Islands of the Indian Ocean (a favorite Italian destination for vacations) or the reefs of Mexico. But I could have told them that.They talked to me about life in modern Italy, increasing violence they said, few options and they'd rather be living in America. Which surprised me as Italians tend to be stay-at-home kinds of people. Francesca, the youngest of the three at 37, wanted her picture taken next to the police motorcycles. She rides to work every day of the year, 20 miles each way on her scooter. I promised her a ride on the Bonneville when she comes back but I think she's a Harley kind of girl...
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None of them is married, none of them particularly wants to be. They like their independence and they enjoy their jobs working in the fashion trade. Times are a little tougher they said but no major changes have happened in their lives. They shrugged. "The government will take care of us," they said, uttering the sort of blasphemy that sends shivers down American spines. But there again the Italian unemployed don't end up living in tents without medical care...You pays your money... as the saying goes.Francesca lives at home with her parents and her German Shepherd. Not an ideal situation she said but she's at work most of the day. The other two are closer to 50 and they live in their own apartments. They were horrified to learn I get a whole three weeks vacation a year. "That's all?" They looked at me as though I were admitting to some horrid character defect. We stopped at Harpoon Harry's for cold drinks as we waited for the tour bus to show up across the street, back in Key West with another load of visitors and ready this time to take these theree back to their hotel in Miami Beach. Eventually the bus showed up and they didn't walk, they ran across Caroline Street. I opened a small window on Key West for them and though they hadn't much liked getting stranded they discovered that there is a good side to having a real adventure.

It was time to say good bye and they were profuse in their thanks for what, it had seemed to me, was just what one does. I've traveled enough and got into jams often enough to know what it's like. I lost my wallet just last June when I was in Italy and I depended on Giovanni to get me out of that pickle.

"If you hadn't been on duty," they speculated as I explained to them that there had been an excellent chance I wouldn't have been working had they pulled the same stunt last week, my short work week. The chance encounter of getting lost on the evening the only Italian speaking member of the Key West Police department happened to be working set their rational minds into gear. "It could have been really hard," they said. Reason enough I guess for one of them to learn some English before their next visit! What do I know, it's not often I've found myself in a country where none of my languages are any good at all.I should get out of the office more often.

Horse Country

Continuing our Tour Of Florida 2009 my wife and I left Ocala Monday morning heading west for Cedar Key. We took smaller county roads across Levy county through what is horse raising country: This is another of Florida's little surprises; a corner of the state that tries to look like Virginia. The countryside around Ocala is mostly low rolling hills covered with pine forests and where human beings have imposed themselves, classic post-and-rail fences to keep those pesky horses where the ranchers put them:
The roads continue to run straight and true, with occasional bends and lots of uninhabited open space. These parts of Florida are not the least bit tropical. This is the land of oak trees, Spanish Moss and sandy soils. In summer it gets up into the 90s but in winter it's not unusual to get frosts that mess up citrus groves and have people putting away their motorcycles and surviving by use of cars. Horrors! I find these landscapes quite enchanting even though some people argue that north Florida is more like Alabama or Georgia, this is still the Sunshine State:

This is definitely the Bible Belt and wherever two or three trailers are gathered in His Name, then someone will promptly put up a church:The other reason to hang out here is farming or ranching, so on either count I am not really a suitable candidate for life in this part of the world. I like looking at the broad open fields, and the trees dotting the horizon, but I am glad I have a home in the heathen Florida Keys:I don't know how or why horses got started here but they have been an economic mainstay for Ocala for long enough that the city has erected statues of multi colored horses all over the town as civic Art. There are tons of ranches out in the country and tons of them are for sale like this one:I've lived on dirt roads and personally if I never have to commute down a white gravel road again it will be too soon for me. Yes I know it looks nice what with those tall pine trees lining the road but dust gets everywhere including in your air filter and tires and suspension wear out. It's ruinous I tell you:The horses grazing placidly don't seem to mind that their farm is on the market:
I found the countryside west of Ocala to be prettier than that to the east which is odd because to the east lies the mass of the Ocala National Forest. However, seen from the broad expanse of the paved highway which drives through the middle of the forest, there isn't really much to see. Perhaps a Triumph Scrambler might be useful around there to explore the dirt roads and sandy trails. The country road driving east from Ocala is smooth and straight and easy:

As we continued west toward Highway 19 we came across this sign:

Not only had I never heard of it, I doubted very much it was named for the German poet. A quick Internet search revealed the truth; it was named for the man who sold the land to the State in 1992, a J T Goethe. It consists of 53,000 acres in two separate pieces and includes what the State calls 15 natural communities. We drove through this piece in less than ten minutes. Which is I suppose a lot of pine forest one way and another.

Oops! Wake up! Bend ahead!

And there is Highway 19 steaming north in a dead straight line, all four lanes of it towards the state capital, Tallahassee. We had to go up a short way then turn west once more for our next destination: Cedar Key, an island some people like to say looks as Key West did decades ago.

Oy Vey Deli

There is a deli in the Villages retirement community, in Lady Lake in North Florida, that had my wife salivating. It turns out Toojay's is a chain and they have an outlet as far as south as Fort Lauderdale and I expect we will be paying them a visit in the future. Nancy a long time resident of Big Pine Key wanted to bring my wife to dinner here and get her opinion on the place. No one cared about my opinion, not least because I'm not Jewish and I'm not that discriminating when it comes to a disgusting dish like chopped chicken livers:
The white specks are, I am reliably informed, chicken fat. You spread some of the mush on a piece of rye bread, add a raw onion ring and chow down making appreciative noises, which don't come easily to me when faced with my least favorite meat dish. I would walk a long way from the camp fire to avoid eating liver. Apparently these two got this dish as a special treat from their grandparents as kids and it brings back happy memories. I remember homemade pesto pasta and eggs fried in olive oil and fried rice balls which make me happy to have grown up in Italy.

My wife likes to tell me what to photograph from time to time, so instead of me photographing my impressions I end up taking a picture of what she thinks is important. Apparently this soda is the authentic accompaniment to the meals of her youth. "Can't go to a Jewish deli and not have a cream soda." she mumbled though her chicken liver. We had diet versions because we are middle aged. Nancy got some elaborate brisket sandwich which came grilled with cheese and I had a taste and it was delicious even to the palate of an uninformed goy. My wife got corned beef, rolls of meat balanced between two thick pieces of rye bread (what else). She got on with the job of disassembling it and rebuilding it to her taste. She has to modify all of her food with sauces and mustards:
I woofed my pastrami as it was, plain and simple between more rye bread and it was excellent.
When we lived in California the highlight of a trip to visit Uncle Hy in Los Angeles was a stop at Junior's Deli on Westwood Boulevard, which is a one off restaurant that has been around for half a century. It was the first time I'd been to a Jewish restaurant/deli and it remains the benchmark in my mind for what one should look like. I have to say Toojay's is a pretty close imitation. Not only was the food piled up on our plates the same way, the take out counter looked very similar:

The decorations were of the kind one expects in a chain I suppose, even though service lived up to billing:

The waitress who looked after us tried to talk me out of my chosen "dessert" and though she failed I appreciated her honesty. I have long wanted to try something called an egg cream drink. I know it has neither eggs nor cream but I wanted to see what milk, soda water and chocolate sauce tasted like mixed together. Perhaps I should have grown up in the greater New York City area to be able to appreciate this concoction, but despite the presence of chocolate and milk it was an utterly repulsive drink. It tasted dry and chalky despite looking like a milk shake with a big white froth on the top.I sucked it up for two mouthfuls, and as predicated by the waitress, I gave up. She laughed, and I gave her an extra big tip for her honesty. Had I really wanted dessert I should have ordered one these small mountains of cake:
But my wife saved the night by ordering some arugula to go and I got my chocolate fix at home.
I like to tell my wife that Jewish food is all brown or white- gravy, meat, potatoes, WHITE fish, and so forth. She says beet soup is red, I argue that's a Russian dish. The best place to have this debate is in a place like Toojay's. I look forward to our next discussion.

Adult Living

Continuing the Florida Tour 2009, from Lady Lake in north Florida:

Ah yes, the dog days of summer and a group of young people hanging out on the sidewalk, possibly plotting revolution or more likely complaining there is nothing to do. Meanwhile, their grandparents are whooping it up next to the bandstand:
The bandstand you say? Indeed, right plumb in the middle of the Villages retirement community there is a plaza in the Spanish-American style and a man accompanied by recorded music belts out the hits of yesteryear and the rest of the community gapes: Now here's one unlikely looking granddad, but apparently ex-bikers are welcome at the Villages: The plaza is supplied with concentric rings of seating so everyone gets a view:

Some people prefer not to descend from their golf carts, others park and stroll:

After I dropped off my rental motorcycle in Orlando I followed the instruction sheet thoughtfully prepared by my wife and I drove north on Highway 27 to the improbably named town of Lady Lake. These spontaneous artificial developments in Central Florida grew up in the 1960's around a number of fresh water lakes that gave people the opportunity to buy cheaper "waterfront" homes than those on the more expensive coasts of Florida. And the developers of these places had pretty loose ideas about what to name their blossoming communities. Check a map and you'll see St Cloud (NOT in Minnesota), Frostproof, Nalcrest (National Association of Letter Carrier Retirement Education and Training) and Windermere (NOT in England) and so forth.
The Villages is a surprising variant on the theme of adult living. It houses nearly 10,000 people ( all white as far as I could see) and until the recession struck was growing at a nice clip. They allow people under 55 to stay for up to 30 days a year and the development has attracted a number of shops and chains which attract people like our friend Nancy who lives twenty miles away in Ocala. When she gave me my instructions over the phone where to find her and my wife she said "Drive down the street and when you see people dancing turn right..." I thought she meant a mural. She meant this:
It's a Florida stereotype, the place where people come to die unencumbered by family or chattels, they and their secure defined benefit pensions have a secure gated community to enjoy their common interests. Despite the soaring architecture this sort of place would feel like a prison to me:
Even though apparently they get up to more than shopping and golf. Gossip is apparently high on the list of activities and the local health department reported a while back that the Villages has the highest reported rate of sexually transmitted diseases of any community in the region. Indeed they blame the increase on the availability of Viagra weirdly enough. Happily I was there to meet the wife and Nancy for dinner, not to shop so I formed no opinion about the stores but I was completely entranced by the place.
I didn't get to drive around the miles of residentially neighborhoods that do exist in the hinterlands but the downtown plaza itself looked like a movie set:
You almost expect management to remove the facades each month and have a different themed plaza for the resident's entertainment. I thought the faux Spanish Colonial look could be replaced perhaps by Red Square or Piccadilly Circus next month.
And in case you were wondering mosquitoes have been banned from the property, as a precaution you understand. I never saw anyone doing anything as gauche as slapping themselves or bleeding from the ankle.
I was disappointed to see a group of youngsters hanging out at the ticket booth of the movie theater (Glenn Ford, Hedi Lamar and Peter Lorre were all absent from the marquee- only 21st century tripe was on offer). I thought perhaps the seniors would get an early start on their Viagra fueled evening with a swift grope at the movies just like when they were kids.
If you ever find yourself south of Ocala on Highway 27 and see this bridge crossing the highway (it's a golf cart crossing to the northern portion of the Villages) do yourself a favor and turn south for a quick visit to the other Florida, the Sunshine State sold in brochures as the ideal winter home and retirement home known as God's antechamber.
I will definitely force Nancy to drag us back the next time we're in the area. And don't forget to turn right where people are dancing. Every community should include such Hansel and Gretel instructions.