Slipping Back

2009 retail sales figures are in and show the worst year in decades. I know my wife and I have cut back on spending money and it seems we are just two white mice among millions who have figured out that things really aren't getting better. It's odd to see the mainstream press dredge up the tired old cliché that 70 percent of the US economy is driven by consumers. You and I aren't people, or families, or neighbors, not to the people at the top. We are consumers and when we stop consuming the money making machine grinds to a halt. It matters not that we aren't spending money for two very good reasons. It only matters that we aren't spending money.

One of the hardest things that I have had to learn about living in the United States is the relationship between the haves and the have-nots. My definition of being wealthy is having enough capital to either a) do nothing productive or b) do something productive on strictly your terms. Everybody else is a working stiff one way or the other. And if you think begging isn't work, maybe you should try, experimentally, before you have to take up that trade in earnest. One way the people in charge keep us consumers in our place is by directing our anger at the shiftless layabouts who do nothing all day, or better yet who live in jail with free meals and television. I always say it's easy enough to join their ranks if you really do think that's a desireable lifestyle. It's much harder to join the ranks of the banksters and political lobbyists and their exclusive lifestyles. And no it is going to get much, much harder to stay in place never mind climb economic ladders.

And yet us working stiffs in the US are never supposed to even feel envy for the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The proper attitude is respect that they made it, tinged with a little bit of guilt that we shiftless masses haven't taken sufficient advantage of our opportunities in this limitless land to join them. The fault lies not with them but in us. If we really wanted to, our leaders tell us, we too could become multimillionaires in business, politics and the arts. When people harangue me on this subject, because apparently my views are radical, I point out that Bill Gates would never have achieved his absolute wealth, had he been building Microsoft in say, Latvia. What has given him untold wealth is we, the US consumers. He produced a product, advertised it, and we, worried about our shiftless image, we the hundreds of millions of US consumers buy it and he makes a personal fortune larger than many nation's annual budgets. But without us consumers there would have been none of that. Don't believe me? Wait and see because now we consumers are no longer spending wildly for two reasons. We've either lost everything or are terrified of being the next pawn to drop off the bottom rung of the ladder of insecurity. Even Microsoft can't make money if we don't buy. And if we don't buy the shiftless leaders of our economy not only get to keep their fortunes, they get to add to them even as one quarter of children in the US live in foodstamps.

That is to me the reason why we have an unspoken social contract in modern civilization, very similar to the feudal relationship between serfs and their lords. We help them make money but they help us to live decent, if undemanding, lives. Most of us after all don't really want that much, a decent job, a home, a family a modest sense of purpose, and now, while our leaders savage our economy to death in front of our very eyes, they still expect us to be grateful. And weirdly enough we lower our eyes from the unsavory spectacle and meet their basest expectations. At least we aren't Haitians, who eat mud pies and are to blame for their own misery for "disrespecting" God, according to Evangelical Christians who speak out on the subject of the recent earthquake.

I wonder how long we will have to decline into being "used-to-haves" before we put the brakes on the wholesale looting of the US economy? How can we? I read that we are going to spend, in official numbers, 103 billion dollars killing Afghans in 2010. I cannot help but ask myself if the charitable thing would not be to pledge that amount to oil-free Haiti to rebuild. Of course not, we are engaged in a life or death struggle to own cheap oil and that is what we will do, no matter how many Americans die to achieve that goal in Iraq, in Yemen, in Oman, and God help us all, in Iran. Because without cheap oil we are doomed to a slow unravelling of the consumer economy, and we shall return to our former status as people, instead of consumers, and that won't do at all.

Turn up the volume on the TV.

Anatomy Lesson

Doctor Norris flaunts a picture of himself in the Key West Citizen on his office furniture, alongside all those other bits of paper doctors accumulate during the course of a career- diplomas, certificates and Rotary Club encouragements to do good. In the waiting room where I sat while waiting to get my expiring shingles examined one more time, there lies my favorite book:It's a big floppy tome that has apparently been around for a while, and I expect will be around for a while longer as humans aren't going to change that much in the foreseeable future.While waiting I like to flip through the book and try to come up with some confounding diagnosis before the doctor gets into the room. "Yes, I think I may be suffering from an impacted esophagealic sprung splangefusket in the lower anterior nerve endings." " Very good," says the unflappable doctor, setting the book aside "let's have a look at those shingles."After we had established my blisters were gone and all that was left was a burning sensation round my waist I got to ask about the book. "This picture," Doctor Norris said, "shows how we evolved from fish. Look at the lines of the nerves, see how they coil round."

We started as worms and then as the flippers developed the nerves traced spirals around our body. "The blue on the arms and the purple on the feet look like flippers."

I stared at the pictures and it was at this moment perhaps that I got a glimpse of how little I know. I have never had reason to doubt Darwin's On the Origin of Species, even though I tried to read it once and found it as dry as chalk dust and just as illegible. I am reliably informed millions of people do doubt evolutionary theory and I wondered upon what they base their distrust. The more I learn the more obvious it seems, not that I have ever had reason to doubt evolutionary theory. I don't doubt the reality of Relativity Theory either, though most of it goes way over my head. Dr Norris worked at a teaching hospital Up North and it shows because he has a remarkable capacity to explain the most impenetrable medical knowledge. I really like having to go and see him, I always learn something.The anatomy book laid out the human body just as one would lay out an electronics schematic or a parts diagram for a motorcycle. How little do I know, I thought to myself as I idly flipped the pages of the book. What seems obvious to a human educated in the sciences seems so remote and abstract in a world where newspapers dumb down their language to maintain the interest of a reading public with the attention span of a ten year old. There was a photograph of the author making his painstaking drawings of us as we are underneath our skin:I liked this one the best, it makes us look like sides of beef, the marbled fat on the right hand side, the barbecue ribs on the left.

I suppose once we accept the physical-ness of our being, all those thoughts that flit behind our eyeballs, all those emotions that spark in our heads become part of the machine. No more and no less.

I managed to have my own bit of fun when I signed in to see the Doctor. "Er, sir," the sweet young receptionist hung out of her cubicle holding my sign-in sheet. "What is this date?" she asked, looking at my signature next to the word Date:___ "Thanks," I replied, "I don't need a date. I'm married." She giggled and withdrew. I wondered what she'd make of my notation that my main complaint was lack of health care reform. We may just be sides of beef on our hind legs, but there's no proscription against having a bit of fun before we go to the knacker's yard.

Flagler Station

Flagler Station is a modest but informative little museum located on Caroline Street not too far at all from the spot where the first railroad landed in Key West on January 22nd 1912. I'm betting no one will notice the 97th anniversary of that particular date when it comes around next week.It took a great deal of slog over many years for hundreds of navvies with steam dredges and massive amounts of ingenuity to build the Florida East Coast Railroad Extension to Key West. I find the story of the railroad to be fascinating not simply because it was the first continuous connection to the mainland but also because it was done for love not money. Indeed the Over-The-Sea-Railroad never turned a profit between 1912 and 1935 when it was shut down by a major hurricane.Henry Morrison Flagler made a fortune as a founding partner of Standard Oil and he got into the railroad business as a millionaire. While Henry Plant was busy running his railroad down the West Coast of Florida to Tampa, Flagler was developing his line down the East Coast. His idea was to create a chain of resort hotels to allow New Yorkers to become snowbirds, and take winter vacations under the Florida sun. It's important to remember that in those days Florida was largely undeveloped thanks to the heat and humidity of summer (affordable air conditioning wasn't invented until after World War Two), along with the kinds of tropical diseases that devastated entire populations in those days. Even Key West, the most salubrious city in the state was struck by Yellow Fever epidemics from time to time. Indeed Key West was the largest and wealthiest city in the state for many decades as it was easily accessible by sea and had by far the best climate. Tallahassee became the state capital (capitol is the building, pedants please note) simply because it was accessible and livable.Flagler had always dreamt of extending his railroad line from New York all the way to Key West, to transport tourists to Havana, and bring back tropical fruits for winter consumption in the Big Apple. The story of how the track got laid through the mangroves and across the open water is a compelling tale. And it's beautifully told in the Flagler Museum.
The train eventually arrived in Key West and changed the face of the Florida Keys. In those days the islands north of Key West were barely inhabited at all, and most of them were nameless. Indeed their names were given to them by the railroad workers who were toiling to build the track bed and bridges. Thus it is you have Ohio Key and Missouri Key, named by workers from those states. Marathon was so named because it was a "marathon job" to lay the track across Vaca to Knight's Key where the ferry connected Marathon to No Name Key. From there a rough road brought a weary motorist eventually to Key West. That's where the museum now resides to explain it all with artifacts and pictures:There has been some debate about how workers were treated by Flagler's engineers. They were recruited from all over the country and were as I recall paid a buck and a half a day with board and lodging and all travel expenses taken care of. It was hard work, no doubt about it, and many couldn't stick it. However there was recreation (no alcohol and no women were the rules, not always enforced) as well as medical facilities and a proper hospital to take care of the injured and sick. From my reading of it Flagler was a pretty decent employer and humane man. It was the work that was tough by modern standards. Imagine slashing and hacking your way through mangrove bogs, hauling rocks to create road bed and all this under a cloud of mosquitoes in 90 degree heat...
That they smiled at all is pretty surprising to me:Then they had to build the cement supports underwater for the many and various bridges. Indeed they used the same technique as that used to build the Panama Canal. They built underwater frames and filled them with cement imported from Germany.They hacked a railroad out of previously impenetrable jungle, and they sweated every mile across the uninhabited islands:It was amazing work. The railroad stalled at Knight's Key while the engineers tried to figure out how to cross the span that we know as the Seven Mile Bridge. Flagler was determined to do it and eventually they figured it out for him. More cement, more struggle.The construction went on and on, top quality work which has stood up amazingly well with no proper maintenance for almost a hundred years. Frequently a boater will find deep water alongside the highway where the waters further from the highway are much shallower. That's because the railroad engineers duck the dirt out to create the causeway. It was immense work and it would never happen today because the railway changed the ebb and flow of these tidal waters. The construction on the left with the classic arches is the old Long Key Bridge flanked by the new highway (opened in 1982) on the right: Hurricanes took lives and wrecked tracks even as they were laid. But the work got done. In those days storms weren't named but the great hurricane of 1935 wiped out the lowest section of track across the Matecumbe Keys, and workers were torn away from the land with hundreds of bodies scattered across Florida bay and even up into the Everglades. A rescue train arrived too late and only the steam locomotive survived, the carriages that were supposed to rescue the workers got blown over:That storm put paid to the railroad but in 1938 the State of Florida bought the right of way, tore up the rails and used them to make guardrails. They laid sheet metal on the bridges and cemented them over and made a narrow but continuous road from Homestead to key West. For the first time automobiles could travel all the way (it was a long arduous day's journey) without stopping to use ferries in Matecumbe or Knight's Key, as had been the case before the advent of the railroad. Nowadays as we struggle to deal with the effects of diminishing oil supplies and increased prices an electrified railroad seems like a brilliant travel solution for the Florida Keys, but rail travel in the US has always been a romanticized means of locomotion, always the bridesmaid to air and car travel. Not so in those far off days a hundred years ago:Freight cars drove onto the ferry which docked at Trumbo Point, a land mass created by Flagler specifically for his train and used today by the Coastguard.An aerial view form the early 1930's I believe: The travelers voyaged in style back in those days:
This is the bust of the man responsible for all this mechanical magnificence:The arrival of the train, finally in Key West was a big day for a small town and everyone turned out. I have read some of the comments published in that era where some people were grumbling that the train would change Key West for the worse...rather in the manner of people today who complain about too much tourism changing the town, even as they make a living off it.Flagler also built the Casa Marina Hotel, in the same grandiose resort style of his other destinations on the East Coast. St Augustine's Ponce de Leon and Palm Beach's The Breakers. A freeze in Palm Beach in the winter of 1894 convinced him to push on south for warmer weather...and the railroad went all the way to Key West eventually. The museum is housed in part in an old one room cabin inhabited by a surprising number of members of the Atwell family. This is the pioneer lifestyle as endured in Florida in those days: Train service took most of the day from Miami and that was partly because they slowed the train down to no more than 25 miles per hour (40km/h) on the bridges over the water. Contemporary accounts of the journey tell us this ride was as magical to the riders of the day as it sounds to us now:A few of the islands were inhabited back then with people homesteading as best they could. I've seen similar farming styles in the Out Islands of the Bahamas were they cultivate meager crops in the sink holes on the limestone where some soil has accumulated over the years. I imagine it must have been similar in the Keys in those far off days. The railroad changed a lot of things for these people. Supplies were brought on schedule, mail traveled along the rail line and the iron horse brought a touch of the outside world to these isolated lives.I have read about my own island, Ramrod Key, where a family lived on the north side of the island. The railroad delivered an automobile to the family and they used it to transport ice from the train, and produce to the train along a half mile road they built from the railroad to their house, such was the effect of mechanization. The train didn't generally stop at Ramrod Key but slowed down and they hung the mail on a hook alongside the tracks...There is a short film in the museum about the railroad and this eyewitness to the arrival of the first train said something that took me by surprise."We didn't know what a train was!" she said. Imagine that. They soon found out:Flagler died the next year but he got to ride into town on his train, so doddery and worn out he could barely see the multitude gathered to greet him. His dream died a scant 23 years later. The line had never made money and when the storm tore up the rails in the Matecumbe Keys there was no money left to fix it. The Last Train To Paradise by Les Standiford is an enthralling read if you want to know more.

I still like the idea of riding my bicycle up to the railroad, getting into a single carriage train and riding the rails to Key West in silent, electrified comfort. Pity I don't have massive shares in Standard Oil to back me up and turn my fantasies into reality.

A Bone Yard

A live Key Deer standing there, pondering it's next move.
Key Deer Boulevard on Big Pine Key. Five arrow-straight miles (8kms) that cut through the Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge on the north side of the island.

This is the Key Deer's main habitat in the islands, which between them constitute it's entire range, and it has to share them with humans, many of whom, though late arrivals themselves. tend to resent the presence of the deer.Sharing the road is part of the issue, the other part is learning to share one's garden with these creatures on Big Pine Key.I thought Cheyenne might enjoy some time in the woods. She has met Key Deer in the past month and they freak her out. She stops, looks at them warily and comes running to hide behind my legs until the danger is past. She is no threat to wildlife.

There was a threat of snow flurries (not really, but it felt cold enough): blue skies and bright sunshine broke out instead:The black dots on the branches in the picture above are turkey vultures, like these in the picture below: This is their time of year in the Keys, and who can blame them, this is a great time normally to be down here. These two below looked like cartoon characters to me: It took a detective like me but a couple of minutes to figure out their interest in this woody spot:It seems at least one and maybe more Key deer had died here.The bleached white bones lay about in a confusion of profusion, starkly back lit by the brown pine needles carpeting the limestone: I trod on this next one and it rose up like a skeletal hand from the grave and tapped me in the back of the calf. I leaped like a startled hare (an arresting image, I know), and when I got home I gave that portion of my anatomy extra attention in the shower. I felt unclean, despite myself.

There were bones scattered all around the clearing and i wondered if some enterprising, hungry resident of Big Pine might not have taken the law into his own hands out in this lonely spot?As I pondered the charnel house around my feet the local undertakers stretched impatiently waiting for the intruders to move on and let them get back to work:

Bizarrely enough I found a container lying in the mess as though the butcher had forgotten it and left it behind.On mature reflection I doubt it was a human hand that did this directly. A hunter wouldn't pick the bones clean and leave them lying around. I rather suspect traffic on nearby Key Deer Boulevard was responsible for severe injuries followed by a solitary death in the nearby bushes.Cheyenne to my surprise showed no interest in the deer remains and contented herself with finding a puddle of tannic water to drink:It's not too terribly legal to eat them either, unless you happen to be a turkey vulture in which case you probably can't read the sign.