Stock Island Fire Station

Apropos of nothing I was cruising up Olivia Street and was struck by this polite bunch of bicycle tourists getting the guided treatment through the Meadows. Had I been on the Bonneville I probably wouldn't have taken the time to take their picture. Tell the truth: it makes you wish you were down here spending money to keep our economy afloat and the snow at bay...However, the saying goes that "every paradise has it's serpent" and that is no less true in the Keys where controversy rears it's head at the least provocation. Lately the paper has been making mincemeat of the School District where the super dooper scandal-free, Conch-free administration imported from Massachusetts hired one of their own attorneys to run the Finance Department and it turns out the Massachusetts Conch doesn't know how to do the job so the Finance Department has collapsed into chaos. The Attorney friend of the ex-Massachusetts Superintendent gets to keep his well paid job and the District plans to hire a new Finance person to balance the books. Whoops- not a great move for a new school board dedicated to reducing Admin costs! Meanwhile the College where the much maligned Jill Landesberg-Boyle was ousted for not kow-towing to Conch developers has been replaced by an Administration that has been sending Tallahassee a bunch of jumbled up budget numbers. Red faces all round and new books are being cooked to satisfy the State. One hopes they will be accurate as the College employees and students deserve better. Then there is the Mosquito Control District lumbering along arguing whether or not a senior officer should be fired for misuse of cell phones. Whether or not they can get their big girls blouses on and do the job the District Attorney is tearing the District a new posterior with an investigation of the abuse. Meanwhile the County which has been struggling to beef up it's Fire Department has been trying to sort out what to do for a new Fire Station on Stock Island.The current building is a bit of an outhouse stuck on a small triangle of land in the middle of Stock Island. Well, the north middle really, across the street from the redoubtable Tom Thumb inconvenience store.Just lately the County has been quite scandal free which is nice. That's not to say people aren't bitching about something or another all the time but on the whole things are ticking along nicely under the guidance of the improbable Roman Gastesi. The Administrator came from Up North to deal with the crazy politics of Monroe County and has managed amazingly well. They say he's even tempered and a good listener which is a nice change.Anyway the county wants to renovate the Fire Station and they have been batting around a few ideas. The best idea it seems is to keep this central location and expand their plot of land by stretching across the street behind the current location.

Apparently the property owner is amenable to selling and the price is right according to the county so who knows perhaps the firefighters will have a new home before too long. The fire station completely fills it's small plot of land. This is a shot looking northwest up MacDonald Avenue towards Highway One.The fire station has decidedly outlived it's allotted lifespan and accommodations are rather sub standard according to the paper.

And there does appear to be land to spare.Big development plans were in the works for the entire island with developers madly buying up large chunks of land. For a while there it looked as though the laboring classes were going to be losing their trailer parks but fortunately the Great Depression kicked in just in time. I guess it's an ill wind that blows no one any good.I can't imagine having to hike to fill jugs with drinking water. Taking her picture I felt like Dorothea Lange. Life on Stock Island is rather more hard scrabble for a lot of residents than you might imagine. especially if you judge life in the Keys by the opulence of the Old Town mansions. Or the serenity of a Key West bicycle tour...

I am going to try to remember where I archived this picture so in a year or two we may compare the past to the glorious new future. A shovel ready project, perhaps.

Wandering Dog

Cold weather has been blanketing the Pacific Northwest and Northern Europe. We have heard rumors of cold air in Jack riepe's backyard too but down here all we have seen are strong breezes and a general drop in temperatures. Nothing drastic you understand.It is hard to make people understand what a sensory catastrophe a thirty degree drop in temperature is like. For a constitution delicately balanced around a comfort zone between 80 and 90 degrees, a night time low of say 55 is an exercise in masochism. The wind chill certainly doesn't help, nor does the fact that the air is damp and salt laden.Some people labor under the misapprehension that I might miss snowdrifts and icy cold weather to celebrate the traditional Nordic Christmas. No such thing. I never much got into skiing, I don't like an icy nose or frozen digits. Personally I don't much go for swimming in these freezing waters either. They are well below my comfort zone of 80 degrees, though tourists for some unaccountable reason don't mind and swim and splash around on jet skis like this burnout:My friends and colleagues all start out expressing joy at the cool weather, a welcome change from summer they say. I think cold is for the birds, like this poor huddled creature:

The weather has been such that the commercial fishermen have been heading for their snug berths out of the way of wind and wave:

The people I really feel bad for (aside from myself) are the visitors who come to Key West for a week away from the cold and the damp and the gray skies at home and they find pewter skies and chill breezes down here... One just has to keep on keeping on. At least it's not icy.

I have been following the debate about the Transportation Safety Administration's new X-Ray machines and intrusive pat downs and I have to say I never have much enjoyed commercial flying. I have flown on vacations for the past 45 years and the experience has never got better, though it has got substantially cheaper and more cattle truck-like. I remember hopping between Italy and England in propellor driven Caravelle aircraft driven by babes in trim uniforms who patted me on my twelve year old head and made a two hour flight seem like a flying fashion show as they took care of my every need. Air hostesses as they were known looked a lot less harassed and a lot more glamorous than today's exhausted airborne warehouse staff. Add the whole business of iced up planes and closed airports and I am glad to be staying at home and not flying. As air traffic jams go Key West is pretty much off the radar.

We are planning an eight day road trip through Dixie before Christmas and I am looking forward to that. I like driving the southern states and I'm looking forward to being on the road with my wife and my dog. Road food! No frost! Anyway, back to Key West where I was walking Cheyenne round the East Martello Tower when I saw this plaque through a gate.

They used to hold outdoor events here years ago but the funny thing is the place is now out of bounds to ordinary mortals. I wonder where the "No Trespassing" came from? Private property? Oh well, things change as usual, and not for the better.

It may have been brisk and cool for my taste, but Cheyenne was perky and some people were enjoying being out in a minimum of clothes

I guess I'm a whiner (don't answer) .

Palms apparently get stressed by temperatures below 50 and get killed off if they get a touch of frost. At least not that, never that, around here, though the wind was shaking this one around nicely.Cheyenne could have taken plenty more of this kind of walking in the wind but we had places to go.

It turns out Sebrings have a couple of doo-hickeys that tension the cam chain and they need to be replaced every 75,000 miles. My wife's Chrysler has almost 80,000 miles and the valves started clattering. Our main guys in Big Pine said Oily's on Stock Island is the expert for Chryslers so off we went.

It turns out Oily's is great. They got the parts next day and worked all day to get the car running again. For $600 it seemed like an incredible deal. Our problem was my wife had to drive to Central Florida for a conference that evening.

Mike was unflappable and incredibly generous to these people he'd never seen before in his shop.

His waiting area is quite de luxe too, with tons of magazines, red liquorice (which my wife loves) and a foosball table. I used to play foosball when I was a kid in Europe so I was ready to challenge my wife but my good sense prevailed and I sat down and read quietly. My wife is competitive and beating her on the eve of her departure might have been a bad idea. Even beating her at something as inconsequential as a table top game.

This place had the air of clubhouse, it was very relaxing.I also located the car shown on Oily's advertising. A Plymouth of some sort.

The car was finished. I went to work after feeding Cheyenne. My wife took off for points north in her refurbished convertible. All was well with the world.

Gardening Envy

The boys picked me up at my house so we could take all three dogs to No Name Key for a sunny afternoon walk. Chuck patiently followed this elderly Vespa at 35mph on the Overseas Highway. I have seen the Vespa parked at Big Pine and spoken to the owner who uses it regularly, though this was the first time I'd followed him. I admired his devil-may-care ability to enjoy the ride at ten miles an hour under the speed limit. When I tried to ride a ghastly slow Stella 150 I was always pulling onto the shoulder to let traffic go by. We got to No Name in the end and met the local inhabitants:And we took a very pleasant walk which quite tired out the Vizlas, Zuzu and Tootie.
Cheyenne sprawled in the back behind Wayne and chewed on her host's rawhide. She likes to make the point that she feels like she is the alpha dog around here. It was a glorious sunny day,a fine time to be out and about and i was grateful to Wayne and Chuck for dragging me out into it. This is the bridge connecting No Name to Bog Pine over Bogie Channel.Soon enough we were back home watching other hardier souls take to the water on a windy day.My vegetable patch got the third degree from Wayne and Chuck. We introduced them to Earthboxes and now they are experts and wanted to see what kind of cock-ups we'd made. My big issue once again is iguana attacks on my vegetables and those dinosaurs are starting to piss me off big time. They climb everything, chew everything down to a nub and they run at the merest hint of trouble. I've tried stalking them and I've managed to shoot two with my air gun but one is only allowed to shoot on one's own property and I desperately afraid of shooting across the canal, which fear crimps my style. besides I'd rather they just stayed away and minded their own business elsewhere. The problem is they have no natural predators and they lay eggs as copiously as ants.This is my third attempt this winter and so far, touch wood the plants seem to be growing unmolested. Wayne and Chuck haven't yet exposed their boxes to the iguanas that cross their lawn but when the brutes discover their plants they too will be at risk. At the moment the boys are being rather smug...Better living through chemistry is my philosophy and I have been trying anti iguana sprays for my plants. The best we have used is called Iguana Rid but it is horribly expensive, 20 dollars a quart so we tried a new local formula. It's said to discourage iguana from crossing anything it covers but it never worked for us. That was two crops of plants that got et. #$%@&! Lisa told me about a home made concoction she has used to great effect.The formula is simple enough, a dose of garlic powder, Neem oil and off you go. In consultation with my wife we decided to add cayenne pepper to the mixture to give the bastards something else to think about. My wife is fussy about the proportions (which I can't precisely remember) but we let the pepper and garlic sit in the water for a while to infuse it properly. I pour a generous dollop of Neem oil into the sprayer and then using paper towels to filter the mixture I pour it through a funnel. This whole bottle of Neem oil which should be good for half a dozen bottles of spray costs just eight dollars at Home Depot.It smells ghastly, like decayed dog piss but at these prices i can spray stuff to my heart's content.And so far my plants remain uneaten...The broccoli and pepper are flourishing......and the lettuce is a favorite meal of the wretched iguanas.I'm hoping there's shade enough so that the lettuce won't get bitter.I wanted to re-use a dangling Topsy Turvy but unfortunately the plastic had become rather thin and weak. I had a tomato plant I needed to find a home for, so I wrapped the container in a plastic soil bag, added some gorilla tape and called it done. Ugly but functional. The boys were polite enough not to comment on it's appearance.However Chuck couldn't help but gloat. After they got home I received an e-mail titled simply "We have a tomato!" And so they do as evidenced by the attached photo:I will too, one day......if only I can keep the damned iguana away.Irony of ironies, Chuck asked if he could please borrow my container to spray his plants down "just in case." That made me feel better.