Robert Is Here

I suffer from a certain reluctance to openly enjoy certain pleasures that are, how can I put this? - too well known. Sometimes attractions become so attractive they lose the intrinsic value that made them well known in the first place and this fruit stand in Florida City should be one of those.

But it's not. I like stopping off here any chance I get, and apparently I am not alone. Last weekend the place was packed...

....despite desperate heat and rain showers laying down a nice thick blanket of humidity. There is no air conditioning here, this is Old Florida. I don't mind the heat and humidity but I hear constant complaints about it. Better here than a hundred and twenty in the desert or a hundred and windy in the Great Plains. Or 38 in Fairbanks. If you live in South Florida enjoy it and refresh yourself with air conditioning.

I look at these kinds of family industries and I wonder what it must be like to have a built-in career already mapped out for you. Half a century of selling fruit and vegetables.

And it is an industry. Trip Advisor shows 216 reviews of this place that they put in Homestead but the fruit stand itself claims to be in neighboring (and much smaller) Florida City.

If one wanted to split hairs it's actually kitty corner from Florida City which has it's western boundary across the street in the picture below, but Homestead is further away to the east. Robert's is actually in unincorporated Dade County as far as I can tell.

However Homestead is the catch all city for the agricultural area south of Miami so I guess it will do for those less pedantic than myself.

To get here turn west on Palm Avenue, which is the traffic light at the Shell station just south of the last Turnpike Exit and keep going west. Or follow the brown signs for Everglades National Park and Flamingo. Picnickers welcome.

One of my several pleasures living in South Florida is access to fresh tropical fruit. I enjoy soursop ice cream at Flamingo Crossing in Key West and here my wife went for the same flavor, known to Spanish speakers as guanabana, a thick creamy vanilla with a hint of tropical perfume. I love the stuff but the seven dollar styrofoam (really, still using non recyclable containers?) cup had us both full to bursting.

This place is more than a fruit stand or a vegetable market. It's also a playground because like I said in the opening this is now a proper tourist attraction. And parents won't come for milk shakes if kids can't do whatever it is small people do on a Saturday afternoon.

Let me be blunt: I don't like goat cheese because it smells like goat and these animals were rank.

My dog was perfect, not smelly and not noisy and certainly not undisciplined or rambunctious. I think she spent a lot of time with agitated small children in her previous life because she wants nothing to do with them now.

We walked out of there post haste. This road is part of the network of straight flat paved links connecting the fields and farms in the hinterland of what was once Everglades swamp. There is a winery out there, and it's on my list for this winter.

And we got in just under the wire at the fruit stand, as next week they close for two months. This is a sign of how peaceful the next eight weeks should be, an interlude in South Florida before snow storms start pushing people south.

Oddly enough I came across a dumpster filled with produce boxes from all over the place. Who knew Mississippi exported sweet potatoes?

Well worth a stop. It's less than ten minutes from the end of the turnpike. A soursop smoothie makes the whole weekend go sweeter.

 

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Key West Harris School

The poor old Harris School on Southard Street continues to be abandoned and unloved with fresh for sale signs hanging off its tired structure. Years ago the Rodel Foundation wanted to buy it and create an artist's colony here, but that idea was way too cool for the School District whose board fluffed the sale and ended up in 2009 (after Bernie Madoff brought down the Rodel Foundation) selling it for $4.25 million to a developer who never announced his plans for the building.

Well, here we are in 2014 and the place is for sale on one realtor's website for a cool $12.5 million dollars. Not a bad return for doing nothing with the property but sit through a financial crisis. This week's election took no notice this sale of "six lots" to break up Key West's first school and will thus lose another piece of the city's heritage. Craig Cates' next term will be taken up with the new city hall construction I have no doubt. At least he got that right at Glynn Archer School on White Street.

But the architecture created by accident and which has survived largely by accident will prevail, one hopes.

I wonder what they were thinking when they built these homes. Was it pure practicality? Did they imagine their posterity admiring their handiwork and considering themselves lucky to live among these livable monuments?

I saw this guy sitting on the bench in front of Mangia Mangia, a peculiar pseudo Italian restaurant on Southard Street, a place I sometimes like to sit and people watch of a morning. I watched him for a few minutes reading the newspaper. Then my dog dragged me on.

And round the corner and back we came, Cheyenne and I. Good morning we said, a pet on Cheyenne's head and off again. Sometimes she seems to be in a hurry, other days not.

I've seen this tree lots of times and its appeared here on this page before. It is still doing well, still silly on Margaret Street, still enjoyable to see.

And so back round to the old school, and from the library this picture of the cafeteria in 1959 when I was barely two, and 3,000 miles away.

All to be lost soon enough. I hope the big old trees will survive, but Key West has a poor track record on that front also.

Cheyenne sometimes makes for a poor conversational companion, as absorbed as she gets by...garbage. I guess she sees little difference between my muted garbage and the stuff she finds under the dumpsters. I end up standing around admiring the architectural quirks of this endlessly absorbing city.

And so we left town, I did some light shopping, herself passed out on the back seat in the air conditioning and on the way home we stopped to admire the waters we try never to take for granted.

Then, by the time we got home there was that other kind of water that was about to land on us from above. This has been a summer of heat, and storms and weather drama of the manageable kind so far.

 

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Hunting Cyclists On The Boulevard

It looks good doesn't it? After more than two years of traffic chaos the Boulevard is done. Totally cool.

Well, not quite. Not quite done and not quite cool. This right turn lane at the Triangle where one drives onto the island of Key West is still boasting large numbers of orange barrels. One feature of this two mile long reconstruction has been the inertia of the contractor, who walked away for several months and was nowhere to be seen after the job began. The other thing has been the most aggravating of all has been the total destruction of the right of way from one end to the other. Businesses have suffered horribly, traffic has snarled and not one piece of the roadway was completed. Everything was torn up everywhere all the time. You'd think they could have done it a stretch at a  time but not a bit of it. 

 Above we see a good traffic light where the idea used to be "just get on with it" a concept that freaked a lot of drivers out and they would stall, fearful of making a move and thus backing traffic up to Stock Island. Like this:

Now the green arrow says "go" in no uncertain terms and only turns red on demand from a crossing pedestrian. Brilliant, yet the mopes pretending to be motorists still stop, pause hesitate and tremble at the thought of merging into their own lane on North Roosevelt. Traffic back ups are still popular for some reason I find inexplicable. This simplicity wasn't good enough:

Meanwhile the left turn at the Triangle has become a source of irritation and confusion. The State of Florida says an invisible traffic light is the only way to go because the lights must be perpendicular to traffic. Which is as may be but the lights indicating a left turn here are hidden behind the trees. I'm guessing the trees will be decimated before the state department of transportation will admit they laid an egg. Meanwhile the lame contractors are still busy tearing up the asphalt they recently put down in this area...45 million dollars later...

The best part is the notion that cyclists should be encouraged to ride in the traffic lanes on North Roosevelt.

Apparently the newly constructed  cement bike/pedestrian path is inadequate and cyclists are being told they can occupy the entire right lane of North Roosevelt coming and going. Check it out, is this enough sidewalk?

I kid you not, look at this sign. Now I ask you, when I write "cyclist" are you imagining one of those high power spandex covered freaks pedaling smoothly at 25 miles per hour, tight butt in the air, head over the handlebars not giving a toss about anything or anyone else? Well, yes there are a few of those in Key West mostly in winter but I can't remember the last time I saw them pulling that stunt here. When I think of a "cyclist" I imagine more of the type you see here, locals using bikes as station wagons to get where they are going with minimum fuss. There's the third type of cyclist I dread seeing wobble down the Boulevard: happy tourists, people who never ride bikes and are here to have a good time, not to get mown down by traffic where the speed limit is scheduled to go to 35mph.

So there they are, the official designations that this is a bike lane. The people who authorized this nonsense must  be mad.

I read in the newspaper that the idea is to slow traffic down, which to me sounds more like a method that might be employed in the Islamic State. Hate cyclists? Make them convert to gasoline power or if they continue in their apostasy, kill 'em all.

And its not like there isn't room on the sidewalks to ride. Indeed in Florida it is legal to ride on the sidewalk. Cyclists are required to yield to pedestrians and have an "audible means of approach" but other than that there is no reason not ride in safety on the sidewalks.

Take another look at the Boulevard, five lanes, two sidewalks, 35mph is barely ever observed but that's where they wants cyclists to ride...to slow the traffic down! 

Despite the fact the eminently smart folks at deMoya are nowhere to be seen they've left behind their construction speed limit signs. Why? God knows.

Then there was this little fiasco reported in the newspaper, a stretch of sidewalk where the owner, a free market capitalist has decided not to cooperate with the state and give permission to pave this stretch of sidewalk. You'd think someone at the state DOT might have heard of eminent domain (look it up) but the paper quoted them as shrugging their shoulders and saying there was nothing they could do unless the idiot changes his mind and signs off on the paving. Meanwhile the gravel pit lies in wait...for the unwary. Lawsuit anyone?

Ah, yes this construction has been a tribulation for everyone and the loss of stores attests to that. The original plan called for flooding impacts to be minimized. Whether the drainage improvements will actually work we shall have to wait and see and if they do work that would be wonderful as the old boulevard flooded after the least rain.

The newspaper in its rather critical essay on the new Boulevard did note a lot of complaints, much to my surprise, at the spelling on the new sign at 5th Street. A few alert readers had noticed the gaffe. It happened a good few decades ago that the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, known to his electors as "Super Mac" came to Key West to be entertained by President Kennedy. They took in the sights and all that stuff...

...and the city decided to name a cross street in New Town after the man who had once told the British people "You've never had it so good!" Not a bad election slogan at that. Anyway the name never stuck and most people call it Fifth Street though if you are giving directions to a tourist you have to remember to call it Macmillan as it it's posted that way, actually now its posted as Mac Millan on the Boulevard. Bummer.

Miss-spellings are everywhere and I like to think its due in part to the amount of words that get written, thanks to the ease of technology, and the ubiquitous spell check function that makes everything written subject to robotic review, but in any event the bicycle thing is even more dangerous than the traffic light thing, and at the price of sparing us some flooding someone is going to get killed this winter, if not sooner by the crazy people at the state DOT. Ain't Florida great?

Key West Firehouse Museum

Who doesn't want to drive a 1929 fire engine? Happily in Key West anything is possible thanks to the museum created at the old firehouse on Grinnell at Virginia. I got my turn.

When I answer the police phones I still occasionally get callers who refer to this spot as "the old firehouse on Grinnell," which confuses new dispatchers as there are officially only three firehouses in the city and none of them is located near this corner of Old Town...

If you saunter down the sidewalk, and you may have to do that quite a bit before you gain access owing to the relatively restricted opening hours in the middle of the day, you can see the firemen's outfits hanging in the windows, a tantalizing view.

The garden in back illustrates how much care has gone into the preservation of this space and its restoration for future generations to enjoy. The brick building in the background with the two wooden doors is the former feed shed where horse supplies were stored. In front of the shed is the 9/11 Memorial similar to the one standing in front of modern Fire Station One.

The "horse trough" is commonly believed to have been used as a place to water the horses though the sign explains clearly that it's great length was designed to wash fire hoses after use. there used to be a table alongside to dry them out.

 As we shall see inside they used to bring horses into the firehouse through here in the days before fire trucks were gasoline powered. 

They have gone all out to show off equipment from the past century downstairs with living quarters upstairs. Its amazingly well organized and packed with information.

They also have two old maps of Key West, drawn shortly after the city was sold to the four Americans who purchased quarter shares from Juan Salas.

Check this out: there was a pond across Lower Duval. Who knew?

 Someone had the presence of mind in the late 19th century to photograph the fire crews and their horses:

And inside they have recreated a space to show how horses were stabled in those days. The Gift Shop at the entrance is the actual location of the original stables but Big George, formerly on display in purple livery at Cowboy Bill's on Duval is being gussied up to illustrate the life of a fire horse of years past.

The horses were used to two steam fire trucks to the scene of fires, once there the boilers on carts created steam pressure to create a stream of water through the fire hose. The steam was built up by burning coal from this the last known coal pit of its kind anywhere in the US. 

And there they were, protecting the precious wooden homes of Key West, the town of 12,000 huddled around the harbor on the northwest corner of the island.

Fire was a real hazard in those days and not just owing to seasoned wooden homes and oil lamps and the lack of firefighting equipment such as we have today. Check out this fabulous story from Key West Markers:

1886 Fire

28

CIRCA
1886

At 2:00 am on the morning of April 1, 1886 the most devastating fire in Key West’s history was ignited in a small coffee shop next to the San Carlos Institute.  This fire was more than an accident, there is evidence that this blaze, costing $2,000,000 in property damage in 1886, was set by the Spanish Empire to try to shut down Key West.

At the time of the historic blaze, the Spanish Empire was entrenched in a revolution against the Cuban people.  The Cuban Revolutionaries depended on Key West for the majority of financial support, to keep their soldiers able to fight against the Spanish.  Add this to the fact that Spain had to sell Cuban tobacco to the Key West cigar factories in order to fund their own troops, and it created a vicious circle of each side being funded by Key West.

It made sense for the Spanish Empire to shut down the Key West Cigar Industry to make sure that the funding for the revolutionaries was put to an end.  They had other places they could sell their tobacco, but the Cuban revolutionaries had no other single place that contributed any where near the support that Key West did.

The blaze was ignited very symbolically next to the San Carlos Institute, the club erected by the cigar manufacturers and the focal point of the Cuban society in Key West.  The fire ravaged the downtown area, burning down 18 major cigar factories, 614 houses and government warehouses.  Our only steam fire engine was off in New York being fixed at this time, another suspicious coincidence, which explains why it took 12 hours for the fire to burn itself out.

There are 3 large factors which really add to the intrigue of this destructive fire.  The first is that the blaze was actually extinguished on Whitehead street in the early morning, but against prevailing winds the fire miraculously re-ignited on Duval street, targeting major cigar factories.  The second factor is that the following morning, there was a Spanish flotilla waiting just offshore to take all of the newly unemployed Cuban workers back to Cuba.  The third is that it was reported by the Tobacco Leaf, a paper printed back then solely for the tobacco industry, that an article ran in Havana the day prior to the blaze, touting that Key West had burnt down.

This fire truly was one of the worst Key West had ever seen and with all of the circumstantial and suspicious evidence surrounding it, it’s easy for one to draw the logical conclusion.  Hopefully through in depth research and with a little luck, concrete evidence will be found to finally prove this blaze was no mere accident.

The twentieth century saw the arrival of internal combustion in key West as much as anyplace else in the United States. It used to surprise me to see so many cars parked on city streets prior to the arrival of the "proper" highway in 1938, but the fact is there was a road to the mainland alongside Flagler's railroad. It was by no means as fast or comfortable as the railroad which got passengers to Miami in about eight hours from key West (slow speed only on the bridges over the water!) but the road was a series of sandy tracks connecting the islands. There was a ferry on No Name Key which connected with Marathon and nother ferry bypassing the low lying Matecumbe Keys. It was an arduous journey but cars were a symbol of status and convenience even in the early days of Key West. And the Fire department was no slouch. This 1929 engine had the steering on the right built in an era when traffic was sparse and outside cities there were few rules of the road.

Nowadays firefighters are chemical experts dealing with all the various dangerous chemicals that we use daily and that impregnate, for good or ill, the materials our homes are built of...bottled oxygen and masks from a different era:

Modern fires have left their mark in the city, not so long ago there was a replica of the 1886 fire starting next door to the San Carlos. This time it was knocked down in a  hurry.

The Copa Fire of the early hours of August 3rd 1995 was a landmark disaster that burned up several stores including the night club that gave its name to the fiasco. A shed caught fire around 2am and  that was attributed to arson. Seven engines including help from the Navy were on scene caught in this painting by noted local artist Ann Lorraine whop also helped the firefighters arrange their museum's exhibits:

Other fires are recorded on the Wall of Flame:

One exhibit that set me thinking was this exchange memorabilia from across the waters, the sort of friendly exchange between Cuba and the US that contin ues to be embargo'ed.  These badges are from before World War Two when Key West and Havana were in constant friendly communication. Perhaps those days will return, and it can't be too soon for me.

On the subject of Cuban memorabilia this here is an authentic, true to life Cuban coffee maker. Hang a sock filled with coffee and heat the water. Yum!

And you may be surprised to learn, as I was that some agencies apparently still use these fire alarm boxes as back up communication devices. This lot is strictly for show and education. They also used a ticker tape machine to provide a "hard copy" of the fire's details to headquarters. The dispatcher in me was fascinated, the citizen in me was relieved the Keys have moved on!

Upstairs we see the way firefighters lived and live today pretty much, on the job.

Chief Fraga on the left and his predecessor Chief Wardlow now a city commissioner. I think having been  a firefighter gives Commissioner Wardlow a different perspective of the city; too bad he's just one vote. 

I hate sleeping at the police station during hurricanes and living cheek by jowl with my colleagues in normal circumstances would give me hives, but some people thrive on this stuff. And I have to say that once upon a time when I was a reporter I got a chance to slide down a fireman's pole and I took the opportunity. With all the sexual ambiguity you care to imply, but it seems not much such sliding is done anymore. Too bad.

And now we come to the other great fire tradition of Key West which, in speaking of fire stories cannot be avoided in the Southernmost City. Not only was he a colorful man, was Chief Bum Farto, preferring to wear red and rive a red convertible, he was also blessed with a particular name though his parents had named him Joseph when he grew up as a small child fascinated by the firefighters based at Old City Hall. Bum Farto was caught in a drug sting in 1975, thus putting an end to his career. His Cadillac was found at the Miami airport parking lot but he was never seen again, not for his sentencing or anything else. Speculation has run rife with the preferred odds being that he had a falling out with some nasty people who disposed of him. The fantasy that he is living the good life on a deserted beach seems unlikely for one as exuberant as he was reputed to be. All in all you can see why it is a legend that will probably never die, the story of Bum Farto. to his surviving family's chagrin. 

Mile Zero to Ground Zero. Fire House Museum Facebook

I could have spent a lot longer than I did and being able to go in the summer after schools are back in session was a bonus for me, but I had other appointments to make before I went home. 

According to the museum itself it is now rated the preferred museum in Key West. I never know what to think of these competitive rankings but I will say it is well worth a visit and my hat is off to the driving force that got this done Alex Vega, a retired fire inspector who saw the potential in this place, long since shuttered. (from totallycoolpix.com):

This preservation of Key West's real history is what this town needs more of, and less time devoted to non existent pirates and their legends. Fire fighters are real heroes.

Fire House Museum History

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