Ocala

Going north and exchanging greetings as we go. Nancy used to live on Big Pine and had a job with Monroe County that put her in an office close by Laynes’s when she worked as a Juvenile Probation Officer. As always Layne has kept in close contact with one of her earliest friends in the Keys. Every time Nancy meets Rusty she starts talking earnestly about getting another dog. This was in 2018 and she is still dogless:  

Ocala in the fifteen years we have been visiting has grown like everywhere else has. It’s one of those mainland towns where Conchs move to after they sell their homes in Key West and discover a million bucks will buy a lot of land in horse country. Nancy has made a success of her move as retirement looms in a few years as a senior clerk in the Marion County courts. Once retired she’ll own her  home free and clear, with a decent state pension after 30  years at a state job, and she’ll have a life close to her son and his family who really like her.

For much of the country it isn’t an unusual story to work, retire and enjoy life, but for me Nancy’s move from the Keys is the story that illustrates how you can leave the much desired islands in good order and make a good life elsewhere. She doesn’t miss her former life and never goes back to visit. I enjoy seeing her flourish in horse country. 

I left Layne and Nancy talking after I finished my brisket. While  they were picking rib bones apart the conversation was intense and they  had already forgotten I was there. Rusty was glad to see me back at the van and we walked. It’s not often you see a farrier’s truck parked on the street. Like I said, Ocala is horse country.  

Ocala has a population around 55,000 with reasonable rents and the official median price of a home is around a quarter million dollars. In Florida Ocala rates highly as hurricane and flood proof as much as anything can be and has a relatively mild climate with hot summers and occasional frost in winter. Marion County has a population under 400,000 but that is quite populated for North Florida and you can see why. 

When a bank calls itself “Seacoast” you would imagine there might be some sign of the sea around you. Ocala is about an hour from the Atlantic beaches so the back is slightly off course. Ocala was built around Fort King which in turn was built in 1827 on the border of the newly created Seminole Reservation. The Indians had fought the US army to a standstill and earned themselves the right to live in the swamps south of Fort King. They still proudly point out they have never been defeated in battle. The northern border of the Seminoles got pushed south to Ft Myers over the decades as white settlers pushed past Ft King, but that was the original border. 

Parking rules in Ocala, sensible simple and clearly posted. And affordable. Key West could do worse than follow their lead. 

By 1819 Spain was impoverished and had no interest in populating Florida where they had built settlements since the 1500s. The US worked out a treaty to take control of the territory and assume any debts owed by Spain to the occupants. The entire peninsula cost the US five million dollars when all claims were paid. 1821 saw the creation of an official territory with statehood following in 1845. 

Meanwhile the Seminoles wanted nothing to do with the US so Fort King was built in 1827 and named for an officer who governed western Florida, Colonel William King.  After the majority of Seminoles were expelled following repeated wars a city was built nearby and it became the county seat of Marion County in 1846 following the creation of the 27th State. A decade later Ocala was booming and well established until the Civil War cake along and wrecked their prospects entirely reducing the population so much its future was in doubt. 

If outsiders think of Florida at all they don’t think of horse country and rolling hills and oak forests and white post-and-rail horse fences. But that is what you will find here. 

A drive across Florida from Brooksville to Ocala to Palatka and St Augustine will reveal pretty little towns connected by smooth winding roads shaded by huge live oaks and Spanish moss. You’d be amazed if you thought Florida is all Disney World and sandy beaches. 

It was a pleasant cool evening for a walk so Rusty and I hit the pavement for an hour or more wandering this way and that. 

Youthful brew pubs and a movie theater downtown is part of the revival of Ocala as a hub to rival Gainesville and its university. 

Eventually we moved on crossing the state in the dark to reach I-95 on the east coast where we slept to get ready to run up the freeway to Hilton Head. 

Next stop South Carolina and Webb Chiles followed by ten days in Ocracoke, the southernmost island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks where we shall park GANNET2, turn up the heat in our rental home and take Rusty for romantic winter walks. 

No, I don’t miss working one bit.

Going, Going…Gone

Galley Grill on Summerland Key is an unassuming breakfast and lunch joint wedged between a dentist’s office and a liquor store. What else do you need at Mile Marker 25? Friends to share breakfast of course. Then Wayne and Chuck led us to the Ramrod Key Saturday Market next to Boondocks bar. Laynes favorite weekend haunt. 

They bought their seafood from Mundy the Pirate…

“He’s taking your picture!” 

“Yes he does that,” they said continuing the discussion of life and business without a pause. 

Saying hood bud is the hard part of traveling. Paula hated parting with Rusty and who can blame her? 

She’s promised to meet us in Peru to dog sit him while we visit Machu Picchu next year. I’ve checked already and dogs unaccountably aren’t allowed. You can’t just drive up to the gates either so we can’t park him in the van as we usually do at museums so we will need volunteers to help.  Paula and Ivan, Kathy and Wayne and Chuck have all expressed interest. Sign up early to join the party in Peru. 

Bruce and Celia are collecting packages for us in Arizona where we shall swing by to buy lunch prior to going to Mexico do when Bruce expressed a desire for a commemorative t-shirt I could hardly say no. However Five Brothers on Southard was all out. 

The years have passed but Eddie still holds court making small talk and handing out coffees. How he does it day after day with equanimity baffles me. No t-shirts for now he confirmed. We compared notes on the passing of time and the electronic complexities of the younger generation. 

All was not lost. Layne and I got large con leches and cheese bread to go. I took the loot home to Paula’s garden where GANNET2 was plugged in and spread Marmite on mine. English boarding schools warp your palette and I make no apology. I plan to cross to Mexico with 480 Yorkshire Gold teabags secreted into nooks and crannies aboard. Layne drew the line at more than six boxes. 

We left Key West relieved to be on the road in good order, looking forward to the open road but aware that lives on that road have diverged our path from the daily lives of those staying on.  

It’s the reality of routine that when you live close by you get too involved in work to spend proper time together and then when you are gone but drop in everyone makes a break to celebrate. But then the routine returns and we the voluntary outsiders must leave and make way for other visitors.  It’s good to know when to make our exit. We did take some smelly blue cheese with us. That was good. 

We are driving to Ocracoke now. Slowly meandering across Florida towards Webb at Hilton Head, another  goodbye. We stopped at a recreation area on Alligator Alley for the night. It’s just past the Miccosukee gas station heading toward Naples, and it’s set back from I-75 and it’s vast. 

I had no idea where to park so I stuck us in a corner away from empty rows and rows of extended trailer parking spots.  Rusty and I explored. There is a trail head for hunters. Rusty poked his nose out and smelled something and red treated rapidly. Maybe he remembered being abandoned in similar terrain. 

Layne made a salad as the sun went down and a few mosquitoes braved the cool 60 degree evening. It was good not to need the air conditioning after the heat in the Keys. 

Morning brought fog. True thick gray wet swirling invisibility fog. Rusty and I took a walk down to the boat ramp and the canal toward the I-75 bridge. 

Rusty walks on his own schedule and he sat for a while at the boat ramp. I did the same sitting on the concrete wall at the waters edge.

I am trying to finish The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a languid novel about the final journey of the Liberator of South America, Simon Bolivar. I was deep into it when I noticed what I had previously thought was a lily pad floating in the canal, photographed below…

…was upon close inspection two eyeballs and the snout of an alligator. Naturally I reacted badly imagining myself stalked so I stood up abruptly and called my dog as I stepped away from the water. The alligator periscope disappeared as it submerged silently and my dog, the Everglades old hand, ignored the panic in my voice. 

TJ and Willow showed up when he arrived to open the hunter’s checkpoint at the back of the parking lot. We chatted at length as the dogs played. He’s been living in an RV in the Wverglafes for the past decade working half the year for the state Fish and Wildlife Commission parking his home on a lot in the park  

We talked of retirement and travel and RVs and so on and so forth. It was extremely relaxed and pleasant and I didn’t want to leave. 

Rusty sat and watched me throw the ball for a while. We drank coffee and watched the sun come up. TJ waved to Karen as she drove by in her pick up. She lives in her lot in the middle of the park and works at the Miccosukee store on the interstate. There is a whole world of life unknown to me in these canals swamps and woods. It was a privilege to learn.  

We’d never have seen any of it without GANNET2 and the curiosity to stop and watch the sunset from an unlikely spot. 

Goodbye South Florida. Look after yourself while I’m gone.

Southard Street

Rusty is not as fond of walking South and Fleming Streets as am I, but sometimes I do manage to impose my will a little bit. 

Not enough to get him to walk down Carsten Lane with me unfortunately so I will never know whether the house under permanent reconstruction is still unfinished. 2016:

I think Mangia Mangia belongs in the Pantheon of Key West restaurants that have changed the least over the decades. 

It attracts rave reviews and a totally loyal following. I like the wrap around balcony so I have far too many pictures of the building and not all in lovely light.  So I take away now another postcard in my files. 

Rusty led me across the street to a For Sale sign which included -rara avis- an old fashioned paper information sheet. I got all I needed. $1,550,000 for 600 square feet. And a swimming pool so you can swim two strokes in each direction while waiting for your house warming guests to find parking on the surrounding streets. 

Ask me if I miss Key West and all I can say is not this version of the city. 

I have learned to enjoy meteorological variety while I have been away but the slant of the winter sun in Key West still pleases me. 

And all the empty porches waiting for this week’s Air B and B guests to arrive. 

Below I found a omebody cheering on the winning side from afar afield. When I recently finished  Travels With Charley I did notice one huge difference between Steinbeck’s America in 1960 and today. In his journey people never talked politics or took public sides or expressed any of the vulgar hurtful cruelty of the modern era in which we see the fear of political change. However his decision to view integration up close in a New Orleans school drew back a little of that curtain and exposed the rational anger and fear of change in those days as black America struggled for civil rights.  We see today the entrenched structures of my generation slowly being  forced to yield to the youngsters of today and their political aspirations. So nowadays a Senate race in Georgia resonates outside that singular state. May we live in interesting times really is a curse. I prefer the politics of balance and give and take and a fundamental belief that America is great already. It’s been pretty great to me but perhaps that view is too selfish. 

I think this cat is homeless last seen on Williams near Southard. It was rangy and appeared to have dandruff and loved to be petted. A woman older than me wearing earbuds and bright expensive exercise clothes stopped by and I tried to palm the cat off on her more as a joke, a test perhaps of her wit. She took me seriously and started to explain why she couldn’t. I listened politely and hoped the friendly little thing found some other millionaire to cosset her. Rusty was looking at me a bit old fashioned throughout. 

Chickens as Christmas decorations. Comments below please. I shall moderate them as fast as possible. Moderating comments makes me feel like a kindergarten teacher. Not my favorite Halloween costume. I thought the Christmas chicken was pretty cool. 

A glimpse of the old Harris School still doing yeoman service as a parking lot. Only Key West can waste land like this. All these disengaged petit bourgeois millionaires and not one with an idea for a public spirited use for this vast  spacious over priced lot and magnificent building. Before Bernie Madoff killed the Rodel Foundation  that worthy organization wanted to create an artist’s comply in the building. Which in those days was for sale for 17 million dollars. I think. An historic Key West school rotting away.