The streets of Ocala's historic district are a pleasant place to walk a dog, with lots of Live Oak trees, dangling the Spanish Moss beloved of horror movies to give that macabre look to a neighborhood:
The cold front hadn't reached North Florida by last night so the temperatures, it has to be said, were quite pleasant, hovering just below seventy degrees. I had on a sweatshirt as a precaution but I might have been able to get quite aways round the block without getting knocked down by the dreaded mainland night time frost. Rosie and I spent about an hour wandering hither and yon and just like Key west we saw some houses:
Some in better shape than others:
And we watched the sun set over the...no not the Straits of Florida, but the plains...of somewhere...Anyway I watched it get dark while Rosie ploughed a furrow through some bushes with her nose:
Rosie showed no signs of flagging, not surprising as Nancy's idea of a foundling dog is a super energetic beagle, so we kept walking. And walking. And walking and to my profound relief she never did take a dump, as Nancy had promised me she wouldn't. I've quit picking up after dogs ever since Emma died, so Rosie was exemplary in that regard (I am a responsible dog walker even 400 miles from home). And as it got dark the houses lit up:
Deck the palms...even the stubby little ones. Especially the stubby little ones.... 
I love Florida, even the mainland isn't all bad. How bad is it that one has to decorate the house with fake blue icicles, to celebrate the solstice? This next one was for sale and I was curious. It looked like a reasonable ranch house type with probably three bedrooms and a garage built on. It advertised a pool and lots on interior upgrades but the details like square footage were left to the imagination. The asking price is $200,000 which I have to say, nice though it may be, isn't an in-your-eye bargain. It's nice to see not everywhere is for sale at any price!
Finally Rosie seemed done in so we headed home and found we were locked out. With all my experience dispatching I figured if some of the half its KWPD catches can figure out how to break and enter, I could do no less. Luckily for me Nancy, that paragon of home safety, had left the back door open so pretty soon Rosie was fed, watered, and hunkered:
I tried to play the role of the red blooded mainland male and fiddled with the remote control. Imagine that, me in charge of a television and then I found gold.
Local access TV was showing the Marion County 40th Annual Christmas Parade. That was a cultural eye opener too, a window on this community. Aside from tractor pulls and school parades there were endless business advertisements walking down the street, a ten horse mounted patrol unit (Lieutenant Newby eat your heart out!) with the Marion County Sheriff's office. Instead of the poofy Mazda Miata Club on display in Key West, Ocala had engines of a different order of magnitude:
It was quite the professional parade though rather lacking Key West's intimacy (and variety) I might add. Nancy has lived here for almost a decade but she hasn't forgotten her roots, her mangrove roots put down in the Keys in the 1970s:
She is house proud of her historic home in Ocala, a home that cost a good deal less than it would have in Key West or on her favorite island Big Pine Key:
We brought her a Conch Republic flag for Hanukkah.
This is my first return visit to the Blue Hole on Big Pine Key,since I was there earlier this year, a time when there was an alligator lurking in the water. Since then the animal which was either seven feet long and had lived there nine years or was nine feet long and had lived there seven years has expired thanks to ingesting a child's toy dropped in the water. Apparently the animal, named Bacardi for some obscure reason, was unable to digest the toy and got terminal stomach ache. Thus no alligator pictures this time except for this:
The last time I was here there were signs of construction and things getting torn up and now the parking area is all spiffed up with cement and bike racks and everything, even some slight shade. Shade is the definition of a good parking spot in Florida, and in winter you just seek out shade from force of habit:
They've cleaned up the paths and the area is entirely accessible now:
With the requisite warnings of course. Signage is everywhere:
The Blue Hole is a disused quarry filled with freshwater and thus ideal alligator habitat, which makes it a shame there is no alligator anymore but people kept showing up to have a look. 
I met one guy at the viewing area and I remarked on the missing Bacardi (I can't get over what a silly name that is for a dinosaur but none of my acquaintances agreed when I ran it by them) and he sounded rather like a Blue Hole volunteer or something when he expounded that "they" had found 75 freshwater holes on Big Pine and No Name Keys which were likely habitats for alligators. That gave me, the back country explorer self styled, pause. Then I wondered if they might import a couple back to the Blue Hole and he sucked air through his teeth in disapproval.
Apparently it is no longer the done thing to mess around the wildlife and they are simply going to hope that perhaps an alligator might migrate back to the hole on its own, like a lost hitch hiker or something:
I saw this dude strolling up Key Deer Boulevard from"downtown" Big Pine Key and I wondered where he was headed as there are only a few scattered housing subdivisions out in these parts. Then I saw him taking a pause that refreshes at the Blue Hole.Perhaps he was hoping for an alligator to liven up his day. It's hard to be disappointed when you are in a pretty little spot like this:
I think they've done a nice job of cleaning the place up. clearing the trails, painting the post-and-rails and putting up all the usual verbiage, without making the experience too suburban. It's worth a visit and to get here take the left hand street from the light at Highway One in Big Pine. The left-hand street is Key Deer Boulevard,straight as an arrow:
It's 
I'm exaggerating a bit. This place didn't look nearly so nice back then but he had asked to see the least 
The usual mixture of well to do restored and massive:
And the 
A bit of early spring cleaning underway perhaps or someone moving in or moving out. Homes tend to be small in Key West so when it's time to rearrange the furniture for whatever reason it generally has to go out in the road in front of God and Everybody, as there aren't massive suburban garages around here to hide one's stuff:
The resident cat looking imperious as usual:
And look here what do we have. Why I do 
I don't miss snow or frost or seasons or any of that kind of stuff. But a nice sun warmed lawn is a fine thing 
Nassau Lane at Christmas, which you would only know 
I wonder if I would still like Key West had we wedged ourselves, mortgage free, into that tiny little shoe box on Nassau Lane?
The High School was rebuilt a few years ago on the same site as the old school on Flagler Avenue, and happily for us, the community at large, they included a modern theater facility on the campus. The auditorium is used as a performance space of all kinds, music, theater and of course the band:
They call it a Winter Concert but it's not the solstice they are marking:
I have to say the program was varied far beyond anything we attempted when I was in High School. The Director of Bands Ashby Goldstein had the band perform the usual holiday fare which is really Christmas carols and Tchaikovsky but we also got some Kwanzaa music which I had never heard, Imani by Sean O'Loughlin.
It was abundantly clear Goldstein, himself a graduate of key West High, was having a great time with his youngsters:
I like the fact that the High School is an open campus, in a nation where students in big cities have to pass through gates and metal detectors to get to work, the students here can come and go as they please. of course Key West is such a small town truancy isn't as easy to pull off as it might at first appear as everyone has a tendency to know their neighbor's business...MY wife's buddy Cathy lives up the Keys near us and she was keeping a close eye on her daughter who was playing a saxophone buried almost out of sight in the bowels of the band. The proud parents had their camera out for the occasion and Phil was working hard to pull his teenager out of the crowd:
The band's performance brings out the village atmosphere in this small town and during the intermission neighbors took the time to to catch up with each other:
Whenever I attend a gathering like this in Key West I think about how far out on a limb we are down here, sticking out like a finger into the Straits of Florida. if we could get in the car and drive south to Havana we would be there easily in ninety minutes, and what a world apart it would be! Yet here we are firmly anchored, under our palm trees and the star studded tropical sky, in America. This may be rhe southernmost High School but its still the band in the land of Sousa and glittering instruments and a particular musical history:
Cathy said the young musicians had been hard at work practicing for this public display of their artall semester long. She said band practice was a daily affair and treated with utmost seriousness by the musicians. Mnay years ago I was in my high school band in England where I was sent to boarding school. Looking back I feel rather as though I am seeing someone entirely different:
The vest tradition lived on I was glad to see including this young timpanist clacking his wood blocks:
And how can one not approve of a female tuba player? Call me prejudiced but I've always felt the piccolo, valuable though its music may be, is an instrument foir wussies...
The concert highlight was a performance of the inevitable Nutcracker Suite, holiday music par excellence, but as Mr Goldstein himself pointed out, one cannot hear the Nutcracker and not think of ballet... So we were privileged to witness the debut of a new and exciting corps de ballet whose name I forget. However their performance, brought to us by means of a video recording was unforgettable. Indeed they brought the house down:
They were, it turned out, hairy members of the band itself, unafraid to make fools of themselves in tutus and slippers, diving, pas de deuxing and pirouetting with no aplomb but plenty of vigor. You had to be there to listen to the whoops and hollering and gales of laughter as the boys flung themselves into their roles as swans of a bygone age trying to be graceful and failing with determination. They took their bows from the wildly appreciative house:
Cathy was as flabbergasted as anyone by the tightly kept secret of the special performance, no was to know ahead of time. The evening ended a little earlier for my wife and I as we left before the community singalong. My wife is a Jew and despite her protestations she has but the vaguest idea about the Christian traditions of Christmas and I couldn't bear to hear her mangle Christmas carols. Aside from which I loathe audience participation and singalongs so she was the perfect excuse for me to get us out of there. As we left we found a youngster perched on the auditorium steps:
He was unable or unwilling to articulate to strangers passing by why he was sitting out there missing a great evening's entertainment warming his hands with his breath. And I know 68 degrees isn't really cold in a lot of places, but it is in Key West, keeper of the southernmost flame of small town American traditions. Be not afraid, we here at 24 degrees North Latitude know what needs to be done this time of year even if frost and snow never put in an appearance. I'm only sorry I couldn't get to the Christmas parade down Truman Avenue, the other winter tradition that will have to wait till next year. Same time same place I hope.