Fire In The County

It's not often discussed but in my opinion if you are going to have a house fire you are better off having it in Key West than in Monroe County. The city of Key West takes fire protection seriously not least because in the 19th century the city suffered a devastating fire and houses are still built of nicely seasoned wood and have almost no offsets in most of Old Town. When a building catches fire the city fire department responds with overwhelming force. In addition to the three fire stations in the city, Key West can call for help from the Stock Island County station as well as Navy fire fighters and even the Key West airport which all operate separate agencies. People who live in unincorporated Monroe County have a different level of service, and speaking as one such resident I prefer Key West's level of commitment to fire protection.

This issue came close to home a couple of years ago when my wife, home alone sleeping early one morning while I was at work, was awakened by Cheyenne who fretted long enough and loud enough in her understated way, for my wife to realize something was wrong - the house was smelling strongly of smoke. My wife went out and found the air filled with burning embers falling all around. They were papers that escaped from a burning house across the canal and were falling like Chinese lanterns all around the houses lining our canal. My wife got the garden hose out and doused them out as best she could. It turns out our elderly neighbor, asleep in bed was rescued from the electrical fire by an alert neighbor with a ladder who helped her to safety off the rear deck of her raised home (most homes in this county, which is flood prone, are on stilts). The home has been rebuilt after it was reduced to twisted rubble and no one was hurt, but... My wife was grateful Cheyenne was smart enough to wake her in time to deal with the embers.

Monroe County's Board of County Commissioners recently voted down a proposal to add paid firefighters at several fire stations. As unbelievable as it may sound the county's fire protection plan is based on calling up volunteers in the event of a fire. It's a style of fire fighting inaugurated in London in the era of guilds, groups of businesses that arranged to pay for their own fire protection. It was a system that gave birth to modern insurance companies, no great heritage that, but in the 21st century I'd like to imagine firefighting might have become more advanced. However I am reminded of this shortcoming ever time I ride past the sign at the Sugarloaf Volunteer fire station. Which is due for some improvements and modernizing. It boggles my mind to think about how they had better not all be offshore fishing or visiting relatives in Miami, those volunteers if the call goes out suddenly to fight a fire.

The county fire department has been in turmoil for some time as commissioners struggled to hire a leader and then when they did they'd end up arguing with the professional about staffing requirements. I am well aware of these problems and I pay close attention to that biggest source of fire which is untamed electricity (as neither of us smokes), and if there is a reason to prefer living in the chaos of the city fire protection is the only serious reason I can think of. I wonder how many realtors point out these deficiencies to the anti-tax investors who come to the Keys in low tax Florida and spare not one thought as to how they will protect their second homes from fire in this understaffed, excessively long thin county.

 

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Summer Storms

I can only say it is ironic that the Great Plains have been blighted with a tremendous drought this summer, and I got to see the burnt fields a couple of weeks ago, because from where I live drought is hard to imagine. The National Weather Service reports the normal rainfall for the year-to-date is thirty inches and so far we've had 43 inches. Indeed every morning when I leave work I find the seat of my motorcycle covered in signs of a recent downpour. The road home is always wet, in whole or in part, and when I get up in the middle of the day more rain invariably seems to threaten.

In a land where there are no mountains one can't look out and see much of a horizon and when heavy summer storms roll in from across the water there is a massive sense of claustrophobia, of being pressed down upon by the sort of divine retribution most often seen in the movies. These rolling black cloud fronts represent the wrath of the gods on stage and screen. Around here they just mean you're about to get wet.

I have come to love tropical rains, which is odd to me as I grew up associating cold temperatures with nasty endless rain. Nowadays rains bring cooler temperatures, usually in the mid 70s which is a fifteen degree drop from the normal afternoon highs, and instead of getting hypothermia one gets refreshed.

The breezes associated with these thunder cells bring cooling temperatures too as though one had opened a refrigerator door on a muggy afternoon, and those cold breezes are the harbinger of imminent big fat raindrops.

It is entirely possible to get cold and shivering if caught out in this rain but the beauty of it is that when I'm out with Cheyenne I'm not wearing clothes that will be ruined by getting wet. She shakes her wet fur and I rub her down with a towel I keep in the car for the purpose, while for myself I go home and change my t shirt. So far the heaviest tropical rain hasn't managed to melt me.

There is a reason it's cheaper to visit the Keys this time of year, and mostly it's the weather. Normal vacation periods are over but this is still hurricane season and even lacking tropical cyclones to make life interesting not every sun seeking visitor relishes summer thunderstorms. Gray skies are gray just like at home and a heavy afternoon rain can make even the Keys look like a cold day in February. It confuses the senses of a resident of temperate regions as one would expect freezing temperatures to accompany these storms but after the rain passes temperatures inexorably rise and the steaming heat resumes.

The best of it is that in winter when temperatures do drop and locals feel cold, because we are puny when it gets to be sixty degrees outdoors, the rains magically dry up. Winter is dry season, which is not to say a little rain doesn't fall as cold fronts low through but the rains presage a front, are predictable and brief. Winter is characterized by short cloudy spells, plummeting temperatures are followed by bright sunny days, dry and pleasantly hot on a continent buried under snow drifts, frozen by ice and surrounded by leafless trees.

For Cheyenne summer storms are an opportunity to get out and breathe easy in the middle of her least favorite season. It's not easy to be a furry Labrador on a muggy corner of the planet. I empathize with her predicament but the compromise is that she gets the air conditioning when she needs it and I get to avoid living with snow.

Rain today with the promise of blue skies and sunshine tomorrow. That crops don't grow in the Florida Keys and that our potable water comes from the hard pressed South Florida Aquifer on the mainland just highlights the irony of all this splendid rain falling where it is least needed, except to refresh landscaping. Drought in the food growing latitudes is a serious problem, and getting worse, but down here you wouldn't know how to define the word. A little less rain would be nice but perhaps it's better not to complain and be glad it's not snow.

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My Dog

I read a blog about buying a puppy after deciding to skip the pound as the dogs were too old.

 

The same sort of consumerist mentality that landed Cheyenne in the pound in the first place.

Lucky me. Three of the best years of my dog owning life.

Good for her too, at last, after a life devoted to people who didn't give a shit about her. Along with all our other problems a world filled with abandoned dogs seems likely to get worse as the economy does too.

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One More Pharmacy For Total Happiness

It's funny how incomers like to boast that Key West is closer to Havana than to the nearest Walmart store, while at the same time Conchs (native Key Westers) moan about the lack of big box stores to feed shopping desires in these small islands. Developers never sleep, it seems and they have been burning the midnight oil trying to figure how to make these islands more shopper friendly. Marina developments are planned for Truman Waterfront and Stock Island and more homes are announced on Key Haven across from the Shell gas station. Gentrification? Bring it on! And even if it doesn't really count as gentrification development is always welcome in the Keys, apparently. The county commission has approved in principle the permitting of almost 3500 new houses over the next decade as part of the controlled growth plan for the county, where the "controlled" part of the equation is a euphemism for anything goes.

It's been on the rumor circuit for some time but originally they said a new strip mall was coming to Stock Island next to Burger King bringing a new chain pharmacy with it. The most recent planning notice was stuck on an obscure corner of the other empty lot on Stock Island, closer to Key Haven. Considering Key West already has three CVS pharmacies and two Walgreens, not to mention one of each on Big Pine at Mile Marker 30... What a sickly crowd we must be in these healthful islands.

The newspaper has also reported contefforts to build a big box store on Boca Chica, Mile Marker Ni to the Naval Air Station. The nature of that store is not disclosed but the rumor mill is betting on Walmart coming to town. I don't shop a Walmart when on the mainland because I don't think the Walton family has done small business in this country any favors but I know a lot of people are on their knees praying novenas to get such a store down here. Two sides to every issue and two sides to every discussion. At least two in the Fabulous Florida Keys, where progress is as old fashioned as cookie cutter strip malls.

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Pedaling Home

I saw this guy on Stock Island last week. He was pedaling smoothly and silently, such that I only noticed him at the last minute as I sensed rather than heard his imminent presence, clearly a cyclist with a sense of the need for chain oil. Most amateur cyclists around Key West seem to prefer the protesting squeaking cycle chains produced by rusty links protesting noisily every stroke of the equally lubrication-free pedals. I snatched the picture at the last possible minute and indeed I never did see his features, he was more a faceless fleeting suggestion than an actual person, as he sped efficiently by.

As I read about Fall fast approaching Up North, with suggestions for leaf viewing and the first Minnesota snow flurries and sudden plunging midwest temperatures in October, my mind went back to the brief encounter with this marginally equipped resident. I saw him later pedaling alongside Highway One, possibly a resident of distant Big Coppitt five miles away or perhaps the owner of a nearby dinghy tucked away in the mangroves lining Boca Chica Bay with a boat that he calls home anchored between Stock Island and the Naval Air Station. Whatever his living situation his bicycle with its ample baskets and his helpful coffee carrying arrangement will serve him well through the winter. Be the weather ever so cool a bicycle works year round in Key West, the frost free zone at twenty four degrees north latitude.

 

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WPA Watercolors

This is the last in my series of essays from the Art and History Museum on Front Street. The title is self explanatory but there is quite a bit of background to fill in for those who don't know about Key West's peculiar place in the period of national reconstruction during the Great Depression.

It is fashionable among the one percent and their acolytes to dismiss President Roosevelt's efforts to cope with the Great Depression by spending money on public works. Nowadays we see money spent on propping up international banks to no visible public purpose, with no legacy in mind other than power sharing and private profit.

Time has not been generous to the artwork produced during the period of the Works Progress Administration but through the faded colors you can still see the vibrant tropical town Key West was and is. Though I have to confess that as hard as I looked I saw no sign of the fabled depression era Cuban chickens roaming the streets...

In 1934 Key West went bust to the tune of five million dollars of debt. Fully eighty percent of city residents were on welfare and all island industries had abandoned the city for the mainland. Cigar making, pineapple canning, all military bases and steamship stops had abandoned Key West. The fishing industry had collapsed under the weight of lack of money and markets and city employees were not getting paid.

Julius Stone was sent to Key West by President Roosevelt to see what should be done with the little town at the end of the railroad.

There were plans to evacuate the Keys permanently but Stone who was known for walking around town in shorts, scandalous attire in public for a grown man in modest Key West, figured he could remake the town's image into an American Bermuda, a vacation destination.

While President Roosevelt was fending off a fascist putsch planned by business interests who wanted General Smedley Butler of the Marine Corps at their head, Stone was busy convincing the city he could bring them back to economic life.

General Butler remained a patriot and rejected the coup plotters while in Key West the Federal Emergency Relief Administration had two million dollars to do something. He hired people to work to clean the town up and with his dictatorial powers Stone contemplated the evacuation plan but decided "Latina and Negroes" would do no better in Tampa than Key West so he just ploughed on and rebuilt the town.

The radical Socialist plan worked and Key West was preserved, what with the road coming to town in 1938, another Government benefit which no one begrudged the city, tourism slowly picked up and the economy revived.

Artists too were part of the public sending bonanza and without government largesse these extraordinary pictures would never have been created. Above the still recognizable southernmost house and below a completely unrecognizable Simonton Beach canning operation fallen on hard times.

It's worth thinking about the legacy we see today from that period of crushing poverty and the collapse of society. The path FDR took is diametrically opposed to that chosen today. The naysayers will say it didn't work. Art and History show it did.

I don't see the bankers who today swallow billions of public funds doing anything as useful for society at large. Call me sentimental.

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