A Key West Weekend

I am working hard to learn to work during daylight hours. A 911 Dispatch center operates 24 hours of course so for every shift of three dispatchers working during the day there are three of us working nights. For the past five or six years I've worked the six pm to six am shift. Now at the behest of the Captain I'm doing the reverse, and I'm here to tell you it ain't easy. When the Police Department parking lot looks like this my circadian clock tells me I should be abed.

I have to admit I am a bit rusty on daytime procedures which differ quite a bit from night shift where administrative calls are few and drunks fights and car crashes dominate the nightly call volume. Frankly I enjoy trying to unravel the nighttime alcohol fueled lunacy over transferring calls to the vital daytime administrative functions of a unit of city administration, which is one of the functions of a municipal police department. But when the Captain wants us to stretch ourselves and improve our cross-shift efficiency, the only effective answer is to do as you are told and smile while doing it.

In point of fact I am learning to enjoy the...learning process! And there are some discreet advantages to working day shift. I'm sleeping a deeper sleep, partly because I come home exhausted, and have to walk Cheyenne who deeply resents my day time absence and lets me know it until we start our evening walk together. Then I eat dinner and pass out ready to rise to my alarm clock (ugh!) at 4:45 am. I also happen to find myself in town in the middle of the day free to roam for an hour during my lunch break. "Get tickets to the Tropic's special event tonight!" my wife ordered me by text. "Go to the bank and get cash!" was another daytime order. Working day shift leaves me vulnerable to the demands of shared domesticity.

The other fun part of day shift's lunch breaks is being able to wander around and take a few pictures as I go. I get to see Key West for a while and enjoy sharing the city with the week day, day time visitors.

This picture below tells the August story in Key West, a lonely Southernmost Point, in a tourist town where families are back in school and winter escape artists have yet to think about abandoning their northern snow fields.

A post office chicken was out walking her two chicks, one half hidden behind her in this picture as she turned to fend me and my phone camera off her precious charges. Summer or no summer she just wanted to be left alone. So I did just that.

We went, my wife and I to see the world première of an hour long documentary, Plastic Paradise | WLRN coming soon to a PBS station near you, offered for free last Friday night to anyone in Key West ready to show up and celebrate the revival of Tiki "culture" in the US. I am not a Tiki aficionado by any means but it was an interesting movie...

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WLRN (91.3 FM and TV channel 17) has been making a push into the Keys for some time now, and recently replaced a rather feeble pair of translators with a "local station" for Key West and Marathon at 91.5 FM, even though WKWM does nothing more than rebroadcast WLRN's NPR and modest local, Miami based, programming. The TV station personnel were glad to "raise their profile" in Key West which they describe as a desirable destination yet not within reach for them except at special events. You'd think they could drive three whole hours to pay this outpost on the dark side if the moon a visit from time to time if they felt like it. You'd be amazed how many South Florida residents have heard of the Keys but never bothered to visit. such lack of curiosity floors me.

I enjoyed finding out about Polynesian themed restaurants and the people who flee daily drudgery by wearing Hawaiian shirts, eating bland Chinese food (by their own account!) while drinking large complicated rum based drinks out of bizarre shaped glasses. As one person remarked, if they had real Polynesian culture to offer no one would have been interested, except of course for me...nerd that I am. I have never eaten the bland, authentically Polynesian starch called poi and I'd like to before I die.

My wife got hung up talking with women in the bathroom so I moseyed out and stared at the sky through my camera lense. I also watched people inspecting Marilyn Monroe's big white bloomers courtesy of Seward Johnson. It was warm and enveloping and I enjoyed the darkness tinged with blue of the just missed sunset.

As we walked back to our parking spot nearby we passed this flag, a new symbol of opposition to harbor channel dredging plans, except in this case it was upside down which meant I'm not sure what - distress perhaps?

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, what else? And I was off duty until my short evening shift Tuesday. It's what I call my short week when I work two days out of the week, opposite my long week when I work six. Cheyenne takes advantage to encourage me to walk her often. Saturday we went to the Bat Tower at Sugarloaf Lodge. Key West Diary: Sugarloaf Bat Tower. Nowadays it sports a growing osprey nest on the roof, as the tower continues its inexorable decay. No one cares apparently.

It was the start of a good weekend at home, at dinner with friends, in between going out walking with she who must be obeyed.

She expects nothing less.

 

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Seward's Folly

The statue in the foreground is admiring the proportions of the figures in the background, and it's all part of the public art display outside Key West's Customs House Art Museum. Sculptor Seaward Johnson calls it "Weekend Painter" and he stands, perpetually, in front of Key West's Customs House.

You might think the Customs House is an oddity of its own in Key West. In the 19th Century it was standard issue Federal design for Customs House, US, for the use of. The fact that it was built of brick, heavy to import to Key West, that the pitch of its roof was designed to shed snow, had nothing to do with it. Canada, Mexico or Cuba, Federal trade revenues were collected in the same style of building.

Now whether or not the bizarre orange folly is improved by Johnson's sculptures is for ypu to decide. You can't miss the embrace at the front, engaged in by a couple slightly larger than life size. The figure to the right is an unremarkable image of a youthful fishing Hemingway while the one in the middle is my dog.

There's the cruise ship in the background and here's the sad tearful farewell in the foreground. One is real, the other isn't.

This guy, in expensive foul weather gear carrying a coil of rope and dragging a sail bag is called "Wharf Rat" a very decorous and proper New England style of sailor. A Key West wharf rat has salty spiky hair, a dazed look in his eye from the weight of his hangover and an a lean leathery tanned body clad only in ragged shorts and weathered flip flops.

Johnson has his own sense of humor, and he exhibits it from time to time in his titles. This next is "Copyright Violator" which you might suppose is a title he might apply to himself. He specializes in making three dimensional representations of famous works of Art while adding his own impish details.

Here's the copyright the "painter" violated, a picture within a picture within a picture.

For corn fed cruise ship visitors this kind of scene has got to confirm, upon their arrival in "exotic Key West" that this town is different. In a country where a few years ago the US Attorney General ordered classical statues covered up as their aesthetic offended his private prudery, it has to come as a shock to be greeted by nekkid wimmins cavorting around a happy lad. I'd have been smiling too had this happened to me at that age, but there we are. Parents cover your children's eyes as you stream off the Disney Magic.

Seward Johnson was born into the tycoon family that sells you baby powder so I'm not completely sure he has much of a clue how the rest of us live. I sort of doubt he worries about getting fired, losing his home or figuring how to pay for a new transmission. His "Lunch Break" sculpture seems to reflect a bygone era, a time when Americans built things and worked in a time when wives stayed home and filled thermos flasks and lunch boxes for their men to take to the mines or factories or railroad. A modern cubicle lunch break never looked like this.

Nor did most break room views look like this:

If you explore his website you may be surprised not only how far flung his works are, but also how Seward Johnson and his work are always out front and in the public eye. Statues that look unique to Key West may not necessarily be precisely that. But they do look like they belong.

He first came to local attention when some of his life sized statues started crowding the southernmost point and that raised some local hackles (including mine, I must admit). Southernmost point | Flickr - Photo Sharing! from javajem's website in 2007. They've now put the simpering family above the entrance to the airport for people walking off their planes to enjoy.

The Customs House has the proper title of Art and History Museum and I like it very much. I go there frequently to enjoy the ambiance of wooden floors and quiet reflection in the high cielinged rooms. I can check up on the real history of Hemingway in Key West, the works of Mario Sanchez and I can also remember the Maine.

That I have to dodge the "Weekend Painter" and little Miss "Yum Yum" always eating her sandwich is no problem when I want to visit the Customs House.

Reflecting on all this statuary and then photographing them takes time and my dog got bored. Time to go, she said by standing up.

One last picture I pleaded, "Holding Out" an elderly shopper not driving but walking.

Yup, no hardship at all to enjoy these eccentric pieces of public art. It was about time I stopped to take a proper look at them and if you decide you ever want to they will be there, stuck in time, glued to the ground, and according to their owners they are to make us think. Hmm!

The Sculpture Foundation : Exhibitions & Leasing

Key West on Dwellable

 

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Morning Thunder

Summer is rainy season, and rainy season is thunder and lightning season.

It's cloudy season when the skies are filled with drama. Frequently you wake to cloudless skies and by the time breakfast plates are washed wind rain and gray skies fill the kitchen window.

And when it all dies down as it does in a hurry the seas go flat and the horizon disappears.

Back on Earth the commuters are rolling every morning but on those days when rain falls or threatens to fall the motorcycles evaporate. I'm not sure why, but it's warm even in the rain and the modest challenge of riding in the wet is rewarded by the clearing skies and sunshine.

Cheyenne isn't that fond of walking in the rain. Shell go out on the porch, look around, and turn back. Suits me.

Rainy season is hot and humid season and we all feel it to a greater or lesser degree.

Did I mention I like the cloud drama of rainy season?

 

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Island Time

It's a funny thing living on an island. I live near Big Pine Key and "my" island has two entrances, where the highway comes in over a bridge and where it leaves over a bridge. That's life along the Overseas Highway. Key West is technically an island but the one bridge in and out makes Key West something of a wide spot at the end of a very long peninsula. People here are fond of noting they live closer to Havana than Miami, with the added cachet that Cuba is forbidden to freedom loving Americans. All that notwithstanding residents of this hundred mile long peninsula like to quote the rather nebulous concept of "island time." Peninsula time doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Island time expresses a zen state of mind where being is more importantbhan doing. Island time is a concept celebrated in song, and this lotHoward Livingston & Mile Marker 24 - Key West #1 Band sing about Key West time, a state of mind where nothing much matters. It's a place where you sit back getting a menial job while drinking cocktails with your feet in the sand. Let's face it, Jimmy Buffett who started his career in Key West has made a mint off island time. Island time, whether you're a bum or a pigeon means hanging around not worrying about a thing.

It's got it's allure hasn't it? Living in Key West without a care in the world, a bicycle for a car, sandals for shoes and no winter clothing. However people who do live here do not live a tourist life of course. People ask me what to do should they want to move. My advice, which I dispense sparingly as advice is rarely adopted, is to burn no bridges and abandon all ambition. All the good professional jobs are taken. Anyone who is any good and shows up on time gets the manual labor. New arrivals start at the bottom which is tough to do when you are middle aged. Having fun at the Green Parrot is easy.

Having Sandy's at your beck and call twenty four hours is a double edged sword. It's great to have Cuban sandwiches whenever you want them but Cuban cooking makes no concessions to modern fads. Live at Sandy's red counter and your girth will explode. Skinny drinks? Hell no. Gluten free? Forget it. All the way at Sandys means butter and mayonnaise if you feel like it on both sides of your lard baked Cuban bread. Great for a vacation break, but when you live here self control needs to beat island time every time!

I like spending time here at the Tropic when I'm on peninsula time. Watching movies with subtitles and trying to avoid the wine, beer and pastries in the concession stand. Coming out of the Tropic after dark and feeling the warm night air envelope you is sometimes the best part of going to the movies, especially in February.

I spent quite a lot of my youth learning to cope with village life in an isolated valley. If you went there in the mountains of central Italy you'd think it was Shangri La. But for me it was a nightmare of conflicting emotions, ancient family grudges, twisted motives and no privacy at all ever. It really didn't suit my rather withdrawn personality. So when I see people celebrating their Key West roots, full blown Conchs born and raised here I am filled with a mixture of respect for them and embarrassment at myself. To be a Bubba, a "brother" is to be a local, with roots that can't be bought or earned in the community. On the one hand they grew up in a small town on the ocean in a tight knit community, and unlike me they thrive in that environment. I'm embarrassed sometimes because I am acutely aware that I am here from somewhere else. I don't like the idea that I am intruding in someone else's family gathering. Yet this is the modern world and to some extent all of us are from somewhere else, and people whose roots are in one place have also invited outsiders in. The insiders sell the outsiders the land and the homes they need to put down their own new roots...

Not all the arrivals in town are welcome. Some people take the concept of island time a little too far and as much as they annoy it seems like we are stuck with them, as much as the Conchs are stuck with us, the seekers of a modicum of island time in an otherwise mainstream life.

I learn my island time attitude from my dog. She sleeps a lot, likes her routine and even though I'd like to think she doesn't worry I rather think she does. She was pretty stressed when I met her and I wonder how much she thinks about the way things were versus the way they are. Nowadays she eats like a horse, sleeps like a dead dog, and is always ready for a walk. I don't know for sure about her stress levels but being with her for sure reduces mine.

Island time ends when work time begins. For some it's after a week or two, for others it's after a weekend.

Island time as an excuse for being late aggravates me. Island time as in taking the time to enjoy the beauty in the world around us is something completely different.

Island time. What a concept. What a reality.

 

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