Layton, 2008

This essay from 2008 I am publishing this weekend as my podcast sideline is heating up a bit. The producer is connecting me with the engineer and setting up the Skype equipment and blah blah blah... so I hope within a week or two to be contacting the guests, almost 20 at last count who have agreed to be on,and then start recording. The website and podcasts should be online sometime before March 1st, I hope. Meanwhile I have been wandering through the archives and I find it hard to imagine it was almost six years ago that I photographed and wrote this essay. I remember the ride very well, which leads me to think this blog really does make an excellent diary. I hope you enjoy this look back at a town that hasn't changed much as you fly by on Highway One. The restaurant has gone soon to be replaced, they say with a new eatery, and the gas pumps come and go, and currently they are operating.

Second City

There is a town on Long Key straddling Mile Marker 69 or thereabouts and its name is Layton. When we want to put an uninteresting community in its place, we describe it as being a "wide spot" in the highway, but when it comes to this little burg we can't even say that about it.Layton is just a long straight stretch on the highway, a speed limit of 45 mph, with, from time to time a Sheriff's deputy on patrol keeping an eye on those passing through. However there is always one patrol car lurking near the Post Office and you know when you are tailing a visitor because the brake lights come on in a hurry.I never speed through Layton because after the tyro has slowed and sped up again realising its only a decommissioned patrol car, there can often be found a second, occupied, car at the last remaining grocery store in the little town.Or possibly a patrol car on the verge further south near the entrance to Long Key State Park, just before the limit goes back up to 55mph.

Layton has about 800 voting voters each election cycle and most people who live in this community are retirees. For a long time Key West was the seat and only city in the Florida Keys but at some point in the 20th century someone got pissed off at something and decided to create a town, based on the local amenities which are not too lavish homes on simple canals.The suburban canals behind the homes give access to some pleasant natural mangrove waterways, decent enough fishing spots of course,but also they lead to the real prize,the open waters of fish-infested Hawk Channel behind the reef, and to the north there are the endless shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.Sailors know of Long Key because of the bight at the east end which offers a shallow anchorage and the Channel V bridge which provides the last seventy-foot tall bridge before Marathon.

The city itself has a little trailer labeled "City Hall" near the Post Office which is a useful spot to drop off mail if you feel like creating a reason to stop in Layton.Though you can't buy gas because the gas pumps and associated grocery store/bait shop closed a while back.Layton has two claims to fame. One was that the author Zane Grey spent winters living and fishing here between writing Westerns and second I bought my first and only skiff from some dude who lived on a canal behind the grocery store and marina.It was a 14-foot Dusky for with all the trimmings including a duff 30 horse outboard that died soon after, but the hull is excellent and with a new Yamaha its a great addition to my motor pool. I think about that slick bugger every time I ride through town.

Last weekend it seemed to me there were a ton of motorcycles on the road, and when I fought my way home my wife confirmed there was yet another charity poker run going up the Keys, in which I found myself an unwilling side kick. I might have liked an antipasto plate at the town's only restaurant but there were just too many people, not to mention low mileage motorcycles.My wife and I ate at Little Italy one night on our way out of the Keys; it was old fashioned checkered table cloth Italian food, decent enough I suppose when you are waiting for a traffic accident to be cleared, but rather funky old fashioned. There was a plan to develop the restaurant out of existence and replace it with a resort, but for now what with bursting bubbles and all, its still there. This waterfront thing is next door to the restaurant and aside from not knowing what its about exactly, it highlights the fact that as usual curb appeal is totally lacking in the Keys. God Bless Funky.

There's nothing much to see in Layton, unless you want to stop by the mid-county garbage transfer station, and excepting that, nothing of great beauty, and for most travelers its just a few buildings flashing by, while they hunker down over the steering wheel intent on getting somewhere else. I like to think wealthy Key Westers who lament noisily the passing of the "good old days", might like to move to Layton and get a taste of the featureless world that populates their memories. Its still there, at this particular stretch of roadway: fishing drinking and staring into space. Unlike Key West, modern little Layton has its fiscal house in order and no public debts or civic scandals blight the town, which I think adds to the boredom.But they don't depopulate Key West for Layton, because there are only a thousand hardy souls who can stand real-life Mayberry blandness, and my helmet's off to them every time I rumble through- at a sedate and legal 49 miles-per-hour.

Boca Chica Rain

Some mornings the sky is extraordinary. There you are out walking your dog, as you do, and the sky goes pink. Red sky in the morning, shepherds' warning...

Indeed it came on to rain by the afternoon and Cheyenne's second walk of the day.

I had been planning for a walk in town but Key West was getting drenched so I scrapped that and turned south in Big Coppitt and headed for the beach.

Boca Chica is home in the winter to an assortment of people with apparently not much to do so the beach becomes a kind of park for transient vehicle dwellers. For me its a chance to hang out and read after my dog has had her fill of trash sniffing.

It's called a beach but its really a narrow strip of sand colored pebbles and dead seaweed. The waters offshore are knee deep for what seems to be miles...so all in all it's not the kind of beach most Florida visitors dream of...but it works fine for Cheyenne and I.

The secret is out and visitors show up in the winter for a walk.

Or to play Karate Kid on a rock.

I saw an angler in the distance trying his luck but by the time I got to point the camera he had given up and gone home.

It was raining enough that most occupants of the parked cars were not hanging around outside. Dog owners of course are not allowed to luxuriate out of the rain.

The rain moved east and before I left for work rain was drumming on the roof like a summer thunderstorm.

It sure doesn't feel like winter as winters used to be. I like it warm but climate change is more than me and my winter wardrobe.

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The First Train

The newspaper reported the  first train actually arrived in Key West yesterday 103 years ago. It was not the first train that history records because Henry Flagler wasn't on that train. It was just a bunch of worker bees testing the Lower Keys track for the first time. They left from somewhere around here, near Bahia Honda.

From the Keys Chambers of Commerce I found this photograph of what was I suspect the Seven Mile Bridge, much more famous and thus tends to overshadow the more interesting structure of the Bahia Honda bridge. In any even this is what the original Railway that Went to Sea looked like.

Nowadays the old bridges are being allowed to collapse by the great state of Florida which never saw the potential for bicycle of pedestrain footpaths across the Keys.

The Bahia Honda Bridge forced Flagler's engineers to build two ramps to get the rail line across the relatively short body of water known as "Deep Bay" in Spanish. The mounds of dirt at each end have created the highest barely natural hillocks in the Keys.

I love climbing this modest hill and getting to look down on the waters of the Keys spread out below me. It's the only place you can do this unencumbered, though of course you can pay a fee and get into the state park at the other end of the bridge... Cheyenne isn't used to bridges and this is another warm winter we are getting through. 80 degrees is a lot for a  furry elderly Labrador.

She enjoyed exploring all over the place, in the salt water and out and crashing through the bushes so she had reason to be a bit tired while I read a couple of chapters in my phone Kindle.  Below I took this picture from one of my earlier essays on Bahia Honda. The picture shows the highway that was built over the railroad in 1938. There was less lush vegetation in the Keys in those days.

The bridge in the park has been refurbished and is now a viewing platform:

Back on the west end I stood on the end of the bridge and looked down at the translucent waters, and my shadow bobbing on the bottom. Cheyenne was busy chasing iguanas of food wrappers or something.

On the other side of the Bahia Honda, Deep Bay the new highway bridge cuts a more direct path between two points, though it cannot be described as beautiful by any stretch. And funnily enough it is already getting some work done on its cement pilings. Flagler's bridges are ignored and stand solidly where they were built.

It's an amazing spot up here, free of warning signs guard rails or any interference from the nanny state.

 The old above, the new below:

Ever since I moved from Ramrod Key to Cudjoe Key and thus escaped the ravages of the iguanas on my plants I have developed a less adversarial attitude to these rather gross dinosaurs.

Ah yes the view from just a few feet up in the air...

 I wonder if that first train crew appreciated the view as much as they did the actual feat of getting a  train to drive across the ocean.

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Seascapes

Still too cold to swim, 65 degree air temperature  livens up the Labrador.

Here at West Summerland Key last weekend. 

 She walked a fair bit hunting for crispy abandoned bait fish.  I took pictures.

 This dawn was Monday looking east at Cudjoe Key.

 Sugarloaf Key KOA. This scene, frequently photographed puts me in mind of old fashioned fish Florida camps. The reality is a bit more crowded.

 Anglers with their backs turned to the dawn. I keep Cheyenne on a leash around these people as she tends to home in on their bait buckets.

 This guy welcomed her and laughed as she sniffed his paraphernalia.

Time for breakfast for her and  bed for me.

Dog Walk Haiku

 Cheyenne's hot walk  done

 She pants a moist summer wind

 Stationary walk.

Actually it wasn't a walk, just a chance to lay in the grass, an afternoon activity my Labrador seems to enjoy more and more as the years go by.

Key West And Cuba

The newspaper said the new openness to Cuba isn't affecting the Keys. Golly, that was a quick conclusion. Aside from the fact no one really knows exactly what restrictions are in place, and more importantly the punishment for violations is undefined, it seems a bit early to conclude that the path to openness is going to bypass sleepy old Key West.

The Republicans who now control Congress are led by loud voices who favor the embargo so we know that isn't going to be repealed. Which leaves the Communist Kenyan in the White House to do the sensible thing and repeal what he can. At long last. I am betting Cuban cigars those phallic symbols of repressed Middle American desire, will start to appear in small quantities at high prices on Duval Street alongside legally imported Havana Club Rum, which I have tasted while traveling in the Free World and not found to be particularly delicious. Already the Botanical Gardens are stepping up the number of "cultural exchange" visits they organize to Cuba. I am sure they will see more "gardeners" like me who can barely tell poison wood from lignum vitae rushing to learn about Cuban flora on the forbidden isle.

I know what a gumbo limbo is (see above) but I am no botanist, or gardener even. I think for a while the repressed opening to Cuba will produce some excitement but gradually Cuba will become just one more destination in Latin America and tours will show off Hemingway's haunts and Meyer Lansky's sleeze and all will be normal in the world of tourism. President Obama will fade into history as just one more hidebound ineffectual president, rather than be the object of gross bizarre and downright mendacious conspiracy theories and The Ted Cruz/Marco Rubio traveling circus will no doubt move on to more important matters like intruding government into people's sex lives, as the young bucks in Congress grow and hopefully wiser. Cuba will still be there.

And so will Key West. And this is when it will get interesting, in a few years, when the choice is a cruise to Cuba and or Key West, arrive by plane or boat...a vacation in the safety of the familiar, or an adventure across the water. And I believe there will be room for both destinations without one taking from the other. The politicians and their posturing will fade into the background where they belong, and the vacation choice will be driven by other considerations.

Cuba will never cease to be exotic, offering vibrant culture, mountains, jungles, rivers, beaches and warmer winter weather on the south shore, the true Caribbean Sea beaches, than Key West. But Key West has familiarity, safety, and it's own peculiar charming character that Cuba can't compete with in any way. Plus those drivers of the winter economy aren't going to flock to Cuba to buy winter homes! some might but Key West isn't going to be denuded of snowbirds...and in summer there will always be families more comfortable on a Key West beach than in Varadero.

In the end though it's the people who make the choice of where to visit and one thing about Key West that stands head and shoulders above every other destination is the combination of the exotic and the safe. One thing that I have noticed about this funny little town at the end of the road is that it attracts people who crave that combination of safety amid the exotic. Among people I have spoken to the slight shabbiness of Key West is part of the attraction, were the town crisp and clean and organized it would lose its safe edginess. If you seek true adventure, the kind with an uncertain outcome, Cuba beckons already.

For those of us that live around here, I guess nothing much will change in the short term. In the long term perhaps we will get ourselves interesting vacations close by. Cool. No one loses. Except the posturing politicians of all stripes. And who cares about that.

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