The Monastery Of The Mangrove

Every other weekend I get Saturday Sunday and Monday off and every other weekend it has started raining to welcome summer. The end of a long drought is a good thing but why does it have to end on my days off? I am taking it personally.

A work day for me ends with an exercise tape at home, a swim in the canal behind my house and then I walk Rusty while my wife relaxes by cooking. I wash up not least because I am compulsive about stuff like that and let's face it a great cook isn't necessarily a great dish washer. Not in my home. Rusty licks a clean bowl when he feels like it but he's perfect no matter what.

I love my evening walks just as much as Rusty does.  This is my Florida, socially distanced and alone looking for anything that catches my eye.

I have mixed feelings about people coming back to visit the Keys, though the good part for me will be, I hope seeing better pictures. Months of looking for still life worth recording is starting to wear on me and I never expected that it would. Empty streets are only interesting when you juxtapose the emptyness of after hours with the busyness of regular hours!  Everything is empty these days all the time...

I am not looking forward to the traffic, the increase inevitably of 911 calls, the undifferentiated impact of people not thinking or not caring about the pandemic they think they have left in their rearview mirrors.

The Sheriff has held the line with the roadblocks against all requests and demands that he take them down. From what I've heard they have refused entry to more than 13,000 vehicles and made several arrests related to the road blocks. It blows m mind that people are thinking its worth trying their luck even though it's clear the road is closed! I cannot imagine they will bring much social awareness when they arrive next week. 

That is a problem for next week. And even then I doubt any of the hordes arriving in the keys will be looking for long empty roads lined by mangroves, dull uninteresting and not worth stopping on. These places will continue I have no doubt to be my refuge even as they were before everything went weirdly wrong. You have to find your quiet place where you can.

Open The Flood Gates

Next week, technically next month, the roadblocks come down and visitors come back to the Keys and from everything I can gauge there will be no shortage of people to bring hotels to their fifty percent maximum permitted capacity. I have mixed feelings about all this as I have about the whole pandemic and the national response to it. I cannot for the life of me understand how we blunder about in this country turning everything into a political game of ping pong without facts, relying on opinions based on hope and with no numbers at all. I dread to think what Pearl Harbor would have ended up being if the greatest generation acted and thought as we do. Nevertheless...we are stuck with it.

Bearing in mind disruption to my life has been minimal inasmuch as my wife and I have continued to work and get paid, she for teaching from home and me for taking  911 calls. It isn't fair to ask me if I want the closure to remain in place as I have found the threat from the virus to have been very well contained by the Sheriff's determined action.On the other hand for those who are barely hanging on, told not to work and receiving no government support of any kind the question becomes an impossible one.

Given that Florida's unemployment system was deliberately wrecked by Governor, now Senator Rick Scott to improve his unemployment numbers one can hardly be surprised if people are desperate to get some income. If you think I am exaggerating Senator Scott's awfulness I invite you to read the incomparable Diane Roberts' column on the subject at the Florida Phoenix HERE. We live in difficult times for the poor and marginal and the virus hasn't helped.

I expect my wife and I will continue to quarantine ourselves as much as we can and from what I understand we are not alone in deciding to leave public social activities to Keys visitors. I cannot conceive of getting on a  commercial flight at the moment after all the effort we have made to contain the virus and keep it out of our lives. And the small matter of my wife's compromised immune system will make it impossible for her to mix publicly with people from all over the country until this business is finally put to bed. Self quarantine is not only possible for us and desirable, it is the only way forward as the Keys welcome back visitors.

Those among us who feel less cautiously inclined can lead the way and be the canaries in the coal mine. For some this will be an economic necessity as I said but for others there will be boredom or bravado to provide the push to socialize. I am not much good on Facebook as I am not inclined to hold strong opinions one way or the other on the virus and treatment and masks and I don't much feel like yelling about all this. Mostly I am confused and puzzled. It seems scientists are too as the CDC has changed its guidelines once again also. Only politicians and their minions are certain about anything it seems.

I will stay socially distant and where I cannot  I shall wear a mask. I have no idea how effective my surgical masks are but the way I see it they can't hurt if people are going perforce to get too close. Fortunately for my wife she is teaching from home for the rest of this school year before slipping into summer school and summer vacation so no decision on her job and her last pre-retirement year need be made yet. But if the virus comes back in the Fall as some scientists predict I wonder what we do then?

I am very cautious when it comes to firm statements about coronavirus because no one seems to know anything for sure not even what it does to us once we are infected. What was a 'flu has become more serious it seems, making blood clots in its spare time to slow the transfer of oxygen. Previously it affected old people now young people are getting sick, even children. Whatever next? Oh yes, US Navy sailors once infected and recovered have got the illness a second time, and as they are on a ship under close observation, thus they would seem to be a reliable control group. So, no inbuilt immunity then? 

No wonder we are all getting stressed out and nervous. I have developed massive amounts of empathy for people who lived through yellow fever epidemics in Key West (and elsewhere) in centuries past. Until Dr Gorgas supervising the health of Panama Canal workers worked it all out no one understood the relationship between mosquitoes and yellow fever. The 19th century in Key West was riddled with deadly pandemics like this one only with a much higher mortality rate.

Bubonic plague and rats were not connected for centuries and people died in droves, horrible deaths without a ventilator in sight. We aren't used to this sort of thing at all. The temptation has always been to just let things go and hope for the best. Numbers of deaths are relatively low and one could imagine keeping the economy going might be easier in the long run.

On the other hand watching the food supply chain get messed up by the numbers of sick people working in close quarters makes you realize, I hope, that profound sickness, never mind actual death, can have a hugely disruptive influence on our way of life. I fully expect to see surprising developments in the Keys as we move into June and the return to business as more or less usual. I hope I shall be pleasantly surprised even though my neighbors tend to the pessimistic with a knot of loud scoffers in their midst. Coronavirus has outstayed its welcome. I'm glad they suffered through the years of World War Two deprivations before I was born. It turns out I would have been insufferably impatient with all the time spent waiting for disaster to strike.

(And if the last photograph makes you go "Aha! Cartier Bresson! you get extra points).

It's a famous photograph by the French master who got people going on the idea of photographing casual moments, so called street photography. Some less than charitable critics suggest he had his  assistant race down the hill repeatedly on his bicycle until Cartier Bresson got his decisive moment correctly framed. The staircase is still there and is made immortal by this apparently banal picture. So I reversed the view and took the picture above of an equally banal spiral staircase...

Casa Marina

I have heard people ask if a certain part of the city is safe, as though violent crime is rife just as it appears to be as they sit at home agog in front of their television sets. The sad truth is that life in Key West is far less glamorous and lived at a far slower pace than outsiders seem to expect. 

The purchase of a home in Key West is less dependent on the quality of a neighborhood than on the type of people who live next door. You will hear residents complain about the parties in houses rented to vacationers who think loud music and pool parties are why Key West exists. They aren't completely wrong but their unfortunate neighbors think they are as they ponder an early start to go to work the  next day. Casa Marina Resort in a  time of coronavirus: 

Meanwhile one can identify individual neighborhoods in Key West.  I was walking Casa Marina after the rain as I wanted and I hope Rusty was okay with a change. 

Casa Marina is the upscale neighborhood in Key West. If you are a moneyed Conch you avoid the city by living on Key Haven at Mile Marker Five or distant Shark Key at Mile Marker Ten. If you are an incomer who wants tropical winters and at the same time demand typical American conveniences like roofs that don't leak and central air conditioning and a yard you can swing a rooster in, you buy in Casa Marina.

Here you will find a muddle of architecture and much greenery and cars that were not built in Detroit. Every rule has it's exception but Casa Marina conforms for the most part to my generalizations. I like it in summer for the shade offered by the greenery and year round this is a neighborhood fails to roll up its sidewalks so one can walk like a normal person from Up North. Sidewalks in Key West vary between bizarre narrow slivers, pavement resembling a ploughed field and no sidewalk at all. I learned that wheelchair locomotion and uncertain walking with a walker frame can be quite complicated. Not in Casa Marina. Here you may mobility challenged and still get around like Wiley Coyote.

Casa Marina is actually named for the Casa Marina a massive pile built by Henry Flagler as a destination for his railway tourists. They were bused across the city from the coastguard base where the train terminus was located on the north side to his hotel two miles away on the south side. In those days the cargo wagons were driven onto ferries to transport goods to and from Havana while passengers walked aboard a ship that would take them to Cuba. Others lounged around at the Casa Marina resort built in the style of other Flagler resorts in Palm Beach and St Augustine. The Standard oil millionaire figured he had to give train passengers somewhere to wile away their winters in this tropical paradise if they were to ride his trains.

During World War Two the military used the hotel and then it was abandoned in the way Key West has of wasting its greatest assets. Nowadays it is a first class resort with all proper amenities so you can enjoy Key West without mixing with hoi polloi any more than you want to. So it is with the housing, expansive well forested and easy to navigate. Oh and if you need a dentist Claude my cheerful and very capable tooth puller ( he loves pulling teeth and does it painlessly) has an office here which is as close as I get to sleeping in Casa Marina in his comfortable dentist chair waiting for the numbness to set in.

Water Reflections

Sunrise and wind, shiny palm fronds fluttering, I sopped by the side of the road and pulled out my camera. It was a relief to see sun and not rain.

I parked in the greenest leafiest area of Key West, Casa Marina, and set off with Rusty. I saw a little humor in the zen van sitting patiently under the weight and indignity of a fallen palm frond. Rusty said nothing so perhaps it wasn't that  funny.

After the rain the air is crisp and clear and colors are brighter.

I hope before too long these signs will become part of the folklore of a time in the misty past. Doesn't seem likely just yet. 

Slowly the flooding will shrink and as the rainy season sets in flooding becomes part of the summer way of life. As the country re-opens I hear people pondering whether the way we live under lock down will persist when things are allowed to get back to normal.

Everything I have read about past times of crisis indicate things will most likely go back to the way they were because stasis is easiest for people and we all prefer the easiest path we are told. Some of us don't but you can't generalize about exceptions.

It's odd to find oneself envying the general indifference of a flower which buds and blooms with not a care in the world about coronavirus or any other pandemic.It does it beautifully too. 

Call The Police

Photographed by me last October seeking a 1930s effect

I was at work a couple of weeks ago when a woman called the police to report something suspicious. She told my colleague someone was photographing the pond in front of the police station. The pool of water is at the corner of Truman Avenue and Eisenhower separated from the police station by a wall of mangroves. I suppose in the right light it may be photogenic, I tried to get a certain old school effect in the picture above, but the woman was advised that taking photos in public isn't  a crime.

We live in strange times, I have to keep reminding myself of that. Cameras are everywhere, with home insecurity systems rife in a town where far too many people have second homes you will be photographed walking down the street. They spend most of the year somewhere else anxiously watching their remote screens for illicit activity..

I see a lot of beauty in Key West but not enough to sit and face it all the time. I was figuring the bench below was positioned so someone could test the theory about the boredom of watching paint dry.  Why else have the bench facing inwards? Some obscure city ordinance?

Once upon a time wearing a mask in public was suspicious. Should I have assumed the man below was robbing Sandy's Cafe or buying lunch while protecting his neighbors from germs? Either way I confess I failed to call the police and continued about my important task of dog walking.

Sometimes people call to report a dead body on the street. I think he's either drunk asleep or dead. Dead? I doubt it. When people are dead passersby know it in some visceral way. If they are unsure I can guarantee the "dead person" is sleeping it off. I can hear it in a caller's voice when they really are with someone who died, there is an unmistakable tension in their voice. Either way we send help of course and in a town where people drink to excess there are a lot of people sleeping on sidewalks. Or there used to be. Nowadays of course there is no one anywhere.

Chickens roam everywhere to take up the space formerly occupied by people. I can't escape them. That or I just notice them more now that they are the only signs of movement on the streets.

One can joke about watching paint dry but Key West is full of picturesque views and colors and shadows. It  would be easy to do this and no more were we not called to work and do things and be active. 

When I was  a child in England the Highway Code taught us to look left, then look right and then look left again before we stepped off the curb. It was backwards because they are in the third of the planet that has recreation driving on the left so traffic comes from the wrong direction. But the principle remains valid and yet all that good training about looking both ways is going to waste in this pandemic.

Truman Avenue can be crossed with relative ease most times of the day, rush hours excluded, and I wonder how long it will take to train Rusty to respect the traffic again. Probably one walk as he is pretty smart. 

There will no doubt end up being a call on record sooner or later as paranoia mounts, about some idiot walking his dog with a camera on a  public street. That will be me.

They Closed

Oh and by the way Turtle Kraals is closing. It would be easy to say the coronavirus is to blame but one could argue other factors have influenced the decision. Turtle Kraals really took a dive according to people who liked the place when an out of town investor, to much fanfare bought the bar and restaurant.I took the photograph below in 2008 to try to illustrate the appeal of a waterfront eatery with my Android phone.  

You could say the best thing about Turtle Kraals is the name, a reminder of the practice of corralling turtles for slaughter in less enlightened times, or the tower offering drinks with a view.  You can find those at Schooner Wharf and Waterfront Brewery, neither of which has announced imminent closing. When I was a boat captain I liked an occasional breakfast here on slow days with perfect eggs and strong coffee but more than anything I shall miss the ever more tenuous connection to the past. The upscale Boathouse is going to move in so less than ever shall we see even a pale reflection of the days when this was a commercial waterfront.

The corporate owner of Turtle Kraals is closing Charlie Mac's a barbecue joint on Southard Street and the Rum Barrel on Front Street closed a while ago leaving a weedy patch behind which is now being redecorated. No coronavirus issues there, just natural turnover.

 

Key West has built a reputation of sorts for being an agent of change. The idea of taking a vacation in Key West has been to allow people to let down their inhibitions and allow repression to retreat. In my own button down way I am not a huge fan of letting it all hang out but I suppose Key West can join New Orleans and Las Vegas in being that kind of place. Therefore it should come as no surprise that places close and things change.

 The owners of the Coffee Plantation seemed to have a good thing going with a strong community presence, doing good works and being seen out and about, passionate and involved. That is gone now and I suppose in a few years someone will mention the coffee shop and get blank stares back. I find myself in that same position at work nowadays and it doesn't make me popular. I refer to someone from years past, I started in 2004, and my younger colleagues look at me as though I am an idiot. I tend to stay silent and not bore the younger generation, preferring to find my history in books rather than my memory. Key West is a town with a rapid turnover, and always has from long before coronavirus.

The Asian noodle place on Southard Street announced permanent closure to widespread gasps of consternation but it turns out it was  landlord dispute that did them in, not the wretched virus. That's a story that has been told a few times in this town and you can pick your sides. A) It's a greedy landlord or B) It's a businessman with bills charging what the market will bear. Personally I'm tired of either narrative as it never changes and considering their standing in town I shouldn't be surprised if Kojin doesn't find another home. I'm not of the generation that finds expensive bowls of tarted up ramen noodles to his liking but millennials in Key West rave about the place

The list of places closing goes on, Lucy's Retired Surfer Bar, Loose Cannon, Med Men the cannabis shop, Pier One is closing and even a clothing store called Fresh Produce is included in the list of retail stores shutting their doors. However it turns out Fresh Produce, like Pier One is a chain and someone somewhere else decided to close them all down rather than just picking on little Key West.

You can drive yourself nuts with this stuff and I'm sure they will on Facebook and Trip Advisor as those are platforms designed to create drama but the evolving retail stuff in Key West is just a process speeded up. The much more pertinent concern about the lives upended takes a back seat. More people will come to key West to replace the workers who couldn't hang on. It's just the way it is despite the hand wringing and proclamations about the end of normality as we know it. People have always drunk in bars and corornavirus isn't going to change that. All it can do is change the cast of characters, wipe a little history off the slate and start again with fresh eager faces and their new appreciation for the wonders of quaint laid back tropical island living. We'll keep feeding the furnaces of industry well out of sight as usual.