A Morning Off

My wife has three more months of work before she retires in early June. She may even get to teach a last month of summer school before she gets kicked, or leaps joyfully, to the curb of the working life. I am looking forward to having not only an unemployed person at home to cater to my every whim but also to not having the house filled with conjugated verbs and bizarre sentence structures as adults endeavor to come to grips with the nuances and bizarreness of spoken English.

Normally on a day off I retreat to the van in the driveway where I have all the comforts of home squeezed into a 6 foot by 12 foot space. I make tea, get milk from the fridge, eat some cereal, read the newspaper on my laptop and ponder the vagaries of human nature. Of course all these delights are only available to me after I get Rusty the entirely too easily fatigued dog, walked. So on some certain days off filled with no appointments or chores I take the mountain to Mohammed as it were. 

He is never easily convinced riding in the van alone with me is a good idea. I get the feeling someone watching me carrying my dog bodily into my van might get the idea I was going to do some unspeakable things to his furry little body and indeed he curls up like a shrimp facing an executioner. As I carry his trembling 60 pounds through the sliding side door. My wife thinks he views the van as a long distance vehicle suitable only for all three of us together so he has no idea we are going to Old Bahia Honda twenty minutes away. For all he knows he may be going to Michigan two weeks away.

All is forgiven and forgotten when we arrive at the waterfront and he starts whining to be let out. Last Friday morning wasn't i surprised to see a giant Class A motorhome in the dirt by the waterfront. Even more surprising were the occupants, a group of 19th century German gentleman farmers and their blushing brides in ankle length skirts and bonnets. 

It's not that Mennonites don't vacation in Key West because I have seen them around from time to time but that they were packed into a 40 foot RV made them much more interesting. I suppose in the age of Covid a motorhome makes sense for everyone. If you are hoping for photos I thought that my fascination didn't outweigh common courtesy so enjoy the nature pictures instead. I got there just at sunrise but they were wrapping up their early morning walks and soon left. The habits of a lifetime are I am sure hard to drop on a vacation for them as for us English. The thing is they seem so austere I just can't imagine them taking breakfast in bed to celebrate a day off.

"Please clean up after yourself please." Grammatically the message fell a bit short and though I admire the sentiments I am not sure writing the words on a plank attached to a tree by nylon ropes really lives up to the promise and the plea of "leave no trace."

Naturally there were plenty of traces left by industrious people including a pile of garbage collected for transport. The spot is a long way to hike with a load so I fully expect a pick up to swing by in an attempt to remove this festering temptation to drop more. People who are enjoying this more open beachfront after Hurricane Irma swept away the undergrowth better wake up and leave no trace if they don't want it closed to vehicles.

Over the years and all the trails I have walked I have slowly come to understand that making alterations is a bad idea. If trails grow over through lack of use I try to view it philosophically. In the Keys I have seen trails wrecked by storms but pretty soon the chain saws come out and restore these few escapes we have into the backcountry. But dumping trash baffles me as there are county garbage cans everywhere.

Rusty decides the turn around point and I trail along behind him never more than twenty feet apart. It is a silent companionable way to walk. If I get hung up on a  picture he sits and waits and watches me. If I take too long he starts a low pitched insistent whine and I move rapidly along. I am trained.

People do feel the need to leave their mark. The worst are the bottles and cans plopped on dead branches so the illusion of aloneness cannot be maintained. But you always know people were there by the rocks propped up and the ground disturbed.

It was still early and the sun was low in the sky. The air was cool thanks to a low key cold front that blew into the islands just in time for the weekend. 

A lobster carapace on a  stick:

Wood likely killed off by Hurricane Irma which blew 140 mile per hour winds here in September 2017.

A sponge catching the sunlight. There used to be a sponger I saw from time to time in Kemp Channel many years ago. He had a trident, a prong on a very long broom handle and he stood up in his boat on dead calm days drifting and poling and suddenly darting down and spearing. He'd lift up a dripping ball on the end of his trident and drop it in the bottom of the boat. He reminded me in silhouette of that Chinese water colors of boats fishing with cormorants. I never met him and was rather glad not to as I fear meeting the man might have wrecked my illusions., Nevertheless I wondered about the sponge market for the real things, especially in the Keys.

We wandered slowly back to the van i the bright sunlight. I think Rusty was figuring that the van was less torture than he thought it might have been.

The pile of trash was around the point in the distance. A pleasant walk when not encumbered.

Low tide:

I have removed the Moon Shade awning to stop myself forgetting about it in a dark locker for the summer. I don't want to leave it in the van to get moldy but that means I prefer to find shade on sunny days! I did all right on this occasion.

It was the perfect day to be at the beach. The breeze was cool and fresh, the sun was warm and after having breakfast and some water Rusty composed himself for a nap in a pile of shady grass. Me being human I got busy after breakfast with my book and my cup of tea and I couldn't hear even the merest whisper of a Zoom classroom anywhere. 

A man stopped by on a bicycle, unmasked and more or less distant and asked me about camping here. He was, I have to say, a brave man with his reluctant wife and proper RV, looking for off beat places to park. He told me he had been moved along from Searstown in Key West and I commiserated until he explained he had been there seven nights, arriving after ten and leaving before eight. Seven days? I asked in disbelief. You got away with seven nights free parking? I was astonished. Then he said he parked outside Boyd's campground in Stock Island as the spaces were too expensive. An employee came out that night and said he couldn't park on the street. He came back the second night and got moved along by a Deputy. I am such a goody two shoes I could never pull that off staying in place after it was obvious the employee was pissed off. I am a rank amateur compared to the man from Massachusetts and his reluctant wife who would prefer proper campgrounds. 

It was a pleasant change, a sense of irresponsibility, a moment away that felt as though I might have been anywhere, not twenty minutes from home.

Back at home Rusty discovered once again, there is routine after the van so he did more napping and watching the world go by. My wife and I spent the afternoon culling more belongings, cleaning the van and pondering what will go into the storage locker, what will go to the dump and what my wife might foist on Goodwill. I'd rather be off in the van that sorting through 20 years of stuff that has unaccountably stuck to my life in that time. I have to be motivated not to be lazy.

Staying Aloft

It is a Sunday in the height of the winter tourist season. Highway One is packed and Key West is busy, and in a couple of weeks my wife will be fully vaccinated. I hardly dare say it out loud but we are thinking about taking an evening out. Masks, caution and all, but yes, an evening out. I feel slightly apprehensive and not a little surprised. Wearing a mask and staying distant are the new normal.

It's odd how humans adapt to normal. That tired old story about heating water up slowly to boil an unsuspecting frog is not actually true according to scientists who've tried according to James Fallows in a slightly dated 2006 opinion piece in The Atlantic magazine. However what does seem to be true is that if we are required to live with a  previously unimaginable inconvenience we can get used to it. I wear  a mask reflexively nowadays and when eventually it may become no longer necessary I shall feel slightly odd.

People call me at work demanding to know by what authority Key West requires outdoor masks and these Facebook lawyers want to engage with me in arguing the validity of the rules. They are finding out what lesser mortals have known since the beginning of time: you can contest the rules but even if you are right you may end up spending money and time to prove it. None of these Facebook lawyers seem ready to be the Rosa Parks of the anti face mask movement. They just like to argue with me, a mere civilian with no authority over anything about mask wearing and who is not going to joust about the rule making decisions of city management.

I cannot wait for masks to be history.  Next I propose we take to Facebook and argue that stores cannot require us to wear shirts. I can think of nothing more important for the Supreme Court to get tangled up in. I demand to see nipples while shopping. I mean really, people who could even be your neighbors are very peculiar;  they don't mind the chance of spreading infection to make a political point as stupid as my fictional demand to indulge in shirtless shopping. I like the fact my retirement home has wheels to allow me to move to a safe distance as needed. I don't really want to be given Covid by my neighbors, not even were it in a  sound political cause which it isn't.

When I was a youngster I craved a motorcycle like this elderly BMW, the touring monster of the 1970s and 80s. They still make a version of the air cooled flat twin, though much more sophisticated, heavy and yet perhaps relatively speaking not so much more expensive. It was too much money for twenty year old me and most likely it was not a chick magnet which matters at that age, though I was always of a more practical bent seeking to complete journeys with no mechanical troubles as a priority over even dating. Looking at the machine parked in the Meadows in Key West I was reminded of many journeys undertaken in my youth on unsuitable, but affordable, motorcycles.

I brought my last remaining motorized two wheeler to Key West on Friday, a 17 year old Vespa 150 which we've owned since almost new when the previous owner lost her nerve after 200 miles and put it up for sale not a mile from where we live now. When my wife advertised it on Facebook she got an avalanche of offers much to my surprise.

I quite enjoyed my final 23 mile ride in the afternoon sun, keeping up with traffic on Highway One, thinking about journeys past. My wife who was following  a few miles behind in the car, was, she told me, freaking out the whole way. The only ride she could think about was my near fatal crash in 2018. She was glad when I parked the Vespa at work and got in the car with her. I'm supposed to meet the buyer tomorrow or Wednesday to sign away the title at the Tax Collector's office. And that will close the motorcycle chapter of my life which started when I was 12.

I may buy an old age motorcycle when we finish traveling but this will be the first time since 1971 that I will be motorcycle free with intent to stay that way. Oddly enough I feel fine with the choice. The van is even less sexy than an elderly practical BMW motorcycle but I can tell you unequivocally it's a lot easier to park and sleep with a van than it is grubbing around in inconspicuous bushes with a motorcycle. I think it's true that in old age you seek comfort more than you do as a youth. I certainly do.

We spent Friday evening emptying the van, putting foods and clothes and camping gear upstairs in the air conditioned house. The idea is to prevent mold and to allow the van to circulate air inside the vehicle during the hot summer months. We are so understaffed at work this year I am doubting I will get a three week vacation but if we do get time away we shall simply restock for each trip. We have a pretty good idea by now how to load the van for long term living but taking stuff out gives as un opportunity to re-evaluate exactly what might be worth not taking with us. One of the great things about change is the opportunity it forces on you to think about what you own and why. We are jettisoning stuff like a dirigible dumping weight trying to stay aloft. It feels good and it makes the journey feel closer. No more motorcycles, for now.

Birds On Sticks And In Flight

Sunday needs not many words. 

I gathered a few recent pictures of birds.

Four birds, the fourth is camouflaged:

My camera is not ideal for BIF -birds in flight - and were I to want to be a wildlife photographer I should get a proper set up. I take these pictures merely to serve my pleasure in seeing Nature at work.

The emptiness of the mangroves which I love is heightened by the occasional bird at rest.

Not all birds are completely benign, ospreys lurk... resting between fishing trips. 

And turkey vultures take wide sweeping circles looking for dead meat.

White phase herons have light legs, egrets have dark legs. You decide.

Pelicans, slow and measured in flight like big amphibious airplanes of old.

This one below is a frigate barely visible, carefree above the line worker.

I think these are palm warblers if I got my identification correct, gathered like a choir ready to warble at Old Bahia Honda.

Searstown

For a change, I said to Rusty, we are going to walk New Town. He looked dubious. What? He said. No alleys? No empty bottles, no abandoned pizza? The list went on. No I said, just an abandoned department store.

Sears opened in Key West on November 4th, 1965, to celebrate my father's birthday. Not  really ( do I need to say that?) but it did open new vast vistas to residents of Key West hungry for fashions and discounts and the ability to touch tools before you buy them. There had been a catalogue store downtown before the actual store opened bringing the products right to the shoppers. I rather think the death of Sears, a store that never adapted to the 21st century, affected a  lot of people who paid attention to history. They were the Amazon delivery service across this country as it grew and developed in the 19th century. The Sears Roebuck catalog connected homesteaders across the West to civilization in Chicago. Who needed the internet to carry out e-commerce?  

Walking past Outback, one of my favorite restaurants in Key West, fast clean not expensive and friendly, I noticed a pair of clean feet. Not I suspect a denizen of the streets, but most likely a feeble one night stand drunk unable to shuffle all the way home.  I get lots of calls at work from people missing family members who don't come back after a  night out. Sometimes I say gently, alcohol in this town gets the better of good intentions. Oh no they say, shocked, she isn't like that! Not Up North she isn't I think to myself but Key West gives people license to behave in uncharacteristic ways. Luckily this isn't a violent town and the aberrant drunk always comes back to the hotel bleary eyed and embarrassed the morning after.

Rusty was wrong and he liked wandering around the shopping center. I think we might do this again.

The driver and vehicle licensing center used to be on South Roosevelt near the airport. They moved to Searstown which I think is a better location. I go to Marathon to do mine ever since the county closed the part time substation in Big Pine. I find the staff in Marathon quite friendly and easy to work with. Mind you Florida gives you six years on a  drivers license and will renew you by mail if you have your real ID star and no tickets. Pretty simple.

These days for some reason not known to me Publix has two stores in New Town. We call them (with some imagination I think you'll agree) New Publix and Old Publix. These designations are losing validity in a town with a  transient population and we are having to move to the K Mart Publix and the Sears Publix. And now Sears has gone kaput. I wonder what we shall end up calling Searstown after the passage of a few years?

Searstown was a big change for Key West in the 1960s. After Henry Flagler built up the north shore of the island for his railroad in 1912 what you drive on and call North Roosevelt Boulevard has become part of the fabric of Key West. The salt ponds that were trapped by the new rail line were turned after fifty years into a shopping center with all modern conveniences and the lonely road that followed the line of the railroad tracks now found itself the main artery to the new in town shopping center. Sears transformed Key West.

We don't think about the expansion because the island would seem to have contained all the land you'd ever find here. But in the 19th century Key West had a stable population count around 12,000 all crammed into the corner of the city that faced the water. The African American community was pushed to the back, away from commerce in what we now think of Bahama Village though that neighborhood was called rather less complimentary names in the past as you might imagine. There are still old timers who call the police talking about "Black Town" and I have to button my lip and take the call. Er you mean Bahama Village? and they ignore me. 

The eastern end of the island was a dairy farm and open space until development happened and the Conchs downtown wanted modern ranchette homes with dry roofs and air conditioning and garages like normal America.  They got them too, leaving the African Americans downtown to watch the invasion of outsiders who thought clapboard wobbly wooden homes were cute and transformed them into guesthouses. The Navy pulled back from key West about the time Sears was built and Duval Street fell into disrepair. The whole island pivoted to the new sohpping center.

A modern multi screen cinema! Competition too for the drive in on Stock Island and the greyhound racing and the cock fights. Modern America was coming to the southernmost city. The Regal was refurbished right before the pandemic shut it down. Then a car crashed into the steps and wrecked the handrails. And now it looks like this. 

It all feels like a symbol of the changes we are going through in how we shop and entertain ourselves and live in isolation that we all fervently hope will end soon. I wonder will these places reopen? It seems inconceivable that they won't.

Around the back is a stretch of Northside drive, with low income housing opposite the scenic rear of Searstown, it's trash dumpsters and loading docks. Key West doesn't have land to spare if you want to operate a modern city here. When I visit the mainland and take Rusty for pre-dawn walks in shopping centers there I am always surprised by the expansive nature of commercial construction with landscaping and broad avenues to drive delivery trucks upon. Not here.

Mariners Cove above was built to provide affordable homes for people connected to the sea but that restriction has died out with time. All that's left is the name. Below you can see Publix gearing up for another busy day. When I worked nights and drove home at 6am three Publix trucks were usually strung out n formation on the highway going home to Miami after making their Keys deliveries. They drive fast too so if you couldn't pass them, or didn't need to pass them more likely, they pull over  at one point on the highway and reset their logs with a rest break near Sugarloaf School. Every day the same routine that keeps the Keys supplied. It makes you understand how dependent we are on the Overseas Highway.

Further along Northside Drive there is the back of Stadium Mobile Home Park, a collection of a couple hundred trailers, homes for the working classes that keep Key West functioning. 

The trailers are as far as I understand it owned by the occupants and rent the land in some sort of condo system. You will see trailers for sale around $20,000  sometimes which seems unbelievably inexpensive in Key West. The thing is you are living cheek by jowl in accommodation that has often seen better days. 

In much of Old Town Key West houses have little or no offsets. Stadium is the same if not worse. Parking can be an issue, street parties can annoy neighbors and in hurricanes mobile homes are the first to be evacuated. By Key West standards this is as affordable as living on land can get.

Overnight sleeping in your car isn't allowed in Key West, hotels need the income. Vehicles over 20 feet aren't allowed to park on city streets. All this is known to city residents and they watch like hawks, ready to call 911 if they spot a midnight violator. In summer sleeping in your vehicle is a feat of strength, take it from me who has learned to run his air conditioning all night off his batteries in his camper van.

When it opened Key West Sears had the biggest sales of any store it's size in the country. It had a monopoly along with Winn Dixie selling groceries next door. 

Sears was the store that managed everything, sales of course but also appliance repair including home service and a beauty salon with latest fashions. Developer Ed Knight was responsible for convincing Sears Roebuck to open a store in this small town and he piggybacked the shopping center from it.  And now it's all gone.

Back to the Triangle, where US1 turns into North Roosevelt Boulevard which  creates a triangular three way intersection. There we find the endlessly slow traffic lights and the road out of town on a modern well marked highway.