Going, Going…Gone

Galley Grill on Summerland Key is an unassuming breakfast and lunch joint wedged between a dentist’s office and a liquor store. What else do you need at Mile Marker 25? Friends to share breakfast of course. Then Wayne and Chuck led us to the Ramrod Key Saturday Market next to Boondocks bar. Laynes favorite weekend haunt. 

They bought their seafood from Mundy the Pirate…

“He’s taking your picture!” 

“Yes he does that,” they said continuing the discussion of life and business without a pause. 

Saying hood bud is the hard part of traveling. Paula hated parting with Rusty and who can blame her? 

She’s promised to meet us in Peru to dog sit him while we visit Machu Picchu next year. I’ve checked already and dogs unaccountably aren’t allowed. You can’t just drive up to the gates either so we can’t park him in the van as we usually do at museums so we will need volunteers to help.  Paula and Ivan, Kathy and Wayne and Chuck have all expressed interest. Sign up early to join the party in Peru. 

Bruce and Celia are collecting packages for us in Arizona where we shall swing by to buy lunch prior to going to Mexico do when Bruce expressed a desire for a commemorative t-shirt I could hardly say no. However Five Brothers on Southard was all out. 

The years have passed but Eddie still holds court making small talk and handing out coffees. How he does it day after day with equanimity baffles me. No t-shirts for now he confirmed. We compared notes on the passing of time and the electronic complexities of the younger generation. 

All was not lost. Layne and I got large con leches and cheese bread to go. I took the loot home to Paula’s garden where GANNET2 was plugged in and spread Marmite on mine. English boarding schools warp your palette and I make no apology. I plan to cross to Mexico with 480 Yorkshire Gold teabags secreted into nooks and crannies aboard. Layne drew the line at more than six boxes. 

We left Key West relieved to be on the road in good order, looking forward to the open road but aware that lives on that road have diverged our path from the daily lives of those staying on.  

It’s the reality of routine that when you live close by you get too involved in work to spend proper time together and then when you are gone but drop in everyone makes a break to celebrate. But then the routine returns and we the voluntary outsiders must leave and make way for other visitors.  It’s good to know when to make our exit. We did take some smelly blue cheese with us. That was good. 

We are driving to Ocracoke now. Slowly meandering across Florida towards Webb at Hilton Head, another  goodbye. We stopped at a recreation area on Alligator Alley for the night. It’s just past the Miccosukee gas station heading toward Naples, and it’s set back from I-75 and it’s vast. 

I had no idea where to park so I stuck us in a corner away from empty rows and rows of extended trailer parking spots.  Rusty and I explored. There is a trail head for hunters. Rusty poked his nose out and smelled something and red treated rapidly. Maybe he remembered being abandoned in similar terrain. 

Layne made a salad as the sun went down and a few mosquitoes braved the cool 60 degree evening. It was good not to need the air conditioning after the heat in the Keys. 

Morning brought fog. True thick gray wet swirling invisibility fog. Rusty and I took a walk down to the boat ramp and the canal toward the I-75 bridge. 

Rusty walks on his own schedule and he sat for a while at the boat ramp. I did the same sitting on the concrete wall at the waters edge.

I am trying to finish The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a languid novel about the final journey of the Liberator of South America, Simon Bolivar. I was deep into it when I noticed what I had previously thought was a lily pad floating in the canal, photographed below…

…was upon close inspection two eyeballs and the snout of an alligator. Naturally I reacted badly imagining myself stalked so I stood up abruptly and called my dog as I stepped away from the water. The alligator periscope disappeared as it submerged silently and my dog, the Everglades old hand, ignored the panic in my voice. 

TJ and Willow showed up when he arrived to open the hunter’s checkpoint at the back of the parking lot. We chatted at length as the dogs played. He’s been living in an RV in the Wverglafes for the past decade working half the year for the state Fish and Wildlife Commission parking his home on a lot in the park  

We talked of retirement and travel and RVs and so on and so forth. It was extremely relaxed and pleasant and I didn’t want to leave. 

Rusty sat and watched me throw the ball for a while. We drank coffee and watched the sun come up. TJ waved to Karen as she drove by in her pick up. She lives in her lot in the middle of the park and works at the Miccosukee store on the interstate. There is a whole world of life unknown to me in these canals swamps and woods. It was a privilege to learn.  

We’d never have seen any of it without GANNET2 and the curiosity to stop and watch the sunset from an unlikely spot. 

Goodbye South Florida. Look after yourself while I’m gone.

Southard Street

Rusty is not as fond of walking South and Fleming Streets as am I, but sometimes I do manage to impose my will a little bit. 

Not enough to get him to walk down Carsten Lane with me unfortunately so I will never know whether the house under permanent reconstruction is still unfinished. 2016:

I think Mangia Mangia belongs in the Pantheon of Key West restaurants that have changed the least over the decades. 

It attracts rave reviews and a totally loyal following. I like the wrap around balcony so I have far too many pictures of the building and not all in lovely light.  So I take away now another postcard in my files. 

Rusty led me across the street to a For Sale sign which included -rara avis- an old fashioned paper information sheet. I got all I needed. $1,550,000 for 600 square feet. And a swimming pool so you can swim two strokes in each direction while waiting for your house warming guests to find parking on the surrounding streets. 

Ask me if I miss Key West and all I can say is not this version of the city. 

I have learned to enjoy meteorological variety while I have been away but the slant of the winter sun in Key West still pleases me. 

And all the empty porches waiting for this week’s Air B and B guests to arrive. 

Below I found a omebody cheering on the winning side from afar afield. When I recently finished  Travels With Charley I did notice one huge difference between Steinbeck’s America in 1960 and today. In his journey people never talked politics or took public sides or expressed any of the vulgar hurtful cruelty of the modern era in which we see the fear of political change. However his decision to view integration up close in a New Orleans school drew back a little of that curtain and exposed the rational anger and fear of change in those days as black America struggled for civil rights.  We see today the entrenched structures of my generation slowly being  forced to yield to the youngsters of today and their political aspirations. So nowadays a Senate race in Georgia resonates outside that singular state. May we live in interesting times really is a curse. I prefer the politics of balance and give and take and a fundamental belief that America is great already. It’s been pretty great to me but perhaps that view is too selfish. 

I think this cat is homeless last seen on Williams near Southard. It was rangy and appeared to have dandruff and loved to be petted. A woman older than me wearing earbuds and bright expensive exercise clothes stopped by and I tried to palm the cat off on her more as a joke, a test perhaps of her wit. She took me seriously and started to explain why she couldn’t. I listened politely and hoped the friendly little thing found some other millionaire to cosset her. Rusty was looking at me a bit old fashioned throughout. 

Chickens as Christmas decorations. Comments below please. I shall moderate them as fast as possible. Moderating comments makes me feel like a kindergarten teacher. Not my favorite Halloween costume. I thought the Christmas chicken was pretty cool. 

A glimpse of the old Harris School still doing yeoman service as a parking lot. Only Key West can waste land like this. All these disengaged petit bourgeois millionaires and not one with an idea for a public spirited use for this vast  spacious over priced lot and magnificent building. Before Bernie Madoff killed the Rodel Foundation  that worthy organization wanted to create an artist’s comply in the building. Which in those days was for sale for 17 million dollars. I think. An historic Key West school rotting away. 

 

Cycling Key West

I pedaled through New Town for lunch, once again. 

I bicycled across town to have lunch with Keith my former colleague. It was a good time at Hurricane Hole on Stock Island. We ate hugely, I had blackened hogfish in a Mexican bowl as they called it while he had jambalaya. 

It was a sunny afternoon with a breeze and we talked politics and travel on the waterfront. And drank Jameson and ginger ale. “I remember you from last time,” the absurdly youthful Eastern European server said. “The drinks.” Well yes we had a few but we were well behaved. 

Keith is pondering his own retirement possibilities in four years and nine months. GANNET2 has convinced him sleeping in a vehicle isn’t all bad. He took five weeks off this year and drive around. Pretty slick. Then back to answering 911. 

I decided to give the bicycle another try and so it was I applied done fearsome strength to the seat post mounting bracket to stop the seat swiveling or worse slipping down while riding. I did a good job too. The bicycle, horrid machine, did a good job as I left South Street and took Staples Avenue to the footbridge. There I nearly got run down by an enthusiastic tricycle piloted with verve but not much skill. A rather portly lady with a cellphone glued to her ear glared at me as I negotiated a path between her hips and the bridge railing. I was probably as wobbly as the tricycle. Not what you want to see coming at you at twelve miles per hour: 

I rode past the old West Isle Apartments on Duck Avenue, now renamed by some marketing imbecile as “Arrive” in the manner of a airport arrivals board. 

The best luxury living in Key West my arse. A while ago the rental restrictions on the complex ran out and they can now charge what they want. I suppose that makes luxury living in this town. Having a place of your own is a luxury these days. It doesn’t look too luxurious does it?  

Further down I also passed this classy front yard ornament! Gotta laugh. 

I was early so at twelve thirty after I had pedaled the length of Duck Avenue on my one speed straight into the gusty east wind I turned right on South Roosevelt and went to look at Cow Key Channel. 

Over there is Stock Island already under massive redevelopment. Over here is the east end of the runway at Key West airport. And there is a gray beard pausing his run to do a great deal too many push ups. A drinking town with an exercise problem. 

Free housing in the channel. When they call 911, and they do as alcohol can easily break up the tightest friendship the question becomes are they anchored on the Key West (police) side of the channel or Stock Island (sheriff) side? 

Spandex tour de Key West meets bicycle live aboard. Old versus new: 

Here’s an up close look at the free housing in the channel. Not exactly travel ready. They call themselves sailors but they are really occupiers of derelicts. In this town sad but necessary. 

Hurricanes take their toll too: 

And this one, below, carefully tied up in the mangroves between the city and Thompson Island got sunk despite the precaution. The irony here is that Thompson Island was owned before his death by Ed McKnight the developer who got rid of Houseboat Row to remove an “eyesore” that would have devalued the townhouse development he was planning. Seaside Court hot built with the units now selling for nearly two million bucks but the houseboat community got broken up with most of the vessels getting a berth in Garrison Bight Marina. Another piece of picturesque Key West gone. Now Thompson Island has its own piece of picturesque debris. And the island isn’t in the city as McKnight didn’t want to pay city taxes. He had a lot of influence. 

On the ride back I took a picture at the canal that runs under the Staples Avenue Footbridge. Quite the mural decoration: 

I also caught a glimpse of a Conch Tour Train going to bed at the Roundhouse on Staples at George Street. 

And after all that Ivan and Paula threw together a fabulous spread on the grill. 

The next day after all that labor I rested in their hammock.

I don’t think it was Sunday but every day is a day off for me when I need it to be.