Dustcatcher Rodeo

I was astonished to read in the paper that there is a dulcimer festival going on in town at the moment. Key West will celebrate anything at the drop of a hat so I shouldn't be surprised, and dulcimers at least are pleasant to listen to. As it was my good fortune to have this particular weekend off I got dragged to Whitehead Street to check out the supply of dust catchers offered for sale. This guy also skipped the dulcimer orgy and because he was playing John Lennon's Imagine I took his picture. Those of us who end up in the nonconformist lagers reserved for godless Communist non Republicans will make the song our anthem as we stare at the free world outside the wire.I have decided a pink tricycle will be my wheels when I am too elderly to be riding recklessly on two. Island Bottles has a slogan that involves you drinking it and they will flatten it to make serving trays and the like. I used to live by sailing and I became a bureaucrat; other people go sailing and they become artists.I have noticed over the years that women who go shopping like to touch stuff. I stand back and stare at the object in question and ask myself what on earth we need this for, but women walk up boldly and start pawing the thing. I have seen this done in all sorts of stores and it is a world wide phenomenon. Give a woman flowers and the first thing she does is stick her nose in them; take a woman to Target and she will walk the aisles all day fondling the merchandise. Stand on Whitehead Street among the bric-a-brac and you see this:Men like to live in caves and do stuff. Some men get to do this and make money. Some, very few men, make a living hiding in caves. You take their pictures and feel envy.This next picture is all wrong. The dude is talking to the shopkeeper and the women are watching. Check their body language- all I see is impatience. How silly can he be thinking we want this stuff? Mom has her hands on her hips to signal that it's time to move on. Daughter loves Daddy and wants to indulge him, but really...Celia, with the western dude ranch headgear, came all the way from Santa Fe to check out the dust catchers. The dude in the dark glasses is her driver. She limited herself to a new watchband so Bruce didn't have to carry any parcels home.This guy got away from his minder and was busy grazing on popcorn. He looks happy with his momentary freedom.No popcorn for you. Keep pushing.
Hah! What did I tell you? More public fondling. The guy knows what's good for him. He's fondling too, and doubtless making appreciative noises.This is the Key West fantasy made real. A woman, a bicycle, a warm summer evening in January and a craft fair to enjoy at your leisure. Some people spent Saturday evening shovelling snow.Unselfconsciously Croc'ed. His dog is a lesbian, and Cheyenne was not amused."Best honey in the world," he drawled, to remind us there are some who believe the Florida they grew up in, is actually a southern state. I am glad there are still enough honey bees left to do their work. I love honey but my wife snapped "we have plenty" and my feeble attempt to do good by shopping fell by the wayside. I wonder what this guy does in real life. Issues building permits? Rebuilds jet engines? His imagination is a thing of wonder judging by his offerings.These carvings impressed me but failed to make a dent in my treasurer's carapace. She didn't even fondle them.Popcorn and gossip. One is a Key West staple the other is a Key West pastime. Or vice versa.This kid had the right idea. The adult kept picking up the useless possession and the kid, an anti-materialist if ever I saw one, kept throwing it away. The wrong message at a craft fair- Chinese child laborers slaved away for hours at below minimum wages to bring you that object and what you really want is an American made wooden sculpture. Yes but if we don't buy their crap products, China won't buy our crap bonds and then we'll have to admit we've gone broke.Dog napping is a constant threat in Key West. KA said she wanted to "give Cheyenne a ride" in her patrol car. A likely story. Had I let her go I'd never have seen her again. I need to train Cheyenne not to trust strangers, especially ones in uniform.

It was a wild day on Whitehead Street. I nearly got a pot of hunny and nearly lost my Pooh Bear. I should have gone to the Dulcimer Festival, it would have been safer.

Cudjoe Colors

I thought to take advantage of leaf changes currently underway to go out one gloomy day last week and put some color in my life.

My West Indian Almond trees do their shedding act of the year about now and these large leathery red leaves start falling out of the sky cluttering up the ground and blowing under the house. Soon the bare branches will bud and large green leaves will reappear and shade my house in time for summer. Mangroves normally drop leaves year round, by settling salt from the salt water they absorb into particular leaves and having those drop off taking the salt with them.

Right now everything is going wild shades of red and orange. Not quite everything.The day was overcast and gray, there was a cool north wind blowing, and everything felt autumnal and unusual in the Cudjoe backwoods.Perhaps there weren't enough palm trees. The leaf-less branches put me in mind of a temperate November somewhere cold. Cheyenne exhibited her usual indifference.
I prefer my leaves to be green, in any shade, with a bit of sunshine reflected off the leaves waxy surface.

You will notice that my pink crocs are less a fashion statement and more an object of daily wear, and well worn they are too.
It's also apparently time for that other source of massive leathery leaves to fall around my house, for I have large bushes like these sea grapes on Cudjoe.

Cheyenne has been having great luck finding dead fish along the water's edge ever since the Great Freeze. She looked by this pool but came back, happily, with nothing.

How this cement pipe and these palm fronds got out here I don't know. I couldn't even hazard a guess as to why someone might want to haul them here at all.

These small marshy succulents which look, at a distance like heather, were sprouting little red flowers. It took quite some grovelling to get their portrait.One gets the feeling sometimes that one's dog does not hold one's intelligence in the highest regard. Cheyenne almost never grovels in mud. She can't see the point.

Vignettes XXXI

When one mentions that the Florida Keys only recycle about seven percent of the waste stream, it's worth noting that it's not necessarily all the residents who are unable to tell the difference between trash and recyclables:There are of course the people who think recycling is a communist plot, there are plenty of people who don't know how to recycle and many businesses signally refuse to recycle, saying it's too expensive and too bothersome. No one is held to account and the trucks keep hauling the trash 200 miles up the highway to the Pompano landfill. We live close to Nature (in all it's fury) in these islands, but not near enough for people to get serious about recycling.

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I was looking at my Bonneville parked on Southard Street for a recent essay and just behind it I noticed one of the new Kawasaki Ninja 250 twins.

These are nice little motorcycles, well equipped, indestructible and even though they rev to 14,000, which is a little high for my taste the latest model is said to have a much wider power band than previously.Notice that they regularly get better than 70 miles per gallon and they cost only $3500 and you have a very interesting machine with a top speed of over 90 miles per hour (150 km/h). I spent twice that much to buy a Vespa 250. Nuff sed.

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I've seen a few cyclists around town lately and for some reason I was moved to take their picture. This one was riding the wrong way on a one way street. He get browned off if stopped and given a citation.Perhaps they just look like they should be part of the scenery in this bike friendly town.

I photographed this next guy on Summerland Key cycling along Highway One, and thereby hangs an (inconclusive) story.I have seen this man numerous times on the Highway, between Big Pine and Stock Island, though I have never noticed him in Key West. It seems to be some private form of recreation for him, always dressed as you see him, gray clothes and a black fanny pack with a pair of ski-type goggles on his eyes. He rides at a steady, unhurried pace. I have never found the nerve to stop him and interrupt his meditation, though I have considered pulling alongside on the Bonneville and tossing out a question. He is a hard core cyclist.

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This boat in the next picture wasn't on Highway One for very long, on at one intersection off at the next, but it sure looked odd while it was.Lopsided on Big Coppitt. I like having my little pocket camera, my only camera, always to hand.

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Not long ago Irondad said his wife's favorite store was someplace yellow and I had no idea of what he spoke. Then I was strolling Duval and saw it:

I think my wife likes shopping here but I had no idea yellow was their motif. And around here it isn't in a (non existent) maul, here it is a regular store front on Duval.

Speaking of stores on Duval there was another place offering this absurd piece of plastic garbage:One has to assume it was made in China. What they think of a culture that feels the need to sell battery operated figurines blowing bubbles from their ass, I cannot say. Nothing good probably.

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I noticed something else that struck me as useless when I was out walking on Cudjoe Key. This funny little "extra" roof on top of the main roof seems to be a design imitating a classic feature of Keys and I believe old Florida homes in general. Nowadays it serves no purpose.In the days before affordable air conditioning it was normal to build a house with a sort of four-way flue through the roof, protected from the elements but able to funnel the outside breeze down through the house. However to do that the sides had to be open to the air, which here, they are not. It looks like a hurricane catcher to me. And speaking of details i saw this chair on Southard Street. I liked the color of the cushions and the shape of the wicker. It looked comfortable.

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I mentioned recently my wife felt she knew of the best chocolate cake in Key West. It turns out it was this, the chocolate volcano, sold at Michael's a restaurant known for it's steaks and it's fondue and a rather romantic outdoor atmosphere.We got four of these splendid concoctions between five of us, with vanilla ice cream and it turns out that once again my wife was right. The volcano isn't overly sweet but it has a core of warm melted chocolate surrounded by a light moist sponge. It makes me hungry to think of it.When the staff discovered it was Robert's birthday they put a sparkler in his volcano and the photo I took looked so absurd I wanted to post it. I instruct my wife never to announce it is my birthday when we eat out on that occasion. Robert took it all in stride. especially as he wasn't really on fire; he just looked that way.