Cutter Ingham

It happened my wife was away, I had the dog at work and at six o'clock in the morning as I left work i got it into my head to take Cheyenne for a walk at the Truman Waterfront in the dark.I had forgotten but they recently towed an old US Coastguard cutter to the dock and there she sat in the dawn's early darkness:The Treasury class cutter was named for 19th century Treasury Secretary Samuel Ingham, and was built in 1934. The ship served on Atlantic convoy duty in World War Two and sank a German submarine in 1942, which was before the ship went to the Pacific to take up duties there.Later Ingham served in the Korean War and in Vietnam before being decommissioned in 1988. The ship was on display Up North until last year when after a refit was brought to Key West and now sits alongside the old Mohawk as part of the incipient Maritime Memorial Museum. The ship is a National Historic landmark and is also a memorial for the 912 members of the Coastguard who died in World War II and Vietnam. They say there is a plaque with the names on it on board but I wasn't able to check it out. I'm not sure the ship is open for tours yet, though I plan to go aboard when I can. The Mohawk was the object of my attentions in a previous essay and is visible in the photo below:Cheyenne loved every minute of her wild wandering around the dock, checking in with me from time to time as she ran back and forth:The ship looks to be in great shape:

And the Navy basin at that hour was delightfully peaceful. Even though there was evidence of the recent activity surrounding the yacht races:

I am not much of a one to discuss photographic techniques but I had managed brilliantly to forget my gorilla-pod in the car so I basically held the camera up with a shutter speed around a sixth of a second and did my worst:I wanted to illustrate the splendid signal flags flapping tightly in the breeze which may or may not have worked out:And there it is. Another attraction for Key West to boast about.

Mangrove Stomp

This badly illuminated self portrait shows Cheyenne and I taking a walk through the mangroves under partly cloudy skies on the north section of Old County Road 939:It's pretty uneventful stuff for the most part, my outdoor life. I have discovered that Cheyenne is as much a misanthrope about dogs as I am about people. We each seem to enjoy each other's company just fine and though she is as polite as I try to be with strangers neither of us seems to feel the need for company. I have stopped making a point of taking her to the dog park in Key West. I looked aloft and there i saw Fat Albert keeping an eye on the world for us. We were not alone on Old County Road 939 on the sunny southern section the next day:I was walking the Sugarloaf Loop, a place I have photographed previously and this was such a beautiful winter's day I wanted to play with my camera and record some of it. I am lucky enough to work 12-hour shifts at the police department and when I am not called for overtime I get to wander these islands weekday afternoons when no one else is around.The day was a perfect winter mixture of sun, deep blue skies, a light cool breeze and everything was just perfect. Of course there should be drama to improve the story but some scruffy oiks Up North in Pennsylvania have compared my diary unfavorably with the plot of Seinfeld episode and that suits me just fine; my little life is about nothing at all these days.

The bright sun made for a day of contrasts and in an effort to create that rich polarized effect I dialed up the shutter speed on my little pocket Canon SX100. In the bad old days of film I had to grope around and attach a polarizing filter and twirl it around to get the right effect and I would only know if I got the right effect when the pictures came back, if the lab hadn't mucked them up. And here is what I saw the moment I took the picture of the canal debouching into the Straits of Florida, and I saw that it was good.The bridge offers a lovely splash of white in the three predominant color groups in the Keys: mangrove green, sky blue and cloud white, or in this case bridge white.

Cheyenne is feeling safe enough to wander off out of sight as she pursues snacks located deep in the mangroves. I had no idea where she was as I stood on top of the old road bridge and called her name. Soon enough....

It looks like summer doesn't it, dappled paths, green leaves and happy dog. Of course because this is the Florida Keys this sylvan scene wouldn't be complete with a cold one. Man proposes, God disposes as the old saying goes. I found the bottle as shown and I wasn't about to taste this particular Rolling Rock. Standing below the bridge one has to be amazed by the amount of effort that goes into sign posting the most obvious prohibitions. Beyond the sign, isn't the sky just a lovely shade of blue?

Cheyenne was wandering around having a grand time of it. I was entranced by the beauty of the day.

I was in such a benevolent mood I even chose to enjoy the free public art instead of getting grumpy about vandalism.I could have been on Duval 20 miles (30kms) away getting shit faced . This was I suppose a wasted afternoon for one looking for the better known Key West entertainments.

I had seen an Illinois tagged vehicle parked on the road at then entrance to the loop and a sole walker striding purposefully by was either a well-burnoosed member of Al Quaida or in fact the driver of the vehicle worried about the effects of the winter sunshine. A little bit of sunshine indeed, the road was burnished by the heat of the afternoon.Happily this disused roadway is closed to motorized traffic so Cheyenne was free to stomp about seeking shade at will.We wandered off the road for a while and found fishy debris lurking in the mangroves. Cheyenne snacked on unseen delights, i fiddled with the macro setting on my camera.

You have to give crabs credit - they lose claws at will and just keep on going. The middle of this part of Sugarloaf is a lagoon and as warm as it was and as inviting as the water looked it's going to be a few months before I'm ready to try swimming. And this place is just too muddy for my delicate tastes in swimming holes even in the heat of summer.

I never really have understood the purpose of the nicely paved loop road round the lagoon. There isn't enough land to do much developing though apparently they gave it the old college try. These trenches are all over the place cut in the solid rock of the Keys. They were designed to hold mosquito larval eating fish to make the marshes fit for human habitation in summer. One can hardly imagine the energy it took to build these things everywhere, but there they are, and along side them piles of spoil gravel that used to fill these trenches now built up into mounds that give a short photographer a slightly extended view across the mangroves.

We were barely half way into our walk but Cheyenne was resting comfortably in the shade even as my camera batteries died and my spares were secure in the car- for I was traveling light this hot afternoon.

The rest of our trek was thus undocumented, but it was a lovely afternoon in the Keys, for me and my dog.

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.