On The Road

I got home from work at 6:30, parked the Bonneville under the house and greeted Cheyenne.This stage of the day usually requires no more effort than walking the dog, feeding the dog and passing out, but instead we all three piled into the car, my wife at the wheel, the trunk full of stuff and took off. I passed out in the passenger seat, my head stuffed in a squashy pillow, the seat back and Cheyenne snoring behind me.Mainland Florida was in Full Summer Mode yesterday with heavy rain, bright sunshine, car wrecks and back ups on I-95. My wife woke me at Starbucks in Homestead where she got a coffee and I got the steering wheel after breakfast in Boynton Beach's famous Jewish Deli called Flackowitz's. Stuffed full of corned beef hash we pressed on. It was 95 degrees outside and everyone was wilting.South of Jacksonville we filled up with gas, the fusion was proving itself comfortable and easy to roll down the freeway at 80 mph. I am still not happy with the fuel economy barely getting 25mpg at home but here on the road it has gone up to 27mpg which is a little less than I used to get on the 6 cylinder Maxima. I was supposed to get better than 30 by down sizing to a four cylinder car. I did notice that at this Indian River Dust Catcher stall they sell Souviners with is another way of spelling Memories, no doubt. Let's cut back on school spending shall we? People are just too smart as it is.These Key West imitators at least had the nuts to take their convertible roof down. Too bad the weather wasn't cooperating with their derring-do spirit. we kept our sunroof firmly closed.I next woke up in Georgia as I was nodding off again. I find these coastal marshes quite attractive though living among them and their very brown, dark waters, would be a different matter. Only 120 miles to a motel room. So at last we arrived in Savannah 12 hours after we left ramrod key. I was tired, no doubt about and I am pretty sure Cheyenne, good sport that she is, was just as ready to get out of the car as was I. Our la Quinta Hotel (dog friendly $56) wasn't far from the historic district but walking the squares of Savannah was going to have to wait till morning. We all of us had dinner on our minds.With Cheyenne fed we got back in the infernal machine and followed the wife's phone to dinner. It looked closed the first time we passed and as it was almost 8pm we looked as though we had lost out.It doesn't look very prepossessing does it, this little storefront miles from the Historic District (what Conchs call Old Town, in Key West). It was open, and the view from inside was of the major four lane highways charging about outside! The local's Savannah...From what I can tell Ma Randy started this place decades ago in World War Two and the food is still amazing if you like soul food.My wife was pretty sure her favorite appetizer, Fried Green Tomatoes, used to be written where the blank spaces are on the board.we were the last customers of the day and we were lucky to get in.A cheerful young woman, a bright spark, took our order and asked where we were from. "I thought so," she replied looking at the car I had backed into the space. "I saw your Monroe County tag." Huh?No one knows that "Monroe" is the county where Key West is the seat. Unless you spent 14 years in Key west before coming home to Savannah to run the family restaurant. "It's too expensive," she replied to my question about why she left. "Besides 14 years is enough, don't you think?" I was guessing she had burned the candle at both ends in Key West.Back at the motel the room next to ours was looking like something out of the Bates Motel with the curtains waving idly and a pile of bed clothes in the middle of the room. It looked as though they were drying out a disaster. Dinner, meatloaf,stuffed pork chop,rice, yams, beans, mac and cheese, washed down with Red Stripe beer was splendid, and here is a picture.

We sat up watching a TV show called Hells Kitchen, where I saw Chef Gordon Ramsay has transitioned from the BBC to American TV and still says "Fuck" a lot. Here they bleep him out. A lot. Poor middle class America, TV Land still thinks you don't know what "Shut the Front Door" really means. The Red Velvet cake was delicious.

Cheyenne, a messy eater, got some rice for being a good passenger.

And so to bed.

Closed Cemetery

The city Sexton announced recently that the Frances Street Gate to the cemetery would be closed so now the only way in is through the main Margaret Street entrance. Anyone coming to the Frances Street side will see this:In locking these gates the Sexton said it was in response to rowdy behavior and disrespectful people bothering mourners in the cemetery. The idea is that the cemetery will no longer be a through street across the middle of the town. A few years ago the city commission voted to ban motorcycles and scooters from the cemetery on the same grounds. Indeed I took the banner picture of this blog the day before the vote, as I thought a picture of my Vespa was worth having. The Frances Street side of the cemetery is well fenced these days: There has been the expected outcry from cyclists who liked to cut across the cemetery but the Sexton isn't budging. One letter writer to the paper suggested it was up to the city commission to make the decision but no one has chosen to grasp that nettle.It's a picturesque trail through the graves. The Key West cemetery is a well known landmark with above ground graves that always grab tourist's imagination. The water table is high in Key West and below ground burials aren't very practical.

You can imagine what it would be like in there if people were walking their dogs through the graveyard, so it's hard to argue with this sign.

I have always had a soft spot for this place and I enjoy bringing a picnic lunch here and eating among the graves. Personally I don't view it as being disrespectful, rather it's a way of incorporating death with life.

There are lots of well known last names dotted through this place.

I expect that, given enough time people will get used to the closure and the practice of crossing the cemetery from Frances to Margaret will be a memory for us old timers to taunt the newcomers.

Perhaps after a time of punishment the powers may relent and perhaps the lock will go away and with no fanfare at all those of us who care to may get to spend some time crossing the graveyard once again. One lives in hope.

Summertime

I have found to my amazement that 75 people have joined this website as Friends. I am not completely certain what that means nor how it's done (don't bother trying to explain Jeffrey, computers and I are barely on speaking terms), but it seems like a large number of people who want to see pictures of the Keys. I have tried reading the profiles and connections and to say they are eclectic is a major understatement. I never knew there were so many knitting blogs and craft blogs out there. Nor that pictures of Key West streets and a Labrador sniffing seaweed fit into them, but apparently so.

I started this blog in Summer 2007 to find something to encourage me to get out and wander by Bonneville, and recording the changing Keys seemed like a good idea. The blog thing came about because this remote, electronic way of storing the images is easy, cheap ($20 a year) and easily accessible. In the bad old days of print photography I took pictures with no idea how they would come out and spent a fortune processing variations on a theme of which only a few were worth keeping. Then with the advent of automated, drug store processing my pictures came back over exposed, under exposed badly cut and generally degraded. Living on a boat I never had room (nor the inclination) to devote a piece of my space to a dark room though I was best friends with a kid in school who taught me photo development years ago.

Blogspot, for all it's technical imperfections and occasional failures is a great place to store pictures of daily living and my sometimes acerbic commentary on the nature of the human condition and our apparently endless ability to fuck it all up. I invite readers who want me to photograph something to drop me a line at conchscooter@hotmail.com and I will do my best. Native Mom wants an essay on signs so I will see what I can do. I am really terrible at themes not least because most of these essays are generated on an impulse because I always have the camera in my pocket. For instance I have been meaning to go to Mel Fisher's Museum a place I really like, for years. And still...nothing!

I got a note from Special Services (HR in the Police Department) telling me I had accumulated too much leave and had to use it or lose it, so here we go. I have planned two vacations this summer, ten days in June to go to North Carolina to visit the sister-in-law in Asheville and then Outer Banks for a few days as we have never seen those islands. Then after a week back at work Layne and Cheyenne and I are taking off on the Poof Tour 2010, starting the 3rd of July, a cheap camping vacation to Maine visiting gay friends (yes, they are all gay, it turns out) along the way. We were going to go to Italy burning up a credit card on expensive Italian food and lodging and souvenirs (and motorcycle rental) but this economic climate does not seem the time to make impulse purchases in Euro even if the exchange rate is 1.20 to a Dollar. Secondary plans to go West got scrapped so now I get to see New England for the first time in my life (I want to move to Vermont and join the Secessionist Movement...fat chance).

What all this means is that essays will be irregular until late July or the beginning of August depending on computer access and time and all that. I am sure this comes as a shock as for the past three years I have managed at least one essay a day, but there it is, this is a chance to check the archive and take time off from wondering how many essays you have missed if you turn your back for the blink of an eye. Five weeks off is more vacant posting time than even compulsive, anal retentive little me can manage to fill completely ahead of time. However I have organized a bunch of essays that will appear three times a week until I get back.

All these plans are subject to change of course (a hurricane threat would bring us home quickly enough, no doubt though Tim our house sitter is very reliable) which is why I dislike explaining a lot of stuff in advance on the blog but an absence of essays just means that I am too busy living to be downloading for a short while. To Cousin Lyn: I am sure Chicago will be on the cards this year as Layne and I will be ready to get out of town later when it is still hot, for a long weekend Up North. To everyone else I hope you have a pleasant summer, oil free, hurricane free and with a job and a roof over your heads.

The Back of Big Pine

So who named the streets that are hidden behind the Blue Hole in the backwoods of Big Pine Key?I look in the air to see the trees and clouds and sky while my dog sticks her nose in the gutter. Or where the gutter would be if there were sidewalks in these hidden streets.I read with amusement how some visitors to these islands think they know them well enough yet have no idea at all these places exits, people live here and thrive.A cheerful mailbox decorated with nothing remotely resembling anything tropical.
I've got a couple of these these and my tomatoes this year are not exactly thriving. Perhaps better empty like this topsy turvy.A conch car, fine except for the dreadful gas mileage. For a high mileage driver like me this is out of the question. It's too hot and humid to follow the deer trails through the pine woods.
A fine Panga out of it's element. I like these wooded homes but prefer my canal side house. Car alert. I am not a car nut, even though I like to drive, but everyone seems to like these classics, and here is one tucked up in the pine woods. When in raccoon country protect those trash cans! Cheyenne found these trash can protectors unneighborly.

A poinciana tree lurking in the backwoods. Actually it is a back yard tree on the next street.This pretty home appeared through the trees. Isolation in the Keys is possible if you want it.

Cheyenne and I were not alone.

I keep seeing stuff growing that looks totally alien to me.

This dude was hauling piles of mulch, with a cheery smile that he turned away as I snapped his picture...

He had a huge pile to move. I find the residents of these back streets to be cheerful and friendly whenever I come across them. Perhaps canals make people grumpy. Nice cactus.Some days Cheyenne has more energy than others, and this day was one of them.

I love this vegetation.

This a driveway anyone could desire.

I have photographed Dade Pine homes in Key West. They exist out here as well.

Dade Pine has been cut to death in Dade County and is now found in the Florida Panhandle. It's oily nature is resistant to weather and insects (and paint which is unnecessary).

This Aryan Naturist surprised me by popping out after we passed and started making cooing noises at my dog who ignored him.

I could have used a swig of something refreshing but the advent of rainy season means Cheyenne is rarely short of a puddle of something good.

There seems to be a revival of key deer this year, they are everywhere, but on this walk this was the closest we got to one. They are training their offspring this time of year which makes them extra skittish.

And so we stumped back to the car and the relief of air conditioning. It has been, as climate change has predicted, a hotter than average summer.