Rainy Downtown

The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain, according to the speech coach. The rain in Key West comes and goes.

It was raining hard when my wife called me from home 27 miles east of my office. "Not raining here," I said and it never did rain in Key West. The next night we were having dinner with a friend and suddenly we heard the sound of water lashing the house. I looked out and had to take the camera to the porch. Key West in the rain is very evocative.Cheyenne is not fond of water and she was happy to sit at my feet and keep an eye on the water from a safe distance.The siding on the house across the street looked like a black and white film noir. Sam Spade should have been lurking there under a wet fedora.My fascination with night time rain was not shared by the neighbors.

This stray cat was huddling out the rain. Last I heard s/he had wormed it's way into the house. I like to think I shamed my hosts into doing it.

And then the rain had passed and all that was left was some damp roadway and shiny clean cars. Rain in the summer in Key West is perfect. It comes and goes in a hurry and and it leaves no mud nor temperatures low enough to allow you to see your breath. My kind of rainy season. The movie was Valentine's Day, a nice chick flick that ended the evening in companionable viewing. The sort of film you can chat through and make silly comments about. It was almost as good as sitting out on the porch in the rain for fifteen solitary minutes.

Historic Savannah

This isn't Key West. This is Abercorn Avenue in the Historic District of Savannah.Very nice it is too.Mind you, this should have been Key West, judging by this dude waiting for the bus. Pink Crocs have got nothing on him.Enough of that, we were in Savannah,our third visit, to take Cheyenne for a walk and et some ideas for our garden. Not really, I'd go mad trying to keep up a space as tidy as this.Cheyenne does what she has to do to be with us but I get the feeling that day after day in the car is probably more than she likes. On the other hand she gets her reward. A smelly piece of sidewalk is all she asks for.

It was Flag Day a few days ago so we got some extra color in the land of the sculpted homes and gardens.
They aren't gumbo limbos but they'll do in a pinch.

They make no bones about how old this structures are, either. As old as the oak trees I dare say. I hope Mistress Dibble appreciated the effort.They do not apparently have a Historic Architecture and Review Commission in Savannah. Or if they do it isn't as respected as Key West's. What were they thinking? I hope the payoffs were enormous to justify this municipal eyesore.

Now that's more like it.

And finally we come to the famous squares that litter Savannah's Old Town. They are quite genteel and and more or less tarted up. It all screams Ante Bellum (before the war).

Antebellum or not they have to make concessions to the curse of the automobile. More fake gumbo limbos draped artfully with Spanish Moss to please the tourists. Actually, like Key West this is a lived in town and it is quite amusing to be the gawping tourist for a change.

Put out more flags.

I doubt they have as many churches per capita as Key west but they try hard.

This peculiar arrangement connects buildings in an historic school.

Why, I do believe there is a missing word in there somewhere. Should not the word "white" be inserted before Public?

It's a nice school but in 1856 they were arguing passionately that the Bible stated unequivocally that blacks weren't human. In a way identical to the posturing today about gay marriage.Of course if you are going to live in mansions that lack air conditioning you don't want to be working up a sweat so it stands to reason you need lots of help. And if the help is free you get a burgeoning economy that gives you sufficient surplus to build the spare mansion in the first place. Anyone that tells you the Civil war wasn't about slavery, tell them yup, it was all about the money. Just as it is today.

The thing about those days was they used their money to build things of beauty that lasted through the centuries. Today we don't even get that spin off. Plaster and plastic. They even managed to build streets that did a lot better than our pot holed asphalt excuses for roads.

They have lots of alleys in Savannah so you can tuck the utilities and trash cans more or less out of sight.

We've visited Savannah several times but really we need to spend more time here. We will one day. Midnight in the garden of good and Evil. It really does look like this and quite lovely it is too. Oh and then there's Ed Swift making a buck or two, even here:

And there is the competition taking a turn around the block.

Just like home.

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.