Coastal Living

A colleague of mine went to lunch with her friend from Guam and they talked about things other than the weather. As Guam is truly tropical I don't doubt these sunny winter days seem quite cold. But they still look good.We were out boating with Wayne,,,,and Chuck......and as we returned to their home we caught a few glimpses of Sugarloaf Key's outline.The islands have sprouted lots of large homes on large lots and here, 20 miles outside Key West there is room enough for such sprawl.On the other hand this isn't sprawl in the traditional sense. It's just that for the longest time the appeal of owning a winter home in the Keys drove lots of people to seek out their place in the sun. This Buckminster Fuller dome is for sale, and the speculation was they are asking 550,000 dollars which seems a bit steep to me. In 2005 this place might have commanded three quarters of a million, but those days are long past.The waters may be tidal but they are generally very shallow close inshore.You could take a long walk off a short pier.Older homes tend to be CBS- concrete block structure homes that have the typical 1960s Florida look to them. They aren't on stilts and as a result federal flood insurance can be twice as expensive as that for a comparable stilt house. Hurricane Wilma in 2005 flooded a great many homes built like this on the ground floor.Thus houses on stilts are much preferred. When we were house hunting in 2004, after we got off the sailboat, I was rather reluctant to live in a stilt house, what with all those stairs and everything.However I got used pretty quickly to living in our "tree house" so named thanks to the mature trees growing around it. Having a canal is a good thing too as it makes going out in your boat ridiculously easy.
With all the coconuts and West Indian almonds and mature gumbo limbo and mangroves my house feels surrounded by trees and because it's on stilts we get to see more of the crowns of the trees than the trunks. These homes allow residents to indulge certain among their whims; in this case flying.Coconut palms aren't native and they produce huge amounts of fronds and fruit to be cleaned up, but for most people they represent the "local" flora that people want to see.You can imagine sitting on the lanai or even on the lawn where you could enjoy getting a slight winter tan under January's weak sun.
Cocktails overlooking the water? The views may not include mountains but they aren't bad.That little two seater seaplane belongs to neighbors of Chuck and Wayne.And the plane itself must have a story to tell. "Italian Flying School?" How did that get here?
And after the arduous boat trip this is what life ashore looks like.Cheyenne was ready for her nap. Tootie and Zuzu were busy looking regal.Like I said it's nice having your own dock, ours is much less organized than the boys' but we like it's woody, mangrove shrouded seclusion. Waterside living is as great as you would expect it to be. Especially in summer when the water is warm enough to swim- 71 degree water is too cold for us.

The Prince of Denmark’s Ride

Work a few hours dispatching police officers and feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. The possibility then of a half hour ride home at two in the morning, flying through the night, rising above the Earth across the narrow bridges, floating by motorcycle, carving a path like Moses between the silvery waters of the Saddlebunch Keys, is exciting enough to wake a dead man, never mind one merely exhausted by a too demanding routine. I pity my colleagues, who live within minutes of work, or worse, the ones who live their commutes boxed in their cars, delivered back and forth like endless re-gifts, between home and work all year long. “Too dangerous” they say as they watch me dress up in the police station parking lot. What they don’t see is the blood fizzling, the possibilities lined up endlessly down the highway, a few cars to pass, a couple of somewhat deep turns to make, rain, wind and moonlight: what will the highway offer this morning?

The ride through the urban mess that is Key West’s northern approaches is just a warm up. The repetitive traffic lights, stopping and starting all night, the mindless cab drivers changing lanes on a whim, the angry SUV drivers that even at two in the morning deluded by drink no doubt, still hold the belief that because they drive large insulated boxes they should own the road. Not when I am in the mood they don’t. Even at two in the morning I cut and carve my way to a quiet, empty spot on North Roosevelt, leaving the slow pokes lumbering behind, while I streak for Stock Island past Sears and MacDonald's and the Welcome Center.

The sharp curve at The Triangle is the best chance I have to scrape the toe of my boot on pavement on the ride home, and if the gods are feeling benign I can hit the light on a green and take the tight left hander just so, apex at the corner of the median, straighten up, and I’m over the hump of the Cow Key Bridge before the self important SUV has even turned the corner. Past Stock Island, past Boca Chica, past Big Coppitt, past the last damned street light, the last human illumination, the last promise of all night gas, and the Bonneville leaps forward into the night. Antoine de Saint-Exupery never had it so good on his Night Flight. At last I’ve broken free of Earth’s restraints, and with a little judicious spotting I should be able to cross the vasty depths of this dark space without conjuring up Glendower’s devils dressed in green, riding gold striped chariots armed with radar guns. The Bonneville purrs at seventy miles an hour, it flattens the bumps in the always wrecked surface of the Highway, the headlight offers a cone of protection illuminating asphalt, grass, lime stone and mangrove as we fly between the tiny islands attached by the merest thread of pavement.

There are those nights of call taking and dispatching that somehow overwhelm me and my romantic inclinations toward motorcycling immortality and leave me feeling exhausted despite possibility of a ride. Those are the nights I secretly wish I had the car and the stereo and the sounds of Miami’s overnight Caribbean beat and the soft Caribbean vowels of Jeanette Drew in my ears and in my heart instead of the sibilant shriek of the wind. Once I stopped at the park behind Baby’s Coffee and stretched out on a picnic table, fully armored, and snored into my helmet for a few refreshing minutes. Another time when the ride was unable to revive me I stopped at… well, suffice it to say I have lots of stopping places along my way, places to sleep, perchance to dream, and once I even fell asleep while riding, a momentary blink, “to die, to sleep- no more!” I learned to stop and rest on those most awful nights.

Sometimes I stop for fun. Those are the nights every cell is alive, usually in summer riding in my shirt sleeves, and as annoying as the cliché may be, the tropical night really is soft on the skin and seductive with it. I want, on those nights to prolong the contact, to feel the night air and see the stars a few minutes more. To stop and lay down on the shoulder when wide awake is to enjoy the greatest show on Earth, infinity laid out above you, horizon to horizon, pin pricks of light hinting at what’s to come when we ride to the bourne from which no traveler returns.

That night I was tired, no gainsaying it, six hours of work and I was wiped out. That night I was riding to get home, to turn my back on the immensity of creation and the hogwash that exuberance can bring and all I wanted was my bed. By the time I had reached Summerland Key it started to feel as though suicide by motorcycle was once again on the cards, and like Hamlet I worry that perhaps the grave is not the quiet and restful place fondly imagined.

To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.

Clearly it was time to stop and pause and take a breath. The coke machine at the Mobil gas station sounded like the ideal spot to refresh my thoughts and get back in gear for the last few miles home.

The lights were on illuminating the bright white building as though it were day. The silence of the stillness after the engine went to sleep deafened my ears. Mine is a factory muffled motorcycle but the effect of wind and engine combine to produce a strange cocoon within which the rider rides, a cloud of noise made empty by the absence of movement. Stationary and silent the night rushed back in to fill the void. The coins chinked in the machine, noisily the can rattled through the bowels and landed in my hand. It was only then I noticed I was not alone when silence returned after all the sudden dispensing activity.
“Please,” she said motioning to the bench next to her, “don’t mind me.”
I took my seat and fizzed the can open. “I have more coins,” I said motioning the silver bullet towards her. She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t drink soda,” she said.
“Neither do I as a general rule but sometimes caffeine is the only power that will get me home safely.” The cold caramel carbon tasted like nectar, the promise of strength and vitality sold under a label that delivers gas and fat and tooth decay. I sucked it down.

“Going far?”
“Not really, I’m almost at the end of my commute. I just got hit by a wave of sleep.”
“Good idea to stop,” she said and I expected to hear the lecture on the dangerous nature inherent to two wheels.
“It’s been a long night, “I said casting the empty can to the ground at my feet. “Aren’t you going to tell me motorcycles are dangerous?”
“I am sure you know that as well as I do, else you’d not have stopped to rest and gather yourself.”
“Riding is the only way I make sense of the commute,” I said. She was not dressed for riding, long blond hair laying loose across her shoulders, what looked to me to be a rather old fashioned summer frock, tight in the white bodice and full and splayed around her legs. She was a picture.

“I’d give you a ride home but you aren’t really dressed,” I said, for I could see no car nor bicycle around to explain her presence. She laughed and looked at me, gray piercing eyes measuring me up. “Are you going far?” No, she said not far; but she said no more and we sat for a while looking out at the empty highway.
“I used to ride a Bonneville once,” she broke the companionable silence with a sentence that startled me. Many times old men come up and spontaneously reminisce about their youth and their Triumphs of yesteryear; rarely does a nymph of thirty start the same conversation.
“Really?” I said, stumped for a reply to this intelligence.

“Well,” she paused, “it was my boyfriend’s in point of fact. He went everywhere on it, a sky blue flash of sound and fury up and down and around the Keys. It was an old ride even when we rode it together, an anachronism of noise and oil. He loved it and would have no car.”
“I never had one of the old ones,” I said. “I was waiting for them to build me a boring reliable one like this.”
“He wasn’t boring, though he was reliable enough that we got engaged,” she said and I wasn’t at all sure she remembered I was there. Her words came through a curtain of introspection, so much that I feared to intrude by speaking. “We spent hours of our lives riding, we went up the Highway to Miami for the day or Big Pine for lunch, we circled Key West and circled the state; and it feels as though we spent more time in the saddle than we did in the rest of our lives combined.” She spoke like an old woman reminiscing which was disconcerting when I looked at her, young and lovely even under the harsh white lights. “The old highway was much more of a challenge than you find this new one to be, I’m sure.”
“New is a relative term, considering this one’s almost thirty years old and has the potholes to prove it.”
“True enough- but us old timers still think of this one as new.” Plastic surgery is a wonderful thing I thought as I looked at her, and made a mental note to consider it for myself on growing older.

“Had we been riding the new road perhaps we would still be alive,” she said, or I thought she said. That got my attention as it was supposed to; her timing was impeccable as she dropped heavy weights of conversation between us. She sat composed, her skirts spread out around her crossed knees like a flower in white, a summer wedding dress. She held her hands folded in her lap one squeezing the other like a reflexive massage but she waved them suddenly at me, her long slim fingers devoid of jewelry I noticed and, feeling required to I obeyed their implicit command. I returned my weight to my feet and settled back down to wait for the rest of the story.

“Not much to tell,” she went on as though reading my thoughts. “It was a hot summer night like this and we lived in Big Pine in a unit behind his parent’s house. We came and went as we pleased and that night we were returning from an evening in Key West. The road was empty, like this, and we made good time on the narrow strip of road that carried all traffic through the islands. We wore street clothes and I had my arms wrapped tight around his waist, my head on his shoulder and we talked, or rather shouted, as we flew through the night. It was here, at about this time, that the car, the only car of the night that I can recall, met us on the bridge, the old bridge where these days they fish. He came toward us across the line, not by a little but by a lot as though we were two magnets attracted to each other. We could see it coming, we stopped and hugged the side of the bridge, leaning the motorcycle out of the lane as though willing the drunk to squeeze by but there was no room, and I remember nothing else.”
She told the story matter of factly as though told many times and this was one more repetition of known facts for one more audience.
“He was dead, the bike was dead and I was dead and thus it was my life ended. I have no desire any more to ride a Bonneville, as you can see.”
“I’m glad you had the courage to come back from such a thing,” I said casting around for some bromide in the face of disaster.
“I never did. It was the death of me that ride.”

We sat there for a while longer. I was unwilling to leave her there out of some obscure sense of propriety, a woman alone carrying an immense burden, as though I could do anything at all to alleviate the ache simply by sitting next to her.
“You should go,” she once again read my mind. “You have people at home expecting you. They’ll be worried if you’re overdue.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve been carrying this weight an eternity. There is no relief for me.” She smiled as she said it, as though to ease the unease of my conscience. “Be careful though won’t you? They annoy you those who say that all the time, but from me you can take the words at face value, knowing what I know.”
I nodded. She went on: “Sometimes you just have to live your fate and that was mine. Yours may be the same, who knows, but you can still weigh the odds in your favor. Take care.”

The words were a dismissal and I rose. I hadn’t been going to put my helmet and gloves back on but after this conversation I thought twice and did right by myself. Usually chance meetings in the Keys produce conversations that center on the weather- how nice it is, how pleasant not to be shoveling snow- the boring bromides of a strange encounter and produced by a dreary fear of causing offense. I couldn’t say the same about this conversation and I turned to tell her so but I was alone again. The coke can was there on the floor next to the bench, I picked it up and dropped it in the trash, and lost to sight the last piece of evidence, if that was what it was, of the brief encounter.

Perhaps, I speculated she lived behind the gas station and I had interrupted her nocturnal walk. Perhaps she had been a dream, but if she was a dream the conversation we wraiths had had, did not leave me, much as upon wakening from a dream the emotions dreamed still live on in our heads.

I looked both ways twice as I paused before re-entering the highway. All was dark, I turned east and changed gears picking up speed, passing briefly under one last street light before launching into the darkness of the Niles Channel bridge rising up like a launch ramp before me.
The wind caught my helmet and whirled around inside my head in a cacophony of sound, a squealing as of brakes, screeching as of tires, a loud hollow thunk and momentary silence before the speed of the cycle restored the wind to its customary pitch in my ears.

All that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

Better this way than many another, I thought as I turned off onto my street, glad for once to be home and not still out there on the highway that is so straight and boring and yet so full of surprises.

Rusty Anchor Stone Crabs

This is the last of my three essays on the recent visit of Kirk and Jay from Seattle. My wife's cousin Kirk and his long time buddy Jay were in town for one brief night to check out family vacation possibilities for wives and offspring later in the year, and they neither of them knew anything about Key west. Only that Kirk's "cuz" lived around here. Kirk wanted stone crabs, so I sent a text to my colleague Keith who knows this sort of thing and this is what he recommended. Kirk loved it.When they drove into town Kirk and Jay stopped by our house at Mile Marker 27 and we then had lunch at Square Grouper on Cudjoe Key. That was a success, not only because the food is uniformly excellent and the service is efficient, but also because that restaurant is located in an unprepossessing barn more clearly labeled as a beauty salon (upstairs) than an excellent restaurant (downstairs). "We'd never have found this on our own," Kirk marveled as he wiped off the last crumb of fish on his plate. The Rusty Anchor in the boonies of Stock Island, a noted Conch hang out, gave off the same "off the beaten track" aura that Kirk loved. He didn't mind the stone crabs either. He was entranced by the "squid" rings- "No pretentious calamari here" he laughed. "Forget your Italian heritage, cuz!" he said to me as he scarfed his "squid" rings. They were delicious.Jay and i had fish, mine was mutton snapper rice and beans. No frills just an honest helping of fresh fish and proper Cuban sides, which I preferred over the potato and salad options.My wife joined Kirk in the stone crab dish. On the advice of the waitress they ordered the large as opposed to the jumbo on the grounds the flavor is better and there is less shell in the weight.It was a quiet night in the restaurant, not quite as quiet as I show here but I felt rather self conscious pointing a camera round the room so I aimed for the quietest corner.Jay and Kirk both thought the Rusty Anchor was the bee's knees.Our waitress was divine, a woman full of humor and chatter and she told an astonishing story of a life as a single mother moving from Cudjoe to Key Haven to be near her multiple jobs and raise her multiple children. Her children are almost all grown and scattered across the country following her footsteps on the college route from California to Key West. Kirk has this ability to draw people out and I watched, fascinated as he found shared experiences and drew the conversation along.Her son-in-law had invented an iPhone application and they were busy looking it up. She told of her other son laid off from his construction job, making unemployment and going fishing with his sister as his mate. She was immobilized after breaking both ankles in two freak accidents but she was out there in her wheelchair on the boat baiting for her brother. And so it went laughing all the time at these most unfortunate of stories. I hope Kirk tipped her enormously because she gave the meal a Key West flavor I could never have replicated.The stone crabs were the draw but the evening was quite a success for a totally different reason.How much we spent I have no idea (thank you cousin Kirk!) but he said the meal was exceptionally reasonable and included coffee and Key Lime Pie (not tart enough...the search continues for the best). Now I need some more out of town guests to justify a return visit. If you want to check out their website you can't because the Rusty Anchor doesn't bother with electronic folderol. You can find them on 5th Avenue on Stock Island and read the reviews on Trip Advisor, which are a mixed bunch. It was good for us, though this is the first time I have been there in ages. Silly me.

Learning The Lingo

This short post at Latitude 38's 'Lectronic Latitude site (see the top of my web list) cracked me up. So I figured I'd share the fun. I used to be a sailor and lived on boats for many years. In fact my wife and I sailed to Key West from Santa Cruz, California from 1998 to 2000 via Panama. Latitude 38 was a fantastic resource during that trip and I enjoy reading about the goings on in the San Francisco area. They also have an excellent sense of humor as shown here.

January 19, 2011 – Waters Everywhere

It’s easy for longtime sailors to forget how hard the ‘lingo’ can be for newcomers to learn. We were reminded of this recently when a newbie made the following observations:

“A rope is a rope until you bring it aboard a boat. Then it’s a line. Unless it’s used to pull sails, then it’s a sheet. Cut it into pieces and it can become a guy — but never a girl. Or a vang, outhaul, downhaul, gasket, topping lift, jackline, halyard, twing, reef point, traveler, or probably a bunch of other stuff. When you’re done sailing, that same bit of . . . cordage . . . can become a dockline or a spring. But as soon as you coil it up and step onto the dock, it’s a rope again.

“Isn’t that right?” he asked.

"Um, well . . . yeah. But it can still be a line . . . .”

“And you guys are writers, yet you never correct things like ‘down below’ and ‘up forward’. Aren’t those phrases redundant?”

By golly, he was right about that, too.

“And I’ve seen ‘anchors away!’ used lots of times to mean letting the anchor drop. I’ve also heard it used to mean raise the anchor. Which one’s right?”

"Well," we said loudly (relieved to finally get a question we could answer without sounding like dorks), "technically, 'anchors aweigh' — meaning to raise the anchor — is proper. But yes, we’ve often seen them confused, probably because ‘aweigh’ sounds just like ‘away'."

He took us to task on a couple other points, but frankly we have no idea why the place where the shrouds and forestay attach to the mast is called the hounds — or why it’s plural. Or why ‘fetch’ has nothing to do with any kind of, er, hound bringing back a stick you’ve thrown. But we were able to confirm that a winch has nothing to do with a wench. Even though some nonsailors also get those two mixed up sometimes.

There was more. No, on sailboats, mast cranes aren’t used to lift anything, and tabernacles have nothing to do with Morman choirs. When he started in on why 'ceilings' and 'floors' had nothing to do with their shoreside counterparts, we glanced nervously at our watch. Oh wow, look at the time! — we were, um, late for a meeting. Nice talking to you . . . bye.

Sheesh. Okay, okay. Points taken. Some ‘sailingo’ doesn’t make a lot of sense.

It’s still easier to understand than Australian.

- latitude / jr

Westwinds Inn

When my wife's cousin Kirk came to visit from Seattle he wanted to know where she recommended he stay. My wife has, over the years, researched a whole lot of options and thought this place might fit the bill:The inn is a compound of buildings clustered around a pool and garden in the center.Westwinds has a driveway where guests can pull in to load and unload their vehicles but because the place is on the 900 block of Eaton Street, about five blocks from Duval Street on street parking isn't horribly hard to find nearby and the noise of drunken revelry isn't a problem. Motorcycles manage to squeeze a space on the property apparently. This machine came down from Miami, the middle aged owners' longest ever ride, they said.The place really is lovely.The guest units are clustered around the central area, all in the classic Key West style. We joined Kirk and Jay for breakfast by the pool. Kirk admitted the morning air was cool enough to merit a sweatshirt, but he was enjoying his tropical breakfast of coffee cereal and fruit by the pool.The breakfast buffet included muffins and do-it-yourself toast. I also had a pastry with my coffee, the net result of which was a spot of indigestion later in the morning. I am no longer used to sugar confections for breakfast, and all this tourist living was proving more robust than my tender constitution could take.Standing around making toast for myself enjoying the view is a life one could get used to I suppose, with a little effort. Though honestly my porch at home where I eat oatmeal and drink tea isn't so very different.I am a self reliant man for the twenty-first century and I don't mind washing up my own dishes which is not an issue when you stay in decadent places like this where they clean up after you..." Not bad," was Kirk's verdict on the place though he thought $200 a night was quite high. Not for Key West in winter, my wife pointed out, and Kirk agreed remembering that summer rates are considerably less.We paused too check out the flora, though with my brain like a sieve I forgot what I read before I was back out on the street. I will never be a botanist.
Lovely morning light at all angles.

Eaton Street is main road into the Duval Street area, as it comes off Palm Avenue from North Roosevelt Boulevard. Traffic can be heavy but for all that, this isn't a busy corner of town, surprisingly.

http://www.westwindskeywest.com/ for rates and all the other useful information.

Kirk And Jay's Key West

My wife's cousin Kirk came to visit from Seattle.We took them walking round Key West as one does and they were suitably entranced by the architecture of a town they had never previously seen. Cheyenne, who has seen a great deal of Key West in the 14 months we have been together remains entranced by the sights and smells of the city. She is seen here viewing Jimmy Buffett's recording studio. We were not alone pausing at the monument at Greene and Elizabeth Streets. These urchins seemed very taken by their souvenirs.In the fullness of time Kirk's long time buddy Jay showed up after trolling around the waterfront.We walked and talked with the two Seattle attorneys as we made our way across town to the ice cream store on Upper Duval. Our guests were not alone in finding much to admire in the Southernmost City.I always feel a certain obligation to photograph the damned chickens because people do find them fascinating. I am less entranced by them.I have to confess I have no desire to dress up like this clown either. He was offering himself to passers by with cameras as though this odd get up were something of merit. Perhaps it is, a sign of his balls where I have none, when it comes to giving up my dignity.Snowbird season is upon us and it's in full swing recession or not. One sign of snowbird season is the sudden proliferation of helmets. You can't swing a cat in Key West these days without knocking over a cyclist who is wearing bicycle appropriate clothing.Sitting out in front of the ice cream parlor we saw dozens of helmeted (moto-) cyclists, some wearing spandex cycling shorts and bicycle gloves- the ones with the finger tips cut off. Local insouciance was also on display.I ordered a small Key Lime sorbet from Flamingo Crossing. Sorbets are water based and are thus not sold in cones. A dish of sorbet is as much as I can eat even in the small size.I think Flamingo Crossing on Duval at Virginia has the best ice cream anywhere in Florida- a broad claim I know but there we are. When I want high calorie ice cream I like their tropical fruits, soursop most particularly. Kirk was on a more conventional chocolate based jag.
When we lived in Santa Cruz, California, it was a matter of fifteen hours by car up Interstate Five, or a couple of hours by plane to visit Kirk and his family. Kirk used to be a big shot lawyer in Seattle managing a law firm that included the mythical Bill Gates' Dad, a name that tends to attract attention much to my amusement as Kirk is as indifferent to fame as he is to protocol. Since he retired Kirk looks to my eye to be much more relaxed of course but his sense of humor remains his stock in trade.This I would be willing to bet is not a snowbird on a bicycle.Tourists taking their beers for a walk. I have no idea if it is legal or not, but I am one of those fuddy duddies who likes to sit down while drinking. Helmetless rental bicycles, thus blowing apart all generalizations.Jay posed for me momentarily which was very kind of him. The idea is for the lawyers to bring their families to Key West in late April to enjoy warmer weather and sunshine with children and wives and the whole nine yards. Jay is so laid back he was embarrassed that his phone kept ringing and he had to huddle by himself on the sidewalk negotiating some improbable deal underway in the snowy wastes of Washington State.Kirk was always the patriarch of the "younger" generation and his home above a lake in Seattle was the gathering place for the clan. Layne and I showed up with our dogs and he greeted them with the same welcome as he did for the children of more conventional families.

In a moment of light headedness my wife told Kirk about Guayaberas, the classic Cuban shirt. Which was how we came to find ourselves at Beall's outlet on the Boulevard as the two men of law were preparing to leave town. Kirk had got into the key West thing, "I could see myself living here," he muttered speculatively as he sat in the shade enjoying the winter warmth. "Of course there isn't a hope in Hell," he added vehemently, "unless the grand kids uproot themselves from the Bay Area." When Kirk's wife retires from a career of teaching in Seattle they will be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area for that very reason. Rather them than me. I suggested to Kirk that these shorts, on the Sale rack at Bealls (pronounced "Bells" for no known reason) would set him up for a role in a remake of the movie Cocoon. He liked the idea. "There is a golf course around here?" he asked hopefully. Cheap too, I said, repeating what my friends have told me.But it was the shirt rack we had come to ravage.Jay was more modest in his sartorial aspirations. The heavy lifting was going on in this corner."55 percent linen" Kirk crowed as he admired the embroidery and the pockets."You don't need any more shirts," my wife hissed at me. "Besides you're so hairy you'd need an undershirt to wear something like that," she added giving the coup de grace to my modest attempt at rebellion. I gave up under shirts and ties as a bad job after I left boarding school.

It was, all in all a very successful visit.