Key West Scooters

I was at the motorcycle repair shop saying hello to my Bonneville which is waiting for a valve job and on the way in I passed two very similar scooters. One of these two scooters is an Italian job, made by Aprilia and is full of scooter cred. The other is a cheap Chinese knock off which it's proponents argue does the scooter job just fine with no need to pay through the nose for the Italian job.

The orange scooter on the left is The Aprilia Mojito (Habana in the embargo-free world) while the other one is a Chinese Baron.

 

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Crazy Keys People

When I walk Cheyenne I frequently have her under voice control only. Cheyenne is as pacific and obedient a dog as any I have trained, and I make it easy for her as I give her as much freedom as I reasonably can. She ambles, sniffs and sets the pace and chooses the direction when we come to an intersection. In return I transport her hither and yon each day a different walk within a few miles of home to keep her interested and reduce boredom. It is an amiable partnership between friends. I pick up after her, she comes when I call, she stands by me when a car approaches and I get to read as we stroll in companionable silence. She is a joy to live with, day after day.

I happen to prefer walking the woods and trails but Cheyenne is an urban hunter, preferring streets and parking lots, trailer parks and trash cans to the delights of trails through the woods in the back country wilderness. So, because walks are her time, I indulge her and seek out urban strolls of varying length on different islands. The warmer the temperatures, the less she likes to walk which is good for me as I like to get to bed after her early morning walk.

It happened the other morning I finished an overtime shift at four and when I got home Cheyenne was ready for a pre-dawn walk. I figured that would work for me as well as I would get some nice uninterrupted sleep if we were both tired out so I piled my Labrador into the car and off we went to her favorite walk on Big Pine Key. I parked the car outside a strip mall a convenient spot from which to launch a dog walk but before we could step off a curly blonde head popped out from the darkened dog groomers and barked at me, much like an irritated dog. "Is he pissing on my door step?" my response was pure puzzlement. I had met the woman previously and she was quite pleasant. Right now she sounded drunk or hungover and generally pissed off. I said she's a girl, meaning females don't mark territory but the subtlety was excessive for the stupid woman who started snarling at me about dogs pissing on her doorstep and how custowere were coming at 9am ( in four hours!) and why wasn't my dog on a leash? Because... She doesn't need one I said. "Its the law," she screeched and my shrug apparently wasn't a satisfactory reply. Perhaps I should have pointed out what a dim view Code Enforcement takes of living in a commercial premise, but I just put Cheyenne back in the car and drove off. I used to visit the bike shop in the strip but I think I will do my shopping elsewhere from here on.

Weird stuff but I figured the woman is probably in bad financial shape to be living in the shop and is likely freaked out and what the hell, there's lots of places to walk a dog on Big Pine Key. We had a good time without the bitch from the grooming store yelling at us. And we slept quite soundly later.

The leash question is an interesting one as I find most dog owners have no clue how to train or discipline their dogs. Cheyenne walks at my side and shows no interest in barking dogs, grazing deer or scratching chickens. She is the most laid back dog in the world and I think she is actually a good example for other dog owners who seem to have no empathy with their animals, on or off the leash.

Which brings me to the next nutter I met on my walk with Cheyenne. That afternoon my dog was showing signs of interest in taking another walk so to kill her restlessness I took her out for a quickie before I left for work that evening. I should have stayed home.

There I was on Ramrod Key and as we got out of the car a woman with two yapping hounds on one leash hove into view up the street between two high hedges of mangroves. There was no one else in sight and Cheyenne was placidly grazing in the grass at the side of the road while I leaned up against the car reading the latest edition of Motorcyclist. The woman got closer with her hounds yapping wildly and tugging at their leash. The woman stated swearing at me, telling me to leash my dog. It's the third time she cursed in exasperation. I looked at her, pointing out how my dog had her back to her as she grazed ignoring the howls of the leashed beasts and how her dogs were baring their fangs at me. She was not the least mollified as I removed the leash from around my next where I carry it while I walk Cheyenne and attached my dog to it. It hung between us like a windsock drooping on a windless afternoon. And as pointless because the woman just started nagging on and on about the leash law and how I was a scofflaw and how she has lived here 27 years as though that has anything to do with the price of beans. That's longer than you she finished triumphantly. Actually I replied, I first came to the Keys in 1981 which didn't stop her tirade at all. She was hanging on to her dogs her stick thin legs braced against their pulling, her parchment like brown skin hanging off her thin frame like a deflated balloon. She was angry as hell and when I tried to empathize with her embarrassment she just got madder. I said I was sorry her dogs were setting such a bad example and I understood how awkward it was to see my perfectly behaved animal not reacting to her dogs and how I was sorry she was having such a hard time, she said her mangy mutt was "protecting her." I shouldn't have laughed. She walked away muttering and at one point threw down her smartphone in some private agony of frustration. When I asked if her phone was okay she rewarded me with a finger over her shoulder. She turned the corner and left Cheyenne and I in peace once again.

I was answering a 9-1-1 call one night and a woman was calling to ask for a officer to remove a drunk from her porch who was hammering on her front door demanding to be let in as though he lived there. "Why is he being so irrational?" she asked rhetorically. I replied that when people act bizarre it's usually grounded in drugs or alcohol. I think in both of my cases private misery probably also had something to do with it. I am not averse to leash laws but I get tired of disentangling my dog from her leash as we amble along and voice control per the law is my leash. As she sticks close to me anyway and obeys my voice commands I see no reason to be attached by an actual cord unless I am in an area of heavy traffic. Most of the time we stroll back streets at quiet times of the day. I am also convinced dogs are very capable of meeting other animals and not getting into a fight. Dogs typically sniff, say hello and move on. People seem to be rather more aggressive than the average lonely dog. Cheyenne doesn't chase deer or annoy wild chickens, she ignores trapped dogs imprisoned by fences and who beg for some friendly attention as we walk by, their owners indoors and ignoring their pets's pleas for love and affection. I am astonished by how fearful most dog owners are that their pets might actually get to play for a few minutes with a passing dog. Dogs, it has been said, are the Gods of Frolic and I love to see my girl enjoying herself in her own particular way.

I laugh to myself every time I hear some dork or another talk about the laid back lifestyle of the Fabulous Florida Keys. And I haven't even told you the story of the plumber I hired to replace a leaky outdoor faucet and who came, half finished the job, refused payment as the pipe had a small leak after he replaced it and never returned to finish the job. Sigh. Gorilla glue to the rescue I guess. Luckily we live off our rainwater cistern most of the time and the inconvenience was minimal. Hiring anyone in the Keys to do a professional job will test the limits of your tolerance and patience and general belief in the laid back ...blah... Lifestyle...blah...Fabulous...blah ...etc...Perhaps it was just presaging the End of the World, which the Mayans supposedly estimated was going to happen today. Or not.

 

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Pauper's Field

Key West has a habit if taking care of it's own, alive or dead. In life the wretched and poor and mentally ill get food and shelter (if they want it) and in death the Reverend Steve Braddock holds a funeral service for the forgotten dead in a corner of the cemetery reserved for the impoverished. He did it  51  times in 2012 according to the Key West  Citizen. It is a left over from pre-industrial society when villagers treated the dead with respect in a world seen as God's creation. A world where dogs have no souls and no place in spaces reserved for those religious events of births, marriages and deaths.

Cheyenne and I were fine on Olivia Street outside the fence, looking in and wondering about those small rectangles of memory. It said "look it up" so I did, thanking the 21st century for Google!

From Robert Heinlein's novel Stranger In A Strange Land:

Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.

Surely this is another of those "only in Key West" spaces, a place where the homeless get to write their own epitaphs and whose epitaphs are cleverer and more literate and more thought provoking than those of the middle class dead celebrated widely in the tedious "guide" books.

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The Ministry Of Gray Walks

I was in Key West early in the day and not finding what I was looking for, which was bright sunshine and white clouds. The skies above were overcast and varying shades of gray, giving Poorhouse Lane a dark and slightly ominous air.

Cheyenne was finding something in the bushes as usual, unperturbed by the momentary absence of summer. The sky and the light put me in mind of California's eternal marine inversion layer over the coast all summer long, gray and oppressive and holding a promise, never fulfilled, of rain.

it seemed to have been trash day, a suspicion forced upon by me the presence of the cans abandoned in the street like broken Dahleks. This cat was sleeping until a fat yellow Labrador strutted by, ignoring her completely.

You know how I point out that rents are high in Old Town, especially considering there's so much poor housing stock. Like what sort of housing stock you ask? Like this I say...talk about a jagged roofline...

It was early in the day and this guy stepped out past me on William Street as Cheyenne and I ambled back and forth sniffing as we went. We reached the corner of Windsor Lane and he suddenly stepped out in front of me, again! This time from Charlie's Grocery with a coffee in his hand. He appeared to be off to work, on foot. Speculating wildly I suspect every spare penny goes home to Chiapas or Guatemala or some other holdout where small wiry Indios pack their bags and head north to earn a sort of living wage with back breaking labor. The cost of the car he was walking past would set his family up in self sustaining comfort if that were his story. Funny old world isn't it?

I have developed a Floridian's dread of parking my car in the sunshine but I have also developed a healthy respect for all that falls out of trees around here. Birds in the Keys seem to enjoy eating glue, at least those that choose to roost in trees. So I try not to park directly beneath said trees, though this primered classic car got a different kind covering from this particular tree.

Remembering that I fail as a botanist I cannot say what it is, nor do I care too much to name it in any case, but that it, whatever it is, is blooming in December is the point I suppose.

And if there were any doubt that it is in fact the Roman Tenth month look around. I try not to be startled when I see the Holy Family depicted like some grotesque 20th century Disney cartoon, middle class white people in bath robes pretending to be a middle eastern carpenter's family from the Year Zero, or thereabouts. Nevertheless it gives me pause because I cannot reconcile such cluelessness with the modern Information Age. The more knowledge we have at our fingertips the more deliberately obtuse we seem to have to be to get through the day. I live in the hope that the God in whose image we are reputedly made, has a robust sense of humor.

This celebration of the Holiday Season seems more in keeping with Key West's public image. When I write that living in Old Town can be a trial this bottle decoration may go some way to explaining what I mean. I am not teetotal, far from it, but I can hardly imagine the constancy and determination to tipple that leads to amassing such a collection. Surely so much vodka was not sunk without the accompaniment of friends and loud merriment, night after night. I hope the neighbors enjoyed it.

I admit I no longer make much use of pay phones though when I see them wrecked and unuseable I feel their absence as a lack of ack up in my life. What if my smart telephone, source of these pictures, were to fail me? I have lots of memories of making my living by pay phone. When I was a radio reporter in California I was always to be seen juggling my notebook, my tape recorder and my audio adapter hooked over the mouthpiece sending the spoken word far and wide. I even learned how to unscrew the mouthpiece of a home phone and wire my tape recorder to the innards to send audio tape across the country. Oh happy days! Not really but we did the best we could with the technology we had, magnetic tape and telephone wires. I remember pay phones very well, I lived and worked by their utility.

Above I see an advertisement for a "better TV experience" by which they mean sports and news on TV to keep the laboring masses opiated, and below we are warned that children may be in the street unsupervised and playing. That does happen in Key West. Children do play in the streets and ride their bicycles around town in perfect safety. It seems an unlikely idyll doesn't it? The newspaper reported this week that the Sheriff's Department has been training and has plans for any possibility of a school shooting in these pacific islands.

There are children of all ages in Key West, including annoying rainbow children making nuisances of themselves, living off the grid by begging from people on the grid, people we used to describe as "square," people we have become... There was something peculiarly inappropriate about seeing the flower child hobbling along with an old Man's walking stick. I hope his Dad has a good health insurance policy for him, else we will be the ones paying for his treatment until the Affordable Health Care Act kicks in.

By the time we got round to Johnson Lane by a circuitous route preferred by my wandering dog it was still gray and overcast and I lost hope we would see sunshine. Cheyenne still didn't care, she was busy following trails known only to her nose.

As we came out on Truman I decided it was time to give up on summer for the morning and it was therefore time to play with my phone camera.

I was left trying to decide if this was a prelude to nuclear holocaust or the zombie apocalypse. Modern intelligent telephones are amazing machines. skies may still have been deeply gray and about drop a few tears of rain on our heads, but from the picture you wouldn't know it. It's a sad day when one can't believe the evidence of one's eyes. Perhaps Jesus really wasn't a Palestinian, perhaps the images are right.

 

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Ho Ho Ho

Outdoor living blizzard free. Who needs seasons..?

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Almost The Solstice

As little as I enjoy seasonal changes my emotions sometimes get the better of my intellect. By the time September rolls around I tend to be tired of summer heat and start looking forward to the second cold front of the Fall. The second front tends to lower temperatures quite a bit and create separation between the oppressive heat of summer and the start of the cool dry season.

Then when temperatures turn really cold, as they tend to briefly during winter I start to bitch about cold fronts and grumble when I have to wear socks to bed. I try to forgive myself for being human as I start to look forward to the heat and mugginess of summer. Well bugger, my Zen is in serious trouble. Better go to the beach and look out at the ocean and center myself or some such shit.

The thing is the water is too cold for swimming this time of year, at least for me, and it gets dark at six in the evening so there is some wintery effect down here. Traffic slows down a lot in winter as visitors pause to admire the views in the travel lanes of the Overseas Highway. Bastards! It's the only road and we all depend on being able to use it to keep the services flowing that they take for granted.

It's silly isn't it to get grumpy when all I have to do is pull over and enjoy the view.

So here it is, the shirt sleeve view. Happy Solstice Northerners. And I'll wish it to you early in case some nut case decides the Mayan thing is real and knocks off the Internet on The Day.

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