Waterfront Walkabout

This is the 3000th essay I have published since I started this Blog in June 2007. I have no idea what significance that statistic has, as recorded for me by Google Blogger. Cheers!

It was dark when we arrived downtown after dropping my wife off at work. and Cheyenne leapt from the car like a rocket launched from a silo. She loves downtown exploration.

I was talking with a friend on the sidewalk later in the morning and Cheyenne laid herself down at my feet, chin on the ground, paws splayed in what I call her alligator pose. A pedestrian came by and got my attention asking tremulously if it was safe to step past my dog. Huh? Not over her but behind her as though my limp leash was holding back a baying hound. I am astounded by most people's lack of what the military call situational awareness. No clue what's going on around them. I saw this piece of artwork, photographed below, and I figured I am not alone in shaking my head at the way the world around me works.

Life has always been complicated for human beings, and though we like to think our lives have been made more complex by "labor saving" devices I don't think life was easier when ambitious people had fewer choices. Emotionally perhaps it was easier not to know what was going on across the world but part of that Blinkered approach to life came from the fact that physical labor kept the peasants going all day long. Sunday mornings they praised God and gave thanks for another week completed without catastrophe, which fear was ever present, and they girded their loins for another week of hard labor and no lifestyle choices.

Myth makers tell us the original human inhabitants of this continent lived in the Garden of Eden, and perhaps by comparison with the restricted lives of fearful European peasants it was a whole lot better but the philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously described their lives as solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short. So then the few appalled by the European Conquests reacted by over blowing the life of these "brutish" savages and they described them as noble, famously incapable of lying. With the benefit of hindsight I figure things must have been somewhere in the middle, a few good and a few bad and whole bunch of people in the middle muddling along. And I guess in that we are pretty much in the same boat today. I cannot imagine living on the streets and it never ceases to amaze me that people manage to do just that.

These reflections were prompted by my visit to the former Waterfront Market after a reader asked, some long time ago, for pictures. He's probably dead from old age by now but here they are, painted by a world class marine artist known by only one name, as all egomaniacal artists prefer to be known ('Conchscooter' could be construed as two names but I insist it be treated as one...).

I crossed paths with a serious city employee focused on his job emptying the meters. There was an appalling scandal a few years ago that sent people to jail for pocketing the coins, rolling them up and depositing them in the bank, over and over again. They were busted by a curious observer who saw a senior employee doing the menial work and wondered why. And the book keeping we are assured has tightened up so stealing tens of thousands of dollars (!) is no longer quite so simple. The best part is the cons were caught setting up phone scams from their jail cells while serving their sentences. Amazing stuff and proof positive leopards don't change their spots.

Wyland's artwork was impeccable of course, not that I know anything about art, murals or fish.

It just looks good, including the odd orange band around the top which seems to represent sunset as the building faces west.

There's lots of stuff to look at yet it doesn't look crowded.

I want to go back now and take more time to enjoy this astonishing aquarium on a wal..

Inside there hasn't been much movement towards the promised brew pub. Peering through the dusty windows all I could see was a construction site. I am looking forward to getting a beer here. The owner is expanding from The Porch pub and Two Cents, a restaurant on Appelrouth Lane. I like The Porch when it's not too crowded but Two Vents is too youthful and too pricey for my taste. I hope if this place happens we can eat value for money. Itll be tough to beat Finnegan's Wake, but I am a stick in the mud.

So there I was staring at this tremendous monument, top flight mural on the outside and a nice middle class drinking and eating jointin the making inside. Could be nice in Key West especially with the new hotel coming in alongside and street gentrification planned on Caroline. And there they are at Schooner Wharf rebuilding the part that burned down a good few years ago. All this energy and enterprise and while I was here this elderly couple slowly pedaled by on their tricycles. The old crone in the rear cooed at my dog as she stumped by and we exchanged smiles.

How is it, I ask myself that we haven't been able to give everyone a place at the table in this banquet that is America. I don't mean that everyone has to be an entrepreneur, only a died-in-the-wool Ayn Rand acolyte could make that argument with a straight face. I wonder how it is that we allow American corporations the right to have "personhood" in this country yet not allow them to feel an obligation to serve this country. It blows my mind that none of the cruise ships that stop in Key West have any American crew on them. How is it these cruise lines rely on Americans for their revenue, can have their headquarters in Ft Lauderdale yet not hire any Americans? I understand the flag of convenience rule perfectly, I just don't understand why we put up with this. It's our money they want.

I don't believe everyone deserves money, which is the line you'll hear from those same Ayn Rand disciples when they talk about leftists like me. I do believe though that everyone should have a chance to help build this great country. Someone has to do the janitorial work and someone else needs to run the company, but instead despised janitorial work is farmed out to shady contractors who hire foreigners, usually without papers, and they say Americans don't want the work. Is it really that simple? Perhaps, but I wager a living wage would help, respect for the work wouldn't hurt and a sense of shared commitment throughout the company would change the way our rather flat corporate future would look.

The service economy is limited in scope and we can't all be shuffling paperwork for each other. And at the same time I understand some people will evade work at all costs: you can't legislate ethics, though we seem to try all the time. I suppose I would like to see an economy based not on the lowest common denominator, the way Walmart hires people, but I would like to see something more ethical than the pursuit of money as the goal in and of itself. I believe it's possible and the more we go down the rabbit hole of profit at all costs the more likely there will be a correction sooner rather than later. The great thing is hat the American xperience is self correcting, the unfortunate part is that people suffer needlessly as the ship of state and it's corporations change direction.

I work for the government because I want job security, benefits and I like working for a boss who makes perhaps four times my wage. If the private sector gave me security, purpose and a sense of shared commitment I might have given it consideration. Just like you, I don't want to end up on a tricycle on the streets, even though I have no hope of becoming a great restaurant entrepreneur or a world class artist with the world at my feet. I jus want a chance to do a decent nights work fr a decent nights pay. And that is what I have. Is that too much to ask of corporate America?

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Getting Hitched

I like to shop locally and support local businesses and I don't mind paying more for the privilege. I used to find books online and go to Voltaire Books on Simonton Street to have them order the book for me. When they closed they told the newspaper most people did the opposite and they used to browse the store then order from Amazon so it's not surprising we have but one bookshop left. What amazes me is that it's Island Books staffed by the grumpiest bookseller in Christendom. I don't go there anymore so now I have to order online.

I recently had cause to call for a plumber who came on time, started the job, failed to finish and left a leak that I had to sort out by myself. That I wasn't charged was part of the business's inability to get anything done. I offered to pay for the minimal work he did but he never came back. I have seen this pattern over and over again in the Florida Keys. I went to a car lot to buy a car and the owner tried to sell me his mechanic's services for my ailing car that I wanted to replace. I went to Carmax and went back a second time and will go again next time as Carmax meets my needs exactly. We tried to buy a oat locally a few years ago. We nailed a price and when we returned to close the deal he had sold the boat and offered us a replacement at a higher price. We went north to get our boat.

It will become apparent after a few years living here that people don't come here to work, to build careers or to provide services. When you find someone who takes pride in their work you praise them extravagantly, keep them close and thank the gods for your good fortune. On top of that you learn to pray to whichever gods are available that your capable business owner doesn't plan to leave these islands soon. We rely on Oily's Car Service on Stock Island. Originally from Santa Barbara he runs an honest shop and does what he promises. Jiri is my rock when I need something done to my motorcycle and scooters. Originally from Czechoslovakia he used to have a partner who exhibited signs of Keys Disease through drinking and now he runs his shop himself.

My experience getting a trailer hitch put on my car has been more of the same. Hitch King on Big Coppitt did okay a decade ago but three years ago they hired a guy who had no idea what he was doing and I spent hours wondering what the hell he was doing in the trunk of the car. I took the "installation" elsewhere to be cleaned up and repaired! So for this car I dived online and found a shop in the southern suburbs of Miami that claimed to only install hitches. Forty one years of experience. I crossed my fingers and made a date.

I left home at 5:45 Monday morning and arrived at 8:25 five minutes before the shop opened but the owners were ready for me and fifty five minutes later, five minutes sooner than estimated, the job was done. I hitched my utility trailer later and everything worked perfectly.

The job cost $328.41 complete and unabridged. I drove three minutes off Exit 13 off the Florida Turnpike, which makes it about 115 miles from my house. That's just life when you live in an isolated community, often to get stuff done you just have to drive. Or you stay on The Rock, ride a bicycle or a moped and try not to think about what the wide world outside has to offer. I like Indian food - not available in Key West. Vietnamese? Nope. Mountains? World class museums? The Keys do what they can but these are small slivers of rock and the world is large. Luckily we are connected by a road so why not use it? Enjoy it even? Highway One is a world class tourist route and I like driving it, though I do prefer riding it actually.

Give them credit as they have been doing this for a while, he takes pride in this being his 41st year of installing hitches! I've been working at my current job eight years and that seems an age so my hat's off to them. I don't like driving pick ups so I always need a hitch to do my hauling in my little utility trailer. I'll be back next time I need a hitch installed.

Apparently a lot of car owners buy their vehicles and ask the dealer to install a hitch and I'm told they pay the price, not surprisingly. I was surprised to hear it as this place was easy to find online. I wasn't surprised that Miami area car dealers come here to get their hitches installed.

It's not a pretty spot this part of Perrine, but the two streets Cheyenne and I walked were absolutely packed with every kind of service you can imagine. Body shops, canvas shops, plumbers, welders outboard mechanics and I can't remember what. It was a gold mine of eager little businesses. I was jealous of the people who call these businesses local.

But I had the best drive home!

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A Walk Beneath The Clouds

It was hot and muggy Thursday afternoon in the Lower Keys and Cheyenne seemed happy to sleep in the house with me. She got restless as dogs do and started staring at me, her big brown eyes full of reproach, and I even though I knew it was too hot for agog in a fur coat I loaded her up and off we went.

The fact is I have myself have been feeling restless, due mostly to work where the youngsters are acting agitated as though seeking change. They too look at me with reproachful eyes as I push their shoulders to the wheel and expect them to keep doing what we do, because that's my job as I supervise the shift. They sigh and mumble how dispatchers get no recognition or respect, like spoiled children stamping their feet and crying "It's not fair!" while I, the unwilling nursery monitor stifle my exasperation. Raises, health insurance, paid time off, and an easy schedule and still the brats have the gall to complain. I'm better off walking my dog. The right wingers aren't all wrong when they moan about the modern work ethic.

It was sunny as we drove away from the house and under the blue skies I opened the sun roof in honor of the sun and enjoyed the fresh breeze blowing through the car. Cheyenne was right, it was good to get out of the house.

Cheyenne prefers urban walks but I laid down the law as this was my refreshment as much as hers so I decided it was to be a walk in the woods for a change, in nature and unlikely to meet people who are altogether too numerous in these winter months. She stepped on the trail, looked around and didn't think much of what she saw so she stopped and planted herself on the trail looking more like a bulldog than a Labrador.

I ignored her refusal to walk and kept going. Grumpily she decided a bad walk was better than none and soon she stumped past me making the best of a bad job. I liked my surroundings even if there wasn't any trash to root through, scattered by careless human beings.

These aren't summer walks when heat humidity and mosquitoes make The Great Outdoors uncomfortable.

In summer I figure she is likely to get thirsty but in winter...however this winter, when most days have been as warm as summer, outdoor boozing suits the furry walker. Besides she naturally prefers dark tannic water to the clean fresh stuff I put out for her every day.

These mysterious channels were cut by developers who saw this scrub land and figured, as one does, that there was money to be made. The problem was that...well the biggest problem were the mosquitoes. So instead of spraying Agent Orange everywhere they dug holes and filled them with fresh water and seeded them with Gambusia Affinis which is a fish that eats mosquito larvae by the ton, give birth to live fish not eggs, and swim with notable grace, they say.

Other problems overwhelmed a lot of planned development and all that's left are a few overgrown trails and these weird Gambusia canals.

By the time we got on the road black clouds were rolling in and it was clear a fast cold front was over us. It was obvious to me it was getting dark early so I turned my headlights on in the darkness, though not everyone seemed to think that was a good idea. In addition to premature darkness the front brought a little rain and blew away the mugginess, so Cheyenne liked it. I was glad to turn off the air and 65 degrees may not sound like much but it feels cold in these salty windy islands. And if not a real winter front at least it's something. A reminder of what winter used to be.

 

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Climate Has Changed, Guns Haven't

Stories about Climate Change threaten people in a way strikes terror to the core of their being. I wonder why?

I don't have children, what the Victorians called "issue," so Climate Change is somewhat remote for me. I have no children or grandchildren at stake in the future of the planet. I have twenty, perhaps thirty years more to live. In the meantime I stand on the sidelines and struggle to understand the conundrum that are my human neighbors. I love living a sea level but every day I wonder what if...Yet my neighbors who do have offspring seem oblivious.

We live on an astonishing planet that has provided a perfect living environment since the last ice age and the evidence is piling up that the climate is changing once again and likely because of human carelessness. Droughts and floods wreck crops, food prices are rising, cheap oil is harder to find, jobs are exported and our leaders don't lead. Our political systems operate by polling so whatever fantasy grandparents prefer to believe becomes national policy when backed by Big Money. Climate change threatens how we live so we pretend to ignore it. Guns kill people, so we pretend gun control isn't necessary. Honestly I don't give a toss either way. I'm not in favor of gun control because I am not afraid of guns or people with guns, but I fear dictatorship through social ignorance not because our military will turn on us. They say climate change will likely wreck our comfortable climate and leave me and my First World neighbors hungry and impoverished but still eating I hope. For Second and Third world people with fewer reserves things look much more immediate and bleak. What astonishes me is that people who do have a stake in the future don't seem to give a toss either way. I'm ready to roll up my sleeves but many of my neighbors can't even be bothered to do some light recycling never mind consider changing the course of global warming. I doubt it's all apathy, I think feeling overwhelmed is a common cause of Climate Change Overload.

If I saw parents across the US rising up in unison demanding gun controls to protect their offspring I would understand; but they don't, even following weeks of national hand wringing and crazy talk about shooting people who want to take away our guns. If parents don't feel strongly enough to speak up in favor of banning assault rifles and huge magazines why should I bother with the issue? I don't go to school, I don't have children in school I just am happy to pay taxes to support free public education for all. I wish instead of tests educators could teach people to think and reason and debate. Meanwhile on a longer scale scientists estimate sea levels will rise nine inches in a few decades though some days they tell us polar ice is melting so fast sea levels may rise much faster and much higher. Or not if you listen to those that would rather not think about these things.

Climate change is so vast and so all encompassing it seems a subject far out of reach of us ordinary mortals who go to work and live what seem to us to be modest lives. We drive, we fly occasionally for family gatherings or as relief from the daily grind, but the notion that my air conditioner is melting polar ice caps seems too remote. Life goes on and it's hard to picture a future of ecological devastation as predicted by scientists and ecologists. Yet the possibility is there and in some deep uneasy way we have all of us seen changes in the weather where we live. We console ourselves with the hope that it's an off year and next year things will go back to normal. What else can we do? That there has been no evidence of winter at all in the Keys this year seems to astonish only me.

Then there are the nutters. I have read about crackpots who claim the school shooting in New England was a plot or conspiracy or an overblown fire drill that went wrong or some other such nonsense. The 26 people who died didn't and are in the Witness Protection Program or something. In my opinion anyone who spouts such stuff should be denied ownership of guns for the rest of their lives because clearly they are barking mad. And they should be forced to write letters of apology every year on the anniversary of the shooting to the grieving parents.

And there are the climate change nutters too who deny everything and claim conspiracies and on and on. The preponderance of the evidence suggests things are changing and not in a good way. The scientists may be wrong but if they are right your offspring have a very bleak future indeed. Yet it matters not to you apparently who have offspring. If the scientists are wrong we can breathe easy but if they are right biblical famine and suffering is in store, and if you have read the Old Testament you know what I am trying to say. That we could try to make changes for the benefit of future generations seems like too much effort for too remote an outcome. That being the case I say bugger it, I'm going to enjoy the twilight years of the Industrial Revolution as best I can.

These lovely low lying vacation islands are at risk, but further afield millions risk drowning in river deltas that make up most of Bangladesh, and South Pacific Island nations make plans to evacuate to higher ground, even as China ignores the lessons learned in the 19th century and tries to pollute its way to superpower prosperity. Worst of all we cannot even discuss these issues, or potential issues, rationally. Never mind try to forge consensus on the best way to move ahead as we struggle with mighty changes in our collective future.

My solace in these trying times is to look to the past for a guide to the future and the more I do the more I realize there is nothing to be done. The cycle requires us to go through a period of fantastic prosperity, over weening pride and then collapse followed by a struggle to regain control, hard work to rebuild and so forth. Skeptics will always tell you this time it's different but history will confirm for you that it never really is. The hard part is trying to figure out which part of the cycle you and your generation is living though. Hindsight helps and in twenty or thirty years we'll be able to look back at 2008 and figure out if it was a blip on the financial radar or the beginning of the Great Depression of the Twentieth Century.

We look at Easter Island, Rapa Nui, and wonder how silly they were that alone in a vast ocean they managed to destroy the forest that sustained them, apparently in an effort to transport giant statues to honor gods that oversaw their civilization. Instead they destroyed their ecosystem and died off leaving behind a mystery and monuments to human self delusion and stupidity. I hope for the best and ignore the worst and whistle in the dark as I go about my daily habits, burning dead dinosaurs as I go.

It would be an awful shame to submerge these lovely places because it took too much effort not to. Perhaps it's the price we pay to appease the gods of our darkest innermost fears.

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The Real Keys

I was walking Cheyenne last weekend in the backwoods of Big Pine Key. As we get deeper into winter and more people show up around here it gets harder to find some outdoor space to be alone. In some fit of wild optimism I went towards the Blue Hole and found the parking lot was packed. Cheyenne weirdly enough wanted none of it, briefly sniffing in the bushes and backing up rapidly towards the car as more people clutching hydration bottles strode down the fifty foot path to the viewing platform looking as though they were seeking adventure in a place so arid there is no chance of convenience store water for a hundred miles. I looked for somewhere more remote and came up with a side street leading off into the pine woods. This truck reminded me of the character Doc Ford in Randy Wayne White's novels about Sanibel Island.

 

I know of another such operation at Bay Point, perhaps its part of this one I don't know, but when I read the novel featuring a collector of sea life I thought it sounded an impossibly unlikely career choice but there again in a world where people feel the need for indoor fish someone has to find them. I have never understood the attraction of watching fish swim around in one's living room, but there again I suppose watching a Labrador shed on your carpet is also an acquired taste...

 

 

Further up the street I came across a more conventional fishing operation, lobster traps and all.

 

 

 

There's a canal in the back with access to the channel and, like a farming operation this location won't bother residential sub-divisions. Fishing is the way most people made their living in these islands before the advent of mass tourism. Fishing has been pushed out of Key West and where these kinds of operations used to function now you'll see tourist cruises.

I like to eat fish though I heard a story on This American Life, doing the investigative reporting that strikes fear into the heart of dullard All Things Considered and the upshot of the story was that about half the fish you eat is not the fish you ordered. Indeed some restaurants serve "artificial" calamari made from unmentionable parts of a pig. That gave me pause. Even I have heard that some restaurants serve scallops made from sting rays which I find appalling. I see these small businesses and hope this reality is some insulation from the reality of fish sold under false pretences.

 

 

 

I have no desire to romanticize the life, partly because earning a living from the sea is similar to earning a living by farming, which is as hard as it can be lucrative and is always dependent on market forces and the weather, which are both out of the workers' control. As in farming where sudden frosts or floods wreck crops, in fishing cold snaps storms and so forth wreck catches, not to mention the high costs of fuel.

 

 

And yet, despite the fragility of the life and daily tasks people persist. I guess its a living for people who have trouble with school work or sitting still indoors. What appeals about it to me is that these kinds of yards, seen from Stock Island north, in ever fewer numbers, are a direct link to the past. This is the world Hemingway did write about when he wrote of Key West. These aren't mythical pirates or freebooters, these are people who live to fish and fish to live and you won't see them in Key West Bight. More's the pity I suppose, though smelly fishermen won't attract tourists. Or perhaps their authenticity or the authenticity of their catch might?

 

Cheyenne enjoyed the peace and quiet out here.

 

 

 

 

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