Museum Of...Wreckers?

When my wife looked up from her iPhone and said there was a wreckers museum in Chattanooga I thought for one confused moment he meant Key West style wreckers - people in boats rescuing people in stranded ships and claiming their cargo. In this case it's the more modern version involving tow trucks. Yup. There a museum!

This place takes the art and silence of towing vehicles very seriously. Indeed the list of those who died doing this job was astonishingly long. Who knew? And why Chattanooga?

The answer to that latter conundrum was explained in the introductory film. At the beginning of the 19th century there lived a dude by the name of Ernest Holmes who was domiciled in this fair city. Around the time of World War One (in Europe) Holmes dreamed up the genesis of the modern wrecker, in Chattanooga.

And here it was, named the 485 after the price he charged for it. Odd but true.

We were free to wander here and there as we pleased. So we did.

Owing to my total lack of knowledge of the field I thought I would add this link so you can read all about it: Home - International Towing & Recovery Museum.

This little Japanese wrecker, powered by a two cylinder engine, called a Cony ended up in the States. It got short shrift from another museum goer for whom apparently there is no substitute for size. "Good for golf carts?" he grumbled."Ford Escorts actually," my wife piped up, reading from the information sheet. He gave her a filthy look and strutted off to look at the big boys of towing. I found the identical conversation online. How weird. 1970 Cony 1/4 Ton 2 cyl.engine-Rogner's Wrecker Palatine IL. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

They also display wrecker tools.

Things have only changed incrementally; they seem to have always been pick up trucks with a crane:

This is where they get careers started:

And this is an international museum. Members belong to countries in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Australasia. The toys are British and German:

I loved this piece of craziness:

Even I could appreciate getting this truck, fully equipped up to 109 mph, such that the tires started to catch fire! Balls of steel these wrecker drivers have!

I like history, and if it's the history of towing so much the better. All I could think of was Bonnie and Clyde. Actually Chattanooga has some history in that department. This town was the scene of Machine Gun Kelly's last bank robbery. Machine Gun Kelly - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This truck puts me in mind of the era:

And the Hall of Fame, all white, mostly men, from all over the place. Key West gets no mention anywhere in the museum, unfortunately.

My wife got me a t-shirt because we really liked this place, as fascinating as it was unexpected.

Great fun. I shall never look at a tow truck the same way again.

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Paradise Blows Back

En route to bed last night I was quite surprised to find my bath tub was full of water. The water was a thick dark brown, a situation I will leave to your imagination as the picture was quite repulsive. I had to go to work at one in the morning and we found to our astonishment that no twenty four hour plumber in the Keys isn't actually available twenty four hours.... Weird that.

I've lived most of my adult life on boats so the vagaries of house plumbing and the like are a bit of a mystery to me. In conversation at work (after I washed myself at home in the kitchen sink) Shannon told me about this little square plug used as an emergency drain in the pipes. Open that and release the jam she said. This morning my wife located a septic tank dude to come and empty the tank and a plumber to snake the system, we thought. I touched nothing preferring to give the experts a chance. Silly me.

We had a meeting in town we could not avoid but the septic tank guys came by, couldn't locate the underground tank and left promising to bring a back hoe as soon as possible to dig up the yard and try to locate the errant sewage pit. "Maybe tomorrow," he said. Maybe I thought to myself. This was the best effort of a sewage tank man called Hauk famous in the Lower Keys as the best man for any septic tank job, by far. Great, this is looking good, I thought to myself. Third Generation Plumbers of Marathon came by while we were gone and they opened the fatal valve apparently. The area under the house was sprayed, forcefully by the backed up contents of the down pipe. Great. They didn't even snake the deadly mulligatawny in the bath tub, which was marinating nicely where we like to wash. So much for experts. I cleaned the tub with old towels, bleach and scrubbing. What a great day off work! Bits of toilet paper stuck to everything under the house where the experts opened the firehose valve. Used toilet paper hosed everywhere. Bleach is a wonderful thing, it turns out. Too bad the experts couldn't have used a garden hose to rinse it before it dried and stuck to everything.

We stopped by West Marine on the way home and bought a forty dollar plastic toilet seat that supposedly fits on a five gallon bucket. Line the bucket with a plastic bag and there's your emergency shitter. Designed for a boater to use on a small vessel, useful in an emergency in a house following a hurricane, or when "the experts" can't clear your septic tank. We readied it for service, though naturally the seat doesn't fit the bucket without some minor modifications... We are now ready if the toilet backs up again before the "experts" locate the missing septic tank. So much for the middle class lifestyle, bitches.

In point of fact we live with one eye on a natural disaster or a human made error cutting us off from the rest of the world. You pretty much have to if you choose to live on a ribbon of dirt in the middle of the ocean. I store gasoline in jugs against power outages. We have a fully functioning water cistern that supplies our whole house with filtered rainwater that tastes better than aqueduct water piped to the house. We keep a small generator supposedly ready at a moment's notice .... to power fans and lights in the event of a prolonged outage. We also store cans of food and some long life dehydrated crap they make in Utah for Mormons waiting for their personal rapture (true story -look it up). The test pouches don't taste too terrible if your chef uses her sauces and potions to add some zest; my wife will cook anything if she has to! Self reliance is a pain in the ass but it limits the stress of hurricane season. If we do get cut off we won't starve. Plus we now have somewhere to take an emergency crap.

Next time you call a tradesman and they show up and do the job remember it doesn't work that way everywhere in the continental US. Paradise sometimes comes down to "will the buggers show up?" Remind me of that when your driveway is covered in snow and the skies are gray and I'm gloating about my winter sunshine...

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Southern Tour 2013

It was, my wife said, her swansong before her summer teacher's break faded into history. We loaded the car, dog food, overnight bag for the hotel, picnic bag for dinners in the room, and all the little bits and pieces that make middle class road travel a pleasant break. It's my alter ego, the Family Guy, walking his family Labrador (on a pink leash as it happens) his wife carries the purse, he drives, she packs, he loads the car. He watches men riding motorcycles and wonders what that might feel like.

I have long wanted to explore Chattanooga, a city perched on a loop in the river seen from freeways curving round the bluffs and through the canyons. Cumberland Gap was a strategic pass for the generals of the Civil War, and today it's an outdoor play pen for young people with time on their hands. I wanted to see it.

Road trips require freeways and I enjoy using the car to slice and dice my way through traffic. I hug the right lane as I know 70% of tickets are given to vehicles traveling in the number one (left) lane, so I avoid that as much as I can. The car I photographed above hugged the left lane, the sole occupant slouched low behind the wheel. The tag on his Ford Fusion Sport was an enigma. Black letters on a yellow plate with no state, federal or consular ID. A freeway mystery.

Dog walks on the road are a little odd as I walk Herself where I can, parking lots empty fields, the loading zones of strip malls, wherever we are. Cheyenne doesn't much like riding the car, but she very much likes being with us, so as the week progresses she gets tired, but she is always game for a new smell and a new down town. I love listening to her snore as the lights go out in our La Quinta (dog friendly) motel room.

We usually eat a motel breakfast, nowadays they offer more protein and less pastries happily. Lunch is sought out by my wife, her iPhone and Urban Spoon and Trip Advisor. No longer do we stop at random, the Internet travels with us. S&S southern buffet in Macon, Georgia, a local landmark in a dying suburban mall.

Dinner is take out usually, but we try to eat that which isn't available on our small island home. Which we sometimes end up being reminded of in the oddest places:

Food drink and sightseeing, cheap motels, NPR on the satellite, conversations, pictures and three thousand miles later we get home. The result? We have batteries charged for another nine months of work. I like my breaks on the road and I'm lucky that I work a weird schedule so if I time it right I can take a week using not much of my accumulated leave. I don't drink ten dollar cocktails on Duval to refresh myself. I drive to Tupelo instead to spend my money!

Getting on the road is more than a vacation for me. It reminds me who I am. My mother put me on her passport when I was ten months old, and while I was born in England I was baptized in Italy. After my parents were divorced I already had my own passport and I traveled back and forth between London and Rome every vacation, a seasoned traveler at twelve years old. When my mother bought me a Vespa, partly I suspect to annoy her ex-husband who feared motorcycles, I used it to travel every vacation I was in Italy. I learned to ride every road and trail with twenty miles of my home by the time I was almost fourteen. I made roadside repairs and I reveled in the alone-ness of being out of touch. I still do.

Of course nowadays it's hard to be actually out of touch, but I like the feeling that I'm not physically present. I see things that others take for granted but that are far outside the circle of my daily life. Driving through the dappled, tree lined roads of southern Tennessee I know I'm not in Tibet, or on the Peruvian Altoplano, but I'm also not at home. I'm not in the flatlands of saltwater and mangroves. Oak trees, kudzu and trailers parked under pine trees. Brick buildings and Palladian courthouses. Rivers and mountains, might as well be Tibet, because it sure isn't the Keys.

Cheyenne liked exploring Chattanooga, not least because it wasn't the car. She doesn't see stuff like this except when we are on the road.

We ate lunch in TerraMae Appalachian Bistro | Chattanooga, TN nouvelle cuisine southern style. It was brunch actually and it was delightful.

The parchment-like menu was long and filled with classics, all served with a twist. The server was delightful, charming efficient and capable, so far removed from the usual Key West amateurs. The bill was small and Chattanooga introduced itself as a place worth seeing.

I had a breakfast bread pudding, what you or I might call a quiche while my wife had the eleven dollar Appalachian lunchable, plate of local flavors in small bites. We talked and wondered at the high price of endless summer, translucent waters and island life. Inland life seems to be so much less expensive, and a road trip reminds us of that.

Check out the tumbler with sesame seed thick cut bacon sprouting out. Pickled shrimp? Pimento cheese with feta? Those are not Key West flavors.

I like traveling The South because in part the region lives in the shadow of its past and all those stereotypes. You see a movie like The Help and imagine its set in 2013. It's not. The boom years boomed in The South too, and the electronic era brings a lot of the outside world into the quiet corners of the country. I'm pretty sure corruption and racism and nepotism rule the roost to some degree here as anywhere but for the casual visitor from another planet the South presents itself as the ideal region for a varied road trip.

This isn't the desert country of the Southwest obviously, nor is it the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, other regions I have thoroughly enjoyed. The South is its own gentle land of rolling hills, farmland, rivers and good manners. Southerners see Florida tags on a car and assume the occupants are carpet baggers. Not real Southerners, they snort. They'd be right in my case.

But there again I claim no roots anywhere much. Born in England, grew up mostly in Italy, became an independent adult in California and am slowly resigning myself to decrepitude in the Keys. The road trips remind me of my rootlessness, my pleasure in absence, my life away from where I belong.

You hear people in Key West say they never leave their island. I've heard of folks who never leave Old Town. My sisters never leave home anymore and watch the Italian seasons from their Umbrian farmhouses. I suspect it's all genetic or something, like being gay, or the color of your eyes. I find myself unable to shake the travel bug. I'm going to Italy in September so pasta and motorcycles will be on the menu next month.

The good part for me is that I like coming home. This time I have come home to news of changes at work. Next week I shall be working day shift. Not my choice but when the bosses ask, I remember I like working for the police, an environment where "No" is not an option. Besides when they need my help it's good to be wanted. I just wish it wasn't on days. Oh well. Change is good.

For the next ten days The Keys will not feature on this page. Change is good, but normal service will resume only after you travel from here to there with my wife my dog and me. William Faulkner, Vintage Motorcycles at the Barber Museum, Johnny Coley, Cooking School in Atlanta, Tea in Tupelo, Outlook Mountain, the fresh water Aquarium and the history of...auto wrecking? All will be revealed.

 

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Sewer Pipes, Grinder Pumps and Gravity

Things are getting a little odd in the world of Lower Keys sewers, a subject that doesn't  sound that enticing but that is in fact quite a story.  The story has its origins in the rather lackluster approach to keeping coastal waters clean in Monroe County from  two decades ago. Imagine a time when money flowed like water for public works and there was a plan long ago to get sewers built throughout the Keys to stop the excessive fertilization of coastal waters.  Monied interests have fought the science forever but its clear by now that agricultural runoff into Florida Bay, principally from Big Sugar has brought untold amounts of fertilizer into Monroe County waters and added to this is the fact that almost everyone in the Keys shits into septic tanks that filter the sewage through rock, not at all effectively and thus add human waste to the fertilizer mixture.  The problem with fertilizer in seawater is that it promotes excessive growth of algae which muddy the waters and deny coral the ligfe giving clarity it requires to live. All this fertilizwer is killing off the coral,

In those distant days money was available to do the sewering but county commissioners decided to postpone the work which would have involved bond issues and taxes and all that nasty stuff with the result that the situation went on long enough until the state started imnposing deadlines. Monroe County signally failed to meet those deadlines which didn't matter one jot as the state has obligingly extedend them anyway.  Nevertheless the work has started, which is a good thing. The City of Key West finished its world class sewer system a decade or more ago but Stock Island, in the county, got it's sewers about three or four years ago installed in some sort of low bid deal with a private company that made  a horrible mess of the installation, which led to toilets backing up and shit landing on many peoples' floors. So the latest round of sewer installation between Stock Island and Big Pine is being undertaken by the public utlility, Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority, which on the face of it makes sense. However...things are looking a little odd.

I recently receiuved a letter from the Aqueduct seeking my signature approving their plan to install an underground pump on my property to macerate and pump away my sewage. The idea is to put the grinder pump underground and have it force the sewage into the main line. More Than You Want To Know About Sewage Pumps.. The immediate question that comes to mind in the flood prone Keys is what happens when another storm pushes enough water on land to flood these pumps? What happens to our sewage lines when  power goes out, sometimes for days at a time, and we still need to go to the loo? And in my own mind, as a former boat owner familiar with pumps used in various onboard applications, pumps fail and designs change. What happens when all these grinder pumps start to fail at once at the end of their designed lifespan? And what about part time residents who won't use their pumps more than a few weeks a year? Theirs will fail through inactivity. The Aqueduct doesn't seem to care about these issues at all and they are planning on installing thousands of these pumps throughout the keys. Why?

I had dinner with a friend a while back and he told me a person of influence has been stockpiling these very pumps for years in a warehouse in Marathon, and my dinner companion, a ferret when it comes to public records says that's the only reason he can figure the Aqueduct is insisting on using these pumps when he believes their widespread use is not only not necessary but also harmful to the effective implementation of sewage system. Apparently the re-shuffle of the leaders of the Aqueduct may have been related to this sewage operation which my friend sdays the old director would never have countenanced. In fact I wondered at the time what the speific reason was that important people at the public utility lost their jobs and friends of Board members took their place. One word: sewage! So now there is a movement across the Lower Keys if my friend is to be believed, of homeowners who are pushing back against these infernal grinder pumps. He also says the county has sought funds promising one system while actually planning to install another and that sort of thing can invalidate the bond issues. How is it possible the county, overseeing the funding, could be so dense? Surely it can't be true says I.

The per-household charge for the new system is $4500 which can be added to a twenty year mortgage payment to spread the cost and its just over half the amount Islamorada will charge it's residents according to the newspapers. I have to say the cost bothers me a lot less than the idea that unecessary pumps, likely to fail, may be used where none are needed. My friend who has experience in these matter says a gravity system using fewer and larger pumps will work fine.

                                

How odd it is that I see a popular revolt growing in these islands, not on matters of urgent national debate like abortion, taxes or gun rights, but on the subject of sewage and how to manage it. Local politics, what a scene.

Vacuum Sewage System Benefits

The Joy Of Grinder Pump Maintenance and Failure

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