From The Archives, Key West & Santa Cruz

2011 doesn't seem so long ago but already three years have gone by...how many pairs of pink Crocs have I worn out since then? My half price do anything footwear that I first wore as a dare from my wife years ago and now I wear out regularly in pursuit of my dog on her walks...

The old Seven Mile Bridge is only open to pedestrians and bicycles today as the authorities plan a seventy seven million dollar make over for he one hundred year old bridge:

The bridge tender who died in a propane truck accident in 1981 as the new high span bridge was planned to replace it:

I was reminded of the Seven Mile Bridge history as I looked at pictures of a day out in Marathon, Chuck and I rode one day. His Harley was on Craigslist and now he has a classic Suzuki for his new life, not in Key West: It's Better in Bisbee | Living on the edge…

There we went overseas on the bridge. I cannot imagine living swapping turquoise water for parched desert hills...

The Florida beach life puts in an appearance in Spring in Key West:

Cheyenne likes life at the water's edge even if she doesn't swim:

And seeing sailors heading up our canal driving their catboat through a summer shower puts me in mind of the pleasures of sailing:

In Key West the supermarket downtown is a symbol of things that don't change. Fausto's Food Palace, the social gathering spot epitomizes my notion that despite gentrification and change Key West is still here for us.

It's Spring so chicks this year in 2014, as then in 2011 are being raised in the streets by their clucking broody mothers.

In the Spring of 2011 my wife and I returned to the home of our youth to help bury the woman who could have been my wife's grandmother, she had that kind of influence on us. I spoke a few words to remember Bernice Belton and the grinning face behind me in the picture below is that of the past and likely future Mayor of Santa Cruz, perennial activist, Mike Rotkin. The self described feminist-socialist would be a paragon of the so-called looney left most places in the US, but in The People's Republic of Santa Cruz he has come under suspicion for selling out to business interests on the right, in some of his city council votes... And he is a car-free avid motorcyclist, so on that basis alone he should get my vote!

Many people view the California coast with awe, the foaming surf on the jagged rocks, the cliffs falling into the waves, the low dark clouds, all the drama of a roiling ocean crashing onto an immutable coastline...

...and this part of the world has its own beauty, for sure. Monterey Bay is spectacular.

I met Tim in Dekray Beach in 1981 and we are still in touch. He has always had a hankering to be in the tropics but he loves Hawaii, not Florida. But his high tech work keeps him living on his boat in Sabta a Cruz, cold bad foggy, a life that got to me after twenty years.

Rick was my next door neighbor when I first moved into my boat in the Santa Cruz harbor. He taught me lots about living on a boat and he still does, part time. I met him in 1984.

Santa Cruz and Key West share some things, aside from both bring more or less snow free...homeless people throng to Santa Cruz where they debate, just as Key West debates what to do...

Downtown has no cruise ships in the California university town and they manage to make Pacific Avenue look pretty on a sunny Spring Day, rather prettier in my estimation than Duval Street.

But a summer day here that tops 80 degrees is considered an unsupportable heat wave and most home don't have sir conditioning though they do have heat. When I visit even in summer I find myself wearing socks to bed as fifty degree July mornings are not uncommon.

But under the palm trees socks are only worn for work.

Coconuts are a nuisance mot an exotic, as they produce tons of fronds that need cleaning up and the nuts fall and debt cars...and heads.

Key West, hot sunny and timeless.

I feel lucky to have lived on both coasts and enjoyed both and to have landed on this side for what seems likely to be the last leg of this momentary adventure we call Life.

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Walking And Planning

I have been preoccupied with impending changes at home but life for Cheyenne continues as normal. She used to get anxious when we packed bags but nowadays cardboard boxes filled with the debris of ten years of life and scattered round the house don't seem to bother her much at all. We walk as always when I get back from work in the morning.

She chases scents while I think about changes to come. We probably won't visit the Ramrod Pool as often but we are only moving a few miles up the road and Cheyenne does love this spot. During the day, especially in winter, people bring their dogs. So first thing in the morning there are lots of fresh smells for my favorite Labrador.

One of the sad things about this move is that we won't miss our neighbors at all. Even my gregarious wife has failed to find any redeeming qualities among residents of our street. To live on a street for a decade and to be glad to shot of your neighbors seems wrong somehow. We already have one person we know on our new street so I can only imagine how my wife will spread that around!

We had thought about moving to Key West, a move I faced with dread as I like living in the Lower Keys, away from the crunch of urban life in the city. However I had thought my wife might like the proximity to her social life but her friend recently moved into town and she said she doesn't find it does much for her access to their friends... So we both agreed to stay out in the suburbs as it were and I am glad.

You get more home for your money, parking isn't an issue and jets aren't flying over your house to land at the airport all day long. Homes tend to be better equipped with stuff like windows that close, central air, room to store your stuff and all those modern conveniences. I find people tend to put up with a lot to live in Key West, especially Old Town, in homes with no offsets, funky designs, poor construction and amazingly high prices to buy or rent. We get central air, parking, privacy, room to store our crap and a dock, a rather bigger nicer dock than we have at our old home. Our lifestyle won't change much...

Cheyenne seems to like the new place though as you can see the changes scheduled to take place over the next few weeks don't seem to phase her much. She is useless at packing boxes too, though I'm not much better so my wife packs and I carry, or I will when we get access to the new place.

We will be sad to say good bye to our cute treehouse; we still wish Wells Fargo would have modified our mortgage but I always tell my wife it was better that we had to go through this forced sale as not everyone is asadaptable and able to cope with change as we are. And Cheyenne is along for the ride, good girl.

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The Seven Year itch

We moved into our current home in January 2005 and spent almost half our married life here. Next month that all changes.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—

Of cabbages—and kings—

And why the sea is boiling hot—

And whether pigs have wings."

In some near future whose date has not exactly been decided yet we will be exchanging our small one bathroom home (above) for a rather larger 2-bog home on Cudjoe Key (below). At the same time we abandon our rather fraught relationship with mortgage servicer Wells Fargo bank in exchange for a rather pleasant man and his wife who live in Miami and own the pink palace we are soon to call home.

We have been asking the bank for a mortgage modification for half the decade we have lived on Ramrod Key and Wells Fargo bank has steadfastly refused so the net result is we have to clear the decks and get on with our lives. I have to say the promise of the HAMP modification program trumpeted by our Fearless Leader in the White Man's house has borne no fruit at all so the news that the Federal government is finally seeking to prosecute Big Banks comes as a big whoop-de-do. Especially as Wells Fargo has modified precisely 0.65% of its home loans, which could lean an ex-home owner to think President Obama has accomplished a big fat zero on that front as well as so many others in his career as Leader of the Indentured World. Happily though Wells Fargo did get a 65 billion dollar hand out from us tax payers when they were on the verge of collapse in 2008, not that that entitles us serfs to any consideration of course.

And yet as annoyed as I am by a kangaroo court system that is loaded against the laboring sods at the bottom of the heap there is a sense, underneath the irritation, of a promise of relief, a feeling that we have shed a relationship that would have aggravated me for another twenty years, likely the last decades of my life. Scientists will tell you it's rubbish but I do like the myth that at the end of every seven years all the cells in your body have replaced themselves. Yes yes I know brain cells are never replaced and those abundant fat cells take ten years, but there is something rather reassuring in imagining that every seven years we are fresh humans inside our skins. Even if, in fact, it's the same old me beavering away at not letting the daily news cycle irritate the shit out of me.

I sent away to Her Majesty's Passport Office last month to renew my status as a citizen of the European Union, and duly got my biometric travel document back, along with a promise that Her Britannic Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is going to keep an eye out on me and requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty that I be allowed to pass without let or hindrance and be afforded such assistance and protection as may be necessary. It is a sentimental document more than a practical travel paper for me these days, but looking at it I realize than in ten years I shall replace it one more time and then most likely that will be it. For the final journey no passport required, certainly not the back up citizenship of one's distant childhood. I can see the curtains flapping in the wings getting ready to be drawn on one more life lived as well as one was able.

Meanwhile I had to take a more prosaic journey into The Heart Of Darkness to get the utilities switched on in our new residence-to-be. I am always grateful I do shift work and at night so I get lots of weekdays off in which to take care of the daily tasks... How do 9-to-5 workers get this stuff done?

Key West was hot and sticky under a summer sun in April. "I wonder what hurricane season will bring?" My wife had asked speculatively the night before over dinner. "I hope the landlord is ready," I replied smugly released at last from that economic burden of home ownership worry each summer. Our ten years of prompt bill paying made the opening of a new account simple enough, and I mostly had to wonder at the patience of those forced to sit and deal directly with customers and paperwork all day in an office without windows. I feel lucky I work at night, on a weird schedule with lots of random days off here and there for that reason too, my work is varied. Turning on the water faucet is critical work but I'm glad I don't have to figure out how it's done. Civilization grinding through a computer program:

I am fifty six this year, a number divisible by seven, in my eighth seven-year cycle of life and change is in the air. My patient wife is packing boxes, "our" underwater house will be sold Monday and by next month we will be scratching the itch in this new cycle of life in a new home. Cheyenne already likes the cool tile floors and my wife is delighted by the two bathrooms in the new place. "This cabinet is for you" she said carefully showing me round "my" bathroom. I am the neat freak in the family so I am nothing loathe about not having to pick my way through her unguents and lotions to find my toothbrush anymore.

On my journey from gas company to water company to electrical services I passed by this superbike from my youth parked near Eaton Street. I stopped and wound down the window. An old survivor, looking lovely. When I was eighteen the R90S by BMW was the sport tourer to lust after. Today it looks as sophisticated as a bicycle next to modern computerized rocket ships. To my rheumy old eyes this is how a sport tourer should look:

BMW R90S - Classic German Motorcycles - Motorcycle Classics

 

The Aqueduct had been a slow process and I hoped that Keys Energy could meet their own self-imposed deadline to get my new service fired up. Notice how they only serve the unemployed (and night shift workers):

It didn't look good as the nice lady studied my rental agreement. At least she immediately grasped my correct address on first careful reading of said document. I patiently read my magazine and the process wended its way to its inevitable conclusion after I produced my rental agreement dated May 15th and they got idiotic verbal confirmation by phone from the landlord to start service yesterday...idiotic because I went by the house on my way to work yesterday, two hours after they promised to fire up electrical service and of course there was not one living electron in the house at Cudjoe Key. Her Britannic Majesty got me a new passport with less fuss, on time, and with all particulars carried out by website and postal services with greater speed and accuracy than this lot could do by sucking up my time with a personal visit during regular people's working hours. I wish Her Majesty's Passport Office managed electrical hook ups around here.

Let's face it, the bailing wire and duct tape electrical hook ups never look completely 21st century to me at the best of times:

But in point of fact black outs are far less common than they were a coupe of decades ago when I was in my prime and the utility was not. All change should be good I remind myself, as my wife summons up her house decorating magic and sorts out her lists of people who have been nice, for the inevitable house warming party. Then hopefully a carefree summer of inexpensive boating from our new and enormous boat dock on our new canal at our carefree rental home. As long as Cheyenne is happy.

Try as I might I cannot imagine where I might be in seven years, most likely here or near here, doing the same thing wondering where the last decade flew to in the rear view mirror.

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Bat Tower

Technically it's also known as Perky's Bat Tower but for most people who even known about it, it's the weird wooden tower on Sugarloaf Key next to the airfield.

The Bat Tower has been on the register of historic places since 1982 and as far as I know it is one of three such structures left in the United States, the two others are in Texas, but this here one in the Keys is unmarked, unloved and unnoticed at the end of a short paved road that leaves Highway One next to the Sugarloaf Lodge and strikes out north toward the Sugarloaf Airfield.

 

Not much has changed since my last recorded visit here on the Bonneville, but I guess slowly and certainly the wooden tower must be deteriorating... Key West Diary Bat Tower 2009 

Richter Clyde Perky was the name of the developer who had this structure trucked down and assembled here in 1929. It was supposed to house bats that would fly around and eat the mosquitoes that plagued Perky's plans for development of Sugarloaf Key. The bats were duly installed inside the tower but they were not happy and flew away.  Development did not happen, at least until the development, post World War Two of cheap air conditioning and the tower remains as a monument to what might have been.

 

It's too bad actually as bats really are excellent insect managers as they eat them by the ton and their presence would be a boon in places like this, but modern histrionics make it seem like bats really do suck blood and get tangled in peoples' hair so they get no credit for any good they might do.

 

There's an osprey nest  on top and every year it gets bigger as ospreys come back to their nests and add twigs every year. I did not see any this visit but they like to nest high up so the tower is perfect for their purposes, if not for bats.

I did mention the tower is close by the airstrip and as we stood in the shade underneath the tower we could hear a sudden flapping noise in the sky above and a couple of parachutes came flinging themselves through the sky at the tree line that masks the airstrip. Its a popular past time around here that I think is far more reckless than riding a motorcycle.

I will keep returning to Perky's Folly until all that is left is a pile of disassembled shingles.

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Not Greece

Summer heat and a few pictures, taken at my favorite spot where land meets water in a public place. They've renamed West Summerland Key, which is sensible as the main Summerland Key, the one with the post office on it, is well west of here. Trouble is they renamed it Scout Key as there is a scout camp on this largely uninhabited island, but the girl scout camp is called ironically enough "WESUMKEE"  an abbreviation of the old name for the island. I call it Homophobe Key because change annoys me, even though the Girl Scouts don't seem to give a toss one way or another about lesbians. Women it has to be said as usual are ahead of the men and the male scouts need to get with the program too.

There is this old pump station  sitting sturdily and emptily next to the old water main installed in 1942 to serve the expanding military needs in Key West, a city that had till then  survived by rain and cistern. Someone has been clearing out the rubble in the old structure and though there was evidence this place had been left abandoned too long  the rather unpleasant contents of this impromptu latrine have been removed with no trace left behind, much to my astonishment.

Cheyenne took stock of the clean room and thought the breeze was cool.  The old toilets in the other room are cemented up and the whole place was actually quite spiffy which I found mildly heartening. People come to fish in these lonely places and they seem never to have learned  how to spend the night in the wilderness and leave no trace. This place has been too fouled up to try to enter in the past. I wonder what's going on? Is gentrification coming to my undeveloped backwater of a non-beach? 

 This funky building reminds me of so many crude structures left behind by humans around the world, places once thought to be critical and now abandoned. I wonder when I look at this stone cube how people lived here and how lonely it must have been alongside a narrow road in the middle of nowhere with no facilities to speak of. A pretty enough spot I suppose but Robinson Crusoe comes to mind. Cheyenne looked around and found nothing of interest which I took to be a good sign.

Afternoon temperatures have been hitting ninety degrees and its too hot for furry Labradors to be out and about unless the wind is cooling things down. I sat outside for a while  and contemplated the beauty of the scene. I love summer in the Keys and watching the sun sparkle on the water was a reminder that getting out on the water is a priority this year.

I am not going to Europe this year and that decision has saddened me. Finding a Greek island in my backyard is some sort of compensation.

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