Key West African Cemetery

It's on the National a Register of a Historic Places and it has been for the past two years. I came out here on a recent lunch break, looking to get some quiet after hours of taking 911 calls. In 1860 the African slaves washed ashore here needed help and they got what you might expect at a time when thousands of Americans were dying to maintain the peculiar institution.

 

Technically they were refugees freed from American slave ships en route to Cuba, and intercepted by the U S Navy. Dumped in the beach the only person available to help turned out to the Postmaster, the senior Federal representative in the city, which was in Union hands throughout the Civil War.

1400 people were rescued and 1100 were returned to Africa, which is a big continent so they were not exactly returned home. 295 they say died here and were ploughed into the ground and forgotten. It is not an edifying story unhappily.

At the beginning of this century ground penetrating radar located some of the forgotten bodies. As a result they built and dedicated this spot to remember the fiasco. African Burial Ground at Higgs Beach

It's hard to imagine the unutterable misery of people ripped from their homes and packed like sardines for weeks at sea to spend the rest of their lives treated as cattle. How they stayed alive and didn't go mad is beyond my comprehension. Especially as the white people who owned them had so little regard for people who worked so hard on so little food to a degree most of their owners could never manage.

It was a humid windy night in this suggestive place and I have to confess it was not as relaxing as I had hoped. Frankly I started to get a bit creeped out as the shadows danced and the wind moaned and a lone cyclist crept up on me and startled me out of my skin with a polite "Good morning!"

I went back to the lights and the strong locked doors of the police station.

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A Basket In The Reeds

Another brilliant commentary by Tim Egan, a cartoonist in Santa Cruz California.

A Day Of Rest

It's hot in August, too hot for long walks. So sometimes we sit in puddles and contemplate the meaning of life.

 

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Saddle Bunch Keys

A few pictures of that empty stretch of Highway One between Big Coppitt and Sugarloaf Key.

The highway runs through water and a drive here reveals some lovely views.

A walk on the elaborately built bike path and the old Flagler Bridges does the same.

Still solid, more than a hundred years old.

The water is too thin for fishing so there was no abandoned bait for Cheyenne to vacuum up.

Twisted mangroves versus solid human achievement:

In the long run the mangroves win.

 

I took this the next driving into Key West early, the sun rising at my back.

Every day, same road, many different moods, and thus never boring.

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Lobstering In The Keys

Lobster mini season is over for another year and the boats and trailers are lining up on the Overseas Highway like the army in retreat that they are. Summer used to be a time of quiet in the Keys but the distinction between the traditionally busy winter tourist season and contemporary summer tourism is shrinking. Every weekend sees some new activity to maintain interest in these islands, Hemingway, silly boat "regattas" or trinket festivals and "celebrations" of food and drink; all amalgamate into one long tedious summer of not sitting still and thinking. Silent contemplation has fallen into disfavor unhappily.

Now that outsider amateurs have had their two day lobster rape romp the serious business of commercial lobstering starts up next week and continues through March. Mini season this year saw one woman killed and another critically injured in a boat accident, but the numbers of illegally caught lobster cannot be counted, there are not enough law enforcement officers around to keep thoughtless amateur lobster hunters on the straight and narrow.

I came home quietly, I thought, after another night at work, however I suspect Cheyenne heard the Bonneville pull up under the house. The motorcycle isn't what wakes her as she knows what time I am due home, and yesterday I was twenty minutes late so she was wide awake. I crept quietly into the house planning to wake her on her bed when I realized she was outside, around the corner, listening for my footfall. She was pleased to see me despite my childish deception. Dogs are very forgiving that way:

In the heat of summer she loves her early morning walks but where to take her is a daily question. Yesterday we crossed one bridge from Cudjoe Key and I settled on Horace Street as a short walk with lots of things to interest a curious Labrador.

And then I remembered lobster season. Commercial fishing reminds me of farming, inasmuch as it is often a family business that puts its practioners close to nature. Like farmers, fishermen are constantly bitching about the weather and market prices. Similarly a bumper crop tends to be universal so when the harvest is abundant the price drops and conversely the price leaps when the harvest is sparse, leaving fishermen and farmers in a constant state of anguish. It seems like a horrible life to me but they love it.

I don't know if fishermen actively envy other practioners of their craft in distant places, but after our summer road trip to Maine I wonder if a Maine lobsterman shrouded in summer fog, surrounded by vicious random rocks, dealing with horrendous tides and freezing July waters envys the easy life of a lobster hunter in the Florida Keys. Gentle winds, modest tides, only occasional thunderstorms while fishing in your underwear... It sounds much nicer to me to be down here. Less heroic perhaps, but more bearable if fish chasing is your bag.

I have heard a great deal of noise about how vastly superior clawed Maine lobster are, over scrawny little crawfish plucked from Florida waters. Therefore when in Maine we tried lobster rolls hither and yon, small lumps of sweet bread split down the middle and filled with cold lobster and mayonnaise. The sample shown below cost eight bucks in Portland Maine eaten outdoors on a hot 70 degree afternoon just last month.

It must be obvious that I am no connoisseur of lobster but I can only say I can't taste the difference. Furthermore it may just be a function of my perverse nature but in a society that claims lobster as the most desireable food in the world I just don't get it. Fish yes, but making a lot of noise about lobster makes no sense to me. As with sushi I will eat it but as an expensive delicacy it is wasted on me.

Happily for commercial lobster hunters I am alone in my disregard for these expensive animals, so all the work that goes into hammering together these one way traps, adding a plastic license, attaching polypropylene line, painting your own float a distinctive color and setting this traps out all over every inch of navigable water is labor not wasted.

Though to hear them say it the harvest is not bountiful, the price is low, diesel is expensive, blah blah blah.

It's nasty messy work retrieving the pots from time to time and checking for occupants and re -aiting the cage with decaying chicken parts, the more pungent the more attractive to the crustaceans they say.

Female lobsters carrying eggs are not supposed to be taken during mini season, but every year some dolt is caught with a lobster carrying the distinctive gray sacs, promise of the birth of a new generation.

It's a huge industry in islands populated by no grumpy farmers. Restaurants sell lobster, tourists eager to join the recherché ranks of the well-to-do order them by the barrow load and so much money changes hands. I bought live lobster tortured on ice in a fishmonger's once and released them back into the wild. I hope they lived. When we were sailing the relatively unfished waters of Central America we would return from snorkeling expeditions and tell our fellow sailors turned hunters we saw no lobster over there. I hope they lived too. But it's a brutal world and we all have our place in the chain.

I understand the need for commercial lobstering, a solid livelihood for people willing to undertake hard labor, make good money without an advanced education, and to be their own bosses. But the amateur hunt every year, sanctioned only by the Chambers of Commerce, the trade union of shopkeepers, must have run its course.

People ask me why I don't go fishing, ironically living in one of the best places in America in which to chase fish. Because I say, I don't like to pit my wits against fish and lose the struggle. In my life I have shot and killed things, suffocated fish and seen commercial slaughterhouses and eaten pork and chicken that I had previously seen alive. I have tried vegetarianism and contrary to rumor I did not feel well, and nor did anybody else if forced to spend any time in an enclosed space with me. I eat meat but I prefer at this stage not to hunt and kill and disembowel it.

In the end I prefer to pay someone who depends on hunting and gathering for a living to get me my fish, and to use my boat or my friends' boats for recreation, ie exploring or finding swimming holes.

And then I think of ice fishing, sitting, for fun, on frozen water dangling a line through a hole in the ice in freezing temperatures. That's when I remember that people who fish are irrational, mad even, and denying them the chance to chase lobster once a year might have harmful consequences. Never argue with a madman especially one armed with a tickle stick, a net and a mad suburban gleam of bloodlust in his eye.

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Entropy Key West Style

"Entropy,"  what a strange word ent-rope-eee. I think of it as meaning a process whereby a complex system reverts to its  component parts. Imagine a car  rusting away to nothing like the old truck on Tarpon Belly Key...a pile of  rust vaguely shaped like a transmission or an engine block.  Scientists have all sorts of complex explanations about heat and energy in a closed system or some such stuff.

 To me the former Finnegan's Wake Irish pub is lurching into a state of entropy. The Irish flag is washed out such that it appears to be more a symbol of surrender than a connection to the "motherland." Never a particularly shiny  bright building, these days Finnegan's seems to be held together more by dirt particles than building materials. 

I miss it. I am surprised how much I sill miss the place, dark corners, draught beers and weird Irish food.

There is an architect's  sign in the window so one day I shall ride by and find construction under way and some new horror  will replace the familiar. However I've heard on the grapevine that current plans may call for an Irish pub in similar form to be restored at this location as an experiment to see how well it goes. I can hardly believe it. Entropy will likely  be reversed.

I struggle to picture myself dismantling a toilet in my house and then plonking the object on the sidewalk. Some people seem to do it all the time. I'd venture a guess hardly a week goes by in key West that something like this isn't parked on the sidewalk. I try to see it as a blow against gentrification, but all I see in fact is inconsiderate neighbors making the town look shabby. Cheyenne thoroughly approved of the sidewalk trash. I was tempted to put a "Free To A Good Home" sign on the commode, but we kept walking as soon as she lost interest. 

If you can ever gain some altitude on Key West and you look down on Old Town you will see a lot of greenery. On the ground it can look as shaded as Elgin Lane. another form of entropy trying to restore the natural order of things:

Commodes aside, this is how  a properly antique Old Town is supposed to loo to attract  visitors. No entropy here:

A  Land Rover in Key West. With gas prices hovering around four  dollars a gallon, one US dollar per liter, one might imagine allowing an old four wheel drive gas guzzler like this to return to kits natural decomposing state.   The beauty of Key West is that you don't usually have to drive very far and even if  four wheel drive is unnecessary and the old Land Rovers are  a handful to drive, so what? Its not my cup of tea but someone obviously cherishes this rather fine example of the worlds most  rugged vehicle.Good luck finding a local mechanic though. I generally dont recommend exotic cars for people who want to live in the Lower Keys. And then my wife gets a Fiat, and loves it!

 Stump Lane looking properly key West, with everyone's ideal of a Conch cottage and a cruiser bicycle, proper wheels for this little town.

 This is actually an old Florida louvered window  painted to look like wood. Very witty:

 These too are lovely old fashioned louvered windows with frosted glass:

 And here, behind the entropic vegetation we see a classic Bahama shutter:

 It has been hot lately as measured by my car at dusk one recent day:

 90 degrees is a bit on the hot side  for a night in Key West but I'll take it with joy compared to a place  where 70 degrees represents a hot summer day.

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