The Benefits Of Dog

My wife says I am much harder to live with when I don't have a dog so it was inevitable that we would be dogless for not very long. That we were dog-free for less than two weeks came as a bit of a surprise but that's what happened. The decision to get a dog requires some planning as one has to expect the new arrival to require training and supervision. In that we are lucky as we work opposite shifts and the new dog is rarely home alone.

In a country where millions of animals are euthanized for want of homes every year I cannot conceive of paying to buy a dog from a breeder or worse a pet store. Some people say abandoned dogs are damaged goods, though from my experience the humans dumping the dogs are more likely to be damaged. Dogs tend to be grateful animals and have long memories so the kindness you show them tends to have a longer lasting impact.

Rusty answers to his name, comes when called almost always, has stopped chewing his leash and no longer catnaps with one eye open all the time. My wife calls this picture she took of a soundly sleeping dog: "Rusty practicing for Cirque du Soleil."

I overcame complaints that Rusty doesn't sit in puddles as Cheyenne used to by taking him for a long enough hot enough walk that the temptation was too much and he yielded to the need to cool off:

He is everything I want in a dog and I've had him six weeks. A few months ago he was ending a year long spell if not longer as a street dog in Homestead so the argument that abandoned dogs are damaged is not one he lives by. He doesn't run away because he likes being at home. In the morning he bounds down the stairs and charges into me, as happy as ever to see me.

He gets me out of the house, we walk and he makes me power walk as he is young and active. He is learning to walk on a leash and though his pace is awkward as he reacts to every sound around him, we are getting to know each other.

I ended a recent walk at Five Brothers on Ramrod Key where the line was unbearable. Had I not called ahead I'd have given up as the crush was too tight in the grocery store. As it was my wife stopped off for coffee to her way to work in Marathon and noticed the lunch special so I was under particular instructions to bring home dinner...so I had to suffer the lines.

It was worth the wait as Cubans have a particular way with oxtail. And I like boiled yucca too. Rusty quite likes oxtail bones too it turns out, so his wait for me to finish buying lunch was worth it.

Rusty's rescuers estimated his age at 4 which means I can hope to get perhaps a dozen more busy years out of him, I'd like to think. After Rusty I imagine I may have time for one more dog before it's my turn to be put down, not the dog's so I am hoping to make the next decade worth while for both of us.

In June we are planning a three week road trip with Quebec City as our northernmost point so I have to get his passport ready from the vet and get him ready for long rides, cool days and cold nights and different kinds of woods to walk in. I expect he will have no problem adapting, because travel is now his fate and if we do get to retire as we are supposed to he will get to se more of the world than he ever expects to. I hope he likes it.

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Firefly Restaurant

I suppose when we asked ourselves why we haven't been here before its a combination of things. We liked Colombian Grace that was here before and when it became Firefly early reports were mixed. That happens a lot in any new restaurant and it's unfair. It turns out it was also stupid on our part to not put Firefly on our list of places to eat. 

We  got outside seats over looking Petronia Street, and it was  a perfect evening to eat al fresco overlooking Petronia Street:

My wife had a cider with her dinner and because I wasn't working I had a glass of Mama's Little Yella Pills, (seriously) by Oskar Blues, a name so complicated I'm not sure I'd know how to order it again without a cheat sheet. I had to Google "Yellow Beer Oscar" to find the page wherein they describe their beer as I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called. It was a not hoppy real lager and quite pleasant. 

The menu is a mixture of familiar and not so familiar and even though "modern Southern" cooking is as tired a cliche as any the food is interesting on paper.

My wife always orders friend green tomatoes, always, and sometimes I end up sharing flavor-free discs of rock hard vegetable coated in some weird plastic breading but in this instance things were quite well done:

The crab beignets sounded too weird to pass up and they came with one of those salad afterthoughts that was actually quite bracing and delicious. The beignets themselves were balls of fried crust containing a soft gooey mixture of something creamy that tasted of crab. Decidedly unusual (for me) and quite delicious. The beer was, as they advertised, slightly cloudy.

Nick (left) and I have been working together for several years now at night. Dustin (studying the menu) is new to Key West but experienced in dispatch and as I am currently overseeing his training and testing my work life is rendered quite easy.He is also a good dinner companion. 

JW told us to taste his mac and cheese and duck wings. In the distance we shared pimento cheese with those tediously fashionable benne wafers, dry flaky things that barely could sustain the pimento cheese without crumbling. I'd have preferred old fashioned water biscuits but what do I know?

When the mac and cheese grabs your attention and the pimento cheese is as good as you've had and duck wings in buffalo sauce is delicious, why wouldn't you come back? For the bacon wrapped meatloaf perhaps that Nick enjoyed with brussel sprouts...He said firmly it was good.

 Dustin was positively enthusiastic about his low country gumbo.

 JW used to work with me but he's moved to another city department with civilized daytime hours and I miss him very much, He has children so 911 dispatch is a hard life. Besides he's pretty cool.

Colombian Grace was a good place but apparently things didn't work out with the landlord or something and we lost an interesting South American cuisine. The interior was much as it is now and I remember it fondly. I am also glad I have a modern iPhone camera for my pictures nowadays. 

And their extraordinary creamy fish chowder covered in molten cheese: 

But you know what? Firefly is just fine, not as a replacement but in it's own right. The food was great, the service was excellent attentive and cheerful and patient but not intrusive and we all want to go back. My other colleague unable to show up (someone has to answer 911) texted me she was madly jealous of our dinner out. 

For myself I'd like a gooey dessert or a cobbler or a crisp in a place like this. Key Lime cake sounded good to me but I got voted down and cheesecake isn't tempting enough after the wild and delicious combinations we had tasted. The view across the street was quaint, characteristic, a little run down and peaceful.

 If you get a chance you need to try this place out. I'm going back.

Southernmost Cabanas

A life in Key West's modest little cottages can sometimes spill out untidily as the homes though pretty are small and not always designed with the practical in mind. 

A lot of visitors like the slightly down-at-heel appearance of this town which still lays claim to a slightly off kilter reputation, a place where vice flourishes and those on the run come to seek cover. It's mot really like that but the story is good and who wants to spoil it?

Well it turns out there are people who think homes built "in the Key West Style" are a good compromise between the gritty reality of life in a  Conch Cottage and the modern desire fo convenience and cleanliness and order.

So outside the fence trash cans and dust and messy street signs litter the way. Inside the fence will rise a fabricated community, a kind of community, of neat clean and well appointed homes of a certain style.

Outside the fence where working Key West struggles to make ends meet.

Inside the fence where intruders bring color until they crow at four in the morning and wrench the visitors from their slumbers.

I found the sign slightly ironic wondering who exactly it is that is trespassing...The land used to be owned by the Catholic Diocease which sold it to pay legal bills incurred by people make claims against the church in the sex scandals of note of years past.LINK

So trailers for the working class are gone and homes for people who need a second home in Key West are here. 

The trend is unstoppable it seems. Rusty and I keep walking.

Then And Now In Black And White

I found some few pictures of old Key West like this one below and I was pondering the nature, not only of Key West in its picturesque decrepitude in another era, but also that of the effect of photography without colors. Once it was the best and most cost effective  way to record the world, but nowadays monochrome is a way to give feeling and depth to the mundane (!).

Perhaps I exaggerate but that's the effect my playing around with the black and white settings has on me:

 Black and white imparts distance in a photograph. Color gives immediacy.

This is the ferry terminal in Key West where the Coast Guard station is today. Freight cars were loaded directly onto ferries equipped with rails. Human passengers crossed the platform to walk onto the ships:

Even earlier we see the fishing fleet in Key West Bight where modern fiberglass toys float and bob. The fleet back then looks remote and austere in black and white, but I have no doubt that iof seen in color it might closely resemble the commercial fleets on Stock Island today, in their rough and tumble glory. 

The old county jail on Fleming Street in this famous picture showing the overcrowding and squalor of the facility. As remote as the clothing pitcured.

And here a cloudy moody Keys sky, the same then as today made interesting by the color washed away.

Yardie Spice Revisited

                                    

It's a bit disturbing I confess. We are creatures of habit so when we plan a ride home from Miami we stop in Homestead at Krome and Flagler and pay JP a visit. Every time we stop by and don't explore choices. It's that good. Or perhaps it's just different, Caribbean food, this time offered with of all things, polenta...

                                         

He always has a good word for his customers ( and spicy hot sauce as needed) while his better half in back churns out Jamaican and Haitian cuisine respecting his and her heritages.

                                          

The food includes empanadas which we like to eat seated at the bar in the window looking out on Krome Avenue. Made with thick pastry-like crusts, deep fried and filled with meat or vegetables. Or small Jed herring-what I knew as kippers growing up in England. The English eat them as breakfast food with eggs but we got our herring in pastry as the weirdest smoked fish empanada that worked remarkably well.

                                           

Yardie Spice is a hopping joint. Curried goat, oxtail, jerked pork, all Caribbean Classic dishes. Accompanied by rice and peas and fried plantains. And a pile of polenta as well.

                                             

Eating at home is good but you do kind of miss out on the Jamaican vibe at Yardie Spice, watching JP charm his customers while feeding their bodies. Many giggles.

                                               

Another successful punctuation to a mainland trip. Rusty, by the way was perfect, in and out of the car.

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