Ramrod Yacht Club

What an odd sign to see at the Ramrod Pool. Some great effort went into painting this sign creating a mythical yacht  club...that doesn't negotiate with terr...tourists.  I let Rusty do his thing around the edges of the pool, sniffing here and there as he went, but the Yacht Club was closed.

I quite like the pool even though sitting around drinking isn't my idea of fun necessarily, I find the people who come out here to drink and talk (loudly) are always very pleasant. Ramrod Pool attracts cars who line up after work and their occupants talk about this and that. Everyone I've ever met here has been entirely jovial and pleasant. Which to my way of thinking is a sound basis for a club.

The morning as still and flat and I rattled off a few pictures, just because I could.

A  year or two back some visitor filed complaints about people lighting a fire in a large fire ring here in the middle of the seawater drenched mangroves, and the county promptly sent out a task force to destroy the fire ring and put up signs forbidding any such fun. I remember feelings were running rather high against snowbirds at the time, and it's interference like this that gets part time people a bad name.

The fire was no kind of danger, it gave the spot a campfire feel (I liked to warm myself by the embers in the morning on cool winter days) but some body body got it banned.

Monroe County is now reviewing plans for one more gated community for the Lower Keys, an "upscale development" its backers call it, slated for the Dolphin Marina that currently serves swanky Little Palm Island. The idea is to close the marina and public launch ramp, give  a few crumbs of comfort in the form of some few cottages as low income housing "in perpetuity" (ie: until everyone's forgotten the deal) and in exchange we get more people who think they know exactly what will be good for the Keys on first acquaintance, like NO fire rings.

For now we have this lovely, undeveloped park, limestone salt water and mangroves. Rusty needs nothing more...

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An Afternoon In Raleigh

I completed my Shark Tank audition by noon and found myself in an unknown city's downtown on a muggy overcast Friday afternoon. I checked my invaluable phone and I found an old time diner which looked like my kind of place. I did manage to get lost once following the arrows on the screen, but that's nothing for this world girdling globe trotter. I sorted it out. 

It was dark and cool inside and I took a spot at the counter. My neighbor had a plate of spaghetti bolognese straight out of a 1950s cookbook, white pasta with a sauce more closely resembling chili, so I figured simple and straightforward was the way  to go. So I ordered friend trout "fresh from the ocean" which I pondered for a bit. Maybe they brought trout from the sea to this inland location. Fish on one side, fried eggplant on the other, mac and cheese in between for nine bucks. 

I was alone on this trip so I was a devil and had blueberry cobbler with ice cream which went with the decor and ambiance of this place. I expected Sam Spade to climb out of one of the booths behind me, or hear a debate between Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

I sometimes hear from people tat they don't need a smartphone and i guess  they don't if they don't leave home. I find mine invaluable and it has changed my life for the better. I love how I can look for whatever I need with a  click of the map icon.  Need lunch? Click, study the choices and get directions. Easy. I could read a book during lunch, or check the front page of the Citizen, find out the history of the Mecca...The short version being a couple of Greek immigrants opened the place in 1930 and it has flourished ever since.

 If I have this right the lady staffing the old fashioned till and helping out at the counter is the wife of the eldest son of the founders and her name would be Floye. I can't begin to imagine her dedication and though she scared me a bit she was actually really cheerful and charming, concerned mostly by the fact the day was Friday 13th. I'd have gone back to the Mecca for dinner, except I had a plane to catch.

With the phone in hand I got myself to the North Carolina Museum of Art which is a rather fabulous place free to all and worth far more than the hour I dedicated to it. I got to see pictures by Damian Stamer shown here in front of one the exhibits (from the Internet, he wasn't actually there):

I wanted to see  more of his pictures of distressed  old buildings but the exhibit had more abstracts than I wanted to see. Also on display was the work of Burk Uzzle a noted North Carolina photographer famous for his picture of a couple under a blanket at Woodstock:

But whose work I appreciated through this picture on display> I stared at it for a very long time, Jesus and a Camo Truck:

 Making pictures of ordinary America they said, a theme that appeals to me, I guess it's what I try to do on this page. So after digesting that lot (and lunch) I decided I had time enough for a short walk before catching the plane. Walking in the Umstead Park halfway to the airport made me realize how badly I have cabin fever in the Keys.

I didn't have long, perhaps half an hour, but I made the most of it under a canopy of startling green leaves.

I wished Rusty were here but he will be Up North soon enough when we take off in the car for three weeks, so I enjoyed my solitude.

It wasn't particularly cold, rather warmer perhaps than I expected and still muggy despite the sunshine that had burned off the threat of thunder and rain from dark clouds overhead.

 Local wildlife:

I followed the copious blue markers  through the woods though there was never any doubt about the location of the well worn trail through the trees:

I met a party of militaristic characters in black and camouflage clothing and was passed by a couple of joggers.

 I got one quick black and white picture before the airport beckoned and the joke was that the flight, I discovered on arrival was an hour late.

Wandering the vast hall on the way to finding a beer I spotted a couple of oddities. One was a guidebook to Cuba which was a first and on the wall in back an advertisement for Key West author Judy Blume, who is apparently much enjoyed by young people who know more of her than I do as I grew up in a different childhood world.

The flight is less than two hours but I sympathized with the young person in the seat in front who seemed to be trying to make a break for it, luckily without success.

A three hour drive through the dark and a small brown dog was waiting up to greet me with much enthusiasm. Our first separation was over 36 hours after it started.

PS I got through North Carolina without falling afoul of House Bill 2 that requires people to be gender identified before pissing or something like that. I used the family toilet at the museum and snuck into the men's loo at the airport when no one was watching. Risque  stuff.

I hope the Feds bring common sense to these poor deluded fools. 

Keys Pictures

A few pictures for which I have a certain fondness but no story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw the rather stupid graffito below and wondered why the two are supposedly separate?

 

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Postcards From The Keys

You live among the islands and the habit seems to become that of a non-observer, as though the beauty of the place should only be admired and enjoyed by visitors. I find that my dog and my camera keep the perspectives fresh. I took this picture of a palm bending in the strong east wind and by giving it a filter I suddenly turned it into a postcard from the fifties. I live around coconut palms all the time, they flap outside my deck, but everyday there is a new way to see.

In black and white the pines of Big Pine Key become shadows against a menacing skies.

I find these signs odd, at best. With the best will in the world who would decide to press into this tangle of briars to trespass? So we see these ugly plastic calls to inaction hammered into trees. Truly ugly in both sentiment and appearance.

Sunrise at Veteran's Park produces its own postcards. The only people at the beach were two travelers sleeping in a car. Rusty and I were alone with our thoughts, which suited me.

A cheerful old dude came up to Rusty and I earlier this week one evening at Boca Chica, on the public side of this fearsome fence and as he came with a large white dog, he called Angel, I held my little boy close as he was looking anxious. Rusty isn't keen still on meeting large dogs. The old man said his dog wouldn't react and it didn't even as Rusty snarled and reared back in fear. It's a struggle but I want Rusty to get used to being in the world and Angel was really sweet with him, and it was a good moment. The old guy was smiling happily. I'm going to be in the paper tomorrow, he said. I was interviewed by Mandy Miles he said. She'll do a good job, I said from my own experience. He got into his truck basking in the promise of his story being told, which as it turned out hinged on his refusal to invite Jimmy Buffett to a dock party he threw in the 1970s. A sweet story but the newspaper also pointed out, almost in passing that he will be thrown out of his home next week and as he waits for divine guidance he is just another lost soul gentrified out of the Keys.

On the beech Rusty found a bone and dug in. I sat on the tree trunk nearby and waited for him to finish, fiddling with my iPhone camera.

This was the product of the pause.

I surprise myself sometimes as I look back over the years I have lived in the Keys and the fact remains the islands still offer vistas that compel me to walk amongs them. I do miss hills, I miss perspectives from above, I wonder what these places would look like with rivers and valleys and shadows but this is what is my backyard:

I greatly enjoy the bright light of the sun over the Florida Keys. The sunrise hitting the clouds produces a black shadow at ground level.

My wife and I are preparing for a three week road trip to parts far north. Places with varied terrain and varied weather and crowds of people and mountains and all that stuff.

I will miss these flat lands, the light, the heat, the sun.

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