Rusty Four Years On

Four years ago today I drove up to the Homestead Petco around ten o'clock on what was  a Friday morning. This Is The Dog had put Rusty up for adoption twice before to no takers. My wife had heard from a  friend about this unwanted dog and as Cheyenne had laid down and died of her own volition just a week before  I surprised myself by being ready to adopt at once.  Not having to decide to give Cheyenne the needle made it infinitely easier to accept her death as it was on her own terms and at the time and place of her choosing. My last picture of her as she prepared to leave me:

Old age is merciless but she was generous to me to the last.

My plan was to get an unwanted older Labrador, the sort of dog that's hard to place as they are viewed with unwarranted suspicion by people who want "puppies." Cheyenne was once an expensive pedigree puppy dumped when her shitty family decided she was too old. But lucky for Rusty I wasn't looking for an expensive fashionable trophy dog. Lucky for me too as it turned out. As you can see when I first spotted the little runt I wasn't really focused on the people who saved him from the streets:

He was dumped in the Redlands of Homestead  where he led a pack of dogs that were killed off by angry farmers using shotguns and poison. When he was the last dog left he surrendered to the good people of This Is The Dog who had been following his progress for months, To this day he cannot stand fireworks or gunshots though he has learned not to run at the mere sight of a big dog and he pretty soon learned to sleep soundly with both eyes closed. This was a picture they posted of him on Facebook when he was a stray:

He whimpered a bit as I drove him away from the only people who had ever shown him any kindness but we stopped along the way and he sniffed the sidewalks and stretched his legs as he got used to riding in a  car. He wasn't overly impressed by this guy's overtures in Marathon:

I always get confused as to why people abandon their dogs. From early days Rusty did his best to please me and apart from a  couple of times when I lost my confidence and yelled at him we have had pretty smooth sailing most of the time.The times we didn't were down to me not having faith in myself which my friend Webb says I need to get over. Rusty agrees and by now we are like old friends and he understands me faster than I understand myself.

I have lived with some really excellent dogs who have put up with my eccentricities over the years but Rusty has attained a new level of understanding. Right from the start we bonded and when I was in the hospital in 2018 I worried he would forget me.

He never did of course and my wife told me he started whining when she turned onto the street leading to the hospital when she brought him to visit me. But right from the start he kept close like he knew this was it for him.. We tried to fence him in to keep him safely off the street but he put paid to that plan easily. In the end I figured he probably could handle our genteel Cudjoe neighborhood after dodging the angry farmers of the Redlands and surviving.

The start of a beautiful friendship.

We did negotiate the bumps, for instance we learned he much prefers curling up in a tight bed that supports him on all four sides. He reserves the couch and our bed for those rare occasions when he wants to stretch out and the open plan dog bed just wasn't for him. But we have had lots of time to learn the little Prince's quirks and to adapt to them.

Long may he last for we have much traveling to do.

Petronia Street

The city has been pointing out fairly publicly that saving a parking space with a  trash can or cone is illegal. It's also illegal to park on the street and not move your car for 72 hours. This is the time of year everyone is turning everyone in for parking infractions. The other day I took 25 of them in a 12 hour shift and I don't know how many my colleague dispatched. When I'm out walking I known when garbage collection is coming or recently occurred:

The sidewalks are narrow and the trash needs are huge so some discombobulation is to be expected as modern trash cans are positively cavernous. Rusty sidesteps them nimbly but I am not quite so lucky as I lumber after him!

Check out the neat new fencing in the picture above. The house has got a lick of paint and order has been brought to a corner that used to be a mixture of outdoor art studio and actual shade tree mechanic's  shop. You can see in the picture below the artwork on the old rickety fence covered with construction netting. 

   

Change is good they tell us but Mr Chapman lost his home next door during the foreclosure scandals and instead of riding his outrageously decorated tricycle up and down Duval playing loud music from the speakers on the back. The neighborhood has gone to gentrification and Chapman apparently had to move to northern Florida from a formerly secure old age in his Key West.

Nowadays it is enough to celebrate the past in two dimensions on a  mural where a game of dominoes will disturb no one and will serve as a sign of how cool the place is that they moved too, and how pleasant it was for those that were lucky enough to live here before it all disappeared and became cultural history.

"The Best Kept Secret Of The Locals!" the neon green sign screams. Irony, where is thy sting?

Every visitor thinks that the locals are holding back, that there is some secret parlor that serves food and drink strangers can never know about; some sort of elixir of youth and  a plate of ambrosia of the gods... for locals only! 

I think the real secret some few locals know and others don't care to bother with, is the state of mind where you walk and look and see and think.

The colorful Conch Cottage illuminated by the afternoon winter sun is there and stands as the obvious symbol of the End of the Road culture of the island.

But sometimes we have to be dragged down to earth and reminded to see the worst with a sense of humor. 

This is the reality of close quarters living in a small American town. You pay a million bucks for a tiny shack but that doesn't mean you get to park nearby or smell only fresh sea air!

But the beauty is also there if you can take time out from sniffing the roses as it were.

Funny the stuff you see when you are wandering around town with a dog (who doesn't piss at random happily) and a camera.

Liquid Lunch

Garrison Bight is a brilliant marina setting if you want the most protected marina and easy access to all the city has to offer, as it is situated on the north shore in-between Old Town and New Town. Just like everything else in your life it is a compromise because that lubberly convenience makes it a bit of a trek to get your boat anywhere interesting. Unless of course you have a high powered center console with low bridge clearance and fast planing speeds. For everyone else you are about an hour from Mallory Square.

There is traffic on the roads that parallel and bisect the marina and from time to time people with cameras wander by trying to find shadows and light to wile away a sunny lunch break.

This has been a winter of rain and gales interspersed with sunshine and cool crisp days so I should not have been surprised to see a boater in long sleeves and well buttoned up though around here t-shirts are the year round costume for the active boating lifestyle.

Or wet suits.

I never really noticed  the pump  in the bow of the fire boat before but peering down from the sidewalk it looked fearsome and very industrial. What a strange and particular specialization: making fire boat pumps and nozzle sprayers.

I strolled across to Eisenhower Drive after I had squeezed the last bit of entertainment out of the waterfront and I saw an unfamiliar face:

I never cease to be amazed how much stuff I get to see in such a small space. I know people who live in Key West and don't have the least curiosity about things half way across the island. I was listening to two colleagues debating the layout of a new pocket park in town, and when I say new I mean a few months old. Neither had been by the look but both had opinions.  I was there in November, but I said nothing. 

I find myself getting older but never less curious about life which i think can be very annoying to the people forced into my orbit and who themselves couldn't care less what the currency of Mongolia is or how the Japanese tea ceremony unfolds or why France owns the Kerguelen islands. So I wander the city on my lunch breaks and I wander Google between calls for service.  

When my wife and I go to the UK next month it will only be for ten days (without Rusty! That's agonizing) and my sister will be the tour guide for most of it. However I have been looking at bits of England where I lived as a boy and wondering what my wife will make of Leith Hill and Dorking and the weirdly typical English lanes I used to bicycle along. And it occurred to me that in the decades before the Internet and street view and during those glorious years of unfettered net neutral Google you could learn more bout a place in an hour than previously in half a life time.

That sort of thinking puts my own feeble efforts to uncover key West and the Lower keys into perspective. I wonder what street view will reveal about Key West after we've finished traveling in retirement and plan to come back?

Moon Over Key West

It was  a big moon a few mornings ago and it looked good, a speck of white hanging above the sleeping town.

 The pigeons weren't sleeping, I think.  But they weren't yet very active. 

The angry mockingbird was hopping around but I made eye contact and for some reason he held back from bombing us which was nice.

The noises of the street cut no ice with this guy who had me fumbling with my camera settings and he walked by with his huge headphones clamped tight. I am told this big ear muffins are fashionable but they look kind of goofy to me shutting out the world. Poor bugger he was obviously busy while I was just ambling for a change.

I look aloft from time to time and I never tire of the spindly shadows cast by trees against a clear sky:

Yellow on yellow in a brown house. I liked the effect but I would never think to paint my own house like that.

 Fish. On a House. Weird.

 A hammock? A flag? Wrapped up and impossible to imagine what it might be. 

 I think the moon kept looking better. So I photographed it again.

Cemetery Again

It was a lovely bright day, I had a lunch break yesterday and I took advantage to go for a walk. Actually I went for a bicycle ride first and took my camera. Downtown Key West is hard to enjoy this time of year when you only have an hour and your starting point is Garrison Bight. The cemetery is close by the police station and thus easy to enjoy when you have little time. I love the serenity and history contained within this park like setting. Pinder is an old Key West name originating in the Bahamas where Pinders were famous Abaco boat builders.

Thanks to typical bad behavior the cemetery allows no vehicles with two wheels powered by a motor so I figured this was a quiet place to test my new to me electric bicycle's pedaling prowess. I found the Pedego Classic on Craigslist for a mere six hundred dollars, a third the price of brand new and I leaped on it. It came as illustrated with a milk crate no fenders and no front light and a little superficial rust..

It is basically a  six speed beach cruiser with a 350 watt hub motor and a ten amp battery good they say for 15 to 30 miles depending as it always does depend on variables when you are consuming electrons for propulsion. Living as I do in a suburb there is no real reason to use a pedal or an electric bicycle as there aren't enough nearby destinations to justify riding even though snowbirds enjoy the bike path alongside the highway for their winter exercise programs. I go to the gym for physical therapy and exercise. I bought the bike for an entirely different reason.

I am going to take some pictures on the subject but the bridge entering Key West is up for renovation over the course of a year starting supposedly in April. Traffic jams are expected to be monumental and my idea is to leave my car near Key Haven and lift my 60 pound electric bike off the bike rack, load it with lunch and my gym bag and ride at 17 mph to work the last three miles across the bridge and down North Roosevelt. Once there I will have wheels to ride around town and not lose my car parking space in our overcrowded parking lot. I'm lucky in that I get to work before 6 am and have my choice of spaces. By nine am when the administrative staff is at the police station along with visitors and maintenance people the lot if stuffed all day long.

It's not for the exercise, this bicycle, its to get me to work in summer's heat and humidity in reasonably dry  not disheveled sweaty shape. I think this bike will do the job. Some friends recently mentioned they bought Radpower bikes out of Seattle, really nice machines but they live in town and will use the hell out of them to get around instead of driving. For my purposes a used electric bike will do just fine.

The Cuban Martyrs Memorial in the cemetery is worth a visit. It's similar to the USS Maine Memorial but smaller and it only holds one actual grave. Key West has a long history of connection to Cuba, not just of people but of trade as well. Cuba gives Key West it's very own ethnicity, a Latin undercurrent made up of descendants of early emigres as well as many refugees from the oppression and lack of opportunity of modern Cuba. This spot along with the San Carlos Institute and the Jose Marti Monument in Bayview Park are citywide reminders of the history connecting Key West and Cuba.

It must be apparent that Key West, as small and geographically insignificant as it is, has played a huge part in the migration of people and money and ideas in the vast seafaring triangle that is formed by Cuba, Hispaniola and the Bahamas. This town is a powerhouse out of proportion to its size. The funny thing is in the United States Key West is a mere vacation destination. For people in the Bahamas, Haiti and Cuba Key West has been a source of refuge of life and opportunity.

And you can see it here across the cemetery. Memorials to bitter battles and reverses, memories of failure and success, revolution and emancipation.  Key West has it all. It really is an amazing place when you get beyond the bars and the sunsets.

Some people are freaked out by cemeteries and other people think they are a great place to commit acts of vandalism or to ride their scooters recklessly.  I am not frightened of the dead and I don't believe in the supernatural (sorry, I also get the flu vaccine every Fall) but I do enjoy the history and the sense of continuity in the community that rests in this field. 

These are all real people, family members, some of them buried before the Civil War and still remembered here. There is a thread running through the city expressing mild irritation at the state of the cemetery, that ancient tombstones aren't vertical, that cement is crumbling and so forth. what I see is a field of lives worth celebrating, a place that should be filled with people walking and thinking and meditating on these lives already lived. Instead I see city crews mowing and cleaning and tidying to a degree I have never previously seen.

Every visitor to Key West should come and see the city as it was and walk the streets of the little city in the middle of the city. It used to be that people were put to rest at Rest Beach on the south shore of the island.  A storm in the 19th century caused so much upheaval that instead of reburying the bodies in the vulnerable coastal sand they put the new cemetery here on the edge of the city. Over time Key West's stable population of 12,000 residents doubled to the current 23,000 and the city of the living surrounded the city of the dead. That's why the cemetery is now in the middle of key West.

And of course the water table is so high the tombs have to be above ground making it a rare North American cemetery. It's worth half a day of your time to come and remember. And turn your electric bike motor off when you do.