Flora On Frances

Howard Sands died at Pisseloup in the Second Battle of the Marne on July 19th 1918, in the last year of World War One. His memory is preserved in this handwritten sign at the corner of Frances and Petronia Streets though for how long one doesn't know. The house is for sale to anyone with three million dollars to spare.

Howard Sands was 18 and died after a month in France as the Germans tried one last big offensive before the Armistice was signed in November. His father who lived on Eaton Street was the one officially notified of the young man's death in France.  And the tree planted here a century ago flourishes.

The house used to be occupied by an old Conch woman, a  lady I dare say who could be seen every day dealing with the heavy snowdrift of leaves dropped by the tree. In old school style she took a  broom to the sidewalks around her house and not a noisy leaf blower, the choice of those unable to wield a broom to full effect. I had a friend who crossed swords with her and when he told me she was mean I felt privately that she deserved a tip of the hat. I never had the nerve to approach her but with antecedents like hers she had much to live up to and she did it well.

Trees are protected in Key West even though signs aren't and even trees can be cut down legally on a  pretext so one wonders if the new owners will want to remember Key West's past. Not many seem to these days. Three million dollars buys you some latitude in these matters.

I like to come down Petronia from White Street to Frances partly because I enjoy the Conch architecture but also I like the shade thrown by the Malabar Tree. The Sands name is memorialized in public housing in Key West but this tree marks someone from key West who went a long way away to try to do some good and got killed for it. An admirable dedication to what's right and not what I would call a sucker and a loser. I find World War One particularly painful as it marked the switch from 19th century warfare to the brutality of mass killing by mechanical and scientific means with limited medical care and terrible physical discomfort. To go from Key West to the trenches of the Western Front must have been mind boggling. And six months later the survivors started to go home. 

Wandering up to Ashe Street I found life spilling over onto the sidewalk, in bright colors.

With World War One and its losses in the history books, Key West benefited from World War Two by having water piped to the city from Miami to supply the wartime navy base. For the first time there was a relative abundance of reliable drinking water in a town that had lurched through seasons by catching rainwater. Until then Key West was not nearly as green and filled with plants and trees as it is today. You simply couldn't waste water growing ornaments. Nowadays it's  a different story, and very glad I am too.

I passed a couple of eyebrow houses which display an architectural feature that has made them famous despite the fact it doesn't work as intended. The eyebrow was supposed to allow air to circulate upstairs even when it was raining but all it did was trap hot air and didn't help. But it looks pretty.

As do the flowers on the streets. The blessings of water! In abundance.

Entropy and Change

This time of year its possible to be on Duval Street and still be distanced from people but I was wearing a mask anyway. I thought it worth a try to see if I could snag some pictures.

You could blame the virus but September and October are low season, the time of year special events are created to lure people to hotel rooms. Plus those pesky cruise ship day trippers. This summer the fur is flying in Key West over whether or not allow cruise ships back after they start sailing at the end of the month with anyone brave enough to stew in close confinement with several hundred potential carriers. 

City voters face three different questions on cruise ships which in essence of approved would drastically reduce the size and frequency of the ships in Key West. I expect that even if the voters approve the suggested changes there will be lawsuits aplenty for the foreseeable future before anything changes.

The idea is to reduce the size of ships and require them to meet anti-pollution standards rather than the pre-pandemic free for all with up to three shups a day and thousands of people wandering Lower Duval in search of the elusive essence of Key West.

It may come as a surprise to learn that Key West has been awash in competing claims over this cruise ship referendum. Supports say they have never seen coastal waters so clean after a six month coronavirus embargo. They say it will be easier to entice high dollar visitors to view marine wildlife in rejuvenated coral reefs not subjected to stress by cruise ships stirring up silt and muddying the waters.

The pilots who make a lot of money guiding the ships into Key West argue that effectively banning big ships will cost the city so much money 911 will not be answered promptly and taxes will go up and Armageddon will follow.  I made this point to a well connected friend of mine who sniffed and said the city may lose a hundred thousand a year in ship fees. I was surprised as I thought the city made 2.5 million from fees paid to dock in Key West. Not so i was assured.

And so it goes on. I don't live in Key West so I don't vote on the issue and I haven't bestirred myself to get in the middle of the competing claims. I have a suspicion that if the vote does pass there will be some unintended and therefore unexpected consequences from any reduction in cruise ship dockings, but like Brexit and other momentous requests of citizens to decide complex questions the die is cast and the result will reflect on Key West one way or another. Consequences be damned.

Its the curse of every tourist town, you want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg because it makes noise and a mess and it annoys. The problem is you need the eggs so how do you kill the goose? The mayor ran on a platform of less mass tourism and more wealthy thoughtful tourists. Well, here we go.

She got 60% of the vote and though she won so handily, the paradox is that by re-electing the mayor the city has chosen the path of change. Mark Rossi the bar owner was the candidate of no change but his haphazard campaign and rather down at heel style  only persuaded twenty percent of voters he was the stability they wanted. So now Key West faces a push to make Duval Street a pedestrian zone and the cruise ships to be limited to small eco boats with passengers fll to the brim with curiosity and the intention of spending money in town. 

I can't wait for the pandemic to be over. People will come out of their caves, mask-less and ready to  take on the issues of the new day.  That will mean lots of meetings, tons of discussion and feelings running high was everything as usual will be at stake. And the city will abide anyway.

Summerland Sunset

I realized with a  jolt that winter is closing in on us. I don't doubt that Up North this fact is being brought home with a  vengeance and traces of frost. Around here it remains strangely humid despite a fresh east wind blowing all day and all night as Hurricane Delta marched across the Gulf Of Mexico. It feels like it should be wintery and dry under crisp clear skies but it isn't.

One indisputable fact is that days are getting shorter and I noticed that fact Thursday night when my wife worked late (from home) and Rusty's evening stroll was my responsibility.  By the time we drove to the trailhead it was ten minutes before seven and night was decidedly falling. Fat Albert, the Air Force Blimp on Cudjoe Key was silhouetted in the sunset.

A lobster fisherman's work is never done. They sit out in the shade and the heat repairing traps. It is in a way the agricultural work of the Keys, labor intensive and physical similar to my memories of work in the fields when I was growing up far inland. It was not my cup of tea so I ran away from the farm.

Commercial boat names are not always comprehensible to me but I thought there was potential for beauty in the lines of this hull high and dry. The rest of the stuff was just colorful.

If you have the misfortune to find yourself lost at sea a red colored life ring could and should make you more visible. Failing that it makes for an effective if gaudy decoration on land.

This, below is what I think of as a winter sunset, a season when humidity is banished till summer and with the humidity go the clouds so the sky is clear. Which also cuts down the color and drama prevalent in summer sunsets. 

The rain keeps coming at random to remind me it's not actually the dry season yet. In two weeks we turn the clocks back and instead of dusk at seven we start to enjoy dusk at six, about the moment I leave the office. 

One thing I do miss in northern latitudes which I enjoyed in Michigan this past summer are the very long periods of twilight. The closer you get to the equator the less difference there is between summer and winter time and furthermore light and dark alternate very rapidly. Around here one minute it's daylight and the next it's night. Twilight is a very short part of the evening.

I am of the thought that year round daylight saving daytime would be good but I fear there are many unintended consequences that would accompany such a change. The European Union is trying to implement such a change so perhaps we can wait and see how the experiment goes. I have no children but daylight  saving time would give us extremely dark mornings all through winter  and I wonder how parents would deal with that for instance.

Winter cometh. Glad there is no frost to look forward to around here. 

Southard Street

I thought to myself "Amazing Cleaning" as the car drove by and then he strolled into the frame.  He actually looked quite well put together under his natty white hat which I think is a Panama, but I don't wear hats very often so I can only guess.  A fedora is made of cloth and a trilby is turned up at the back. Therefore by default this hat is a panama, no?  

By this evening Hurricane Delta should be grinding up the Mississippi delta as a major hurricane with lots of water to deposit on the already quite wet wetlands. As usual one feels relief that it's them and not us, a form of relief with some guilt mixed in. 

However the skies over the Keys have been quite peculiar for the past several days, a whirling mixture of sun one minute  and gray veering into back another minute accompanied by sudden bursts of rain and a constant thrumming wind. 

My wife working at home sends me grumbly texts to my desk 25 miles away reporting thunder, an anxious dog and rain flooding the ground. I look out of the window at work and see blue skies and tranquil sunshine. An hour later the situation is reversed. It is very unpredictable. 

What is predictable is the humidity hanging over us all. Lots of that all the time. This picture I took when walking Rusty early Wednesday a few moments after a downpour caught us on Eaton Street so we took sjhelter at the theater for five minutes and then strolled back to the car.

Hurricane watching, from a safe distance, is one way to take your mind off this grotesque political month.

Dupont Lane

In 1888 the 27 year African American Charles Fletcher DuPont was elected Sheriff of Monroe County and he served his term from 18898 to 1893. He has a lane named for him off Petronia near Duval Street at the 801 Bar.

DuPont had a hard time of it controlling the Cuban factions in Key West divided between supporters of Spanish rule and revolutionaries seeking independence.  When two two supporters of the Spanish colonial government gunned down a Cuban revolutionary in Key West the Monroe County sheriff found himself in one of those situations beloved of Hollywood, defending evil doers against a lynching mob. 

Sheriff DuPont acquitted himself well in that June 1891 incident and the two suspects were never sent to Tampa for a lynching but had several trials in Key West and finally found not guilty. It all sounds  a bit peculiar but the Sheriff did his bit. 

DuPont was the son of freed slaves  and his father Rome is believed to have been born in St Augustine as the property of landowners from South Carolina by the name of DuPont. It's rather mind boggling to imagine people being born as property and relatively speaking not that long ago. Amanda Shackleford was DuPont's mother and her family settled in Key West, hence her son the Sheriff elected by popular vote.

Even in those days of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow Key West was always a bit different thanks in part to the numerous different groups attracted to the city by its port and the trading ships passing through. It's hard to imagine any other southern city electing an African American as sheriff. Maybe they did in drives but it doesn't seem likely.

All this history is contained in the small one block land that leads north off Petronia Street. You could drive by without even noticing it.

Looking toward Petronia from the dead end of the lane:

And there is the sign on Petronia that marks the lane:

Shadows

The sun is dipping closer to the southern horizon as we head into what is technically going to be Fall in the Northern Hemisphere. The shadows are moving with the arc of the sun.

I have never figured much protection comes to golf cart riders from the weather they drive through but the flat roof on this one gave welcome shade:

In Florida it is said that the best parking spot is the one in the shade and I have found myself, no matter what the climate, looking for shade when I leave the car. I did it in Michigan this summer where the locals were sweating and my wife and I were looking at each other feeling too embarrassed to say out loud we were nearly feeling a chill in the air. I still looked for shady parking for the van.

In two years we hope to be showing Rusty the wonders of Alaska but I have to admit we are both a little dubious about our ability to thrive in the tundra. My wife has heard that mosquitoes in Alaska make Florida insects look like punks and they suck their victims dry. Despite the appalling heat this summer I am no aficionado of cold damp weather which they have in abundance even in summer near the Arctic Circle, I am reliably informed. However for now I shall enjoy heat and light in the tropics or thereabouts.

One umbrella isn't necessarily enough in this sunlight, but even without a sunhat  he wears a mask which tells you he's a local. No matter how hot it may be the tradition of stopping to chat on the streets of Key West must go on, preferably in the shade.