No Turn Arounds

This place is  so odd to me,  a pleasant isolated home with a guest house, harbor and tennis courts listed a few years ago for ten million dollars. And so buttoned up it looks more like a prison than a luxury home. 

Hurricane Irma wasn't kind but constant work by people with very little English, friendly enough and cheerful to the passing dog walker who spoke Spanish, and very hard working, has brought back the vegetation and fences and and lots of signs. And rocks.  I feel like I'm walking past one of those places on the highway that advise not to pick up hitchhikers.

The Old State Road 939 heads south from the Overseas Highway, passes the KOA which is finally being rebuilt and dead ends in a gate put across the old road by the wildlife people. You can walk it but not drive it. Its about two miles long and ends in the Sugarloaf Creek, a tidal waterway where the road bridge has been taken down.

This business of no turn arounds is a positive obsession for these relative newcomers. I come here to walk Rusty so I park close the campground and come down on foot, but others are exploring and find themselves stuck in a  dead end. And they confront these signs:

The gate closing the road is out of sight about a quarter of a mile down the road and there is a small turn around there but if you arrive here the owner of the manse is determined you will back the other half mile to get back to the KOA entrance where you can turn around without backing into the bushes (as I do) beyond the Lord of the Manor's irritated reach. 

I rode my Bonneville down the old state road a good few years ago, in 2007  more precisely:

and I enjoy walking down to the saltwater creek from time to time. But it is decidedly a one track lane nowadays and once in, you are committed. Especially as not many people seemed to be trained in the art of the three point turn. 

I noticed all the signage because it has sprouted up suddenly from people who don't really seem to have set up a winter home in laid-back-land with the intention of relaxing into the ambiance. Furthermore this sort of face on the world is emblematic of the changes that have been spooling up around here. You used to have to go to the mainland to see this lining A1A up the coast.

I don't suppose it's illegal nor do I care. The lady of the manse once caught me photographing a succulent and drove up in a cream colored Mercedes convertible and imperiously demanded to know what I was doing to her mailbox. Nothing I said. She glared at me. I said you really don't have much to fear in the Keys compared to where you are from, most people try to get along fairly peaceably. Then I was naughty. I told her I was relaxing after a day working 911 at the POLICE STATION and realization dawned that I was an instrument of her class and therefore on her side and she couldn't have been nicer. I was slightly revolted. The barricades don't make me feel any better.

It's not to my taste this style of hiding behind moats. I was born into the landowning classes and ran away as soon as I could when I realized I could not do my duty. Now I am a serf and I enjoy not being responsible for anything but myself and the possessions on my back (in my van). I see all this anxiety and wonder at the stress. So what if someone turns around in your driveway? You can turn around in mine on John Avery Lane as often as you want between now and April. When I leave we'll hand the landlord the keys, I think my wife knows where they are, and off we shall putt. To me that is freedom, not worrying about who is backing into your driveway. 

The Long Haul

The employment situation in Key West is bleak and in my job we are as understaffed as anyone. We have three dispatchers for day shift where we are supposed to have at least six and at night we will shortly be down to two. Even though we have police officers, former dispatchers, assigned to help, the situation is critical until the latest batch of trainees finish training this Fall.

The net result will be three weeks scheduled without a day off which is my way of saying I will run out of pictures and words before long, probably even before I run out of brain cells. So if this page gets stuck don't be surprised. I hope that by mid August I will get a day off or two and normal certainty will be resumed.

Rusty will get his walks though I expect my wife will be picking up the slack there a bit. I try to vary the photographs between town and country but that may not be in the cards. I shall post what I have, but whatever shortcomings appear on this page has everything to do with too much work and nothing to do with anything else. I enjoy walking Rusty and taking pictures. It is my stress release.

I am not surprised when I walk into Circle K to get some milk for my tea and find the place filled with half empty boxes. There aren't enough people to staff the checkout and unload the new stock. Hotels are desperate for staff and are trying to find ways to automate processes we have become used to being carried out by humans. Even to schedule a colonoscopy (getting stuff done while I have work insurance which covers every cost!) I had to fill out a giant questionare on line. No more sitting in a waiting room scribbling on a clip board. Understaffing is the new normal in every line of work and apparently not just in the Keys.

Finding people in this employment climate who want a job that requires sitting still for twelve hours and needs the ability to stay calm in crisis after crisis after crisis is no easy matter. It takes six to nine months to train someone suitable and the process isn't made easier with understaffing already taking a bite out of the energy required to train new people. 

I had a conversation with someone half my age who advised me the old work parameters no longer apply. A job is an anchor for a couple of years, working from home is preferred and commitment is limited and not terribly important. I think that was what he was saying and I liked none of it.

I guess my old fuddy duddy pleasure at having a secure job with benefits while doing something useful is out of date. I can actually see why retirement is so important. Things change, generations change and I feel horribly out of date in this work place of new attitudes. It is time I disappeared.

But not until some replacements are trained and seated. Someone needs to be ready in 260 days because I will be ready to slide on out.

Meanwhile I will keep on keeping on and under these circumstances my life shrinks down to sleeping, walking Rusty and showing up at my desk. Playing with words will be a secondary concern for a couple of weeks I fear. I don't like living like this but it is temporary I hope, though as we have seen life intervenes sometimes spectacularly and without warning.

I am ready to expect the unexpected, I know plans can unravel or be unraveled by twists of fate, but you have to keep planning. The plan is to get through our worker shortage with my mind intact. 

A camera, a walk, a surprise along the way.

Looking for the beauty in unlikely places.

August promises to be brutal around here! Enjoy yours and take a vacation while you can. I will rest later.

 

Shades of Downtown

I was not in the mood to go out into the noonday sun but I went anyway as the alternative was to sit on the couch and space out or worse, take a nap. The trouble is I like naps but it was a bright sunny day and I wanted adventure.

As adventures go it wasn't anywhere close to my definition, "an undertaking with an uncertain outcome" as I was pretty sure I'd end up back at my desk an hour later.

So I fiddled with the settings on the camera and chose square format in back and white to make me work.  With the red filter deployed the sky turned a satisfying shade of dark. The beauty of digital photography is the filters are all in the camera electronically. Press a button whoosh you can have red yellow or green at will.

It was a s hot as it looks actually. Downtown surrounded by buildings the cooling breeze is not like it is in the mangroves. 

I choose to walk on the shady side of the street in summer. It's like they say about a good parking spot for a Floridian, that's always the parking space in the shade.

People seem to enjoy walking up and down Duval Street and I keep hoping I shall enjoy ti more but really I don't. 

She didn't seem to mind sitting there with a bull in her lap:

Three bars in one building:

I made my way off Duval Street and walked into Truman Annex for some peace and greenery. "Coming in hot" the scooter rider shouted so I stepped off the sidewalk(!) into the grass. 

The Presidential Gate on Caroline at Whitehead. They are traditionally only opened for US Presidents in town. President Truman used to stay in Truman Annex when it was a Navy Base and his car would trundle in and out of here. There's a replica you can rent apparently somewhere in town. The car I mean, not the President.

Like I said, find your spot of shade and stick to it.

Everyone was hunting for shade.  I once had a memorable encounter with someone at this very corner, a stranger who accosted me as I walked back to the car late one night after a movie at the Tropic. He tried to ask for directions but before he could finish, or start really, he vomited copiously very near my shoes so as I leapt back to avoid splatter (successfully) he pirouetted in a  drunken faint clutching the wall and sliding to the ground nicely mopping up his own mess. Late night movies haven't held the same attraction since.

Back to Saint Paul's shining like a beacon of sanity on an insane street.

Into my car with ten minutes to get back to work. The journey was not aided by those foul golf carts holding up traffic and crawling like oversized tortoises in the middle of the road.

I still got back in time. 
 

Duval Street At Four

I went to Publix yesterday and bought half a dozen items my wife had forgotten she wanted. Now that she is retired she has decided, in order that I may be encouraged to work a little while longer, that she will do the housekeeping. Our family has become a facsimile of a 1950s stereotype. I lack the tie and briefcase and she does not greet me at the door with a  whisky and soda but I work and she is the stay at home housewife and it is slightly weird.

Consequently I am not as familiar with the interior of a grocery store as I used to be. I remember when the height of tough political questioning on the campaign trail was when reporters (remember them?) asked Presidential candidates the price of milk to see if they were in touch with the common people. I don't think any of them were and now I too am in that exalted Presidential state.

Imagine my surprise when I was confronted by not a single check out cashier and the only way out was through a group of self service machines. I have tried these tools of Satan at other stores, notably Winn Dixie on Big Pine and I loathe them. Invariably I end up screwing up something and I have to wait for the overseer to come along and whip the artificial intelligence into shape. The machines are always screaming at me to put my items in the bag, or screaming that I put something I shouldn't in the bag. They remind me of the the misery of my teenage years, a new boy in school getting yelled at by everyone for not knowing the protocols. "Excuse me" I shout. "The machine is accusing me of stealing from Publix," I say in an effort to shame the managers of these unruly beasts. And don't forget we are all under surveillance:

The fact is every business in the Keys would like to be hiring people. I hear it is the same story across the country and it's certainly true in dispatch where we have seven dispatchers covering 15 paid positions, so I suppose it makes sense to hire artificial intelligence where people won't work for the paltry wages.

I feel my grip on the customs of daily life slipping away from me gradually. I guess it is the process of aging. I liked to try different things and take long vacations as a youngster but I came home and got a job. It was as matter of  course as calling AT and T to install a phone line in my new apartment.  I worked until I got bored and then I took off for a while. Then I came home and worked some more. I just looked for a job and eventually got one. I had as much desire for a career as I had to start a family. But I worked.

I can't tell if it's the virus that's changed everything or the Internet or ray guns from outer space but I don't feel part of it any more. Perhaps the change is within me and things move ahead as they always have. Perhaps people earn money buy selling stuff on eBay like my wife as she gradually empties our home of superfluous possessions. Perhaps manual laborers are making a living on YouTube or working from home in some manner I can't imagine. I am so used to commuting and sitting at a desk I can't think of how else I'd like to work. No benefits? No union? No contract? How 19th century my work life feels to me now. 

Perhaps it's just Key West and outside this bubble things are back to where they were.  I see lots of businesses closed, surviving stores are looking for employees and the latest numbers show Florida is heading back to a world of high numbers of infected people, busy hospitals and low rates of vaccination. I completed my vaccination on February 16th and have suffered no side effects since except staying healthy enough to show up for work every shift since.

Other than being vaccinated it's like the last year is starting all over again. I was indeed very wrong last year when I thought the pandemic would last maybe six months, because now a year and a half later the Canadian border is still closed, travel in South America is banned and Key West is a never ending circus of people looking for relief from the stress of being stuck at home. The city is packed with tourists if not snowbirds. And we can't staff supermarket check outs. May we live in interesting times.