Little Conch Baseball

Little Conch Baseball League is organized and ready for another season in the numerous diamonds lined up between Kennedy Drive and North Roosevelt Boulevard. 

Clayton Sterling the complex is called and each diamond has a name attached to it to remind Conchs of the glorious past. There are a few rules here but they pretty obvious. It may surprise you, as it did me, that they boil down to nothing more than the requirement to be kind to each other.

The teams that play here go by names that might be familiar in other settings, Ramona's Conch Creations, Certified Appliance Repair, Town N Tavern, Hurricane Hole or Key West Firefighters. 

Baseball is a big deal in Key West and as you might expect parents have been known to get a bit more passionate in public with louder voices than their progeny. 

The businesses that support the teams get photos of eager young conchs in their red and white uniforms on the walls of the business.

As you can see, all the support they get is put to good use with nice facilities for the youngsters to play on.

Hot dogs and sodas and so forth are also sold here to raise money for the sport:

And past players are memorialized.

Familiar names spring out, especially familiar if you grew up in Key West:

Buddy Owen may have sold you a fish sandwich on Caroline Street and Boog Powell made the big leagues playing for the Baltimore Orioles. He wasn't born in Key West so locals will tell you you can't be a Conch, but in my book most people are formed in High School so to me a Conch is anyone who graduated Key West High. Being born here takes no act of will but surviving high school is definitely a life marking experience for most Americans.  These days I believe he lives in Sarasota. But he started here!

Field of Memories.

Duval Pocket Park

There is a certain carelessness in the way Key West maintains its public spaces. It used to bug me to see decay ignored, an absence of care, and now that the city is moving faster and faster to fulfil the mayor's vision of a genteel upper class tourist destination, I see seaweed rotting on the beach and feel relief.

Slabs of cement mark the southernmost end of the "world famous" Duval Street, the heart of tourist Key West. The unsightly lump works for the seagulls.

This cheerful sign addresses an issue I had not previously considered to be a problem. I hope the pelicans know not to dump around here.

Conversely this slab of horizontal cement is a pier thrusting out into the sea, a photo opportunity with no sign of where or what this place might be. "Yay! Key West!" would be a nice background for those endless selfies taken at this spot, instead the background is a sign covered in scruffy stickers. The pier itself is about as inviting as a loading dock.

They come, they go and zip through the new pocket park built to replace a few seaweed covered parking spots that used to live here.

This is as it was:

This is as it is, so urban renewal is not out of reach:

The surrounding architecture should inspire.

Cruise ships are still in the news. The city is struggling to override the Governor's mandate that cruise ships are not subject to local control, but the latest news from the cruise ship industry is that Carnival has dropped Key West from its ports of call. According to the paper there is no reason given but that's a loss of several ships a week from Key West. 

Score one for the Mayor in her running battle with the Governor. Whether the loss of income will affect Duval businesses this far south from the bars at the top end of the street...is pretty easy to say. These places don't get many cruise ship visitors and in the past have complained about the discrimination. Nowadays Upper Duval is a mess of closed cruise ship centered businesses but down here everything looks normal and people are working:

In other news Florida's governor has promised to appeal another loss this time in Federal Court in Miami where a judge ruled Norwegian Cruise Lines can require passengers to show proof of vaccination. It would be odd if Key West did trump Tallahassee but there is precedent:  David did wallop Goliath...

Storm Clouds

I had no expectations when we left the house Rusty and I as I could see the thunderheads and I could even hear the thunder so I fully expected Rusty to have no desire to go for a walk but he surprised me and so we took off and I wondered what I might see.

Another Tropical Storm Watch has been issued for the Keys as a storm formation of no great organization has been named Fred and is rolling up the Old Bahama Channel north of Cuba. I think Tropical Storm Elsa was a useful education and this time around there is less wigging out, so far, as we expect a bunch of rain and some strong-ish winds. They say gusts up to 50 miles an hour and some flooding where you might expect it. Beyond that its another damp weekend forecast for the Keys.

These clouds were just another common-or-garden summer thunderstorm and while Rusty chased his nose I got to enjoy the wind and clouds. Indeed the wind picked up and the leaves rustled and it was all lovely and dramatic and not even raining.

I have noticed over the years that the path of storm systems seems to get set early in the summer. This year unfortunately we are in the middle of the second storm following an almost identical course to the first of the year. That makes me wonder where a stronger middle of the hurricane season storm will go. 

If my theory is correct this could be a good year for the Yucatan and the Bahamas and a crappy year for us if we get a strong hurricane.

On the other hand wild speculation doesn't help and for now we have nothing much on the horizon. We are driving to the mainland this weekend as I have a few days off after a very long period of too much work. Of course our departure is now predicated by the weather. We loaded boxes of stuff we want to keep in the van last night before it rained.

The plan is to drop off the boxes of books and plates and china we want to keep in a second floor air conditioned storage locker near the Miami airport. My wife is keeping up her online yard sale on Facebook while at the same time she is re-arranging what is left to fill the gaps in the home decorations.  I rather enjoy the sparseness and simplicity of the pre-departure home.

My eye doctor said my eyes are good, my modest old age glaucoma hasn't increased and my prescription hasn't changed which is nice. My lenses are starting to craze a little and I'm planning on using my prescription to get some new lenses in Mexico this winter assuming we manage to get on the road early. The vaccine holdouts in dispatch aren't changing their minds and Fantasy Fest is a  go this year so to have my immune depressed wife in Key West this winter seems rather too risky when we have a better option already in the planning stages.

My skin doctor says I have the skin of a 40 year old for which I thank my Italian mother. I have exposed and over exposed myself to the sun over the decades but it seems the stories they tell of Mediterranean skin might have something to do with my good fortune. The older I get the more I appreciate my genetic good fortune. Even my tooth cleaner could see no issues in my mouth on my final visit. The last medical hurdle is a colonoscopy next month. I don't sense any problem there even though I am known for being full of shit. I have been taking psyllium for years ever since my doctor warned me about the horrors of colon illness. My wife says I need a clean bill of health in my gut before I hand in my notice. She is so drearily sensible.

It was time, it was getting dark, the road beckoned and before too long we were home, in our denuded house with enough time to eat dinner, lay out my uniform and get ready for another early start at work. 

Sunrise

A spectacular summer sunrise. I had to get out of bed before six to get myself organized for this.

The old pumphouse is a pile of rubble now. Hurricane Irma  finished off the 1942  structure.

It used to look like this, and I miss the trees and  park-like greenery:

There is still plenty to look at:

Gumbo limbo survivor:

Later I stopped on my way home to pick up a few groceries. I parked behind the Winn Dixie and found a Key deer grazing nonchalantly ignoring the passing humans. I don't suppose you can blame them but there is more grass around human habitations than there is in the wild so why not enjoy the buffet? And so they meet cars and come off second best.

It's summer so I am always looking for clouds.