I awoke realizing that I needed to stay another day in the Florida Keys so the rangers at the park worked with me extending my visit for one more night. However I had to move from the ocean side to the bay side of the island. In other words from the windward to the leeward side which is very important when it comes to no-see-ums and mosquitoes. I would deal with it when it happened.
As I drove south to the tip of the Florida Keys,I past the second BSA Sea Base called Briton on the ocean side I stopped in and spoke to Lenny, the head of maintenance of the base. The base had a fleet of about seven vessels of which most were for fishing. The campus is made up of about seven buildings built up on stilts. Much of the under-building spaces were used for storage and shower facilities. Lenny was working on Hawaii canoes used to paddle out the four miles to the 110 acre island. What surprised me was that the canoes didn’t use an outrigger for stability but two canoes are leashed together to provide a total of eight paddlers. Once the base used double kayaks but weak paddlers couldn’t make it.
When I asked about hurricanes, Lenny said that the whole base could be shut down in twenty minutes. I questioned the speed and Lenny answered that they had to close down and evacuate five times in one recent hurricane season.
One of the staff came by and when he heard that I was with the northwest sea scouts, he said in the two years he has been on base only one sea scout ship had come through. The rest of the youth have been High Adventure Boy Scouts looking for fishing, sailing or scuba diving in the Keys.
Where did all the people come from? Key West was the most tourist impacted city I have ever seen. Could it be the 2,000 passenger ship tied up on the waterfront along with mega yachts with anchors that you could see your reflection in. Or could it be the jets landing every hour?
I found Mile Marker “0” and with a tip of my hat walked on. The tourist traps on Duvall Street were in full swing and I caved into a few: Sloppy Joe’s for a drink at Hemmingway’s old watering hole and a clothing store. I had been seen the sport fishermen wear a very comfortable looking shirt and when I saw one on display with SALE written on it, I went inside. When I asked about the price on the shirt, he said it had been $60 marked down to $40. I asked if he would accept $30. “No!” Pause, then “Just a minute.” He came back and said, “OK.” Nice shirt. I hope no one asks me how the fishing was. After a couple of hours of Old Town, I couldn’t get out of there faster.
Back at the park I asked about a place to eat: Key Fisheries on the other side of the Seven Mile Bridge. I slid into the dockside place for an early supper. And the place was authentic. Fishing boats, lobster traps, supplies and a small restaurant with the daily catch. I ordered up their famous Reuben Lobster Sandwich and because it was slow, the woman that took my order talked awhile. She was like everyone else – from somewhere other than the keys (in this case Tennessee). She had been in Marathon for 12 years but had said everything changed in 2005. That’s when everyone got greedy with the outlandish prices for property and houses. Many folks cashed in their places and left leaving poor folks like herself behind. Florida has been ground zero for the housing mortgage bust. Vestiges still remained with billboards blaring out “NO DOWN, NO CLOSING COSTS” and “NO CREDIT? NO PROBLEM!” The house of cards started its collapse right here with this type of greed. And Stern Bear, the banking giant that promoted this reckless offering to under qualified buyers, asked the federal government (you and me) to bail them out.
But I was helping out the local economy by pigging out on my local lobster sandwich while Ruddy Turnstones walked between my feet.
Party on.
No comments:
Post a Comment