Sunday, March 26, 2006
Winter dreams of Key Largo
A CONDO IN THE KEYS
It is in the darkening and cold nights of early New York December that I begin to daydream of Key Largo, its public library and Publix supermarket near Mile Marker 102.
I visualize driving down the dusty US 1turning into the spacious Fairview shopping center parking from the North exit and deciding whether to move into the left – near the K-Mart, the sheriffs office where you pay taxes and get your boat sticker, and the library – or the right, near the Publix, the ice cream parlor, the ATM – the bank now charges $1, it used to be free for out-of-town accounts – and the watch shop where they sell Spanish silver, doubloons form the Atocha wreck of mid-1650s.
The parking decision involves not only the destination but also finding a shady spot under the big elms and palm trees, with easy exit
Palm trees are more prevalent in the flower decorated Winn-Dixie supermarket, North of my condo, slightly under the weather because the chain is in Chapter 11.
Both markets are equally desirable for access to blood pressure machines, and Xerox equipment, at 10 cents a page, but the Publix also has a large walk-on scale. Last time the latter’s blood pressure machine had a crowd of four around it, two to get readings and two to kibitz. I politely declined their offer to go through, as at a checkout counter, and stood by, through their entire session, listening to the disbelieving woman coming to the conclusion that her good reading was close to the expected, and the others supporting her. My own readings, after a lot of walking and swimming exercises and some weight loss, were hopeful.
The main charm of the Publix is its clientele. The Keys, despite a real estate boom that has pushed out a lot of locals, poor retirees and refugees of the 1968-generation, still has many interesting types. This year I noted, among the food stamps people, a disheveled timid thin man with a scraggly long beard with white ID card on a chain around his neck, buying cheap beer and essentials with a debit card, following instructions from his equally sad faced wife. He pushed the laminated ID card at the unimpressed checkout clerk, who eventually told me that it was a Veterans Administration issue.
Beards are everywhere, from the bushy white Hemingway types, on bulky older men in shorts, accompanied by leggy aging blondes, to the scraggly chin whiskers on younger men, whose companions are more likely to be in short shorts and bikini bras. The Harley types and the deeply tanned bicycle riders are more prominent at the Winn – Dixie, where the goods are less upscale, and the frozen TV dinners from Weightwatchers, South Beach Diet as well as more conventional suppliers, mostly on sale at upwards of 3 for $5, occupy two impressive long rows of frozen food display cases. The oldsters, who limit their cooking to microwave work, can have varied meals in cardboard boxes, a different dish daily, for weeks.
Women do dress for the supermarket visit, some wearing heels, with only an occasional youngster running in straight from the beach, bathing suit covered by a huge towel, sarong- style.
Why the public library? Well, for one, it has the best balanced air-conditioning system of the shopping center, and you can spend hours dipping into the local reference library, or sample Keysian mystery writers, looking for newish works, not yet read, or rereading Travis McGee and Hiassen. You can keep slow-reading books for weeks; the friendly librarians will renew your two-week books on the telephone. Most importantly, the library is the free Internet café of the island, with some 10 computers available for visitors’ e-mail sessions, in 30-minute stretches. The wait is not long. I would sign on with the local ISP, xx for subscriptions by the month, until Earthlink acquired a local phone number for dial-up. If you want DSL, the Key Largo Café at around MM101, has a for-rent service – they also have local music (anyone can sit in, jazz, rock and Jimmy Buffet) on Saturdays and poetry readings on Sundays.
I would also dream of driving the US 1 on a Saturday night, coming back from dinner at lazy Days, or Outback, or the open deck of the Islamorada Fish Market, where they serve baskets of oysters, clams or xx, with plain of spicy fries, under the light of the moon; the occasional boats coming in for dinner from the utter darkness across the Florida Bay casting spooky lights, and the tarpons that the kitchen help feed fish scraps occasionally jumping out of the water, rulers of the sea. They would have a Bahamian steel-drum musician serenade the dinners, by oil flare light, softly singing Belafonte and Marley their own tunes. The deck was ripped off the wood pilings by Hurricane Wilma in 2005, and will not be rebuilt, developers are claiming the bayside for docks, and diners will henceforth eat on firm land. But the charming car ride back to MM 104, across bridges with the ocean on both sides, shimmering in the moonlight, and soft jazz from WLRN Public Radio in the air, they can’t take that away from us.
I also dream of swimming in the Florida Bay, climbing down from the iron ladder in the concrete peer in front of our condo colony. It had a palm-frond covered teepee with a long picnic table and benches, where the visitors would gather every day at dusk, with plastic glasses and baskets of chips and popcorn, to applaud the sun going down. This was also torn down by Wilma, when its water surge and windstorm destroyed the entire marina, and it is now a construction site, off limits for the 2006 season. The visitors now gather at the cookout site on land, and we the bay swimmers had to find another venue.
The chief swimmer and health-through-exercise fanatic, my friend Micro, a retired pediatrician from Chicago, who had run some 15 marathons, a like number of semi-matahons and triathletic (run, swim, bike) events had found an access to the bay thet involved a bit of trespassing, an abandoned motel. Kelly’s that had been purchased by a condominium builder, along with another property, both surrounding Hobo’s Restaurant and Marina, favorite walk-to lunch and dinner spot and a distinct loss to our winter ambiance. Run by a chubby British woman known ass Mum and her cheery daughter, Kathy, wife of the owner, it was highly regarded as one of the best in the Keys, nightly attracting a waiting crowd from all over, particularly on Tuesdays, the barbecue event. The Hobo’s people promptly parlayed their condo millions in a property around MM102 on the Oceanside, building a larger restaurant with a huge parking space and outdoors waiting area. This rush to condo riche is happening all over the Keys, despite ROGO, the regulation that restricts the annual new construction in the islands with their year-round population of 80,000, to 200. The developers simply buy up the trailer parks, send their low-income retiree renters packing, tear down the double-wides and elect an equal number of town houses. The Mariner’s Club, around the old Mandalay Restaurant, a simple Oceanside food and music joint, advertises $1,750,000 condos, with clubhouse, gym and marina, only an hour from Miami (understated). It seems, though that the marina, under stringent rules, can accommodate only 2/3ds of the condos, and the developers are frantically searching for off-premises marinas, a matter complicated by a rule that each 100’ for shoreline can accommodate only two boat slips. The Hobo’s property presumably has grandfathered marina provisions. Another development of 12 homes in Islamorada, $1,975,000 to $3,600,000, 3,500 sq. ft. units, features individual heated swimming pools surrounded by white picket fences, as well as all of the above amenities.
Anyway, Dr. Miro and I now walk out our gate, down the road a hundred yards, through the open entrance of Kelly’s (blocked off for vehicle access), through a net passageway past the cottages, to the launching ramp, where we drop our towels and wade in through the muddy bottom, beginning to swim at waist –high, avoiding the dangers of the artificial rocks and reefs surrounding thee little laguna, occasionally watched by the few cottagers in two other small motels dedicated to serious scuba divers and snorkelers, who do not swim in the algae-green waters of the lower Bay. The current attack of the algae seems to be part of a recurring 10-year cycle, but we ignore them. I for one swim side-stroke, thus voiding taking the water in, unavoidable when you swim the fast crawl stroke.
Once out in the Bay, a hundred yards, we turn North, to swim past the motels’ marinas, until we reach our condo’s concrete pier, a hundred yards of thick plate, over 40-odd paired verticals, capped by crossbars whose concrete has been delaminating. The plates have been shifted although slightly, by Wilma, forcing the engineers’ conclusion of instability. Replacing them will cost at least $250,000, in addition to the ½ million already allocated to replacing the three dock causeways, hurt by Charley and carried away by Wilma, elevated 18” and built with material that permits surges to flow through, without ripping them off the newly reinforced posts. The concrete piers now house seagulls, observing us closely while perched on the three bolted-down benches that we used for fishing and looking at the passing boats crossing our Blackwater Sound on their way to the fancy homes west of the Winn-Dixie and Jewfish Creek, the passageway to Miami.
Once past the peer, we cross the condo’s launching pad, on the far side adorned with mangrove trees, their multiple roots reaching into the water, and are at the mouth of a manmade lagoon, an artificial harbor surrounded by trees of all descriptions, the former property of a director of the M Arboretum in Miami. There is a long sailboat in the harbor and a deck with tables and chairs, and a helicopter in the distance, through the trees. It is the property of a former airline pilot, purchased in the old days. I can admire the trees than make up the boundary of his four plus acres, from my back entrance. They did not suffer much from the hurricanes; neither did the broadleaf that shades my entrance, except for salt spray damage.
The keys have been fortunate. Since 1935 there have been no major hurricanes, neither Andrew nor Charlis and Wilma did much. More later.
It is in the darkening and cold nights of early New York December that I begin to daydream of Key Largo, its public library and Publix supermarket near Mile Marker 102.
I visualize driving down the dusty US 1turning into the spacious Fairview shopping center parking from the North exit and deciding whether to move into the left – near the K-Mart, the sheriffs office where you pay taxes and get your boat sticker, and the library – or the right, near the Publix, the ice cream parlor, the ATM – the bank now charges $1, it used to be free for out-of-town accounts – and the watch shop where they sell Spanish silver, doubloons form the Atocha wreck of mid-1650s.
The parking decision involves not only the destination but also finding a shady spot under the big elms and palm trees, with easy exit
Palm trees are more prevalent in the flower decorated Winn-Dixie supermarket, North of my condo, slightly under the weather because the chain is in Chapter 11.
Both markets are equally desirable for access to blood pressure machines, and Xerox equipment, at 10 cents a page, but the Publix also has a large walk-on scale. Last time the latter’s blood pressure machine had a crowd of four around it, two to get readings and two to kibitz. I politely declined their offer to go through, as at a checkout counter, and stood by, through their entire session, listening to the disbelieving woman coming to the conclusion that her good reading was close to the expected, and the others supporting her. My own readings, after a lot of walking and swimming exercises and some weight loss, were hopeful.
The main charm of the Publix is its clientele. The Keys, despite a real estate boom that has pushed out a lot of locals, poor retirees and refugees of the 1968-generation, still has many interesting types. This year I noted, among the food stamps people, a disheveled timid thin man with a scraggly long beard with white ID card on a chain around his neck, buying cheap beer and essentials with a debit card, following instructions from his equally sad faced wife. He pushed the laminated ID card at the unimpressed checkout clerk, who eventually told me that it was a Veterans Administration issue.
Beards are everywhere, from the bushy white Hemingway types, on bulky older men in shorts, accompanied by leggy aging blondes, to the scraggly chin whiskers on younger men, whose companions are more likely to be in short shorts and bikini bras. The Harley types and the deeply tanned bicycle riders are more prominent at the Winn – Dixie, where the goods are less upscale, and the frozen TV dinners from Weightwatchers, South Beach Diet as well as more conventional suppliers, mostly on sale at upwards of 3 for $5, occupy two impressive long rows of frozen food display cases. The oldsters, who limit their cooking to microwave work, can have varied meals in cardboard boxes, a different dish daily, for weeks.
Women do dress for the supermarket visit, some wearing heels, with only an occasional youngster running in straight from the beach, bathing suit covered by a huge towel, sarong- style.
Why the public library? Well, for one, it has the best balanced air-conditioning system of the shopping center, and you can spend hours dipping into the local reference library, or sample Keysian mystery writers, looking for newish works, not yet read, or rereading Travis McGee and Hiassen. You can keep slow-reading books for weeks; the friendly librarians will renew your two-week books on the telephone. Most importantly, the library is the free Internet café of the island, with some 10 computers available for visitors’ e-mail sessions, in 30-minute stretches. The wait is not long. I would sign on with the local ISP, xx for subscriptions by the month, until Earthlink acquired a local phone number for dial-up. If you want DSL, the Key Largo Café at around MM101, has a for-rent service – they also have local music (anyone can sit in, jazz, rock and Jimmy Buffet) on Saturdays and poetry readings on Sundays.
I would also dream of driving the US 1 on a Saturday night, coming back from dinner at lazy Days, or Outback, or the open deck of the Islamorada Fish Market, where they serve baskets of oysters, clams or xx, with plain of spicy fries, under the light of the moon; the occasional boats coming in for dinner from the utter darkness across the Florida Bay casting spooky lights, and the tarpons that the kitchen help feed fish scraps occasionally jumping out of the water, rulers of the sea. They would have a Bahamian steel-drum musician serenade the dinners, by oil flare light, softly singing Belafonte and Marley their own tunes. The deck was ripped off the wood pilings by Hurricane Wilma in 2005, and will not be rebuilt, developers are claiming the bayside for docks, and diners will henceforth eat on firm land. But the charming car ride back to MM 104, across bridges with the ocean on both sides, shimmering in the moonlight, and soft jazz from WLRN Public Radio in the air, they can’t take that away from us.
I also dream of swimming in the Florida Bay, climbing down from the iron ladder in the concrete peer in front of our condo colony. It had a palm-frond covered teepee with a long picnic table and benches, where the visitors would gather every day at dusk, with plastic glasses and baskets of chips and popcorn, to applaud the sun going down. This was also torn down by Wilma, when its water surge and windstorm destroyed the entire marina, and it is now a construction site, off limits for the 2006 season. The visitors now gather at the cookout site on land, and we the bay swimmers had to find another venue.
The chief swimmer and health-through-exercise fanatic, my friend Micro, a retired pediatrician from Chicago, who had run some 15 marathons, a like number of semi-matahons and triathletic (run, swim, bike) events had found an access to the bay thet involved a bit of trespassing, an abandoned motel. Kelly’s that had been purchased by a condominium builder, along with another property, both surrounding Hobo’s Restaurant and Marina, favorite walk-to lunch and dinner spot and a distinct loss to our winter ambiance. Run by a chubby British woman known ass Mum and her cheery daughter, Kathy, wife of the owner, it was highly regarded as one of the best in the Keys, nightly attracting a waiting crowd from all over, particularly on Tuesdays, the barbecue event. The Hobo’s people promptly parlayed their condo millions in a property around MM102 on the Oceanside, building a larger restaurant with a huge parking space and outdoors waiting area. This rush to condo riche is happening all over the Keys, despite ROGO, the regulation that restricts the annual new construction in the islands with their year-round population of 80,000, to 200. The developers simply buy up the trailer parks, send their low-income retiree renters packing, tear down the double-wides and elect an equal number of town houses. The Mariner’s Club, around the old Mandalay Restaurant, a simple Oceanside food and music joint, advertises $1,750,000 condos, with clubhouse, gym and marina, only an hour from Miami (understated). It seems, though that the marina, under stringent rules, can accommodate only 2/3ds of the condos, and the developers are frantically searching for off-premises marinas, a matter complicated by a rule that each 100’ for shoreline can accommodate only two boat slips. The Hobo’s property presumably has grandfathered marina provisions. Another development of 12 homes in Islamorada, $1,975,000 to $3,600,000, 3,500 sq. ft. units, features individual heated swimming pools surrounded by white picket fences, as well as all of the above amenities.
Anyway, Dr. Miro and I now walk out our gate, down the road a hundred yards, through the open entrance of Kelly’s (blocked off for vehicle access), through a net passageway past the cottages, to the launching ramp, where we drop our towels and wade in through the muddy bottom, beginning to swim at waist –high, avoiding the dangers of the artificial rocks and reefs surrounding thee little laguna, occasionally watched by the few cottagers in two other small motels dedicated to serious scuba divers and snorkelers, who do not swim in the algae-green waters of the lower Bay. The current attack of the algae seems to be part of a recurring 10-year cycle, but we ignore them. I for one swim side-stroke, thus voiding taking the water in, unavoidable when you swim the fast crawl stroke.
Once out in the Bay, a hundred yards, we turn North, to swim past the motels’ marinas, until we reach our condo’s concrete pier, a hundred yards of thick plate, over 40-odd paired verticals, capped by crossbars whose concrete has been delaminating. The plates have been shifted although slightly, by Wilma, forcing the engineers’ conclusion of instability. Replacing them will cost at least $250,000, in addition to the ½ million already allocated to replacing the three dock causeways, hurt by Charley and carried away by Wilma, elevated 18” and built with material that permits surges to flow through, without ripping them off the newly reinforced posts. The concrete piers now house seagulls, observing us closely while perched on the three bolted-down benches that we used for fishing and looking at the passing boats crossing our Blackwater Sound on their way to the fancy homes west of the Winn-Dixie and Jewfish Creek, the passageway to Miami.
Once past the peer, we cross the condo’s launching pad, on the far side adorned with mangrove trees, their multiple roots reaching into the water, and are at the mouth of a manmade lagoon, an artificial harbor surrounded by trees of all descriptions, the former property of a director of the M Arboretum in Miami. There is a long sailboat in the harbor and a deck with tables and chairs, and a helicopter in the distance, through the trees. It is the property of a former airline pilot, purchased in the old days. I can admire the trees than make up the boundary of his four plus acres, from my back entrance. They did not suffer much from the hurricanes; neither did the broadleaf that shades my entrance, except for salt spray damage.
The keys have been fortunate. Since 1935 there have been no major hurricanes, neither Andrew nor Charlis and Wilma did much. More later.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:01 PM 
