Living in a winter wonderland

It snowed last night!

For most folks, that may not be such a big deal, but it's the first significant snowfall I have encountered in almost six years.

After four plus years in the Florida Keys, and an almost snowless winter in Seattle last year (at least where Rachael and I live and work), it was fun, sitting in the living room, watching the flakes fall. And a late walk through Lincoln Park was hush, chill and lovely.

I am certain that by Monday, if this continues, I will remember why I left Ohio (for the Florida sun) in the first place, but for now, I'll enjoy the greeting card images and savor a good book and a mug of cocoa in front of the fireplace.

Jimmy and the Missus

“Jimmy! Take a picture of that!”

The Missus had a voice to set the world on edge; a grating sound day-old coffee might make, if it could. She and Jimmy had stopped at Eaton Street, in downtown Key West, in the midst of a stroll past the bars and boutiques along Duval Street.

“Take a picture, Jimmy!” The Missus said. It was more command than request.

She was an itty bitty woman, for such a voice, of a height to confound those signs at amusement parks that read, ‘You must be this tall to ride this ride’, and if she ever had weighed more than ninety pounds, it couldn’t have been for more than fifteen minutes. The Missus compensated for her lack of stature by wrapping herself in garments that demanded attention.

An over-sized shirt, banana yellow, hung to mid-thigh, all but covering lemon Capri pants. Gold jewelry dripped from her ears and fingers, and her face was almost hidden by a pair of bronzed sunglasses. The ensemble was completed by straw sandals and a visor as lemon-yellow as her pants. A canvas purse, salt-white to match her lacquered hair, hung from her right shoulder and looked to weigh as much as she did.

“Picture of what?” Jimmy asked.

He wasn’t much taller than The Missus and it was clear he never skipped a meal. Meaty arms and heavy-hammed legs. Stubby sausage fingers. A melon belly, round and firm enough to bounce him back upon his feet, should he fall.

His head was covered by a Panama hat and his eyes were hidden by ink-dark shades clipped onto prescription lens. His outfit was as bright as hers, but less coordinated. Kelly green shorts. Lime green plastic sandals and white athletic socks. An islands shirt, orange as the sunset seen from Mallory Square and covered with pink flamingos in such contortions you could almost hear the Red Queen shouting.

“The silver man, Jimmy,” The Missus said. She was pointing now, commanding her army of one. “The fellow that looks like a statue!”

Jimmy followed orders; he brought one of those little digital cameras up to his eye and pointed it toward the nearby street performer. The silver man struck a statuesque pose, hoping for a large tip, no doubt.

After the Kodak moment, The Missus jerked Jimmy’s hands toward her, inspecting the image he had captured. She nodded acceptance and they resumed their stroll. The rest of him didn’t move, but the silver man’s eyes followed them, pleading. No luck. Jimmy’s thick hands were full of camera and The Missus didn’t even glance toward her purse.

“Jimmy, do you suppose we should look for Tom and Doreen?” she said. “Tom has the car keys.” Jimmy sighed, as he slipped the camera into his pocket.

“They ain’t going to leave us,” he said. “Besides, it’s only been twenty minutes.”

“But what if something happens to them?”

“Like what?”

“God only knows! What if Tom has too many beers and picks a fight; you know how he is when he drinks.”

“You just got to think of troubles.”

“Well, you never do! What if something happens to one of them? What if we’re stuck here because Tom goes to jail or Doreen winds up in the hospital? Have you thought of that?”

If he had, he didn’t say. Instead, he stopped outside one of the tee-shirt shops that seem to sprout on Duval Street, between all the bars, like weeds blown over from the neighbor’s lawn. One stubby finger tapped against the glass.

“Lookee there! Don’t that beat all!”

The window was filled with white tees imprinted with bumper-sticker humor. I’m 18 years old—with 40 years experience. Look at my face because my tits are blind. My liver doesn’t love me anymore. And the one every shop carried, the one city officials wished wasn’t on display anywhere, because it was close enough to the truth to be painful. I got Duval-faced on Shit Street. The Missus grimaced.

“Jimmy, you can’t buy one of those! If you do, it goes right into the trash when we get home!” Jimmy tilted his head and glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

“Didn’t plan to,” he said. “But I can look, can’t I?” She sniffed, as if to determine if the scent of her disapproval was strong enough.

“That’s all you better do, Mister!”

“Listen here, Missus,” he said. He was looking at her full-on now. “You’re the one needed to see Key West. You’re the one wanted to drive all the way down here from Orlando. You’re the one that had to have Tom and Doreen come along, and made Tom rent that gas-guzzler. Just you remember that.”

His voice never rose, but the pink in her cheeks did. He turned back to the window and they stood in silence for a time. At last, she lifted one sculpted fingernail to the glass.

“That one is funny, isn’t it?” she said.

The bitter-coffee whine was more palatable, sugared and creamed by whatever had flowed between them. Jimmy nodded; he tapped the plate glass once more.

“Yep,” he said. “And that one there makes me laugh, too.” She snickered and clasped her hands between her breasts, as if to offer up a prayer.

“Oh, yes! Take a picture of that, Jimmy,” she said. “Take a picture!”

The only way to have an intelligent conversation

I was posting with some folks on-line this morning about writing and the conversation turned to the topics of character development and author immersion.

A couple of years ago, while we were living in the Florida Keys, I took a novel-writing class at Miami-Dade College, once-a-week evening sessions that were supposed to be convenient for working writers. I imagine they were, for the other students, but it was a five-hour round trip for me.

Every Thursday, for eight weeks, I was on my way up U.S. 1 by 4:00 p.m., to make the 7:00 p.m. start time. We would talk about writing for three fleeting hours, and then I would have to tear myself away to get back to Ramrod Key before 1:00 a.m.

It was exhausting and exhilarating, worth every minute of drive time; as a bonus, I managed to dictate a rough draft for each week's assignment into a tape recorder as I rolled down U.S. 1, across the sea and under the stars.

There is nothing better to stir the juices than being able to act out a story aloud, playing all the characters and detailing the action, without fear that someone will think you insane.

Anyway, I told you that to tell you this.

The instructor talked a lot about reaching "critical mass". It didn't have anything to do with pages or words, she said. It was the point, in the creation of a story, at which you begin to talk about the characters as if they are real people.

Or talk to them as if they are real.

Of course, she was being practical; how can you expect a reader to believe your characters are real if you don't. But have you ever had a serious chat, on the back side of midnight, with a person you created whole cloth?

What a rush.

Key West on my mind

Rachael and I have been in Seattle for more than half a year, but the Florida Keys still tug at me now and again.

The cool and rainy weather we’ve been having these past few weeks has reminded me of a man I knew for a time in Key West. It was public record that his parents named him Douglas James, but his friends under the Cow Key Channel Bridge called him Dougie.

He was fifty-five years old, but you might guess his age at seventy, if you bothered to look at the bearded little man with the shy smile and bright blue eyes, wearing a ragged Santa Claus hat.

It seemed he was everywhere. Sitting on the seawall along North Roosevelt Boulevard, watching the smooth-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico, while he sipped from a paper-swaddled smooth-green bottle. Wandering Duval Street in downtown Key West, trying to catch the eye of a passing tourist to cage a handout. Asleep under a bush at the buss stop in front of the Winn-Dixie store; that’s where I came upon him one August day.

Dougie was sprawled on his back, snoring. An empty bottle was close at hand, its threaded snout peeking from a rumpled paper bag. His head and shoulders were resting beneath the bus, where there was shade, but his feet, one of them shoeless, were off the curb and in the path of traffic.

I knew him from the Monroe County Detention Center, where I worked as a corrections officer, and where Dougie was what the staff called a frequent flyer. Fourteen days for public intoxication, perhaps; a month for trespassing. Then back onto the street for sixty to ninety days, before returning for another round.

Inside, Dougie cleaned up without effort. After a week of no alcohol, regular meals, medical care and frequent baths, he looked the part of an elderly uncle or that retired bachelor teacher everyone liked in high school.

That is what he claimed to be, a teacher, at least once upon a time. High school history, he said. He was vague about where he taught. “Up north,” was all he ever would say, but he was certain how long he had taught.

“Seventeen years,” he would say. “I taught for seventeen years and then the booze got the better of me.”

He had been in Florida for fifteen years; in Key West since 1998, he wasn’t certain of the exact date. Like other homeless men and women, he found the place local residents refer to as Paradise very nearly that. He discovered that living without a roof was easy where the thermometer almost never drops below room temperature. And, with a little luck, you could survive the mosquitoes, head lice, bored police officers and occasional hurricanes.

And there was always a bottle, somewhere, to be passed around. For Dougie, the bottle was the best part. He was a man for whom a bad habit had become vice, and he just wanted to be left alone with his demon.

On one of those rare rainy days in Key West, Dougie’s luck ran out. He was crossing North Roosevelt Boulevard, with two friends, also homeless, when he was struck by a delivery truck.

“We was crossing the road, right there at Sears,” Dougie’s friend, Terrence, told me later. “Me and Heather and Dougie. He was behind us, and when me and Heather got over to the bike path, we turned just in time to see that truck clip him. Jeez, he went flying.”

The paramedics pronounced Dougie D.R.T. Dead Right There. His remains were taken to Lower Keys Medical Center; no one claimed the body, so it was cremated and the ashes scattered.

There were no services and the only eulogy spoken was said over shared bottles, so I offer these words to Dougie’s memory. His parents named him Douglas James, and he is gone now, but still remembered by one wandering soul who, thank God, never lived under the bridge.

On the road again

Moving to a new city, where a job and a place to live are waiting, is an adventure; that's how Rachael and I made it to the Florida Keys.

Moving 3500 miles cross-country on a leap of faith is something else, something that may not even have a name. But that's how we came to Seattle; in our SUV, towing a trailer that contained everything we owned, hoping there would be something for us when we arrived.

We were lucky, that first Sunday here; we found an apartment we both fell in love with the instant we walked through the door. Work took a little longer, but we are paying the bills these days, with enough left over to have some fun now and again. Not bad for a couple of aging gypsies.

But the real adventure was not settling into Seattle; it was the trip here, and the high point of our travels, was our stop in Malta, Idaho.

Saturday, October 27, last year, just after midnight, we had drifted into a truck stop outside of Ogden, Utah, to nap for a couple of hours. We were back on the road by two a.m., and neither of us thought to top off the tank before we left. Ninety minutes later, on an empty stretch of Interstate 84 in southern Idaho, we were cursing our carelessness.

Desperate for gasoline, certain we didn’t have enough fuel to make it to Twin Falls, we spotted an exit sign and saw high-pressure sodium glowing like faery light; we left the interstate and headed for Malta.

The sign at the village limits said 184 souls lived there; but at 3:40 a.m., the place looked like a well-lit ghost town. On Main Street, we found the Malta Fuel Depot -- two pumps, a convenience store and a bait shop. It was closed; the sign said the place opened on Saturday at 7:30 a.m. Four hours away. We planned to cross over into Oregon about then; instead, it seemed we would be in Malta, praying that the Fuel Depot opened on time.

And then, Rachael did something that never would have occurred to me if I had considered the situation for the rest of my life.

“The light on that pump is on and it has a card reader,” she said. She opened the car door. “Let’s see if it will take my credit card.”

I tried to stop her. I worry about most everything and I have a grand imagination; not a good combination. I had visions of large policemen springing from hiding, guns drawn; I saw the two of us – who do not fit the demographic for Malta, Idaho, in any way – being led to parts unknown, our SUV pushed off a canyon rim and our two cats left to find their own kibble.

Rachael wouldn’t listen. She marched up to that pump, slid in her card – and it worked. No cops. No sirens. No worries. Five minutes later, we were back on the interstate, with a full tank of gasoline bought and paid for; giggling like a couple of first-time drunks. And by the time the Malta Fuel Depot opened for business, we were crossing the state line; thinking about breakfast and about to discover that pumping your own petrol in Oregon is against the law.

So, from a distance of seven months and seven hundred miles, I want to thank the operator of the Malta Fuel Depot. I don't know if you forgot to turn off the pumps that Friday night, or if you leave them on 24/7 for the early risers in town. Whichever, it was the difference between disaster and delight.

And that is what adventure is about, isn’t it? Taking chances, latching onto serendipity and celebrating victory -- even over such a small thing as a full tank of fuel.

Mama's slide

Monday and Tuesday are Rachael's days off and so those two day have become our weekend.

Last night, we ate puerco asado at a Cuban restaurant, and the hostess, with her Havana Spanish, reminded me of a woman I knew, once upon a time, in the Florida Keys.

Her name was Elena and she had come to the Keys from Havana, with a short stop in Miami's Little Havana. The experts say that cultural immersion is the best way to learn a second language. Want to become fluent in conversational French? Live a year in Montreal. Buy groceries at a neighborhood store where checkout clerks only speak French; Read Le Journal de Montreal for news and watch Peter Falk mutter, in dubbed French, through a Columbo rerun on CFCM Channel Four. You learn through necessity; sink or swim.

I watched Elena learn English that way during the first months of her year-long stay at Monroe County Detention Center in Key West, where I worked as a corrections officer. As duty officer in Bravo unit during her first week there, I watched her struggle with the language barrier; watched her frustration well into tears. I offered tissue and told her, in my broken Spanish, to have patience. Six weeks later, I was back in Bravo again, and when I came on duty, Elena trotted toward me.

"Off-i-cer," she said. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," I said. "How are you?"

"I am good. Thank you."

I could still hear Havana in her voice, but her words were English. Elena was a quick learner; Three months after arriving in Bravo, she became head trusty, in charge of a team of four, who received certain liberties in exchange for serving meals and cleaning the common areas. One afternoon, Elena came to me with a request.

"In the hall. The metal, it needs cleaned."

She was referring to an aluminum floor strip in the vestibule outside the unit, where trusties parked food carts following meals. I checked and agreed; the grooved metal needed cleaning.

"After lock down," I said. "You and I will work on it."

Five p.m. found Bravo's other residents behind secured doors and the two of us in the vestibule. Elena was armed with a mop, buckets and a green abrasive scrub pad. After the final mopping, she found spots not up to her standards, so she bent at the waist and began to polish with the green pad. She was almost done when her spread feet slipped on the still damp floor and her bottom began a descent to the tile.

I'm not certain who was more startled, her or me; it ended too soon for either of us to react. Elena just had time to glance at me, her eyes wide and her mouth a perfect 'O', before she plopped the final few inches to the floor, performing a split so perfect it would have made a gymnast proud.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Her eyes were filling with tears; I was certain she was injured, then she laughed and I saw that all that had been injured was her pride. At first, she made little snorts, through her nose, but that dropped into full-bellied giggling. It was contagious. I couldn't hide a snicker as I pulled her to her feet. Her face was pink, but her eyes were bright and a little wild.

"Oh, boy," she said, her English still intact. "That was some surprise."

Then she looked at me. Appraising. Considering how to recapture her lost dignity. She shook a finger at me. Playfully. Slyly.

"Don't you tell no one, okay?" she said. "Don't you tell no one at all!"

And so, I held my tongue; at least until Elena's stay was complete and she returned to the world, mistress of two languages.