A week in Hell

Beth and I went to Bowman's beach a few days ago and this young woman sat down in a large pile of shells right behind us to start playing.  Sanibel has truckloads of shells washed up on shore every day.  There are more than anyone could imagine.  This island is known as a shell collector's mecca.

This woman was thrilled with the shells.  I commented to Beth that she reminded me of a teeny bopper sitting on the floor with all of her 45's strewn around her.  Beth said that she agreed, that woman DID look like little Bethy did at thirteen years old.

I went off into the water to collect some Lightning Welks, Lettered Olives, Flame Augers, and Lace Murex.  During my hunting expedition the couple behind Beth left the beach.  Beth said that the woman didn't want to go, but the guy left for the car and she eventually followed.

Five hours later Leslie, Beth, and I were walking along our beach when I noticed a pretty thin woman with little shorts standing at the edge of the surf excitedly cupping two hands worth of shells and letting the sand and water fall out while wiggling her fingers to filter the "perfect shell" from the rest.  It is a common technique around here.  

There is the "Sanibel Stoop" which is walking along with your head hanging forward scanning the sand and holding a plastic supermarket bag in one hand.  People are in such a trance looking at the dazzling array of shells under their feet that we have seen porpoises swimming right offshore from a "sheller" and they never even notice.

There are the petite collectors, that walk with a black plastic bag from a jewelry store and only select the finest of the finest.

I myself use the harvesting technique.  My pockets bulge out like the cheeks of a chipmunk from all of the shells that Beth and I put in them.  They get  sorted later.

This excited young woman was using the "lift and filter" technique.  If you stand in one spot, enough shells are removed and deposited at your feet with every wave that you can bend over and pick up another fresh batch every ten seconds or so.

This woman was going to check out every batch.  She seemed a little too excited.

She would jump up and down while waiting for the shells to expose themselves, then she would dump out what was left in her hands and scoop up another batch, hold them up at eye level and bounce in anticipation.

Her guy was trying to distract her so that they could move on.  It wasn't going to happen.

She was going to be planted there until the ocean stopped giving her shells.

If he tried to get too close to her to convince her to move on, she would move her arms out in the universal "keep away, I am busy" sign language, and then bend over and scoop.  She would attempt to get him to help find "the perfect shell" and he would look around a little and then go back to staring at the horizon.  This was a busy day on the beach so there were people walking by finishing up their beach combing before the spectacular sunset would signal the official end of shelling for the day.  This guy was going to be there for a while.

When I went by him the second time he was staring at the horizon and clenching his teeth.  He did not seem like he was having a good time at all.  The waves were splashing his knees while his very cute lady was almost hysterical at the joy of shell shopping.

Don't ever ever bring your O.C.D. girlfriend/wife to a beach that is known for shelling.

Much later as the sun was going down, you could see her silhouette far away, bending over, hold em' up, bending over.

Can you imagine him describing his vacation to people at work when they ask if he had a good time?  "Yeah everything was fine until she found the freakin' shells!"  

"All week long, those freeeeeakin' shells!"

Where to vote.

Television stations don't really put a lot of effort into public service announcements because they just don't seem to make any profit on them.

In Florida they start two weeks early with "Early Voting" which is a system that they use down here because there are just so many registered voters and so few residents who can count, and from what I understand, it really frees up the pressure on election day.  

At a friends house, I saw a silent Public Service Announcement displayed between commercials that listed voting locations (any time the TV stops barking at me, it gets my attention).  My favorite was a polling place that could be easily found because it was across the street from the "Quaker Steak Lube".

OK, I am not eligible to vote in Florida, but I drool like Pavlov's old Harley every time I think of that retaurant and what the after effects might be.

Heading Nawth

This is fairly typical. Wonderful weather all week long. Flat seas. Dolphins swimming by, a manta ray leaping in a graceful arc, and then yesterday afternoon the wind picked up.
The waves perk up. Actually they stand up and come crashing down. Huge strings of waves with three second intervals. Very impressive, and warm. This morning before the sun came up Doug and I were wandering around on the beach until the rain started. We were able to watch a palm tree out by the street create all kinds of sparks by trying to become one with the power lines.
So we are packing (well Beth is packing while I am typing) and will be leaving town in bad weather again. We will be leaving the warm Florida weather and heading towards the cold cold cold Northeast. It's time for hugs, we'll just have to do it with big bulky winter coats on. Our lack of planning and innate sense of timing will assure that we will arrive up North when the mercury is embarrassed by the amount of shrinkage it has endured.
Load up, move out. Dump D&L at the airport in Florida and because of the storm we can probably pick them up at the airport in Manchester New Hampster as we drive through.

Got Gators?

Reverend Rick contacted me to tell me about a couple of spots in Sarasota that we should see. He started reading this Blog after I wrote that little story about him in Florida Men, Part I.
He likes it. When he gets time he pokes further and further back.
I am especially pleased that, because of that story, he now has an official online "handle".

He signed off on his notes with his new name: Dances-with-Gators.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Peacocks in the cemetary.

Now sometimes you see something that is wonderful, but a little difficult to explain.

Dunedin Peacocks

There is a cemetary in Dunedin Florida that has peacocks. I don't know why. They are wild, they fly around, they could leave if they wanted to, but they like it there. There are a lot of them. When you drive in they run up to see you. Once they figure out that you are an amateur without any cracked corn they ignore you. Go ahead, take your pictures and go.

Black Friday in warmer climates.

I have participated in the craziness of Black Friday for the last few years because it's... well... crazy. You get up early, stand in line in the cold, when the doors open you run in, buy your stuff, rush out, drive to the next place and do it again. You fill up your car with $600 to $1200 worth of stuff, and then drive home and fill out the rebate slips and end up with a huge pile of semi-useful stuff for less than $99 after rebates. Most of it would be given away to people during the year. I was free of this newfound obsession this year because I no longer have a place to store all of the junk.

Well it turns out that in areas of the country that don't have frigid weather, things are even crazier. We had heard that people start camping out at closing time on Wednesday.
So on Thanksgiving day on our way to Dee and Rick's place for dinner I drove through the Best Buy parking lot. Sure enough, there was a long line of tents. These two pictures were taken 17 hours before the store was scheduled to open on Friday morning. Best Buy now brings in Porta-Jons because of the lessons learned after the first year.






Many stores have now started offering the exact same deals online to avoid the crush.
By the way, that Friday is called "Black Friday" because for some stores, it is the symbolic first day of making a profit (or getting in the black).

Wandering again...

OK, we are on the road again. Sort of.
Headed East to Gainesville for a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. We headed South to Clearwater for another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. and Alice... remember Alice?

Today we headed East to the Atlantic Ocean and I ate Rock Shrimp.
There were pictures along the way and other stuff. Eighty degrees today. They say it is abnormally warm for this time of year. Fine by me.

I was severely stalled by cousin Tim's passing a few days ago, but with the proper editing, I will work through it. The two Thanksgiving dinners with good friends really helped me.

We will be driving a lot tomorrow but I will get back on the stick as soon as we park. Honest.
...but, after I write my column for the Marmon News, then new stuff. Honest.

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I'm so sorry to hear about your cousin.
You are all in my thoughts and prayers.
love chemo sabe November 27, 2007 10:37 AM

Florida MEN, Part III

We went down to the waterfront to see the sunrise.
Most sunrises that we see are quiet peaceful events, we don't talk much although we have been known to snore.
Being on the west side of Florida usually means great sunsets over the water but usually limits sunrises to waiting for the sun to peek over your local strip mall. (If you haven't been to Florida in the last five years or so you would be surprised to see that there is a statewide ratio of an entire stripmall for every 32 residents, so when the sun rises in Florida there is a very good chance that you will see it rise over a nearby store).

A sunrise at Cedar Key is very different.
It is an actual island, which is where the "Key" comes from (I will explain the sad story of the "Cedar" part another day). This island is far enough out that you can watch sunrises and sunsets with only a very leisurely ONE block walk between them.
We were on the East end of Dock Street to watch the sunrise and things were not quiet and peaceful. This is a fishing town.
On weekends there are charter boats heading out at 6:30 to catch grouper. This was a Wednesday so all of the clammers were going out instead. There were a few families going on some charters, but there was a continuous stream of pickup trucks with clam boats in tow backing down the two boat ramps. The old timers were wearing rubber aprons and rubber boots and the younger ones were wearing wet suits.
The clam boats are very long, low, and wide with a large outboard motor mounted through a hole that is about six feet from the bow. The bow curves sharply up and has a little steering wheel right at the point. The captain, which is usually the old timer with the rubber apron, stands up in the bow and drives, while the younger guys with the wetsuits operate the overhead winch in the back.

The sun came up at about 7:10 and the boats were all gone by 7:15, each of them heading off in different directions.
I got distracted watching a construction barge setting up shop while Beth walked away to get a coffee.
A second wave of boats started arriving in the parking lot at about 8:10. These were the man/woman couples. Husbands and wives or fathers and daughters repeated the same process although at a more casual pace with a little more complaining involved. Load the boat in the water, do a little chatting bow to bow, and then drive off in different directions. Gone by 8:25.

At 8:30 the boats from the first wave all returned loaded down with big bags of clams. They made arrangements to meet for drinks as they hauled their boats out of the water. At 8:40 they all drove away.
I assume that after a drink or two they were going to unload the bags of clams from the boats, wash them down, sort them, and prepare for tomorrow's trip. I have no idea how long that process takes, but I assume that it would take a good part of the day, factoring in the drinking and all.

Now this is civilized fishing. Lobstermen in Maine are required to check their traps every day no matter how bad the weather is, and it is bad 11 months of the year.

These guys plant the clams in their growing bags when the weather is nice. If the weather is bad they don't need to go out, the clams don't care, they are still eating and although they probably aren't that worried about their future, they aren't being eaten either. They are as happy as clams just waiting out any storm. The clammers keep themselves busy doing other clammer-type things indoors to prepare for better weather, or they drink.
When the weather is wonderful again the clammers plop their boats in the water and do the harvesting. Very civilized. LOTS of clams.

Cedar Key sunrise and barge

(Click on the picture to see more or go straight to the SLIDE SHOW)

Florida MEN, Part II

Beth and I returned to Cedar Key from Gainesville just in time for the First Annual Cedar Key Charity Male Revue. $10 includes dinner and "The Show". the dinner was homemade lasagna. It was good. Then things just got weirder and weirder. These weren't just ANY men. These weren't New York or L.A. metrosexuals or transexuals. These were clammers and fishermen in drag. Ugly men don't make beautiful women, but they ARE funny.

Normally seeing Milton Berle, Bugs Bunny, or every British television personality dressing in drag doesn't make me laugh as much as the laugh track suggests that I should. Well, maybe Bugs Bunny does, but I don't think that a man dressed as women is inherently funny, but when somebody that looks like a Yonkers New York hooker is telling you quietly how hard it was earlier that day "to unzip my durn britches with these durn long fingernails on" you just have to giggle.
These were the regulars of a bar called "Coconuts" (voted best bar in Florida 2006, 2007). The regulars aren't tourists, they are locals. Locals either sell to the tourists, or they fish for a living.
Beth and I had never seen any of them before so we were basing our first impressions of these folks on the way they looked tonight. They were stunning! Walmart Chinese self-defense Stun-Gun stunning, but it definitely kept all of the customers very alert.
The old adage of "everybody looks good at closing time" would not apply here.
"Red" had a long slinky dress, large black high heels and a red wig with Bette Midler curls, a little pocketbook, and a Budweiser bottle.
"Key Lime Pie" had very long legs, nice shoes and a very short dress. A large mane of black hair, black eye makeup, and a large nose, and just a hint of five o'clock shadow showing through the white pancake makeup made me think of Alice Cooper in 1972. I told him how much he looked like Alice and he said in a VERY low hoarse voice, "I'm getting a lot of that tonight".

More "girls" and their "pimps" kept coming in. Most of the "pimps" were the wives or girlfriends of the "girls" that were competing tonight. The "pimps" were dressed all flashy and had facial hair.

When the event finally started the "girls" would be introduced and then would stroll around to a soundtrack that they chose, and try to get tips. They had 5 or ten minutes or so to do their magic. The one that collected the most money would win the competition.
After the evening gown competition, each one came out in a bikini. There was a lot of dancing on tables and each one collected a lot of money in their bras, bottoms, or garters.
Then there were the awards. There were certificates given out. Third place got a sparkly tiera. Red was the second place winner and received a tiera.
First place went to the only "girl" that didn't have a wig on. He had long bushy gray hair and a very large gray mustache. He looks just like David Crosby (in drag). His gown looked like a maid-of-honor's nightmare with big gold poofy shoulder thingamabobs. He/She received the biggest tierra and a dozen roses and a long royal looking cape/train that was at least ten feet long. As the First Place Queen was being crowned "Red" suddenly fell off his high heels and almost took out the drumset. He REALLY fell. I saw his shoes in the air BEFORE I heard the clunk on the floor.

The band started up and the place was hopping. A really GOOD band with a great guitarist that we had seen before (playing in a different band), who looked just like a guitarist friend of mine named Kramer who lives in New Hampster.
Unfortunately Beth and I had to leave because we were both feeling really ill. Unlike most states, Florida still allows smoking in their bars, and everybody smokes. They all talk with VFW voices and are either sucking on a cigarette or are lighting one up. There was a solid cloud of smoke from our knees up. We went out to the bar's fishing porch many times during the "event", but the smoke was winning. We had to leave.

They raised over $750 for Children's Cancer Research.


(Click on Red and Beth to see a slideshow)

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chemo sabe said...

I just hate it when a guy has nicer fingernails than me!!!!

November 19, 2007 9:09 AM

Florida MEN, Part I

We were visiting Rick and Dee in Gainesville Florida. They were alternating shifts of the "ya gotta move here" tour. Dee gives one tour and Rick gives an entirely different one.

I had told Rick that I wanted to see some gators. He told us that in this area ANY body of water that isn't surrounded by a fence will have a gator in it. Cool. I wanted to see some.

Rick took us to a place that he hadn't been to in about 5 years. It is in a section of Gainesville called Payne's Prairie. It has all kinds of wildlife. Many years ago a movie was shot there and they brought in Buffalo/Bison for the filming. When the filmmakers left town they just let the buffaloes roam (this was before the days of "carry in -- carry out"). There are also wild horses, more birds than you could imagine, and gators.

We walked on a path that had warning signs at the trailhead that had some token "gator warnings", like what to do if one is blocking your path and especially the fact that you should NOT be out there at dusk because of an interesting fact about a gator's diet: During the day, gators select their meals according to size (Poodles, no Great Danes), but once it is dark, size doesn't matter, "everything is supper". OK. I will pay attention to the height of the sun.

I was looking forward to seeing a gator or two in their natural environment. Rick brought us to his favorite "gator hole". We peered through the moss draped branches and saw a big gator tail. After we adjusted to that, we spotted more, and more. We backed out and walked partway around this 50 foot round pond. It had non-muddy water that was brown with tannic acid, so it looked like a primitive cup of tea. Very primitive. Prehistoric primitive. There were at least 10 gators in view at any one time and more kept appearing.
Beth kept looking behind her to make sure we weren't being stalked.

I was taking a lot of pictures while Rick, who grew up in the South, kept trying to get me to follow him down the steep embankment to get a "closer look". Since I grew up waaaaay up North, I thought that I didn't really need a "closer look" that had the possibility of being from the inside of a gator. So I took pictures from a safe(r) distance.

When we were done at that hole we continued on a pleasant walk past bird watchers with binoculars. We watched long beaked birds poking in streams. We listened to large quantities of "cooing" birds that stayed out of sight. Very pleasant.
Then we came upon a much larger pond. It had gators too. Not as many per square foot as the small hole but it seemed to be enough to eat a large quantity of anything.
Rick, being a Southerner, felt obliged to go down and introduce himself. Beth and I stayed behind taking pictures and trying to convince Rick to throw us his car keys before he went any further.
It was going to be a long walk home.
As he got closer and closer to the edge, more and more eyes kept appearing on the water. Now I want to clarify something here: Us Northerners don't think of eyeballs as particularly dangerous by themselves but, in my opinion, eyeballs that seem to be attached to a huge set of teeth, hundreds of pounds of muscle, and perhaps most importantly, a large stomach that may be feeling hungry at the moment, should be allowed a certain amount of "personal space".

Rick is a Southern-Preacher-Man. He might have connections that I don't, but I think that his "Southern-Man" was leading the way at the moment. The "Preacher" part wasn't involved.

It takes a long time to step through the grasses and brush when you are trying to avoid stepping on water moccasins, so I didn't try to rush him or distract him, although I DID keep pleading for the car keys. He has a good arm, I knew he could get them to me, but I also knew that if he was busy being eaten, he may not have the presence of mind to put his house guests first and pull his keys out of his pocket.

When he was down there by the water, he kept pointing out various gators that were popping up here and there, just looking at the menu, I suppose.

Suddenly Rick snapped his arms over his head and screamed!

The gators all splashed into the water at the same time. The water was churning and there were NO gators to be seen. The Southern-Man was happy. He looked around with a posture that said "come on, you want a piece of me?". I jsut wanted his car keys. Beth kept checking behind us.

Rick climbed back very carefully.

We had a nice stroll looking at birds, turtles, and other gators in the marsh.

We went back to Rick's house. When Dee (Rick's wife) looked at the pictures I thought that she would be angry and bawl Rick out for being "such a knucklehead/macho/typicalman", but no, she's seen him do this a LOT of times. If she was walking with him, she wouldn't even slow down to watch him confront the gators, she just keeps walking.

But then again, she probably has her own set of keys to Rick's Mustang.


(Click on the picture to see a slideshow)

Florida Wildlife

Welcome to Florida!

This little fellow with eight shiny eyes and green iridescent pincers was discovered by Beth. I was working out in the yard when the announcement came about a spider sighting. When I didn't respond quick enough, a second alarm was raised. I came in to see Beth just pointing up at the wall. I got out the dustbuster, sucked it up and took it out to the yard as part of my catch and release program.
I dumped her out onto the sand and squatted down to get a good look at her. She hoisted herself up on her large front hairy legs and studied me with at least four of her eyes while I studied her. Then she ran. She ran straight to my boot and started climbing. I flicked her off with a stick, she regained her composure, looked around at her surroundings, and ran to my boot again.
Now I figured that she was afraid of being outdoors, which wasn't likely, or she really appreciated that I didn't squish her and merely vacuumed and released her and wanted to climb up on me to express her eternal devotion and servitude to me, which wasn't likely, or she was attempting to kill me.
Just to confirm my suspicions, I set up some obstacles just to prove that I wasn't merely in the way of where she was going. She was smarter than your typical lab mouse. She could zip around anything in her path and return to my/her boot with NO learning curve involved.
I wanted to just leave her and return to the house but something told me that I should try to identify her because... oh, for example, the emergency room doctor wanted to know which anti-venom to use. I also didn't really want to turn my back on her. So I did something that I don't like to do. I "dispatched" the beast. She didn't like it. I then carried her back to the porch so that I could take a picture, which you can see above. Go ahead, look, she won't bite... WATCHIT! She moved! did you see that? oh, I guess not. Sorry to scare you.

I went to some websites that list all of the poisonous spiders and snakes in Florida. There are not as many types as you would think, about four types of spiders and six types of snakes, but they are all very common. Actual death from a spider bite in Florida is rare, but "very painful, large cone-shaped depressions of dead skin tissue" is more common. Yeah, that's not so bad, that must be why they have so many handicapped parking spaces down here, so you can drag around your necrosis addled leg.

She wasn't on the list of black and brown widows and the recluse spiders. So I looked in the "non-poisonous things that just bite just because they think it's fun" section and there she was. I think she is/was a BOLD JUMPING SPIDER . She did seem a tad bold. The pictures I saw of her kind were of plain, boring, run-of-the-mill, hairy, tarantula-looking spiders. NONE of them were as flamboyant as she is/was with her iridescent green pincers that just shout "I am veeerrrry dangerous". In fact, there was no picture (on this site) of a spider with shiny colorful pincers. Maybe she still had her Halloween costume on from the night before. Or maybe she is/was a mutant spider imported from an exotic place like Warwick Rhode Island that is planning to destroy Florida's economy by killing the tourists.

I was glad that I followed Doug's advice and was wearing boots and not my Tevas that I have worn ALL summer long.

Florida: Wear boots while in the yard, always.

Here is a nice easy to read description: Bold Jumping Spider

The Cedar Key News, Halloween edition.

As we travel around I always pick up the little free local newspaper because I like to know more about the local community and because... well, it's free.

Last night I was reading the Cedar Key News. There is a short cover page story about rebuilding the “big dock”. There is the “Sheriff's Corner” with helpful tips about how to back up your car.

The largest article was “From the Desk of – Bubba Castell, Cedar Key Chief of Police”.
It seems that there has been a problem of people in cars not using turn signals and people in gulf carts not using hand signals. There were three vehicles stopped for speeding through the school zone who were arrested for DUI and suspended licenses. There was a DUI arrest of a 23 year old driving around with five people packed on a gulf cart at 1:30am.

There were also a couple of interesting items that I don't think I have seen before. One was the description of a traffic stop: “Officer Mike detected a strong odor of the impurities of an alcoholic beverage coming from Mr. Clark's breath. Mr. Clark admitted to having had “a couple” of beer.” [sic]

“impurities of an alcoholic beverage” is a phrase that I am going to have to start using simply because it sounds so cool as it flows off the tongue.

The final item from Officer Bubba is the reason for this post. This little item made me laugh out loud and continue giggling until I fell asleep:
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REMINDER: TRICK OR TREAT WILL BE HELD ON OCTOBER 30, 2007 THIS YEAR BECAUSE THE 31^st FALLS ON WEDNESDAY, per City Resolution Number 209. The 31^st will be the normal date unless it falls on Sunday or Wednesday. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Do you think that the person that wrote that city resolution liked to watch TV on Sunday evenings and had a kid with piano lessons on Wednesdays?

I think that someone should mount a campaign to change the banned days to Monday and Thursday. That would make MUCH more sense.
Small towns... You just can't make this stuff up.

Halloween Party.

Cris G took us to a Halloween party tonight. The decorations and the setup were awesome.
The bathroom had the toilet set up as an electric chair with lots of electric sparks, lights, and it's own soundtrack. Costumes were required with no exceptions, so they were good.
We are all going to bed NOW, so I will try to add more info in the AM.

2007-10-26 FL, Halloween, wm

(as always, click on the picture to see the rest-o-them)

I also uploaded the few pictures that weren't completely blurry that I took with my phone when we were at the Greek party last night. See them here: Greek Party

A concerned reader.

Tonight we were at the Greek Fall Festival in Tarpon Springs learning about Greek culture by attending a big fat Greek party in the #1 sponge producing town in the world.
Our buddy Stu called while we were there. He was a little concerned about the last few posts and wanted to know if maybe I was off my medicine and/or I needed medicine because the latest posts seemed a "little disjointed". I told him that they were slammed out as I sat in public places with no editing of any kind. I assured him that I would read them when I had an internet connection later tonight.

Well I read them.
OK, they are disjointed, but that is how I write, and then I clean things up and throw away the stuff that doesn't really belong, like the "pillage, then burn" comment. That was actually a thought that came cruising through as I was typing and it would usually get cut and pasted to my nugget file where it may resurface later in a story about pirates or something. When I am typing in a public place with an intermittent internet connection, editing is a luxury for another day.
Tomorrow is another day. I will try to edit then. Or maybe not. We exchanged Chris K for Cris G today, which doesn't really free up our schedule. We are going to a Halloween party tomorrow night and there is a lot to do before then.

Thanks for your concern Stu, and thanks for the laughs on the phone. I think I am legally sane in at least 27 states. I think.
As of Tuesday I will have an internet connection so i ...... [Edited for length]

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chemo sabe said...
re disjointed writing
Golly, I didn't notice anything... just enjoying the ride. But then I'm in a fog anyway (thanks to the miracles of modern medicine)! So maybe I'm not the one to comment!!!!
Warren, found a picture of you and me at a Holloween party over 20 years ago. You were a ghost and I was the Keebler elf. If memory serves, a girl that was a bag of M&Ms won the prize & D&L were Fatman and Bobbin. (Amazing thing chemo. I can remember over 20 years ago, but forgot what my husband told me an hour ago...sigh)
LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
chemo sabe
October 29, 2007 9:58 AM

What IS he tugging on?

Downtown Cedar Key.
I wanted to cross the street to see what they saw,
but I decided it was better to leave it up to the imagination.

Happy as a clam.

We are staying in the roundhouse in Cedar Key. It looks like a yurt, but is a real house inside. It doesn't have four corners, it has sixteen. A little odd, which fits us well.
Chrissy is staying with us for a couple of days. Chris K. became Beth's very close buddy on the first day of first grade. (Vicky, who adds occasional comments to this blog, is Chris' daughter.)
The three of us bounced around downtown Cedar Key last night. We went to all of the hotspots, or at least every spot that was open on Wednesday night. We had a drink at the old hotel, which features a very old painting of Neptune with mermaids and merboys behind the bar. There are two very large bullet holes in the painting from some disgruntled patron of the past. I guess some people are not afraid to criticize art when it is warranted.
We traveled on to a restaurant out on the water. We had jambalaya, clams, and potato skins. The jambalaya was made with ALL local seafood and the clams were something we HAD to order because they were touted as “our own” clams, just like other restaurants might tout their homemade pies. You see “Cedar Key is the #1 producer of farm raised clams in the USA”.
The clams were small cherrystones, which are the clean looking round ones with thick shells. Very small and very tender.
We asked the waitress if these were a typical size for “farm raised clams” and she said that these were 18 month clams. They can get a little bigger, but these are typically what they ship everywhere. Of course, we had to ask her about the process.
Background: A few months ago, Nook took us to see the oyster beds up past Seattle which were large square grids floating in a bay. Under the grids were strings that hung straight down that had all the oysters attached. Well clams are different. You would think that the mangled up shells of oysters would be created in a rough location and the smooth shells of cherrystones would be from some clean undisturbed surface, but it is the opposite. “Farm raised clams” grow in the sand and mud just like the regular “wild” New England clams. The difference is that they grow inside a bag so they can be harvested in one easy swoop because clams like to use their foot to move around, because after all, that IS what a foot is for. The mud is always blacker on the other side of the rock they always say..., which makes harvesting of free-range clams a rather difficult job.
They start with the little seedlings in a fine mesh bag and they stake it out in the water. After a month or two they are pulled in and switched to a larger “growing bag” with larger mesh that allows larger food to wash through. Clams are filter feeders so they need a constant supply of food particles to wash by them so they don't get grouchy. Just imagine what the ocean would sound like if all the clam's stomachs were growling, and then the sponges would get irritated by the constant noise and would contract and stop absorbing all that water and the oceans would overflow... or maybe not.
Anyhow, the larger clam bags are staked out for 12 to 18 months where they grow into the happy clams that these were until an hour ago. I asked about starfish and whelks, and she said that there they sometimes find large holes torn through the bags (the starfish's version of a bagged lunch I suppose).
They ship these clams all around the world for all kinds of stuff. A nice business that seems much easier and more predictable than the pitchfork and calf-high mud technique of clamdigging that I am familiar with. Now don't go running off to collect onion bags and clam seedlings to strike it rich. Nobody around here seems to be particularly wealthy.
We walked down the cat-strewn street to the bar. Tonight was the big night of semi-finals for the state karaoke championship. We were too late to hear the contestants, but we were there for the big awards ceremony. Afterwards we danced in the corner. Our clique had expanded with the addition of a local named Lolita, a well dressed. pretty mannequin that didn't dance and never spoke, but enjoyed watching us dance and dance. When the town closed we walked around the loop looking for more kittys and then we drove home.
All in all, a very nice downtown.
Things don't seem to move quickly, in fact, everything seems to move at a clam's pace around here. I think this town will be a good place to catch our breath and review the last six months.


The scene fades to a picture of one of their rickety docks, while Nancy Sinatra sings: “This foot is made for pushing, and that's just what it'll do, one of the these days this foot will push away from you....”

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Vicky said...
Ok, I couldn't not comment. I love the clam story. Warren, you always have known how to make me laugh. I hope you guys have a great visit with mom. It sounds like you are having lots of fun. And Warren, I want a copy of the picture of the girls crossing the street on the cell phones.Luv you all, Vicky
October 25, 2007 3:40 PM
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OK Vicky. here's the picture.


Chris K talking to Vicky while Beth talks to Cris G while crossing the busy street in downtown Cedar key.

Welcome to Florida!

We are in Cedar Key Florida right now. I am parked downtown with the engine running because the air conditioner helps my typing accuracy. I am downtown because there is no Verizon signal around here and so I am off-line unless I park near a motel that has wireless.
Beth is sooooo happy to have a kitchen and a place to neaten up. D&L's little round house only has ONE set of curtains. I saw Beth take down, straighten and replace that one set of curtains at least three times. She is nesting. We are planning to be here for six weeks or so.
I am now going to do the research to see what options are availble for internet connections.

"Why I remember way back before that Tim Berners-Lee feller went an created this dang World Wide Web a few years ago when we were happy with havin' a computer. That's right! We were happy with our 2.66Mhz processors and acoustic modems. Why we thought we were tough stuff to use the Internet as a cheaper way to sneak into bulletin boards without a long distance charge. We're spoilt now. Aren't happy without an Internet connection. Spoilt!"

Travel Plans

This is a photo I took of a sticker on the side window of an out-of-state van that was in Anacortes, Washington.