1992. You know me, I headed into the swamp.
Taking the beach route. The bike route. The evacuation route. The two-laners less traveled, just to the left of the surf.
On Marco Island, the public beach wanted a dollar to park, and no pets. Of course.
Some bastard didn’t pick up after his designer mongrel and some other guy who can’t be bothered to watch where he’s going but ironically is somehow in charge of the entire neighborhood steps in some shit. Now nobody else’s dog is welcome in the damn park. So we have learned patience.
Went a few more miles down the road. Across a bridge, hard right, stop. No rules and a small strand of sand.
Unleashed, Gang and I took a walk under the bridge. The kind of place a coastal boogie man might dwell. Spray-painted on a piling were the words “THOSE OF YOU WHO WORSHIP THE DARK, WHERE WILL YOU HIDE WHEN THE LIGHT COMES?”
Boca Raton, Florida. Ultimately, seems the people here most likely to commit crimes are the police.
We are at the home of my Uncle Joe and my Aunt Toni. They are like an older brother and sister. Toni is ten years younger than my mother and she’s ten years older than I am.
Toni finally stopped calling me “Jackie” just last year. The woman has LOVED me for forty-five years. (Talked to her last week. The teenage girl who taught me to swim is in her Eighties. Almost makes me feel old. She’s loved me for over seventy years now. – JDW)
Like I’m a living doll.
The first thing she says to me every time she sees me is “Here’s my baby nephew. Handsomer than ever. But too skinny. (To my companion.) Has he told you how I used to diaper him when he was little and he squirted me right in the eye?”
A week later I’m ten pounds heavier.
Uncle Joe is a piece of work.
We also go way back. In order to take Toni to the drive-in in Punxsutawney in his snappy 1951 Chevy tu-tone Bel-Air, he had to take me and my little brother along.
In order to smooch with my then-sixteen-year-old Aunt, Joe would spend large amounts of money at the concession stand. Us kids liked our snacks.
There was also the BRIBE. For two-bits – each – Mike and I promised Notyetuncle Joe we’d keep our mouths shut. If he wanted to cop a feel.
Then we’d rush home to Grandma and Grandpa’s and spill our guts.
Next week – Grandma would ALWAYS insist:”Take the boys or don’t go” – we were all back at the movies. I still love westerns.
Uncle Joe hasn’t taken me to the movies in thirty-seven years.
***
Just before entering the Glades, I had commented about a snippet of news I had caught on the radio. Between switching from one easy listening lite rock make-me-puke station to another.
“Actually heard the Rodney King Brutality Jury has been out for twenty-nine hours deliberating. Twenty-nine!! What could they possibly be talking about?”
Three days later, we turn on the TV and we learn those fifty-six baton licks and boot kicks – which we all saw with our own eyes – weren’t outrageous criminal behavior. But justified.
Overnight behind some bushes, Merry Miler is a waterfront studio apartment on the Barron River. We stopped at the town’s front door. From here I can read WELCOME TO EVERGLADES CITY. WESTERN GATEWAY TO THE EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK. THE LAST FRONTIER.
Population 300.
There are vultures on the sign. Strange birds, they look like their original faces were replaced with paper mache features molded by preschoolers.
In the morning, The Black Gang took Hiawatha for a walk.
I was alone when he approached the van. I had my back turned when I heard the noise behind me. I spun.
It was a dolphin. He looked me straight in the eyes, smiled and dropped back into the black estuary. I watched him go.
Surface. Breathe loudly, like it didn’t matter how much noise he made. Or who heard him. Submerge. He didn’t dive, he just let himself drop.
The NeverAgainGlades are disappearing fast. The swamp is rapidly becoming a desert. On a positive note, there’s a gator in every lone puddle.
You can camp for a month in a primitive campground. According to the rules, I must physically restrain my dogs at all times.
Which is today’s metaphor.
If the road has taught me anything, just do it and make sure nobody sees you. The quicker you move, the less guilty you look.
***
A very womanly woman in a low-cut dress stepped close to Merry Miler, parked almost on the sidewalk. “Look, Gang, kitty,” I whispered. “Kitty!” As I knew he would, the big dog let out a bark, loud enough to startle the woman’s breasts.
We have only been rousted by a couple of civilian types; the worst – Key West Airport: you can park your car for seven days, but you can’t sleep in your van a single night.
It wasn’t even 1 a.m. So, we didn’t lose much sleep.
We spent $7.00 (not a typo) and two days in Key West. Parked Merry Miler (for a moment, The Southernmost Van In The U.S.A.) a few blocks from sunset off Duval Street and slept there. Got our morning coffee like it was meant to taste at Cuban restaurants. Walked all over the place.
Key West, by the way, looks real different when you’re monogamous, sober, and impecunious. Sure would be a good place to put a houseboat and hang out. Even if one wasn’t drunk and chasing babes on an expense account.
Drove back up Highway 1. Had to go back to see Aunt Toni and Uncle Joe again, I had to. They still loved me from last week. They also confirmed my impression, not in so many words mind you, my parents have been taken over by alien lifeforms. Who’d rather spend Mother’s Day without the kids.
Called the folks yesterday to wish Top Hand a happy seventy-fifth birthday. Top Hand answered the phone. Which he gave to Norma as soon as I could say, “Happy Birthday.”
And before “I love you.”
It must be noted they had returned from a week of gambling in Reno and Tahoe just before Mother’s Day. She came home, her pockets turned inside out, Top Hand’s back was shirtless. Mom was ill with laryngitis. Sitting on a stool for thirty-six hours out of forty-eight, she had simply consumed too much chilled, grey casino air.
So that was one good reason not to host her only surviving child for the weekend.
On the phone, she offhandedly apologized for tossing us out three weeks ago.
No problem, I told her.
What else could I say?
She’s still sick three weeks later and we didn’t want to stay anyway.