Peak experience

Nate, Steve and Juan were really cookin' on Monday -- wretched in the heat sense, but terrific in terms of progress.

They'd worked on the south front dormer in the morning, and by midafternoon they were fixing up the unfortunate things the mainland carpenter, Ken, had done on the north counterpart.

"That sill just about fell out when I touched it," Brantley said the other day. Oops. But looking up today, he had a huge smile when he said, "That's really a pretty roof. You're gonna have the prettiest house on the street."

I walked around to the back and scoped out the other side of the second floor. The proportions look different with the siding up -- but I still think Mr. B is right.

Adios, Iguana

I turned the corner at Green Street today and -- there it wasn't.

I fell in love with the Iguana the first time we went there -- a little lunch-counter sort of place across the street from Captain Tony's, with an old-style wood front that swung up to make a canopy over the sidewalk. There were a few high tables there and only 8 or 10 more jammed into the tiny inside. Behind a slim front part, there was an open-air section built around a tree, and then a wee kitchen in back. The floors were uneven, and there were terrariums behind the cash register with dusty faux iguanas.

If it started raining while you were eating, you did your best to scootch into the perimeter of what would only pretentiously be called the atrium.

It seemed less to have been built than to have happened, a great Key West relic. And once you'd snared a table, you never, ever, felt any pressure to leave. Stay, savor, read the paper, ogle the street traffic and groove to the live music from Tony's.

Of course, groove on the food, too. I loved the patty melt with curly fries, and I mean loved; Robert's favorite was the grilled fresh tuna sandwich -- the best on the island, he said. Even more delectable was the owner, little Ino, with all the passion and flash of her homeland, Spain.

Then after Wilma, we noticed 2-by-4's across the front, and when I ran into Ino at Publix early this year, I asked her what was going on. "Oh, the hurricane," she said. "It did so much damage, and the landlord doesn't know what he wants to do."

I know what I want to do. I want to cry.

New leaves

And now in age, I bud again.
After so many deaths, I live and write;
I once again smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempest fell all night.

-- George Herbert

Don't ask, just nail

Juan and Gregory were up on the scaffold, measuring what we needed and nailing up the planks that Brantley and I, down at the sawhorses, were measuring and cutting.

Juan knew exactly what he wanted: "33 and 5/16," he called out at one point -- and by damn, we gave it to him, not an easy thing with HardiPlank.

During a heat break (Juan's order is red Gatorade; Greg's another "anything wet" kinda guy), Ref and Nathaniel drove up.

"Don't ask where, but look what I found," Ref said with a big grin, pointing at a load of cedar planks in the back of the truck, some up to 16 feet long. Given the demand for materials around here, the odds were about as great as stumbling across another of Mel Fisher's ingots.

"Just unload 'em, and get 'em in there where nobody's gonna see 'em." The wood smelled marvelous as the guys carried it in, and Ref was working on adrenaline. "Now I can sleep tonight; now my stomach can stop rumbling." And now he could resume work on the front of the house. "I think that's why I haven't finished the windows yet -- I wasn't happy with the salvaged pine we had to work with. It wasn't gonna go far enough. And this cedar is perfect for us."

Later in the day, he heard Juan shouting down an order for a long-point measurement of 30 and 11/16. "Sixteenths? Sixteenths?? Just say 5/8, man! This ain't no cabinet shop yet."

Not yet; but when it is, we seem to have found someone who can deal with it.

On your mark . . .

If you heard a popping sound this morning, it was probably the starting gun for our dash to get the place sided and "dried in."

Ref's ad bore fruit, and first thing today Steve and Juan had shown up to finish building the pump jack and start siding.

Meanwhile, Ref and I were on our way to HARC -- the Historic Architecture Review Commission -- to talk with Diane, the staff honcho (or is that honcha?).

Those blue lines in the picture are chalk marks on the porch planks, finally squared up after all these years. But we wanted to let HARC know we probably wouldn't end up with enough usable salvaged planks, and couldn't find wood 1x6's anywhere, to cover all the old structure on the south face. (HARC guidelines allow HardiPlank on the new construction, but call for wood on everything historic.)

Diane told us to do our best -- and, by the way, gave us a green light for our exterior colors. (Even paints have to be approved in the historic district.) She knows the house we're using as our template -- even though it's a big, fancy thing, and we're just a cottage -- and loves the combination. All I have to do is submit chips or a photo for official approval. Pity I can't just tell her to look here.

Momentary tiger

More adventures in afternoon light.

Tempus fugit at 3 p.m.

Captive audience

Rev. McKinzie, a retired music teacher and preacher, plays at Fleming and Duval most mornings. "I try to go for 2, 2½ hours," he said. Even if the tourist tide has yet to rise, he's there, in jacket and tie. Any donations go to the Key West Bible Classes program.

"Sure, I know him," Brantley said with a big smile. "He has that two-story frame house next to Hemingway's house. He's fun to talk to -- and man, he can play any instrument there is."

Ref on roof, redux

"Is this the same roof I was working on before?," Ref was asking. "I think it got steeper."

You can barely see him up there, grappling with the other end of the post to anchor it for a scaffold. Mr. B's s up fairly high steadying it, and below him, out of the frame, is Nathaniel, wrestling with the lower bracket.

They're getting ready to shoot the planks on the south side of the house, which at this hour of the day is the hot side, believe me. The sun is merciless.

We've had a few slow days, mostly because carpenter Ken was heading back to resume work on the project but had an unfortunate accident -- Ref caught him scamming. It's a complicated story, but Ref sums it up pretty well: "I told him I was born at night, but it wasn't last night, and he might as well turn around and go home."

So Ref's put an ad in the paper, seeking carpenters and helpers, looking for labor that's skilled and honest.

Loose ends

. . . but not for long, woo-hoo!

I bit the bullet today and ordered all our "smart" switches -- and though the price smarts a bit, it's amazing technology for the price.

They're by Insteon, and basically they'll do everything but walk the dog. Want to turn all the outside lights on at once? One button from any room. Dim the den for TV while the art stays lighted? Light a path to the kitchen? Turn everything upstairs off? With a combination of wall-mounted keypads and tableside remotes, bingo.

You can also monitor and adjust from elsewhere -- as in Tennessee elsewhere -- via the net. Factor in alarm system, climate controls, watering schedules . . . .

The fanciest systems that do all this go for true megabucks. This is a brilliant alternative.

Or half-dimmed, depending on your mood.

A good third act

The light was intense this afternoon, and as I passed the Walgreen's, on Duval, I had to get a picture of the restored façade.

Krakow has its wildly decorated Rynek Glowny, and we have. . . . Aw, hell, they have T-shirt vendors in their Cloth Hall, too (that's what the finials remind me of), though better cafes on their square.

I know, the marquee can seem intrusive, especially from this angle. But it's exactly the same size as the Strand's old now-playing marquee when the Carbonells owned it. (A few weeks back, at the barber shop, a sweet old guy told me he was watching a movie when water poured in the doors and down the aisles as a hurricane roared through; I think it was Donna, but I wasn't going to screw up a good story by asking for details.)

Given Duval Street rents and the woes of non-chain non-plexes, the outcome could have been worse.

And considering that the entire canopy had been torn off some years ago -- and that the theater innards had been torn out to make a Ripley's "museum" -- I think the new life is a good third act. At least when you drop money in Walgreen's, you leave with something besides a headful of cobwebs.

And at night. . . . Well! Ro-co-CO!

Lester sends a smile

Ran into her on Duval and as usual it was hugs and kisses, with extra points for matching Crocs. She says hi, and sends love.

I mentioned Joe's buying Mangoes, and Lester said she'd run into him at the grocery and congratulated him, but in his big, quiet way he just smiled. "This is an amazing place," she said. "Five years ago, he was cooking in the kitchen at Caroline's."

Lateral light

The Artist House next door cut down their big ficus tree a few weeks ago -- invasive roots, incredibly messy; I'd have cut it, too -- and since then the late-day light on our little sitting area almost comes in horizontally. I love the hot spots it creates on the potted arecas.

Religious experiences

No sounds of saws, hammers or nail guns as I sat awhile at the house this morning. Just the seaplane buzzing in from the Tortugas, a high breeze rustling fronds, the bell at St. Peter's and the hellos from the well-dressed church ladies strolling home after services.

So I ambled to the car, and decided to see if North Roosevelt had washed away or anything during the night. No -- and the car somehow wanted to turn into Kim's Kubans, so who was I to resist.

A Cuban sandwich (or Cuban mix, or just "a Cuban" -- the names vary as much as the proportions do) is a workaday paean to the pig. It's an amalgam of ham, roast pork, a smidge of thin-sliced spicy sausage, shredded lettuce, sliced onion, tomato, mayo, pickles (extra, please!), generic yellow cheese and mustard in a sliced length of crusty, flat Cuban bread, all pressed between heated plates just long enough to smoosh but not so long as to wilt the lettuce.

Buy one, feed two. ¡Milagrosa!

Today's was great, as Kim's always are, but it would be unfair to compare it to the first one of theirs I had.

That was another Sunday, in March. Robert was here, and we'd just become "official" residents. We'd gotten sandwiches for the beach but, being spring break and all, the tables and parking spaces at Smathers were full up, so we parked in the sand on the bridle path, opened the sunroof and windows and feasted in the car.

Clear sunshine, big palms swaying in the wind, gulls swooping, galleon clouds out over the reef, sunburned kids playing Frisbee and volleyball in the sand, fine Latin jazz on the CD and that sandwich.

¡Pura vida!

For Whom the Bull Rolls

There was Mac talking with L.E. -- oh, wait a minute. They were just Mac and L.E. wannabes.

Actually, they were among the few hundred PapaWannabes and a few thousand hangers-on in town for Hemingway Days, full of literary stuff, a rolling of the bulls (on wheels; they tried running live veal on Duval for the HemTennial in '99, but this ain't Pamplona), and a bash Saturday night at Sloppy Joe's to anoint the best lookalike.

It's also a massive boost to the rum trade.

Of course Hemingway was 29 when he got here, slim and with a Citizen Kane moustache; the snowbeard contestants often confuse square-jawed with portly, stuck in Old Man and Sea mode, but no matter. A party's a party.

One perennial Have-Not, though he really would like To Have, is Tom Grizzard of Leesburg (he's in the pink shirt above). He makes it into a brass-knobbed bash, renting a big guest house on Southard, hiring a band, silk-screening T-shirts, printing up fans for his fans. . . . But thus is fame fleeting. This handout was in the gutter across from Fausto's (truth be told, a place almost all of us have been one time or another).

High mileage

It's been almost six months since I wore shoes, and my trusty blue Crocs, worn smooth as a Scrub Club come-on, now lose traction even on dry pavement.

The new ones -- with hot pink topsoles -- make me smile -- the flip-flop equivalent of big, honking air horns on a VW bug.

Plank by plank by plank

I don't know if it was heat, homesickness or the high cost of living in Key West, but by the time I got to the house Ken had told the guys he was heading back to Arcadia for a bit.

Still, Gregory was back (on the weekend break from his day job), and it was great to see him again as the planks kept going on, slowly but surely.

You get a sense of the result best on the long wall(s) of the den and bedroom. Ref says the secret is to shoot a control line at eye level -- that's where any deviation will most be noticed -- and use control blocks to assure even spacing. When little adjustments are needed (and they will be, since houses aren't perfect) you cheat here and there near the top. (Don't mind the smudges, by the way; that's just a little mud.)

Also here and there on Saturday, people dropped by -- a woman from the mission project down the street, sprucing up the St. Peter's thrift shop and asking about building permits; Bud, a business partner of Realtor Ken, who made some great HVAC suggestions; and Irving.

Irving's from Montreal, but came down to Boca Raton a few months back to help a friend with his hurricane shutter business, and has been putting in manic hours since. So this weekend his daughter and his staff Shanghaied him, confiscated his cell phone and bundled him and his wife off to a guesthouse on our street for their maiden visit to Key West, no work allowed.

He asked lots of polite questions about the house, and said lots of nice things -- but then, the hearbreak of workaholism: He asked whether it was OK to take some pictures of how our windows were framed in, so his workers could get an idea of the sort of construction they needed to anchor serious hurricane shutters.

I was flattered, and of course agreed. Then I told him to go play.

Life on a 2-by-4

Apropos of my small-world post, I stumbled on this Space Station's Eye view of our little island while I was web-surfing -- and dang, isn't it pretty from way up there?

That highly-canalled part off to the right is Stock Island, connected to Key West by the euphonious Cow Key Bridge. (Cow, stock, livestock: Get the historical thread?) The long arm rising to the top of the picture is Fleming Key; the smaller one to the right of Fleming is Dredger's; both are Navy. You can see the straight-line dredge cuts.

The offshore dot at 10 o'clock used to be naval, a key descriptively called Tank, but developers applied a ton of lipstick, changed its name to Sunset and made it a very high-class hook for arrivistes.

But our little patch of rock -- just 2 miles by 4 -- is its own quirky mix, live-and-let-living with every stripe of any rainbow ever imagined, rich, poor, in between and who cares.

How did I get here, and what took me so long?

Making haste slowly

That's Ken and Nathaniel -- aka Dogman and Bowleg -- outside the big guest room dormer. Brantley and I were inside cutting the siding, window trim and frieze boards (don't ask) that they were nailing up.

Mr. B was in a mentoring mood. First I was marking the HardiPlank from the pattern -- actually working the pencil. The detail work with the electric scissors was far safer in his capable hands. But then he turned me loose with the miter saw a few times, and I initialed the back of the first board I cut, for the benefit of future architectural anthropologists.

The heat was getting to all of us by late afternoon, and Ref blew the whistle when we all started making little mistakes at once. "We'll finish this tomorrow," he said. "It's better to stop now and do it right when we're fresh."

I told him that the Romans had the right phrase for what we needed to do: Festina lente -- Make haste slowly.

On the up and up

It was raining when I got to the house, and Ken was the only soul around. "The guys showed up at 8, but that's just when it started coming down again," he said.

So, another day gone -- until lunch, when the sun finally broke through and the sauna switched on.

Of course Brantley and Nathaniel hurried back, and by 2 or so they were almost done with the top of the second floor rear.

We toasted progress with rounds of Gatorade -- and I'm well aware of the standing orders: Mr. B., red; Ken, red; Nathaniel, grape or blue. (Among the electricians, Steve's grape, blue or berry; Denny, odd duck, opts for iced tea.)

Ref? "Anything wet." Except rainwater.

Welcome to Venice

My camera was high and dry while I was canoeing through errands yesterday, but the Citizen's ace photog, Rob O'Neal, came through as usual in this morning's Page One shot.

Between storms

The star charts say it's Alphekka -- Arabic, because our terms of reference for the heavens were born among those astronomers.

We all see the same stars. Can't we all see the same Earth?

Wrong day to roof

. . . To put it mildly.

The tail end of the system that spawned Tropical Storm Beryl up the Atlantic Coast drenched Key West. Those are streams of water, not mere drips, coming off the front porch. "Great time to build a house," Nathaniel said in passing, dry humor on a wet day. Steve, under the floor stringing conduit again, had made the literary transition from "The Metamorphosis" to "A River Runs Through It."

Roofing was out. But one pre-roof errand wasn't. Denny reminded us that we needed weatherproof vents (how appropriate) for the bathroom fans, and we needed to get them in place before the wizards of tin start their magic.

Easy, I said. I'll drive out to Stock Island to pick 'em up. So as the rain tapered off, I started for the apartment and the car. A minute into the walk, the skies opened so wide that turning back was pointless. "Soaked to the skin" was more than a figure of speech, so I kept on truckin'. Fortunately, it was a warm shower, and also fortunately the Boy Scout in me had packed a baggie in a cargo pocket just in case the camera ever needed some weatherproofing.

After I toweled dry and changed, the real adventure began. Stormwater at White and Eaton was over hubcap level. U-turn. On parts of Flagler, it was only up to the rim. Slow ahead. MacMillan on Stock Island was only rim-deep. Slow ahead -- until the return trip, when it was up by 6 inches or so. U-Turn. And so on. Key West does have some rapid-drainage issues.

By the time I hydroplaned back to the house, the pool had filled up to the bottom of the steps, but it was only drizzling, and Ref was cracking the whip to get the rear of the second floor sided. Something about making hay while the sun was shining somewhere.

See you on the flip side

No roof guy, no HVAC, but Denny and Steve were toiling away inside, wiring the master bedroom and bath.

Ref, Brantley and Nathaniel, holding the ladder, had set up the laser-spinner in the right rear corner of the yard, getting ready to shoot control lines for the siding on the south and east walls.

Notice the shiny patch just this side of Ref: It's a dummy window out of sheet metal, to be covered by shutters that are permanently closed.

Keeping the old window there would have screwed up the layout of the little guest room and bath, but the historic architecture commission makes you keep all the "openings" on the original part of the house -- even if they're faked with closed shutters.

Just blame Robert

"The ghost is in the attic," one girl said to the other outside my bedroom doors, her voice shaking. "I heard it."

Actually, they were in the yard next door -- the Artist House guesthouse adjoins one side of our rental, and only a fence separates our little sitting area from their garden -- but voices do carry at 2 a.m. (Our big sitting area is adjacent to another guesthouse -- the Pilot House. Living wedged between them is a mixed blessing. On the minus side, you never quite know what your neighbors are going to be like from night to night; on the plus side, they're likely to flee the island in the morning.)

At any rate, it was late, but I am amused by the gullible, so I eavesdropped. The girl and her friend were high-schoolers -- visiting Key West on their own (hello? parents?) -- and had noticed the Ghost Tour stopping in front of the guesthouse the night before. So this night they had taken the tour, and taken the bait.

Before it was a guesthouse, it was the Otto Mansion. . . . And here the legend begins.

". . . One serving girl who had been badly mistreated and was apparently versed in the arts of voodoo gave their son, Robert Eugene Otto (called Gene by his friends), a straw doll that stood about 3 feet tall. It was to be his companion and friend for the entirety of his childhood.

"Gene gave the doll his first name, Robert, and took him with him everywhere. It is said that his parents often heard him upstairs talking to the doll, [with answers] in an entirely different voice. Strange things began to occur as misfortunes began to befall the family, and always Gene would appear, holding Robert in his crisp white sailor suit and proclaiming, 'Robert did it.' Close friends of the family agreed that it was in fact the doll who was somehow to blame. Many claimed to hear giggling coming from the doll or to have caught a glimpse of him running up the steps or staring out the turret-room window at them. . . .

"When his parents died and Gene inherited the house, Robert was rediscovered in the attic. . . . Visitors in the house could hear something walking back and forth in the attic, though no one was up there, and several times demonic giggling interrupted the quiet evenings. More than once it was reported that the doll watched people and mocked schoolchildren from the window of the turret room. Gene, who insisted that Robert was in the attic, was quite surprised to find him in the rocking chair by the turret room window. He seized the doll and took it back to the attic, only to find it again in the rocking chair when he came back down.

"When Gene Otto died in 1972, many thought it to be the end of Robert. Evil, however, never dies. Robert waited patiently until another family bought the house. When their little girl, who was only 10 at the time, found Robert in the attic, she claimed him for her own. She unleashed a chilling hell on herself, claiming that the doll tortured her. Now, more than 30 years later, she steadfastly claims that the doll was alive and wanted to kill her. She is still deeply traumatized. . . .

"But Robert is not the only restless soul associated with the Artist House. When Robert was finally removed [he's now on Ghost Tour T-shirts, and on display at the city's East Martello Museum, clutching his stuffed lion, and curators swear he shifts position], it is said that Anne, the wife of Gene Otto, took up residence in the turret room to guard against the little monster's return. . . ."

- - - -

Their chatter was increasingly breathless, and at a pause -- just the right moment -- from my side of the fence came a small, crinkled, evil voice, cackling louder and louder.

Small screams, fast footsteps, slammed door, locked bolt.

It was Robert.

High gear

"I am ready to get this into high gear now," Ref said bright and early Monday. "This is, what? The 17th? So we've got 10, 12 days. . . ."

Maybe that's why Ken had the nail gun in one hand and a hammer in the other -- but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Ref's target is to have the trades wrapped up by the end of the month, so he can get into the finish work, which is why he was cracking the whip. Roof man Dan should be on the case tomorrow. Ditto Kenny and George for the HVAC. Then Denny and Steve can finish the electrical, and the subfloors can go in like they should have in the first place, and the insulation can go up, and paneling, and drywall, and. . . .

It's a long list. But Ref had seen Ken working another job in town -- he's from up near Arcadia -- and spotted him on the road out of town even earlier Monday, hailed him, and persuaded him to sign on.

Of course I wondered if Ken knew what he'd gotten into, but it sure looked as if he'd used a saw and hammer before. Here he and Mr. B are finishing up the north wall with HardiPlank.

Up on the porch, Nathaniel was scraping ceiling planks, then sanding off the old layers of gummy exterior latex. Sure enough, one of the underlayers was sky blue -- the very color Ref and the painter had suggested for that ceiling and the soffits to trick bees and birds out of nesting there.

I looked at those paint patches -- listened to nail guns and compressors, saws and sanders -- and heard Ella over my shoulder:

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see . . .

Location, location, location

Back in the days when every hippie had a houseplant -- some of them even legal -- my fave was a Dracaena marginata. It was perfectly happy next to the radiator in my steam-heated apartment in Evanston -- enough humidity and warmth to stay snug through the bitter winter and drought-tolerant enough to survive my spells of seasonal ennui.

But that was Zone 5, by the USDA's reckoning, and this is Zone 11 -- where the plant doesn't need the house, and the environment is a radiator. It likee!

This one was growing wild in the old yard but got smashed to bits during demolition back in February. In March and April, its remnants were covered by old piling stones. Then it got staked through the roots when we got temporary electrical service. And now: voila, again finding its place in the sun -- along with offspring from its broken bits, for heaven's sake.

The tropics are a different world. A lecture up the Keys this weekend by a senior curator at Fairchild Gardens would surely face a Zone 5 chill in Evanston: "Tough Love for Better Mangos."

Tangy and tough at 98

Ref was cutting up some of the old siding for patches (soon to undergo invisible reweaving), and I closed my eyes and inhaled as his toughest table saw worked through them. "Good saw," Ref said. "When the blade's sharp, you can cut to a sixteenth."

You can't savor the tang through the picture -- planks packed with aroma after all these years, still full of the resins and oils that made old Dade pine so resistant to both termites and weather.

And because I didn't want to interrupt his work to "set up" the right light, you can't see the polished glow of the sawn edges. They were so dense they looked and felt varnished.

Ref saw my fascination with those pieces and broke off to walk over to a stack of freshly delivered 2-by-4's. "This is what they sell for No. 1 wood these days," he said, pointing at the knots and making a sour face. He found a piece of new scrap and made a quick cut through a section. It looked like styrofoam by comparison, bleached and character-free. "They dry this stuff out too much," he said.

"Now look at these," as he went back to the old planks. "This is No. 1 wood." Tight-grained, unblemished and beautiful behind peeling paint. Tougher than nails -- he'd had to buy a new gun to cope with the old degree of hardness.

Lord, I thought, if I ever approach their age, may I be half as sturdy and smell half as fresh.

Bumper crop

The extra mile

"I gotta get this done," Ref said, gesturing in disgust over his shoulder at the windows over the porch. "When I came by yesterday I said, 'I just can't stand looking at that ugly front anymore.' "

So he and Nathaniel were up there Friday, getting ready to fine-tune the windows with a gentle application of circular saw and Sawzall.

As soon as those blades hit the old wood, the pungent scent spread down and around -- Dade pine, zesty as the day it was put in.

But he wasn't the only one at the "gotta get this done" stage. All week, we'd been expecting the plumber and the electrician to resolve the question of instant hot-water heaters: how many, how effective, where, and how much power. The plumber had told me there would be two big units; the electrician was worried about that word, "big."

Now, these two guys have offices maybe a block from each other, about a half-mile from the house, and all week I had a little film loop playing in my head: Strother Martin's classic cracker line from Cool Hand Luke: "What we have here . . . is failure to communicate."

So on Friday, I let Ref know how frustrated I was -- if there's any fixing to do, it needs to be done now, while the floors are torn up. Ref hopped in his truck. A few minutes later, he came back, pointing out that some requests are conveyed far more clearly in person, and announcing that the meeting was scheduled for 10:30.

We were singing perfect harmony on the classic hymn, "Come to Jesus."

Denny arrived first. Then Duane, the honcho for the plumbers. Smiles and handshakes, then Duane turned the spec sheet over to Denny: two heaters, 47 amps of 220 current each -- nothing like the 100 amps each Denny was thinking of as "big," but according to Duane each about twice the capacity required. No sweat. No more questions. End of transaction. Thanks. See ya.

It took less than a minute.

Make that "was a failure to communicate."

Glaze under pressure

The storm system that dropped 2-plus inches on us in the last few days -- a big, slow trough of rain, but not much wind, and not enough intensity to be a (capital-T) Tropical (capital-S) Storm -- was supposed to peter out as the day went by.

So when I rounded the corner at Fleming and saw a crew putting up the big aluminum rails for heavy hurricane covers on the windows at Banana Republic, I wondered if I'd missed something in the morning weather briefing.

But no. They were just getting the framework in place for the next time they need to put up their big, new armor. That's happening all over town.

Our armor -- and we won't have to put it up and take it down -- comes in the form of impact-resistant windows and doors now mandated by the building code. Here's a label from one of the panes. (And you have to keep the labels on the windows till your final inspection, by the way.)

What the numbers tell you is that the pane is about half an inch thick, a sandwich of glass and plastic designed to meet the tough Monroe County requirements for resistance in winds up to 155 m.p.h.

To certify the design, first they fire a 9-pound 2-by-4 at the window at 50 feet per second. Then they fire it again, and then the fun begins. Different sizes of openings have to pass different load tests, but in this case, they subject the impacted window to air and water pressure of 75 pounds per square inch from the outside, and then 75 from the inside (hurricane pressures can be like that). Then they repeat that pressure test -- for 8,999 more plus-and-minus cycles. If the maximum crack after 9,000 cycles is 1/16th of an inch or less, the system passes. They tape the whole shebang for the certification process.

A second test fires 10 ball bearings at 80 feet per second at a fresh window a few times, and then goes through the pressure stuff. If the window system passes both tests, it's good to go.

All of this, of course, is meant to give us a great sense of security while justifying the immense cost, and I do mean immense.

There are some savings, though. Because the windows are so tough, I'll get to subtract the $9.95 "breaking glass" burglar sensor that I'd been planning for the alarm system.

Wave THAT worry good-bye

One reason I might have been a little twitchy this morning was that Mom was having a stress test -- not the sort of thing I take lightly when she's 86 years old and 1,000 miles away.

Robert, bless him, was there with her, and called me as soon as the green lights were finished flashing.

So her heart isn't the culprit for her shortness-of-breath complaints. Next, we all get to learn how to spell "pulmonologist." At least lungs are easier and less invasive to treat.

Down and dirty

The original title of Kafka's great novella, "The Metamorphosis," translates as "Notes from Under the Floorboards."

Steve, on the electrical crew, could have written some of those notes on his own Wednesday. This is about his greatest point of visibility, and probably his closest access to fresh air, such as it was: no breath of a breeze, just heat, over the floor, under it or outside.

He reported that the most notable scents under there were cat poo and plastic-conduit solvent. I don't know how he did it.

Since the plumber was a no-show, and we couldn't resolve the heater question, but the day was hotter than you could believe, when we broke for lunch I told the guys to call me if they needed me.

The only kind of Ungeziefer I wanted to be was a water bug, in the pool back at the apartment.

Mangoes goes . . . to Rev. Joe

Amy and Giorgio have been running the place -- and making a mark not just on Duval Street, but on the whole island -- for the last 16 years.

Great, award-winning food, and a terrific place to eat it.

And then. . . .

I don't think it was just me. The place seemed to lose the fun (and the awards stopped coming, for whatever reason).

But this morning's paper had big news: They'd sold to the Fogarty's group, and Joe Walsh pledges to retain the staff -- and give it a bit of a jolt. (He's always the Rev. Joe to me, by the way, because the burger by that name at Caroline's is always a religious experience).

I'm looking forward to trying it out after their re-inspection, mandatory when a restaurant changes hands. And I'm going to be among the first to request a table on the rail for Fantasy Fest. Caroline's has been our perch there for the last three or four years, and this will bring us that many blocks farther from the, uh, delights of Lower Duval, and closer to home.