1,200 degrees of non-separation

That's Kenny, applying his oxy-acetylene torch to our coolant lines.

He was downstairs; George was upstairs finishing up the ducts.

Yes. Finally. At long last. YES.

Not Wednesday, as expected. Nor Thursday, as promised. But apparently Shawn delivered some gentle persuasion, and there they were Friday and Saturday.

Kenny may be tardy, but everyone says he's the best in town. In this case, he was making extra-sure the solder joints were extra-strong. The lines carry upwards of 400 pounds per square inch, after all.

With the AC work finally done, we can get the green light Monday -- the appointment's already set -- for an inspection that will let us insulate and (dare I say it?) start closing up the walls.

It will start cooking in the kitchen, which lets us get a verifying measure on cabinets, which lets us order cabinets. . . .

When I got into this project, I didn't quite realize how much it was like a freight train starting up, with one car pulling another, banging the coupling, pulling another, banging the coupling, pulling another.

Sound the damned whistle.

- ■ -

I have, by the way, formulated Sueñitos' Law of Multiple Subs:

AT ≥ ET(nSC²)

Where AT is actual time of any project segment, ET is its estimated time and nSC is number of subcontractors involved. In Key West, cube the factor.

Gregg for Kingg

It's a month to Fantasy Fest -- our annual slide into sleaze with ease -- and the campaign for king and queen has kicked up a bit.

Gregg McGrady, one of the candidates for king, is living in Fast Buck Freddie's window this weekend to raise some very fast bucks, because that's the name of the game: The king and queen crowns go to whoever brings in the most funds for AIDS Help. (As you can tell, no candidate really loses.)

Bar nights, strip contests, private dinners, big parties, little events -- they're everywhere. But Gregg is the first candidate to have gone quite so public.

Yes, he gets bathroom breaks away from prying eyes. But he's sleeping, eating and generally hanging out at FBF until a coming-out cocktail party Sunday night, chatting with passers-by via handy-talky, and sweet-talking visitors and locals into supporting a great cause.

Make a really nice donation, and have lunch with him in the window. And if you can't get to Duval Street, you can make a donation here.

Thanks, Lori

I went to Island City Tile two days ago with blueprints in hand to get quotes on bathroom tile, and Lori Neilson (who runs the place with her husband, Marc), walked me through all the decisions Robert and I had made months ago -- though they needed a few adjustments, with availabilities and all.

As promised, she was back with a quote within a day -- and with a money-saving tip. We wanted a really deep blue in the master bath -- Royal Blue in the American Olean catalog -- that was $11.60 a square foot. Not outrageous by tile standards, but not inexpensive by any means. She volunteered to look for a substitute.

In minutes, she called back to say her recollection was right: Dal Tile has a color line called Cobalt that sells for $6.51.

I went over today to confirm the order and put a deposit down, and she had done more homework: Yep, the two are made in the same factory, and if you put one next to the other, it's hard to tell the difference.

She and Marc lost $5 a foot, but they gained a very loyal customer.

Tropical tashlich

When my friend Lou reminded me about tashlich (or -kh), it struck me that this was the first time I could do it in the Atlantic Ocean.

For those who don't know, it's a ritual casting off of sins, part of the High Holidays observances leading up to the Day of Atonement, based on a verse in Micah: "You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." Traditionally, bread crumbs and grains represent the sins and cares. (There's a hilarious list of suggested crumbs, based on various sins, here -- e.g., pretzel crumbs for particularly twisted sins, stollen for larceny . . .).

For an Episcopalian, I'm a fairly observant Jew, so I took some crumbs (and a lot of cornmeal that had fallen off the bottom of the loaf, teensy tiny sins perhaps) from my terrific ciabatta from Cole's Peace and headed to the White Street Pier. You can see the West Martello, the ruin of an old fortification, and now the home of the Garden Club, on the promontory.

Out on the pier, as I said a prayer or two and cast my bread upon the waters, I noticed a couple standing on the shore watching me. When I set foot again on the beach, the woman came up to me and said, "We're so sorry for your loss."

I was tempted to say I was quite happy to lose the burden -- but, puzzled, had the presence of mind to say, "Thank you." As I walked on I realized where I was: The pier is also Key West's AIDS Memorial, and what I was doing did look an awful lot like scattering ashes.

And the more I thought about it: Crumbs or ashes, the past is always lost in the deep. Born anew in a loaf of fresh, beautiful, nourishing bread, or the phoenix of the dawn.

An eye for detail

Arnold, who spent years making fine cabinets for yachts, brings a remarkable level of skill and taste to our house.

The junction of the deck and house, for example, had been troubling him. Yesterday, he found a subtle and beautiful solution:

Ripping and then shaping scraps from the deck wood, he designed a sill and molding -- elegant.

"My very favorite woods are teak and mahogany," he said, "but this ipe is interesting stuff."

Now he's working up ideas for the fence -- and they're beautiful, too.

He said something today that warmed my heart and choked me up at the same time: "I'm going to make this as pretty as Reffard would." You couldn't ask for a better guarantee.

Like a duck's back

A month ago, on a day when black clouds were rumbling in the sky, I hiked over to Half-Buck Freddie's -- the Fast Buck outlet -- to pick up a storm jacket. I'd noticed them marked down from the 40s to the 20s.

"Nice color on you," the clerk said. He remembered me as a local and gave it to me for $17, bless his heart. His parting words, a spot-on forecast: "It's not going to give you a chance to use it today."

Nor for the next several weeks -- there have been nighttime drizzles, but nothing more. That didn't stop me from rolling it up in its own hood, wrapping it in a bungee cord (left over from hurricane preps) and hanging it on a pocket of my cargo shorts.

Until today. Big rumbles at lunch, and as I headed to the apartment, big drops.

And when I got home and hung it up to dry, I looked over at the banana plant in the corner by the pool. This is waterproof:

Postal scales

On Olivia Street, just steps from . . .
the fine little Seven Fish restaurant.

A big tent, full of toxic gas

No, not just the Republican Party, but also the Artist House -- the guest house a dozen steps from the bedroom door at our rental.

It was covered in rubberized canvas and pumped full of poison to kill any termites. It made me uneasy the first time I saw the process, 50 feet away from a guesthouse room almost a decade ago. But this close . . . all night long I thought I detected a funny taste in my mouth (and mostly in my mind).

Our new place won't need it: Concrete piers, no wood in touch with ground -- and most of all, treated lumber, HardiPlank or stuff like ipe wood that's naturally resistant.

All fall down

I went out to RayBro, the electric supply place on Stock Island, to order some outdoor light fixtures today, and all the guys there were riveted to the action out their front window.

Across the street, heavy equipment had done this to a trailer park in mere hours.

It had been a long battle and an old story: A developer had bought the land, negotiated his way out of the leases -- some of the residents had been there for 30 years -- and planned new construction. You can bet the rent that the new rents will be astronomically higher.

Stock Island has never been glamorous -- well, maybe except for the country club -- but has always been far more affordable than Key West. The city and county are trying to promote affordable housing, a critical concern in a tourism-based economy so dependent on traditionally low-paid service workers, not to mention nurses, firefighters, teachers and others who serve the basic community. But somehow the developers seem to outfox them.

Every so often, the anger boils over. Over the weekend, the police chief and a few city commission members led a crowd of angry neighbors fed up at the managers of the relatively posh Truman Annex development (so sterile, and such a lifeless contrast to the abutting Bahama Village). It's former Navy land once promised for much affordable housing, but of course developed via shell game into expensive houses and condos, and the property owners' association has now decided to hassle all "outsider" motorists and pedestrians with ID checks to access the public beaches and waterfront on the Annex's water side.

I think the marchers needed pitchforks and torches against the monsters, though I talked with one guy who has an equally annoying tactic: His business has a big fleet of trucks, and he's ordered his drivers to take swings through the annex between all service calls. Heh.

Growth

These were July 29th's tiny leaflets on the plumeria stalk I picked up on the street, took back to Tennessee to repot, and brought back south (despite a big spill at a Turnpike tollgate) to bask in the tropic sun.

Here's a top view from this week -- not quite two months. The leaves span just about two feet. Perhaps it knows it's home.

Too true too often

Bright spots

Why I love the tropics, Chapter 352.

Mixing it up

This was the view from the end of the mixing hoe Tuesday morning.

Arnold and Mike were finishing up on the right side of the front gable, Mr. B was off on an urgent errand and me
. . . well, I'd watched the guys mix concrete before, and it had reminded me of getting the lumps out of brownie batter, only kinda gritty.

Right, if you're talking about 240 pounds of flour. It took only a few minutes for the first blister to rise.

By the time Brantley got back and got the load poured, Arnold ambled over, studied the form, studied the bags yet to be mixed and said, "That looks like it'll be a couple of yards' worth -- gonna take you a while mixing it by hand."

We put in a quick call to Jimmy Lee, a plasterer friend, to see if he was using his gas-powered mixer today.

He wasn't, thank goodness.

My kind of litter

Another brother on the scene

The middle Stafford brother, Aurelius (on the ladder), came by the house today to help Uncle Arnold with the siding on the front gable, so long delayed.

Dollie shared a great mental snapshot of the brothers: Trailing behind their grandfather, also a builder -- Shawn at about 2, carrying the hammer; Aurelius a couple years older, carrying a bucket of nails; and Ref, a couple more years older, proudly bearing the saw.

The good lessons stuck with all of them.

I think that's Steve the electrician silhouetted in the window -- yep, they passed their inspection.

Mr. B was chain-sawing a little bit of root out of the way of the equipment slab (I urged gentleness on that -- I'd rather not damage the tree or weaken it against high winds), so we should be able to get it poured Tuesday.

Then, as if the day weren't full enough, the drywall guy, Franklin, came by to go over the walls room by room, measuring and making notes.

Progress.

Holiday greetings, from our palm to yours

So here we are, at the first new moon after the equinox, and the palm tree in front of our house is showing why it's called a Christmas palm, a species I mentioned some time ago.

The time it's marking is neither High Holidays nor Ramadan -- both appropriate just now -- but rather its own point on the clock.

"They're incredibly confused by the storms we've had," said our landscape architect, Craig. "All the water during four hurricanes last year, and lack of water since. . . . They just don't know what to do."

Except bear fruit on their own time.

He never shot a board that didn't need it

On Saturday, Shawn was fine-tuning the deck sliders -- adjusting the track for the bedroom doors, putting hardware there and in the living room so we can button up the house. Mrs. Shawn, Dorothy, who'd come down for the weekend with him, was out shopping Key West.

When his cell phone rang and I heard him asking her, "Now, how are we gonna get a 9-by-12 rug back as carry-on luggage?," I decided to get really interested in what Mr. B (in the green shirt) and Uncle Arnold were doing out at the door between the dining room and den.

And of course it was interesting. Arnold was giving yet another master class, ripping 2-by-4's into 1-by-1's to build the bottom of the soffit covering the air duct: The less weight and thickness, the better.

And when he studied the intersecting angle the uprights would have with the roof -- then studied it again, then again, then wham made the angle cut, and a notch to mate to the rafters -- I was ready to swear he had calibrated eyeballs.

Then, after making sure everything was plumb, bangbangbang -- another task nailed.

Happy birthday, dear Reffard

I ordered this in early August, and it was pure luck that it finally arrived two days before Ref's birthday.

It's bronze, 8 by 8, and about 3/8 inch thick. Though I've since found the house is about 20 years older, at least what's on the plaque reflects the Historic Architecture Commission records.

I went over at breakfast time Saturday to give it to Ref, and he wasn't quite up, but asked if I could come back around noon.

I did, and he was sleeping. He woke up, though, when he heard Dollie mentioning my name, and asked me to come on in.

I told him the plaque would always be his -- of course it would live at our front door at some point -- and propped it up on a cabinet at the foot of his bed. I haven't seen that big a grin in a long time.

Fall foliage (hah)

I'm not sure what these flowers were, but they made a beautiful hedge along Olivia on my walk to give Ref's sister, Dollie, her birthday card Friday -- the first day of fall.

"Has this been the hottest week in the world, or what," Steve the electrician said to me in mid-morning, with sweat pouring down.

"A crisp, clear autumn day," I answered, and we reminisced about drives through cool, misty mountains, and glasses of fresh cider.

It's Ref's birthday Saturday, and I think I have a nifty surprise for him.

The doctor is in

Ref's brother Shawn came back to town Thursday night (hooray!), along with Uncle Arnold (double hooray!), and it wasn't surprising that they jumped into work on the house first thing Friday.

I went over checklists with both of them, with the goal of getting as close as possible to the point where we can close up walls. Shawn instantly started surgery on the sliding doors in the bedroom, assuring me that I was pretty lucky to have only one subcontractor -- the HVAC guys -- standing in the way of progress.

For their part, the electricians were digging, laying conduit and covering it up at the soon-to-be equipment pad.

In this shot, Steve is (wisely) using pliers to keep his hands out from under Matt's sledge-
hammer.

They called for their inspection, to be held Monday. They go into it with a good bit of confidence: They have never, ever, failed one.

The palette

While I'm working on getting walls finished, Robert's working on move-in details (wow, does he ever plan ahead!).

So when he asked the other day about colors for the sheets in the little guest room -- the one with the green bed -- I mentioned cream.

I was probably channeling Mother Nature, and the vertical leaf in this picture. Not a bad combination -- with the neon in the center vein, the deep green or that gorgeous light shade.

Illustration only. Your results may vary

When the pool guy, Chris, and his plumber, Chip, came by to work on their pipes bright and early today, as scheduled to the minute, they came fully prepared -- even bringing a battered old pump to stand in for the one they'd be putting in later.

With it, and the appropriate valves, they knew to the sixteenth of an inch where everything would have to come up in the equipment slab.

Now Kenny, the air conditioning guy, was the only blank space. I'd called him Monday and yesterday, twice each, and got voice mail. This morning, twice more, and more voice mail. I gave up at noon, and he finally called me when I'd given up and gotten back to the apartment. We agreed to meet at 2.

I was there at 1:30. When he hadn't shown up by 3:30, I got his voice mail again. He called just after 4 to say he was on his way -- big delay at Las Salinas, and his back was hurting. . . .

Just like Gilda Ratner: It's always something.

Hot pink, defined

Nothin' movin' but the mercury

And 2,240 pounds of concrete mix, plus a half-dozen 10-foot pieces of rebar.

Since it's time for the equipment pad, Mr. B and I started laying out frame pieces bright and early. But even at 8 a.m., it took about a minute's work to soak a T-shirt.

After lunchtime, when we were in the middle of two trips for concrete mix (we needed 28 bags, which is a bit much for my car), I turned to Mr. B as we were wrestling with the bags and laughed:

They left this work for the two old farts?

Finally, the Conch Canal

When the plumbers arrived at the house this morning, they thought digging the extension of the sewer pipe, to run beyond the den deck and past the area where the equipment pad has to go, might take a couple of hours.

But that reddish lump Pedro was attacking with the Sawzall is a sapodilla root -- at 8 inches or so, the smallest of three big ones they found in the pipe's path. Sawzall, pickaxe, mattock, more Sawzall.

I made a lame joke to Pedro, who's Nicaraguan, about digging the Culebra Cut, and he's such a good-humored guy he even laughed.

Five hours later, they were still sweating, but now we can build the form for that pad.

The 4 a.m. bunch

These people are having a negative effect on my bubbly good humor.

This was at 4 a.m. this morning -- though it was the same at 10, 11, 12, 1, 2 and 3 -- and it doesn't do justice to the dozens crusing up and down ahead of or behind them. No destination, just noise on wheels. Not all of the bikes are loud, of course, but the legal ones are in the minority.

As I walked around town this morning, I had a few singles in my pocket. Whenever I came up to any of the early risers on an extra-loud bike, I went over to him and offered him a dollar toward the repair of his muffler, just in case he ever wanted people who live here to welcome him back. No takers.

Safe Harbor: Away from the crowd

Our friend Sullins called, suggesting he and I skip town during the biker invasion -- so of course supper on Stock Island was in order.

He pulled out the Beemer, dropped the top and we bopped across the Cow Key Bridge, turned right after the Hurricane Hole, then right again (not the hard right; the soft one), then left through the trailer parks, arriving fashionably early at the Hogfish Bar & Grill, on the edge of Safe Harbor. (Symmetry: Flee hogs, seek hogfish.)

The sun was painting the clouds over the power plant, while a big gray cat crouched on the rail attached to our table to scope out my shrimp (quite fresh) and Sullins' tuna (quite rare).

The waitress came over to ask if the cat was bothering us, and all of us laughed except the cat.

The beer was cold, and there wasn't much of anything chromed in sight. Quite lovely.

Nadirs vs. rock bottoms

When I mentioned "the nadir of the tourist season" Thursday, I meant it in terms of numbers, not thinking about the tens of thousands of bikers on their way down for the "Poker Run" weekend.

Had I considered those rude, crude, low-rent jerks -- their noise pollution proudly roaring, belching, farting, revving, backfiring through exhaust pipes smirkingly bereft of mufflers -- I would have allowed room for a different kind of depths. To give you some perspective: A dozen or so jets pass low over the apartment every day on approach to the airport. None is as loud as the loudest of these hogs. And the jets don't land at 3 and 4 in the morning.

A few years back some genius on the Tourist Development Commission decided to lure these people to town during low season, to give the economy a boost. These aren't tourists who need to be lured, or developed. And T-shirt and beer sales do not constitute an economic boost. Their festival high points are a beer bust, a tattoo contest and a bikini contest.

The city does ask them to behave as considerate guests. Sure. Dozens are being ticketed -- 80 cops on the street are allegedly doing their best to enforce the city's noise ordinances. Hundreds more need to be.

Sure, "One Human Family" is the city motto. Families have rules.

Time out

Coming back to the apartment for lunch today, I don't know what made me walk the extra block up Duval, to Eaton, before I turned right -- but I did, and was beguiled into St. Paul's lunchtime organ concert.

Even now, at the nadir of the tourist season, the music flows every weekday between 12:10 and 1. I heard Bach from the street, and it was an offer I couldn't refuse.

One structure or another, St. Paul's has been here since 1832. Hurricanes kill it, and it resurrects.

And today, on a hideously humid day, the side windows still pull in breezes, and somehow it's cooler as sheep safely graze.

Look up when you're inside, and see the bottom of a ship: timbers collar-tied and stoutly braced. Reeded wood, bronze burnished with age. Look around, and see jewel windows. Listen, and hear the sweet genius of St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, where I stood over Herr Bach's cool floors and marveled some years ago.

A woman in a tank top and tattoos goes to the Mary altar, kneels in devotion, crosses herself and leaves.

There's an organ tube out of tune, almost a high squeal, but when the fugue resolves it's a Bach moment: The harmonies and melodies shake hands. Plumb. Level. Square. Straight. Uniform.

Finished.

A nourishing lunch.

Yes, sir, it's right over there

Whenever I see someone on the street peering at a map and looking confused, I amble up and ask if I can help finding a destination. Random acts of kindness, and tourism is our biggest industry, and all that. It's always good for a smile on both sides.

But today, someone hailed me. A nice couple in a car honked at me in a crosswalk and asked where Duval Street might be. I asked what they were looking for in particular, and when he said Bank of America, I told him the three right turns he'd need to make to pull up in front of it on Southard. Thanks, smiles and move on.

Half a block later, a couple on a motorcycle pulled over to the curb and asked me directions to the Curry Mansion. Turn left there and half a block on your right. More thanks and smiles.

Then a family of four hailed me. Where was Margaritaville? (Common question.) Block and a half ahead, turn left, block and a half, right side of street. More thanks and smiles.

I started to wonder if my karma light was glowing really brightly.

Then a group of four Aussie guys saw me and came across the street, map in hand, to ask me where Bourbon Street was. One of them remembered it distinctly from an earlier visit. I'm quite sure he did, I said with a grin -- but it's a bar, not a street, and it was two blocks ahead and four blocks to their left. More thanks, more smiles.

I was wondering what the heck was up, until I got home and took off the T-shirt I'd bought about a year ago to support the city's youth baseball programs. D'oh:

Big BIG letters across the front: KWPD -- Protecting Paradise.

How hot was it?

Coming up Duval in a much-sweated-through T-shirt, I saw the new window display at Banana Republic: "Best of Fall: Luxurious Sweaters." I actually got a little swoony as I thought of myself swathed in cashmere, alpaca or mohair.

We don't have many national chains on Duval -- thank heaven, because they just don't get what life here is like. Home office says sweaters, and they jump, even though it's 94 and just rained, and the first four people you run into use the word "sauna" unprompted.

Fast Buck Freddie's is a direct opposite to Banana Rep in more than geography. Local to its historically funky core, it brings smiles more than swoons with its windows.

Valentine's Day, for example, focused on the marriages of Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky.

This month, instead of sweaters, a big sign asks "How hot was it?"


Bottom line: It wasn't too hot to laugh.

My apologies

. . . For two days without posts back there. The lassitude of latitude, I suppose. I cite the Fourth Law of the Tropics:

Mañana doesn't just mean "tomorrow." It also means "not today."

Plumber time

DeWitt, the plumber honcho, came by today -- and he melted into a smile when he saw that I was spending time with Mr. Allen.

Mr. Allen is in his 80s (at least), rides around Old Town on his bicycle on nice days and stops to chat and check progress every so often. He's a delight to talk with, full of stories of old Key West.

I excused myself to talk with DeWitt -- who was on the clock; Mr. Allen wasn't, and understood entirely -- and learned that the plumber had known him since childhood. He said Mr. Allen owns a big stretch of property on Margaret or Elizabeth, I forget which, as well as elsewhere around Old Town, and a gentleness came into his voice and eyes every time he spoke about the old guy.

Then he looked around quickly and said he'd send a man out Wednesday to hand-dig the way for the pipe that has to go under the pad we have to pour.

I guess it's a friends-of-friends kind of thing.

- ■ -

One other note, and I don't know whether to file this under "Pride of Place" or "Life on a Small Island": DeWitt said he was born in a house on our street -- and he thinks our house -- in the '50s.

His parents are both gone, so he can't check with them, but I told him I'd research it a bit.

Chop-chop

I had a great talk with Shawn tonight. He's been through enough battles on construction to be able to cut like a sharp blade on what needs to be done now.

The mechanical equipment pad, to be sure. But more to the point: fix the things that the "courtesy" inspection had flagged.

His impeccable logic is that you have satisfied the inspector on the points he's seen, and he's noted the problems. So address those problems, quickly, and get him back, quickly, to get your ticket punched. If not, you court the chance that another inspector will come in and start at Square One.

Square One is a nice restaurant, just a few blocks down Duval from the house, but not a nice place on the inspection rotation.

So Monday, deo volente -- or Tuesday if need be (Mr. B has a pressing engagement out of town, the old rogue) -- the sound you hear may be things getting chopping.

La retour -- C'est si bon!

I got all misty-eyed when Cafe Croissant reopened -- finally! -- on Duval.

It wasn't the emotion, though there was plenty of that. They'd been in exile in a Petronia storefront since their fire . . . on Valentine's Day '05, with four hurricanes close after, and it was terrific to have them back home after so many construction woes in those 19 months.

The mist was coming from some fans they'd installed to infuse a cooling spray on diners. The left lens of my glasses kept fogging up, because one of the fans was comin' right at me.

But when I dug into the poached eggs in brioche, with their wonderful whole-mustard sauce, I knew the cafe and I had both come home. And when Daniel came over for congratulations and a hug, maybe not all the mist was from the fans.