Back in time

Until this week, Duval Street was lost in time.

The clock stopped -- in fact it snapped off -- during Wilma, on October 24, 2005. That would have been about the same time the anemometers at the National Weather Service and Naval Air Station Key West snapped off, too.

I didn't have the heart to take a picture of the broken capital on the column at Southard Street; I always felt the clock was one reason I never wear a watch here, and I missed it and ached when I looked at the stump.

But when the crew put the new clock in place this week -- well, I felt as if the street was ticking again, at long, long last.

Wilma is still a healing wound here.

The other day I mentioned Clayton Lopez, the city commissioner I'm meeting with Thursday about my windows.

I found out just this morning that Clayton and his wife, Pam, are living in a FEMA trailer. Wilma wiped their house out -- knocked it off its pilings, filled it with two feet of water -- and their wind and flood insurance companies are still squabbling about the settlement that will let them rebuild.

To add insult to injury, FEMA has told Clayton and Pam and 71 others in Monroe County that they'll have to vacate their trailers by April 24 or find their belongings on the street.

And this man is taking up my cudgel? Working to protect my fancy house, when his own home has been destroyed? Thursday afternoon, I'll walk through his office door a humble and thankful man.