Dear God, Give Me a Sign

Besides advertising that holds you down and kicks your ass, locals here are given to personal testaments that would never see the light of day in more organized communities. The first time I drove through Clearwater, last fall, I watched a young zealot manhandling a 4 x 8 foot sheet of plywood down North Myrtle. He had invested hours painting his message in neat block letters:

Jesus Christ is coming SOON and
He is going to KILL
everyone who is not Born Again!!!

Born-Again-Man is likely the endpoint of a progression that starts down here with the ubiquitous sandwich board, on which an endless parade of sandwich-board-men and -women hawk everything from $5 foot-longs to a strip joint called Mons Venus. Outside the Pinellas County Sherriff's office last week was an otherwise normal-looking lady with a sign reading:

Police Unfair to Jaywalkers!

Carry-it-yourself messages are not the only medium in town. Newspaper classifieds here commonly publish squibs like:

Thank you, dear Lord, for punishing your enemies!

No doubt submitted - and paid for - by a relative of Born-Again-Man. The same relative may be responsible (if I can use that word) for:

Scientologists Suck!!!

Tampa Bay is a land where Scientology is half-revered, half feared. Also last week, a nearby pizza joint that routinely posts specials and menu items on its sign posted this plaintive appeal:

Happy 14th Birthday, Angela!
God Help Me!

Actually, I'm sure the comma was not in there, but I have considerable editorial discretion here. Despite an appalling absence of rigorous punctuation, personal billboards of all persuasions do have one common excess: exclamation points. I think the number of exclamation points is intended to convey the level of fervor for the sentiment expressed

Florida is perhaps the only state that approves of makeshift roadside memorials to loved ones who have departed this mortal coil via the windshield of a car. Paeans to Linda or Rocco or Satchel-Butt appear at regular intervals on most roads. The state apparently sees the signs as an effective, if macabre, deterrent, since a bureaucratically correct message is fixed to the top of each such memorial:

Drive Carefully!

It seems to me that the state's message would be more effective and certainly more personal if it were less generic. Depending on the cause of a crash, the topper sign might read:

Don't Drink and Drive!

or

Check your Brakes Soon!

Or perhaps Born-Again-Man could schedule an appearance at each such memorial, saying:

See? I Told You!

I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

Newt

The Return of the Native

I have lived in Florida for two years now, which means I have personally experienced about two percent of recorded local history.  I am a Native.

Oh, I know that Florida has been around longer than 100 years, at least  in the James Mitchener sense: the big sand bar left behind as the last Ice Age subsided to Canada (more on that in a minute).  But people who are even more native than I know that real Florida history doesn't go much further back than the early Carl Hiaasen novels. The Historical Society fights to save buildings thrown up in 1955.  The original Clearwater Beach Crabby Bill's has a commemorative plaque.  My own Ulmerton Road has a bronze sign reading:  "At this location on November 16, 2000, the first hanging chad was discovered by roving bands of aboriginal Republicans."  We have historically significant structures made of plywood.

As a Native, I now distinguish myself from the annual influx of snowbirds that is fluxing heavy as I write this.  You see them everywhere.  Men jogging sans shirt?  Must be from New York.  Lying on St. Pete Beach in the 75-degree heat?  Michiganders.  Bobbing in the surf?  Canadians, no doubt. We can tell a Quebecoise from a Newfoundlander by how high they float in the water.  Make no mistake: snowbirds are beloved here.  They bring money, a scarce commodity in this state of sunshine.  But there is a certain rehabituation required each fall. 

Snowbirds struggle with the time scale here.  We Floridians, for instance, don't generally need to be anywhere soon.  The line at the local Publix glaciers along because the cashiers like to chat with the clientele.  Before I became a Native, I chafed at the delay.  But when my turn came, the cashier, who turned out to be a sweet southern belle, chatted with me as well.  She didn't seem to care that I was not yet a Native.  Our New York snowbirds especially find this adjustment challenging.  Folks in New York don't chat.

But I'm not here to talk about history or snowbirds.  Florida Natives know at this time of year that - Bucs aside (Go Bucs!) - there is only one subject worthy of serious scrutiny: how's the oyster crop?  Crassostrea virginicus.  The same Eastern oyster that thrives from Malpeque Bay to Blue Point, Long Island to Chicoteague Island, Virginia, C. virginicus reaches perfection in the waters off Apalachicola on Florida's panhandle.

Apalachicola is back in business.  I popped into Crabby Bill's last week, and the oysters were merely very good.  Earlier tonight, they were better still: fat and sweet, swimming in icy oyster liquor and happy-looking, verging on outstanding.  I was pretty happy-looking myself after two dozen of the little darlings.  On the half-shell.  Nekkid.  (Not me - the oysters.)

But - but - but - THE OIL SPILL!!  Yeah, I know.  There's oil out there somewhere.  Well, there weren't no oil in my dinner tonight.  The news shouters have failed to mention that virtually the entire Florida coastline completely escaped the oil spill.  Including - thank you, God - Apalachicola Bay.

C. virginicus will only get fatter and sweeter as the season proceeds.  Life on the Gulf is good.  Did I mention that a dozen on the half-shell at Bill's cost me the princely sum of $6.99, complete with freshly grated horseradish, which I snubbed.  After all, we Natives do it nekkid. 

Newt

Paradise Found

Having visitors from the North is a fine occasion for ranking the best things I know about life in Pinellas County.  We managed to cover many of them in the past week or so.  In no particular order:

Boris Family Restaurant for breakfast.  Boris is a bear of a man who presides over this simple family eatery, and server Mary Ann showers us with attention every Sunday morning.  Eggs Benedict this nicely prepared are hard to find.  Thick, creamy Hollandaise that has never seen a blender.  I can feel my arteries hardening as I type.

Clearwater Beach, even in the driving rain.  Slashing, hissing, deluging rain.  Bummer, I know.  But there is something elemental about strolling through boiling surf, soaked to the skin but warm and in good company.  In a land of exquisite beaches, CB rains supreme.  (Sorry.)

Gulf Coast Po' Boys is a hole in the wall featuring the Louisiana delicacies for which it is named.  Sit outside and be treated like royalty for about 8 bucks.  I love this place.

Busch Gardens.  Eight roller coasters, count 'em.

Willard's Tap House has 40 beers on draft, with "no crap on tap."  These beers average somewhere north of 7 percent alcohol.  The Smith boys know what they like.  And they seem to know what a lot of folks like.  I'm working my way through the list for the second time, surrounded by those peerless tipplers who have long since tucked away their third or fourth rotation.  This is a happy place.

The Cajun Cafe on the Bayou sprawls along the bank of Center Bayou in Pinellas Park. When Paul and Rebecca are not hosting a music fest or beer fest or crawfish fest, they preside over the best Cajun vittles in the south - including, by some reports, the best that New Orleans can put up.  Not to mention a menu of 80 great beers - 80! - of which 15 are on tap.  No crap on tap here, either.

The Turtle Deck at McGough Nature Park is an oasis of quiet charm off nasty Walsingham Road. No one can resist dropping 2 bits worth of turtle food into the teeming mass of armored reptiles, rooting for the little cooters and snappers, but fascinated by the stately Florida Softshells.

(Photo Credit: Robyn's Pond Turtle Species Page)

Taste of Punjab means great curries and friendly service.  And decent beer.  (You see the theme here.)

It is with considerable anguish that I barely mention Golden Bear Restaurant , the sponge docks at Tarpon Springs, the Museum of  Florida History, the amazing Cuban sandwiches at the Kooky Coconut, and a dozen more favorites.

Welcome to Paradise.

Newt

Peek-a-Boo Salvation

Contrary to misguided Yankee opinion, the Deep South has many people who are entirely literate, and we have libraries chock-a-block with books, just like the North. I was a talented reader before I came south, and I have carefully nurtured and maintained my reading skills in the face of invidious assaults on literacy by twitterers, txters, Sarah Palin and other idiots.

The Deep South also has religion in glorious excess, with churches outnumbered only by bars and strip joints. At the intersection of libraries and religion there dwells a phenomenon I have not observed in other civilized places - and that's saying a lot, since I have been to both Paris and Provincetown.

You will recall from your last library excursion that library books routinely bear little taped-on labels on their spine for those of us who lack the time to judge a book by its entire cover. (Some other time I will get to libeling library minions with hyperactive labeling glands who plaster over the book title or author's name. It is my thesis that compulsive labeling is a trait of the recently literate.) These spine labels drop books into convenient slots - B for biography, F for fiction, 793.734 for palindromes. Unless you're from around these parts, you probably didn't see a CF label last time you visited the New Books rack. I have concluded, based on a short sample, that CF stands for Christian Fiction. If this news does not set off little alarm bells in your head, this is probably not your blog and you ought to stop reading. There are swarms of places on the Internet labeled CB.

In the Largo Public Library, fully ten percent of the New Fiction section is labeled CF, much more than is devoted to, say, Danielle Steele bodice-rippers or Stephen King flesh-rippers. Heathen that I am, I like the CF label for the same reason I appreciate signs reading "Keep Out - Cholera." It hastens decision-making quite nicely. That brings me, however circuitously, to the topic of the day. CF folks have figured out that they are proselytizing to the pious, which is no way to pump up the population of paradise. To solve that problem, the pious are introducing a fresh new genre to the bookshelves: Stealth CF.

Stealth CF works like this:

Spine label: F

Title: "Deadly Target"

Author: Someone you never heard of

Book jacket synopsis: In 2015, world power has been seized by a fanatical religious cult bent on a return to the dark ages. To save civilization from intellectual dehydration, Jake Savage must penetrate a corrupt organization that . . ." Et cetera.

This is hackneyed socio-political thriller stuff for which I am a bit of a sucker.

Sure enough, as the story unfolds, the promised malevolent cult emerges. Hero Savage is a meat-and-potatoes Robert Langdon, laughing in the face of entrenched evil. Incensed at the malicious onslaught of the hyper-religious, hyper-hypocritical - if there can be such a thing - Church of the Apocalypse Now, Savage launches his one-man crusade to tame the excesses of the foul new regime and restore traditional morality - uh-oh - to the country, making it safe for every born-again Christian - uh-oh, uh-oh - to live a life in Christ and be baptized, not in the water but in the blood. A-a-r-r-g-h! Here I am 100 pages into a reasonably well-plotted page-burner when the Stealth CF alarm light finally flickers on. I am about to be saved against my will by a submarine Bible tract.

Several times now I have nearly been saved, but in each case have preserved my march to eternal damnation only by hurling the holy book into the flames of the library's all-night book drop. But the flesh is weak, and I will continue to read too much socio-political crap. From now on, though, I will read the last page first to make sure there are no legions of formerly heathen Newts marching triumphantly through the pearly gates.

Newt

My Hyphenated Cat

For reasons I don’t understand, we own two cats. Their names are Shut Up and Dickhead. I can’t tell them apart, but I’ve never really had to because I always speak to both of them at the same time. As a result, I think of them as one hyphenated cat. Shut Up-Dickhead lives on the lanai, which is Florida-speak for a front porch with delusions of upward mobility.

We have had Shut Up-Dickhead for some 14 years, which is easily 13 years too long. They don’t catch mice and I can’t get them to eat palmetto bugs. Our lanai is screened in, but it is egg-fry hot down here in August, and Judy does not believe that cats can stand the heat. So our lanai has been shrink-wrapped and I put in an air conditioner. Judy scoops poop once a day and the town poop truck comes twice a week to collect the scoopings.

Shut Up-Dickhead is a pain in the ass when we want to go somewhere for more than a few days. They expect to eat and drink regularly and become testy when they do not. When they are hungry or when they think they should be hungry, they make a considerable racket, which is how they got their respective names. Neighbor Dave next door hates noise of any sort, so extended cat howling while we are traveling would only lead to social unrest. Moreover, if you don’t scoop at reasonable intervals, your lanai fills with poop. We are waiting – or at least I am waiting – for Shut Up-Dickhead to die so we can do some extended touring, during which time the lanai will not fill with poop. I know that sounds heartless, but – well – never mind – maybe it is.

I have some uncategorized collectibles that share living arrangements on the lanai with Shut Up-Dickhead, things like Joan Baez records and my old fraternity paddle, things for which I have no further use but with which I cannot bring myself to part. (I put great stock in not ending sentences with prepositions, but sometimes that obsession leads to abominations like that last sentence. Find another blog if off is what that puts you.) To keep the cat fur off my treasures, we have been looking for one of those plushly carpeted Kitty Condos. We have been holding off because I am too damn cheap to spend a three-figure sum on accommodations for a hyphenated cat. Then, just last week, we came upon a recovering derelict on a street corner holding a cardboard sign reading “Kitty Condos – Cheap!” Beside him on the grass was a row of pouffy condos. We stopped. For $99 in carefully counted cash, we jammed a multi-level cat castle into the back seat and sped home. Our lanai now qualifies as multi-unit housing. Although it took a while for Shut Up-Dickhead to part with Joan Baez, they now sit proudly on the condo roof looking out on the world like Yertle the Turtle surveying his domain. Therein lies the problem.

Shut Up-Dickhead used to be boys, but we reorganized them when they were babies. For nearly 14 years they have been content to be sexless, sort of like Gumby with fur. Lately however, one of them – let’s assume it’s Dickhead – has had flashbacks, probably brought on by profligate behavior when he was in college. Anyway – cut to the chase – Dickhead has been mounting his brother. A lot. Personally, I have no issues with whatever two or more consenting adults do in the privacy of their lanai, but this lanai is not private. Mounted on the roof of the condo, they look like the hood ornament on Larry Flint’s Lincoln. They are scandalizing the neighborhood. Most of our neighbors have not been on the roof of the condo since the 1970’s and are unlikely to be amused by Shut Up-Dickhead’s in flagrante antics.

We have reluctantly started lacing Dickhead’s chow with kitty saltpeter. But you have to admire his pluck.


Newt

Gut Check

It no doubt started, as all hurricanes do, with the breeze from some butterfly flapping its little wings over the west coast of Africa. I knew damn well when I came to Florida that the state is a hurricane sink hole. In fact, Hurricane Ike was idling in the Gulf even as I was unloading the U-Haul last September. Of course, by that time, Ike had already glided harmlessly past Tampa en route to Galveston. Nonetheless, the state-run homeowners’ insurance monolith refused to sell me insurance while Ike was on the loose. I was not nonplussed in the least. In fact, I have rarely been so plussed. No hurricane has scored a direct hit on Tampa Bay since 1921. Even Hurricane Fay, which bounced around Florida last year like a fart in a bucket, never laid a finger on Tampa. So why, 11 months later, is the first tropical storm of the Atlantic season scrambling my eggs? Could I have been ill-advised in my plussage?

The seat of my discomfort may be all those hurricane supplies I saw stacked up at Lowe’s this morning. Lanterns and duct tape and rope and plywood and, right there in the aisle near the registers, a gravity-flouting Tower of Batteries. I came home after buying spackle - the kind that goes on pink but dries white - and counted my spare batteries (4 D’s, no C’s, 8 AA’s, 3 AAA’s and a 9-volt with terminals rimmed by an ominous excrescence of old battery). I don’t even know what most of these batteries go to, except that the six remote controls in my living room all take AA’s. When the big one hits, my survival plan has been to pillage the remotes. Since my spackle outing, however, I have had a few hours to contemplate the significance of Lowe's's none-too-subtle marketing strategy, and I am developing a potent craving to go back and buy too many of everything in the stack.

Tropical storm Ana is nosing around the Leeward Islands as I type this. One unheralded benefit of living in Florida is that its residents all know exactly where the Leewards are. No one in Connecticut has ever heard of them except one old salt at the Essex Yacht Club and the snotty weather guy on Channel 30. Well, surprise – the Leeward Islands is just an uppity way of describing the Virgin Islands, Anguilla, St. Kitts and sundry other paradisical places we all want to visit outside hurricane season. So named because they are downwind of the Windward Islands, of course. Sorry - I got carried away.

Ana is generating a measly 40 mph breeze right now. A zephyr, a sprightly freshet, a gentle flutter, a bit of a draft. But the Hurricane Experts have now sketched in the dreaded cone of probability, and – whoa! - guess where it targets ground zero. No, no - not Tampa. Key West. From Key West, however, Tampa is nothing but an eight-iron and a bad slice. Suddenly, 1921 doesn’t seem like all that long ago. I’m going out to buy duct tape.

Newt

Mad-Dashing for Bagels

Pinellas County is that thumb that sticks out of Florida’s west coast, without which there would be no Tampa Bay. People live and breed here in mind-fogging profusion, and most of them spend every waking hour – and some non-waking hours – on the road. Vehicular progress of any sort in Pinellas takes place – if at all – on parallel north-south and east-west arteries that crisscross the thumb at two-mile intervals. Between arteries lies a no man’s land of mobile home parks, strip malls and other cul-de-sac-y places that ultimately lead nowhere except to someone else’s mobile home or the local bagel shop. Want to take the back road to get somewhere? Can’t do it. The sole option – so it’s not really an option at all, then, is it? - is to drive from your own cul-de-sac-y maze to an artery, then to another artery – et cetera – then into the cul-de-sac containing your bagel shop. You might think this a simple process, but you would be wrong,

Pinellas’s crisscrossing arteries are, in fact, full-dress highways carrying eternal, torrential traffic. They are cloven by grassy – or what passes here for grassy – medians designed to keep southbound torrents from intersecting randomly with northbound torrents, eastbound from westbound. Our quasi-grassy medians are punctuated at terrifyingly frequent intervals by opportunities, for those willing to risk life and orthopedic integrity, to turn left across the onrushing torrent to get to that cul-de sac-y place that seemed important when they first set out. No traffic lights to help. No guts, no bagel shop.

Median lanes are hair-raisingly short and narrow, and this is where hair-raising turns to tire-screeching lunacy. The traffic torrent in each direction rips along at 55 to 70 miles per hour. That’s 5 to 20 mph above the speed recommended by the Pinellas County Sheriff. To turn left off an artery, the bagel shopper must dismount while moving at ambient speed and stick a landing at zero speed in that tiny chink in the median. This maneuver tests not only brake pads and guts, but coffee-cup holders and seatbelt anchors as well. Did I mention that some Bozo in the oncoming lane always wants to occupy that same little chink of median lane you’re aiming at so he can turn left into HIS favorite bagel shop? Now the available median lane is halved and your initial closing speed with Bozo can be a sphincter-cinching 140 mph. Cream cheese with that bagel, sir?


One more point, then you can get back to your Facebook-ing. The only way to get from the bagel shop back whence you came is to mad-dash your way back to the median chink, this time in perpendicular fashion. If geometry escaped you all those years ago, this means sticking your 17-foot-long Escalade into a 12-foot-wide lane. Chronic under- and overshooters are eventually – and regularly – scooped off the pavement and reassembled at the Global Mortuary (see my diatribe of August 13 if you’re fuzzy on what this means.) However heart-clanging this maneuver may be to the mad-dasher, it is worse for the poor Bozo approaching in the leftbound torrent at his usual 70-mph cruising speed. The highest heart rate ever recorded in Florida belonged to just such a Bozo caught in mid-cellphone conversation just as a mad-dasher began his mad dash.

You gotta love this state.

Newt

Detachment - Florida Style

An essential truth for those of us living in the Sunshine State is that we are called "God's waiting room" for good reason. (Somehow "Sunshine State" seems a bit Charles Addams-ish when you ponder the imminent fate of our most senior residents and those of us who wander into traffic with any regularity.) Anyway, when God calls, many of us respond with such urgency that there is precious little time for carefully selecting a departure terminal. Here is where Global Mortuary steps up to offer the one-stop shopping experience of a lifetime - and beyond. Here in Largo, you can nip into AJ's Sports Bar for a quick pop, check out the grim labor market, get your nails spruced up for the trip, and pick out a nice Glock or S&W next door. As a final convenience, the funeral home/departure lounge is the next door on your left. You don't even need to move your Buick .



Pity, they misspelled "Bizarre." Here's what it looks like from ground zero. AJ's Sports Bar is at the far left.




I couldn't make this stuff up.

Newt

Billboard Rant # 1, part 2

You didn't believe last month's rant about vasectomy billboards, did you? Ha! Both of these signs are still flying a couple of miles apart in Largo. Note the subtle - I can't believe I am using the word "subtle" in this context - anyway, note the subtle changes in text and phone numbers between the new version above and the old version below, obviously designed to appeal to persons of varying tastes and persuasions. The one abiding constant, besides the obvious, is the needle and scalpel thing, and that's OK with me. What I like best is that Dr. Doug did 5,000 more nut jobs - that's 10,000 little tubes, folks - while waiting for the second billboard to go up. So he's cheap, he's fast, he has Elvis's hair (at least during the day), and he doesn't use instruments. Very cool!

See? I was right again.

Newt

Billboard Rant # 2

A clutch of billboards that I suspect you will find nowhere else in this country has has been laid along several Tampa Bay highways. They advocate, of all things, abolishing the traditional separation between church and state, a modern twist on antidisestablishmentarianism, of sorts.

I especially love one version of the billboard that quotes Thomas Jefferson saying that the American form of government owes much to the belief in God. This is hardly a revolutionary thought, either by Jefferson by those who now quote him. But quoting Jefferson in this context is like the Flat-Earth Society quoting Columbus. Good old TJ, or Thom, as he liked to be called, was no antidisestablishmentarian. Here's a quote that better captures Thom's essential belief on the subject:

Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Not convinced? Here's another:

The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg . . . . Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

Of course, Tampa Bay has more churches per mile of road than almost everything except garish strip joints, so one might argue that there is in place already a certain establishmentarianism.

Those of you who suspect I may have posted this rant simply so I could fairly use "antidisestablishmentarianism" in modern discourse may be onto something. You could be wrong, but I don't think so.

Newt

Little Bastards

This really happened. Well, most of it.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"What the hell is THIS?" exclaimed Judy as she pointed to a cockroach-looking critter on the bathroom counter. Cleverly and courageously, she had trapped the little bastard under a handy water glass in the middle of the night. She waited graciously till the break of day to exclaim to me about her exploit.

"Well, if it weren't 3 inches long and didn't have really long legs, my sweet, I would say it was a cockroach." You have no idea how hard it is to conjure up witty repartee while standing bleary-eyed in the common company of a woman in nightclothes and a cockroach-looking critter under glass. "Looks a bit like a cockroach on stilts."

Slipping a piece of cardboard under the inverted glass, I rendered the critter-prison portable and I ported it to the driveway, from whence the critter quickly skittered under the house. Judy threw a perfectly good $2 glass away, and I made coffee and talked about something else. I knew that I had to get to the bottom of this or we pretty soon weren't going to have anything in the house to drink out of.

"Neighbor," said I later that morning, "we're new to these parts, and wondered about a big old cockroach-looking thing that my wife captured last night." Neighbor - let's call him Paul, originally from Arkansas - everyone down here is originally from elsewhere - so Paul says to me, "Oh, them's palmetto bugs. They're all over the place. Harmless though. And did you see how fast they can run?"

I asked others in the park - we like to tell folks we live in an ungated community - about palmetto bugs, and they all said about the same thing as Paul. "But," I said, "they really look like cockroaches, except bigger." "Nope," they all said, "them's palmetto bugs." I felt better, and I explained to Judy as to how she should feel better as well.

Over the next few months, we saw 2 or 3 more of the little bastards - I call them "little" because it makes me feel a little better - I call them "bastards" because that makes me feel a lot better - anyway, we spotted some more of them around the house, but follow-up searches that Judy recommended I make of all the hidey places in which one might expect to find cockroach-looking critters, well, those searches routinely turned up empty. That was sort of uncockroach-like. You know how they say if you see one of the little bastards, there's a thousand more hiding under the kitchen sink? Well, thankfully this wasn't true of these particular little bastards. But I did see some of them lurking outside in the hibiscus bushes - this was back before I had to cut down all the hibiscus bushes, but that's another story - and i saw a few parading down the driveway in broad daylight like it was Palmetto Bug Pride Day.

That broad daylight thing made me nervous because if they really were cockroaches - well you never see cockroaches out in the sunshine, so any of the little bastards that you find in the sunshine are probably rabid. I did not like the idea of rabid cockroaches lurking near the house. Palmetto bugs, I suppose, were OK with daylight because I didn't really know if palmetto bugs were supposed to be nocturnal in their habits.

The more people I asked about the cockroach-looking little bastards, the more I was assured that they were palmetto bugs and harmless. This reassured me no end and helped to placate the wife as well. After all, we came to Florida in the first place to enjoy a life of placation, so we began to revel in the feeling we got from knowing that them were palmetto bugs.

I suppose I should have left well enough alone, but my insatiable thirst for knowledge sent me to the ultimate expert on palmetto bugs, just to inquire as to their personal habits. Right there in Wikipedia, I learned that the common name for the palmetto bug is - damn, this was hard to accept and it still makes me sore about all those neighbors from other places - anyway, the real name for palmetto bug according to Wikipedia is "American cockroach."

I haven't explained this yet to Judy, and she remains in a fair state of placation not knowing what I know. Now, it is of some consolation to me that the palmetto bug of Florida has adopted different habits from its Connecticut brethren in that - well, all cockroaches like it where its warm and wet and there is lots of food all the time - but here in Florida those cockroach-friendly conditions occur mostly out-of-doors, which is where these little bastards belong - assuming, that is, they belong anywhere. In fact, conditions in Florida are so cockroach-friendly - I'm not sure I like those two words linked together like that - but the conditions are so good that Florida cockroaches grow up to be pretty damn big. And they grow legs like stilts so they can motor along through the cockroach-friendly underbrush at a sprightly clip. Contrarily, when the little bastards come indoors here in Florida, they find that it's cold and dry all the time - everything is air-conditioned all to hell here - and they hate that. It dries the little bastards out and freezes their little cockroach asses off. So they stay outside. In the cold, dry North, of course, the little bastards have to go indoors where it's warm and wet. So Connecticut is sort of an inside-out Florida if you're a cockroach.

Anyway, you can see why folks here call them palmetto bugs. I'm still not sure about the rabies thing though, so I generally keep my distance.

I could be wrong about this, I suppose, but I don't think so.

Newt

The Best Eatery Ever

My favorite food authors, Jane & Michael Stern, rate each of their finds, not by the absolute wonderfulness of the restaurant, but how it compares to what it tries to be. So Shady Glen in Manchester rates at the top, not because the food is better than Cavey's, but because it is the perfect 1950s ice cream shop. Few are perfect, except perhaps The Cajun Cafe on the Bayou in Pinellas Park, just south of my place.

Pinellas County is laid out on a grid, with main drags running predictably north-south and east-west. The resulting squares are filled with mobile home parks and billboards. Once in a while, a square contains a park or some natural wonder, like a swamp, a Burger King or a government building. On extraordinary occasions, a creek or even a bayou wanders through the grid. (Plug 8133 Park Blvd, Pinellas Park, Fl into Google Earth.) Drive down Park Boulevard in Pinellas Park, amidst the car washes and strip malls, and turn into a ramshackle driveway at the ramshackle sign reading The Cajun Cafe on the Bayou. Drive over the alarmingly ramshackle pavement and notice that the frenzied pitch of Park Boulevard fades and soon disappears. Welcome to the Cafe. See http://www.cajuncafeonthebayou.com/

The Cafe is a shack, but not a ramshackle shack. Real-McCoy plank siding must date back to earliest Florida history - maybe 1955. Inside are plain booths, but the rear deck is a destination rivaling Clearwater Beach itself. The deck overhangs the bayou and virtually nothing else. The dark, brackish water meanders north or south with the tide and swirls with catfish and the occasional alligator. Mangrove and cypress line the shore as far north as you can see. The tin roof sings in the rain - jeezus what rain! - but the picnic tables on the deck position you barely out of the deluge. Gentle and unfailing breezes keep away any little biting critters. Cajun music of all colors plays not too far in the background.

The Cafe has Cajun food for the ages. Gumbo and jambalaya and etouffees and po'boys and oysters and catfish creole. Boiled crawfish in 2- or 5-lb batches. Red beans and rice. Dirty rice. Pork bouidin and crawfish boudin and sausage-stuffed Cajun meatloaf. Cafe's crawfish cornbread is succulent and satisfying beyond description.

Care for a beer? Keep in mind that beer served in Florida rarely strays far from the Bud Light rut. It's a hops wasteland, a barbarian, scum-swilling land of pantywaist buzz-chasers that wouldn't know a decent brew if they fell into a mash tun. So it was a shock of epic magnificence to see a sign in front of the Cafe claiming to serve 80 craft beers, 15 of them on tap. Local brews like Dunedin Pale Ale and Jai Alai IPA, Belgians ales, stouts, wheat beers and Hercules Double IPA. Brews from Colorado and Oregon and California and the Carolinas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Louisiana. Texas, Massachusetts and Virginia. And those are only the ones I have tasted, so far. The Cafe would be beer heaven if it served nothing but hot dogs.

One might think, mightn't one, that an eatery of this intensity would serve some wonderful desserts. The Cajun Cafe on the Bayou serves one dessert, and one only. One is all is needed because everyone knows, or quickly learns, that it is the best of all possible desserts: bread pudding with whiskey cream sauce.

If I were stranded on a desert isle for the rest of time and could bring only one thing with me, it would be The Cajun Cafe on the Bayou.

I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

Newt

Billboard Rant # 1

Florida, God bless it, is a land where advertising rushes in at every turn. The billboard, in particular, sticks it in your eye. We have one down the street that reads VASECTOMY - NO NEEDLE - NO SCALPEL. Um, right. Perhaps they use a mallet. Or a tiny weed-whacker. The billboard touts a grinning genital-grabber in Elvis hair and a BIG 800-number. Would you let Elvis mess with your junk? I thought not. Besides, this is Florida, where the median age is 74. Cialis ads should abound - as they do - but vasectomies would seem a shrinking market.

Out on I-275 in Tampa is a billboard for an outfit that cleans up after murders, suicides and "undiscovered deaths." You might expect something discreet from advertisers in this delicate industry, assuming that you knew that such an industry exists, but you would be wrong. Florida does not grasp discreet. 400 square feet of gore in view of 55,000 cars an hour.

Lawyer billboards? How about one for an outfit called, www.whocanisue.com ? It's not even grammatically defensible.

Florida has a population density of about 600 people per square furlong and no zoning laws. In the inevitable scrum for every available retail dollar, advertising has grown even denser than the population. In more ways than one.

It's a crazy state. I feel at home here.