Month: February 2022

Made the long and tedious drive to Key West. If I were you, I’d skip the drive and fly or boat to the cute beach town.

What a treasure we have in Everglades National Park! Spent the night in a very nice campground deep in the swamp. Had to make an emergency run to the camp store for bug spray—I stepped out of the van for one minute and was assaulted by clouds of bitey things. The bug spray worked like a charm, except for some particularly hungry biting flies. Its a good thing they stayed in an area far from the camp site.

North of the Everglades, I found a delightful Gulf Coast town: Venice. It was Saturday, so a farmer’s market had taken over the broad street leading to the beach. Clearly a moneyed town; there are many mansions lining the waterfront. The town was designed by the famous urban planner John Nolan and is an excellent example of the Garden City design movement of the 1920s and 30s.

From the coast, I drove up through central Florida. It is very difficult to drive from the gulf coast to Gainesville without using I-75, but I mostly managed it. They raise a lot of cattle there, black, brown and dingy white ones that need laundering. I was surprised that Florida permitted the mixing of cow colors like that. The cows have a nice life, it seems, grazing in the sun or lounging under enormous oak trees dripping with Spanish moss.

I have been savagely misled. Visited Cocoa Beach; it is ordinary sand! Doesn’t faintly resemble cocoa and makes a lousy hot beverage. Have not been so disappointed since visiting the Gold Coast. Geographers are a dishonest lot.

Otherwise, in all fairness, I must report that Florida is an awful place. It’s no wonder that the inhabitants thereof are so surly; I would be, too, if I were condemned to a life there. Did you know that it is possible to drive for 15, maybe 20 miles, down a road and see nothing but strip malls? I had no idea a place needed so many fast food chains, tattoo parlors, and knick-knack shops. There seems to be no end of Floridian appetites for such merchantilism. As an urban designer, I have to admit that it leaves me…depressed.

On the other hand, Florida has achieved an epic level of discourtesy and rudeness. I’m not talking about the customary insolence of what passes for wait staff in these parts. I hope you have never had to endure what I about to describe; the more sensitive may wish to resume watching cat videos. Entities, masquerading as people, pull into a gas station, occupy a pump, wander about the grounds, complete their Christmas shopping at the truck stop store, feast on government approved food products from the roller apparatus, take a nap, squabble with their spouse, all with complete indifference to the queue of people waiting to fill their tanks. An extraordinary display of callous disregard for others. As you might imagine, I’ve patronized many gas stations on my journey; these folk live exclusively in Florida.

I’m happy to report there is one redeeming quality to this (thankfully) vanishing part of America: song birds. The place is full of them, singing the songs of their people all day long. Bright red cardinals, pretty bluebirds flashing their colors, drab little brown birds…all of them singing their hearts out. Delightful.

Maybe we can blame it on the pandemic, but I’ve discovered the Southern cooking ain’t what it used to be. I did manage to find some good catfish, fried of course, in Natchez, Mississippi, right on the banks of the river. Next door is the club in which Jerry Lee Lewis got his start.

I made a quick pass through the Vicksburg battlefield. You could spend days tracing the movement of troops through the area, but I’ll save you the trouble: the Americans won. An interesting fact I learned while there…during the American occupation of Vicksburg, they stationed what they then called “colored troops,” armed to the teeth, to maintain law and order. Poetic justice is served!

Visited the National Naval Aviation Museum at Pensacola Naval Air Station. Huge building crammed full of planes. Nice collection of early airplanes from the WWI era. I was glad to see they had a large and informative exhibit about airships and blimps.

While traveling through the waterlogged section of the country, I’ve learned that boat launch ramps are often good places to camp overnight.

 

10,000 to 13,000 years ago, people migrated across the Aluetian Land bridge and settled throughout the Americas. They lived there in harmony with the land and in relative peace for 10,000 to 13,000 years in the region now known as Texas.

Starting around 1500 and continuing for about 300 years, a group of state-sponsored terrorists and pirates arrived from Spain; they were appropriately called conquistadors, meaning conquerors. They implemented a pogrom of genocide against Native Americans using biological warfare and outright violence, capitalizing on their technological prowess. Those Native Americans not killed outright were compelled to construct a series of concentration camps known as Missions. At these camps, Native Americans were imprisoned and forced to worship a god alien to their ways.

In 1810, a competing gang of thieves arose in the New World, who called themselves Mexicanos, or Mexicans. They engaged the Spanish gang for control of the Native American lands and ultimately drove them out in 1821. Rather than returning the stolen land to the Native Americans, they continued the pogroms of the first band of pirates.

In 1835, a third terrorist band of thieves arose, sanctioned, if not sponsored, by the American government. They engaged the Mexicano gang and suffered a humiliating defeat at The Alamo. Surprisingly, to this day, Texans and their American sponsors wallow in their humiliation, treating the site and the incompetent leadership of the American gang with awe and reverence.

Aftermath: the American thieves used their defeat as a rallying cry and mounted a counter-offensive against the Mexican thieves and consummated the theft of Native American territory from the second band of thieves in 1835. The Americans continued the genocidal pogroms of the Mexicans and expanded the construction of concentration camps, now called reservations. Notably, they institutionalized  the enslavement the few Native Americans remaining and engaged in a deliberate policy of cultural obliteration. None of the land has been returned to its rightful owners to this day in 2022.

While passing through Eastern New Mexico, I discovered a town quite infatuated with aliens: Roswell, New Mexico! I even met one, who was quite shiny and friendly.

There are numerous businesses in town focused on extra-terrestrials (as aliens are sometimes known). My favorite was this Scottish restaurant shaped like a flying saucer!

They even have food shaped like flying saucers!

Although I was unable to participate myself, one could purchase priceless alien artifacts and eat alien donuts while in Roswell.