South, but Not Too Far

New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the Union and has been since the 1970 census. The District of Columbia is much more densely packed, but it isn’t a state, and it doesn’t have hundreds of square miles of Pine Barrens.

The Barrens make up much of Burlington, Atlantic, and Ocean Counties. They cross the state almost from the Delaware in the west and come right down to the bayshore in the east at some places. The great thing about them is that they are downright spooky.

Nothing grows more than three stories high, because the soil won’t support it. The most common living thing down there is a fantastically twisted species of tree called the pitch pine. I love the place. It’s where the Jersey Devil was born and the Hindenburg blew up.

We left North Jersey a little before ten and less than two hours later, we were definitely someplace else. We traveled the Garden State Parkway for 70 miles or so and then took county roads to Warren Grove. A little south of there we stopped on top of a hill at place called Stafford Forge.


This used to be iron-making country but Stafford and all the other forges are long gone, just place names now. Stafford Forge is a preserve for a section of dwarf Pine Barrens known as the Plains.

This is where regular people get to be the giants. It is a forest of mature trees that grow to be only about five feet high. There are several sections of it, and I don’t know how many square miles the Plains cover.

I read in an old botany book that the subsoil is so hard that the taproots can't break through it so the trees have to adjust their growth to limited nutrients and water.

Joanna stands about four eleven, and she was taller than most of the trees on top of the hill at Stafford Forge.

I’ve seen several parts of the Plains, and they are generally impassable because the pitch pines mix with oaks and, being short, their limbs lock close to the ground, so you can’t press your way through. You have to follow the trails cut by deer.

This section was an exception in my experience. It was almost exclusively pitch pine, and we could have picked our way through it for some distance, but chose not to. Tick season came early this year and there are Lyme disease warnings everywhere. The best time to go walking anywhere in the South Jersey woods is the wintertime after the first solid frost.

Next stop was an old cranberry farm called Whitesbog. According to a display in the general store, in its prime time, Whitesbog employed as many as 450 Italians—immigrants recruited in south Philadelphia.


The bogs are still there, and when Joanna saw them, they reminded her of fish farms in China that she had seen as a little girl.

It was also near here that the blueberry was domesticated. Or at least, the strain of it that we buy in boxes at the supermarket.

We strolled down some of the sand lanes in the woods. It was so quiet I could hear my tinnitus roar.

Then we drove to one of our favorite places, the Carranza Memorial near Tabernacle. Tabernacle is cool, too, because it’s where a Presbyterian minister named John Brainerd built a log church in the 1700s.

Captain Emilio Carranza was a Mexican flyer, the nephew of an assassinated president of Mexico. He had come to the United States on a goodwill tour. This was 1928, only 12 years after Pancho Villa raided New Mexico and Blackjack Pershing invaded Old Mexico. A year later, in 1917, some of the Kaiser’s men tried to convince Mexico to get even and invade the U.S.

Things could have been a mite rocky between us and our southern neighbor in those times.

Carranza was a celebrity—front page news—so when he crashed in the Pine Barrens, people were understandably upset. Every July, the Mount Holly chapter of the American Legion hosts a memorial service for Carranza at the crash site. The children of Mexico saved their money to pay for a monument that stands in a clearing of the woods in Wharton State Forest.

On the way in, we saw a turkey cross the road in front of us with that lurching dinosaur walk they have. On the way out, just around the same place, there was a rabbit trying the same thing, but it was too timid to make it across and turned tail.

We got to Batsto after the visitor center had closed. It has a few interesting exhibits about the environment and the old mill town.


Batsto was originally the plantation of a Swedish colonist named Eric Mullica. It later became an iron-working center.  It supplied cannon balls to the Continental army and water pipes to Philadelphia. That business closed when the coal-fired furnaces of Pennsylvania opened up. 


Being in the middle of the forest, a sawmill was a no-brainer. The mill still stands, but is not operational. There was a glass factory, but that is all gone. There's a sign to mark where it was. They made charcoal at Batsto, because that is what fueled the iron and glass furnaces. They may also have rendered turpentine.


The state has built replicas of workers' houses, and several of the original buildings are still standing, including the big house.


Batsto is in the Wharton State Forest. It is named for Joe Wharton, the financier whose name is on the Wharton business school at the U. of Pennsylvania. He bought thousands of acres of pinelands, including Batsto, because it all sits on top of one of the world's largest natural sweetwater reservoirs, the Cohansey Aquifer. He planned to sell the water to Philadelphia, but Trenton got wind of it and passed a law banning the sale of water to customers out of state.
So there was Wharton with all that ground and nothing to do with it. All the businesses at Batsto had long since gone under. He enlarged the manager's mansion and made it over in a style called Italianate, which was fashionable at the time.

He vacationed there from time to time and invited people to dinner.


The State of New Jersey bought it in the 1950s.


Joe’s Maplewood on the White Horse Pike (U.S. Route 30) in Hammonton is a great place to eat, by the way. Joanna had tilapia and vegetables. I had pork chops dressed with cheese, mushrooms, and all kinds of good stuff with pasta on the side.


Joanna had a Pepperwood pinot noir. She handed me the glass and said I should pay attention to how it finishes. It was tasty going in, but it changed completely when it was going down. It was downright spicy, and a lot of fun.

The Howard Johnson motel was booked because—unbeknownst to me—this was the weekend of a motorcycle tour called the Pine Barrens 300. The nameless motel where we stayed let my reservations go and put me in a room called the Jacuzzi suite, which had no closet or coat rack, and a deep tub whose jets didn’t work. The manager gave me a break and only charged me time and a half what my original reservation would have cost.


We went back to the Carranza monument in the dark because that is absolutely Gothic. There are so many ghosts in this place, and to drive along a narrow road hemmed by spiky, hungry-looking trees is really worth the time. 


We stayed for a few minutes and may have had the place to ourselves, although there could have been somebody parked in one of the clearings behind the monument.


By day, people park their horse trailers there when they come to ride the trails. It is supposed to be closed after dusk, so that's when kids go there.

There was a single planet shining through the clouds, but light enough to see by. The sky reflects the city glow from Philadelphia and Atlantic City, and the ground is white sand.


The deer were up and about. Along the same stretch where the turkey and rabbit were earlier in the day, three or four deer came out. We stopped to watch them. Good thing, too because, one casually wandered right in front of the car to cross the road.

Next morning, on the way to Leeds Point, we came across one hell of a surprise. We were following Atlantic County Road 561 and came to a fork where 575 breaks off. It creates a triangle of land, fenced in and covered with small American flags.

We turned around and came back. A couple of the markers identified the graves as belonging to men who had served in the “Col. Inf.” One died in 1909, another in the ’20s, so “Col.” can’t stand for “colonial.” Besides, General Washington’s soldiers were called Continentals.

Each grave had a Grand Army of the Republic marker in addition to a headstone. One of the stones spelled it out: “colored infantry.” These were black soldiers who had fought against the slaveholders. They had served separately and they had been buried separately.

Leeds Point is an interesting place to go because it the birthplace of the Jersey Devil. There is an interesting stone house there, and also an access road to a boat launch.

Smithville is a tourist attraction, but it’s fun. There are several restaurants there, including one that traces its pedigree back to colony days. Behind the big restaurant is a collection of shops they call Historic Smithville. It consists of buildings salvaged from all over the Barrens and reconstructed in a peddlers’ village.

There were also geese, swans, and a couple of roosters raising hell over a hen.

From Smithville, we took Route 9 to Port Republic. I’m not sure Port Republic exists anymore. It used to be a smugglers’ retreat and a stronghold for the New Jersey privateers, who attacked British merchant shipping during the Revolution. Big business. You sell the cargo at auction, sell the ship, sell the munitions to the Continental Army, and get to be a hero instead of a pirate.

Right off Route 9 in Tuckerton, where the Indian chief monument stands, is Seven Bridges Road. It’s not called that now. It’s more like Bay Boulevard, or something else sufficiently bland. Just before you come to the first big bridge, on the right, there is a place to pull over. That’s so you can get out of your car and peek through the cedars at the shell mound. The Lenape used to summer here and eat the shellfish. They threw the shells into one place, and over the course of centuries, maybe millennia, it has formed an artificial island large enough to support several trees.

You can take the road out to a beach on the Little Egg Harbor.

One last observation: The famous house with the chair on its cupola isn’t in Tuckerton, but in Eagleswood, N.J.

March to Florida, part 3

Into the Gulf

March 19

I know I’m somewhere else, and that makes all the difference.

The ibises flock like chickens on people’s lawns. Herons of various sizes, both white and gray, stand in storm drains and on rooftops. Avocados, grapefruit, and bananas grow by the driveways. I am only now learning the names of some of the trees. I may be able to identify sea grape, cabbage palm, sabal palm (it produces abundant clusters of small black berries), and saw palmetto.

I spent half an hour snorkeling in the Gulf of Mexico this afternoon. Don’t recall ever having a snorkel on before. Everything under the water looks close up. I saw lots of sand. The current arranges it in small ridges that look like ripples. There were some broken shells and an actual small fish that seemed close enough that I tried to catch it by hand. As you might guess,  that was one safe fish.

I haven’t been swimming since I was here a year ago, so after a while, I had had it. I handed the snorkel back to Bob, who went out and pulled maybe three dozen sand dollars off the sand today. They are going to be game props when his grandkids show up.

The Gulf water is chillier right now than bath water, but once you get in, it’s very comfortable. There were very small breakers on the beach. The little birds that you see on the Jersey shore and elsewhere were here as well, running to the edge of the waves to pick in the sand at the bubbles and then running away as the large waves rolled in.

Jamy and I started the day by biking for breakfast this morning, and it was when we came out after pancakes, eggs, and ham at Peach’s that I saw the bird on a wire in today’s photo. You may remember the Leonard Cohen song: “Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in may way to be free.” This free bird is an ibis. They used to be holy in Egypt. Maybe they came over when the Egyptians discovered America.

Next trip of the day was biking south to the far end of the island. I found the treehouse again and also a vacation rental with Haitian motifs. I had wanted to reach a park at the foot of the island on the channel between Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key.

I mistook the turnoff and wound up on the bridge over the channel. The sidewalk was closed on my side for repairs, so foot traffic and bicycles had to cross the highway, and very conveniently right then, the bridge was being opened for a boat to pass so traffic was standing still.

So happens, the boat passed under the bridge just fine. It carried three antennas sticking up above the roadway level. Rather than arrange to dip the antennas, they raised the bridge.

On the other side of the bridge was a road that appeared to be the entrance to a park. But not so. Apparently I was not the first to make that assumption. It was plastered with “no trespassing” signs, so I left Longboat Key behind. 

The trip back went up Gulf Drive until the bike lane ended. At that point, cyclists are directed to turn right onto the “Scenic Bike Path.” It runs past a neighborhood of old fisherman’s cabins and then comes to the Historic Bridge Street Pier, a short block or two from Island Time, where we heard the band yesterday. It is also the neighborhood of the Tidewater Inn, which had Long Hammer IPA on tap. India pale ales are better to tap than they are in the bottle. They have a very crisp fresh flavor on draft, but they are very lively and sometimes the carbonation overwhelms the flavor in the bottled version.

We had supper at Slim’s. When I’m coming up Gulf Drive, I make a right at Slim’s place to find my way back to Bob and Jamy’s. The cheeseburger is excellent. Magic Hat #9 (which makes me think of a slightly sweet IPA) and Sierra Nevada pale ale are on tap.

Joanna and Beatrice’s husband, Alan, have told me that the two bright stars that I couldn’t identify are in fact planets. One is Jupiter; the other is Venus. There is also a vote for Mars.

I will take another look at the sky. Maybe I’ll be able to make out some telltale sign that tells me which is which.

Good night for now.

Jack

March 20

Great trip, glad you are enjoying it!  Did not know that Leonard Cohen recorded "Bird on a Wire," one of my favorite songs.  Ever hear the Joe Cocker version?  Leonard C. is on my iPod with "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah." He did a great "Joan of Arc" song, too, with Jennifer Warnes.  I like Cohen a lot but am still bowled over whenever I hear Joe Cocker's greatest stuff from way back there in the Stoned Age.

Harry

March 20

Yes, I have heard the Joe Cocker version. I first heard the song about 40 years ago when a folk singer named Dave Van Ronk did it at a small club in Greenwich Village. 

There is another moving version by the Neville Brothers. It plays during the closing credits of the film "Bird on a Wire," with Mel Gibson (back in the days when he was entertaining) and Goldie Hawn.

"Suzanne" I remember fondly from my college days. "Hallelujah" is used in  "Shrek." I can't listen to it any more, though, because it breaks my heart.

Thanks for the reminiscence.

Scrawny Squirrels, Fast Pelicans

March 20

The grey squirrels here are smaller and leaner than the ones back home. That may be because they are different strain of grey squirrel, they go to the beach and work out a lot, or they are competing with the birds for nourishment. If the birds eat any squirrel food, that’s probably the reason.

There was a man on one of the piers cleaning his catch. This is not squirrel food, but it is bird food down here. A brown pelican in the water was getting the best of it because the fisherman was casually tossing the offal and bones in his general direction. A great blue heron was standing a few feet away from the guy and was so intent on getting a share of the action that it didn’t move when I came up and photographed it. When it got tired of waiting for him to throw something in another direction, the bird took off and tried to pick up something up for itself off the man’s worktable.

By then two gulls and another pelican had showed up. I think the other pelican got a little something, but the first was faster and in the best spot.

One of the gulls tried to divebomb the guy but got shooed away. He or his companion somehow got a little mouthful away from one of the pelicans a few minutes later. 

Another fisherman at the pier caught a blowfish, which puffed up when he tried to take it off the hook. He had a young boy with him who was fascinated. He may have thrown it back it, but I’m not sure, because I walked down a ways to talk to another fisherman. 

We were watching some fair size fish nibbling bait off his hooks. They were razor thin if you’re looking for the top or the front, but oval in silhouette from the side. (When I described them later to Bob, he guessed they were haddock.) The man offered me a pole, but I told him I hadn’t the patience for it. He said neither did he, but he had grandkids, and you learn to be patient with grandkids. I think the boy with the blowfish may have been one of those kids.

Jamy and I went back to the same pier by kayak for lunch. The beer selection was very limited so I had Heineken from a bottle. One of the specials was grouper cheeks. It didn’t specify face cheeks or butt cheeks, but if I can eat beetles, grubs, underfried crickets, and chicken feet, I can eat anything that somebody calls food. Even if it’s for no better reason than to brag about it later.

It tasted like fried fish, but had no bones and was a little fatty, and that was fine with me. Jamy had grilled mahi-mahi. I sampled that and it was delicious. It may have had some kind of tangy marinade on it.

We got caught in a light shower of rain on the way back, but that didn’t matter, because we were already soaked from splashing ourselves with water off the paddles.

We ran into a guy standing on what looked like a surfboard. Jamy told me this is a paddle board, and is designed to be used that way, by someone standing in the middle and paddling. I could see he’d been fishing, so I asked if he dismounted to fish. He said he fished from the board. 

If I tried fishing from a board like that, I’d be bait. I slipped on the stationary ladder at the little dock yesterday when I was getting out of the kayak. But that’s all right. I learned how to snorkel yesterday, so I fulfilled stuff-in-the-water learning requirement for this year.

I tried to get lost, just to remind myself that I’m on vacation, but except for maybe going a couple of blocks out of your way, you can’t do that here. A half mile east or west and your somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico or Tampa Bay. And you can always tell east and west. In the day time, you look for the sun and remember that’s always south. At night, you look for Jupiter and Venus (or Mars) and remember that’s vaguely northwest.

It’s half past five here. We’re going to be heading out to a place called Eat Here. It’s owned by Sean Murphy, the founder of the local St. Patrick’s Day parade. He also owns an upscale restaurant, the Beach Bistro, which is highly rated by Zagat.

Eat Here is where the parade started. Jamy tells me the pot roast is succulent, and there are also taps with craft beers. If I remember anything, I’ll let you know tomorrow how it goes.

Be well, all.

Karl

March 20

Astro-floral-keyboard alert.  Harry those planets are bright in the Jersey sky this evening. Also Wiley found your house key and is sitting over there tickling the ivories at the piano as we speak.  And your daffodils are blooming. Springtime in America.

Harry

March 21

Thanks for all that good news, Karl.

Back Again

March 22

A good trip gives your brain enough exercise to ward off senility. So far, so good.

Eat Here says it’s the second-best restaurant in Florida. Or maybe it’s more modest and claims only the island. Anyway, that’s because it’s owned by the parade guy, who runs the top-rated place, the Beach Bistro, where the prices are higher.

The food menu runs four pages, beer and wine are another. For the hamburger, the menu directs you to Duffy’s 200 yards to the right; for chicken wings, to Hurricane Hank’s across the street. 

Jamy had tempura-fried beets. Bob had the pot roast. I had “Better than any Frenchman’s onion soup” and “shrimpcargot,” shrimp done like snails with the addition of collard greens and bacon. The place is known for craft beers, mostly bottled, but they had a Dogfish Head 60-minute IPA on draft and that was good with dinner.

The next stop was Old Hamburg, a schnitzel house with a selection of German beers on tap. I had a Hacker-Pschorr summer bock that has a sweet edge but was very tasty. Jamy and Bob each had a crisp lager, and I’m not sure, but it may have been Warsteiner.

We had medium-size glasses. I think they were medium because they weren’t quite a full liter measure.

On the way home, Bob says, “Do you want to see the parrots?” Sure. 

So he does a U-turn, pulls into a strip mall, and stops in front of a beach shop. Outside, there are maybe a dozen floor cages with various rescued parrots.  There were grey ones, green ones, blue ones, some with yellow heads. There were notes about the species, along with the individual birds’ names and particular skills. I can’t remember much of it, because what do I know about parrots? Some were from South America, some from Asia, some maybe from Africa. I’m trying to sort out if one was from Nepal. Do they have parrots there? I may be confusing it with a tree with red flowers at the Ringling Estate grounds in Sarasota. 

According to the signs, all of the parrots bite. Some of them talk, although apparently never face to face. One laughs a little bit like Woody Woodpecker, another can sing “Old MacDonald” (which I didn’t get to hear), and yet another kept saying “hello” when I wasn’t looking. They do stuff like that to get you come back and pay attention to them. 

One huge bird, maybe a macaw, entertained us by climbing around the inside of his cage using his beak and claws.

I am trying to recall some of the names, but all I can remember are Yosemite Sam and Tater Tots.

Wednesday is traveling day. I got to walk for a while on the beach in the morning next to the Gulf. I was over 50 before I saw the Gulf of Mexico for the first time, and so, like palm trees, space cake, or people driving on the wrong side of the road, it’s symbolic of being somewhere else. Maybe because it’s so largely enclosed or more likely because of the movies, the Gulf of Mexico always conveys a sense of rich history--pirates, lost Spanish gold (I know, I didn’t find any; but there has to be some, right?), dolphins, shipwrecks, conquistadors, metal hats, and all kinds of interesting things.

And speaking of interesting things: Most people stopped wearing St. Patrick’s Day beads by Monday, but when I left Anna Maria, they were still decking some lawn ornaments--pink flamingoes, wooden herons, and Dianas bathing.   

Jamy stopped at the Ringling Estate on the way to the airport. In fact, it’s practically next to the airport. You can drop in and walk around the grounds. There is a fee to enter the house, the art museum, and the circus exhibits.

Before that, we stopped at a couple of commercial fishing docks in Cortez, across the bridge from Anna Maria Island. That’s where local sculptor sells his work. Today’s photo is “Jamy Meets Chainsaw Charlie.”

Cortez is a town of commercial fisherman, and there is a monument near the docks to honor them. Three names on the monument are of fishermen lost in “The Perfect Storm.”

The rest of the way home was fairly uneventful. No drunken skaters, for instance. Sarasota airport still has free Wi-Fi, although it’s not strong enough to e-mail large files. But that’s all right. You don’t have to pay eight bucks a shot to use Boingo.

The B concourse at Atlanta has one of the worst arrays of prepackaged food that can exist at airports or malls. But there was one bright spot, a packed place that may have been called Sweetwater Brew House. It claims to be Atlanta-based, and the taps are all house brands. I don’t know if the company brews them or buys them. There was time to show my ID (in the Bible Belt they harass the wicked for drinking beer) and grab a pint of Sweetwater Georgia Brown. That was a tasty brown ale, and on the dry side for a brown, which is good.

I left the parking lot at Newark at 10 p.m. and was home around half past. 

Thanks to Jamy and Bob, another great trip. And senility has been put off to a later date.

Love to all, and to all a great time.

March to Florida, part 2

Greetings From Florida

March 18

Hello, everyone.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day, so I’ll tell you what little I remember of it.

After I signed off on Friday night, I walked a block to the beach. You can get far enough from the floodlights in people’s backyards to see the stars. I found the Big Dipper, North Star, Orion’s belt, and two bright ones to the right of it. I have no idea what they are. Maybe the space station or UFOs. They were the brightest things over the beach, except for the floodlights.

I picked up my bike from Beach Bums on Pine Ave. Saturday morning and went to the Rod & Reel Pier for biscuits and gravy. They put me at a table on the end of the porch, so all I could see outside was Tampa Bay. It was very entertaining to sit and watch the landscape move. The water was shades of green.

See what I mean? You had to be there.

I’d send the photo of that, but it’s semi-boring. The view of water is one of those things you have to be there to enjoy. The pelicans were somewhere else. There was only one on the pier and he looked like he was getting ready to take a nap. He was curled up on the edge of the pier like a ball of feathers with a beak.

The Anna Maria museum consists of a house that was built on City Pier in 1920 and fell into the bay in 1926. Somebody pulled it out and set it up on Pine Avenue. There is a native Florida landscape around it, so of course Harry had to go read all the little signs.

The trees are fantastic. Mangroves and myrtles, cabbage palms and saw palmettos (I told you I read the little signs) and other things that look very exotic to a New Jerseyan. Some look like they might eat you if you misbehave.

The City Pier had live Irish music at the bar. A man with a guitar and a lady with an amplified violin. They did Tura-Lura-Lura and I’m looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover, which I guess could stand in for a shamrock, but the hit was rollicking Gospel song about “raising a building for my Lord, a Holy Ghost building. “ Maybe that gives you an idea of the rhythm. A couple came dancing out of the bar doing a neat two-step routine across the deck past the fishing poles and then back.

We went to Beanie’s in Ruskin, over on the mainland for the corned beef and cabbage special. It was hands-down the best corned beef I have tasted. They serve vinegar, tabasco, and mustard on the side. It was like comfort food. If the hot sauce didn’t bring tears to the eye, nostalgia would.

We met Beanie, who is growing his pony tail for his 40th high school reunion, which is coming up soon. Seems he was the only hippie in the class of 72 down here.

The bar had a house brand, Beanie’s red, which was very good.

We stopped on the highway to see the eagles. They have been nesting in that tree for several years now, and never fail to draw sightseers. Last time I saw them, the adults were out and I could see the head of a eaglet sticking up out of the nest. This time there was an adult perched near the nest.

Bradenton has a strip of bars and had that street blocked off for a festival yesterday. There were all kinds of craft brew taps, and far more than I had stamina for. There was a black lager, but the high point for me was discovering that Sierra Nevada makes a barley wine. It’s so strong, about 10 percent, that they serve it in a short glass.

We stopped somewhere else, too. I am positive that we did. I got to bed somehow, and I know this because I woke up there.

I am taking care of myself, watching what I eat. I had a fruit cup for breakfast to balance the biscuits and gravy, for instance. I am only drinking good, high-quality beer to keep my heart healthy.

It’s Sunday morning. I am going out in the kayak soon.

Joanna, March 18

The two bright ones are planets. Jupiter and Mars. Remember “Age of Aquarius,” Hippie boy?

When Jupiter aligns with the Mars then peace shall guide the planets.

I may not remember the lyric correctly. Anyway, something like that.

Happy kayaking.

Peter, March 18

Somehow I just knew you would have a good time on St. Paddy's Day. Glad you enjoyed yourself. Cool eagle photo.

Jack, March 18

Thanks for the warning about barley wine.  Reminds me of when some Brit introduced me to Guinness saying it was little more than liquid black bread.

I’ve Been to Florida and Seen the Elephant

March 18

Another busy day in paradise.

I started the day by paddling into Tampa Bay. It’s slow traveling, but it’s really unusual to see the world, or at least a little part of it, from about three feet above water level.

The bay is so clear that it looks a foot deep, when it’s closer to four or six. I was able to look for manta rays, sharks, dolphins, and lost Spanish gold, but struck out on all counts this morning

When I was moving through the bayou, I almost missed spotting a couple of blue herons. They’re rail thin when you seen them head on. One was perched on top of a boat launch and looked like part of the lumber.

After the boat ride, I spent a few minutes watching geckos climb the palm trees, and then we went to watch the parade. It has to rank right up there with Montclair on the Fourth of July. It lasted about half an hour, so it’s shorter than Montclair’s but there were pipers, a couple of high school bands (at least one of which may been called the Pirates), Shriners on tiny cars, a pirate ship, and the Pittsburgh Pirates mascot. In addition to all the pirate impersonators, there was a bright green St. Patrick throwing beads to the spectators. The hit of the parade and its distinguishing feature, besides the abundance of pirates, was a live elephant, just a little smaller than the one that tried to kill me in Thailand.

We had joined friends of Bob and Jamy at their house on the parade route. They were Ed and Nancy. More than a dozen people were in the front yard, including Evelyn, a retired snowbird well into her 70s. She is terrific. I met her last year at a bar in town called Bortell’s, where she was downing shots of whiskey with water chasers.

I was feeling a little rocky from last night and bobbing like a cork on the swells in the bay didn’t help. So I had some sweets that Jamy made, a kabob with vegetables and salami, and an apple-flavored Jell-O shot. I don’t know what did it—the alcohol, the sugar, or the artichoke in the kebab, but I was feeling better after that.

The parade is the brainchild of a local restaurant owner, Sean Murphy, and was co-sponsored by the Pittsburgh Pirates players organization. According to the one of the local papers, a lot of the team members stay on Anna Maria Island during spring training.

We had run into another friend, Anita, at one of last night’s many bars and she had invited us to watch the parade from her yard, about three blocks from Ed and Nancy’s.

We stopped there next. We had some of the food, and while we were putting that away, most of the parade cars and floats started coming back down the street. Later, two men walked the elephant back. It was like having flashbacks. Some people on floats were still throwing beads.

Jamy introduced me to “our lucky Penny.” Penny is 92 and, until a couple of years ago, used to mow people’s lawns for a living. She had to give that up, and now Anita, who is not a relative, watches over her to see that she is fed, gets her meds, and so on.

Traffic was heavy on the main drags, so Jamy led the way by back streets to the next stop, a bar called Island Time where she wanted to hear a highly recommended trio, the Ted Stevens Band. Very tight and very retro: “Runaround Sue,” “It’s All Over Now,” “Runaway.” They had all kinds of people up and dancing. One or two couples may have been under 50. Short selection of taps here: Amber Bock, which is a palatable Anheuser-Busch product, and Shocktop.

There was a kid behind the bar who had jammed the stapler and couldn’t fix it. Bob helped him out.

A few minutes later, he is on stage taking some kind of instructions from the drummer. The kid was a ringer. He might not be able to fix a stapler, but he tore through a long drum break on “Secret Agent Man.” He was using his sticks on the wall, woodwork, and a metal Budweiser sign before he was through.

After the performance, he ducked upstairs, where the kitchen and the storage are, for a couple of six-packs to restock the bar.

It’s almost eleven. My hot dog at Anita’s house was a long time ago. I have to get something into my stomach. I’ll narrow my choices by looking for something that goes with beer. Of course, I have yet to find anything that doesn’t go with beer.

What the In-House Astronomer Says

Beatrice, March 19

Harry, Alan says if they were indeed “The brightest things in the heavens,” they were Jupiter and Venus.