Tales From the Edge of the Earth: Time to Pack Up the Computer

Groovy scene at Johnson Beach, Gulf Islands National Seashore, Perdido Key, Florida

               The Lady of the House and I are moving back to Clovis, New Mexico.

                While I’ve been wrapping up my work at my radio job she’s been busy packing up the place here in Pensacola, Florida.

                There's a room filled with boxes and the house is getting emptier and emptier.
                It's about time to box up the computer too.

                I’ll write about my Pensacola experience someday, but not now.  I don’t have the words.

                I started another work this morning called “If You Stop Learnin’ You’ll Start Dyin’” but I stopped because the words wouldn’t come after a while.  I wanted it to be funny and it started not being funny.

                Because I really didn’t have a damn good time while living in Pensacola for the past two years.

                I ain’t gonna blame anyone.  It just happened.

                But it was a good learning experience…seriously.

                The Lady of the House learned that mosquitoes love her, most of the year.  Swarms of them.

                We both learned we really are small town folks.

                I learned that my roots and my heart really isn’t Southern, it’s Southern Mountain.  There is a difference.

                But I also learned that the folks of the Southern Appalachians (that’s pronounced “apple-at-chan”, you folks who want to pronounce it fancy…well….)…are much like the folks of eastern New Mexico and west Texas.  Don’t ask me how that works, it’s just so.  I think my first book will be titled “Cowboys and Hillbillies.”

                I learned that if I really have a bad experience in life I go quiet about it…I tend to bury it.  I really didn’t know that about myself.  So when I return to The Golden West you won’t find me saying much about the past two years.

                I’ll tell you this…I’ll tell you what I’ll miss about The Florida Panhandle…

                I’ll miss our house…a sweet little bungalow built in 1932 out of wood.  It has wooden floors.  It has a vintage kitchen that reminds me of my grandmother’s with a swinging kitchen door whose springs squeak as it opens and closes.  I will miss this house.

                I will miss Perdido Key.  I won’t miss Pensacola Beach with its ungodly traffic jams and throngs of people.  It is a mess.  They don’t want that dirty little secret revealed, those chamber of commerce types, but the traffic is horrific.  I don’t care how they try to whitewash it, if you put lipstick on a cow it’s still a cow.

                I know the original saying is “If you put lipstick on a pig, etc…” but I like pigs.  Cows ain’t the brightest bulb in the pack, they’re sweet, but….

                Back to Perdido Key.  I like it because it’s a lot quieter compared to Pensacola Beach or the Alabama beaches to the west of it.  If people ask me where to go in the Florida Panhandle I’ll always tell them Perdido Key.

                I’ll miss Giorgio, the dude who ran a little food trailer in Perdido Key where he sold what The Lady of the House and I considered to be the best gyros on the planet.  Giorgio is selling his food trailer, he may be closed now…after 8 years of bothering no one he suddenly got caught in the crosshairs of county regulations.

                The Lady of the House says she’ll miss the produce...the variety, the freshness.

                She says she won’t miss how avocados seem to go bad so quickly in this area.

                And she’ll miss Joe Patti’s Seafood Market where throngs of people come for fresh fish and stuff.

                We’ll both miss Joe Patti’s Seafood Restaurant.

                We won’t miss the traffic…so many traffic accidents, so many traffic jams, so many people running red lights, so many people speeding.

                And we won’t miss the rude people who seemed to have come from someplace else and sullied genteel Southern culture.

                I’m remembering now, and I’ll like to forget in the future, an encounter that pretty much summed up many people I encountered in Pensacola:  Driven, overly-ambitious, but most of all rude.

                The Lady of the House and I were called to an attorney’s office to wrap up the sale of our home.

                To make a long story short there needed to be a change made to the title work so the little lady attorney said, “Well I’ll just have to call the buyer.”

                We were directed back to the office lobby to wait for the matter to be resolved when the buyer walked into the office.

                We exchanged pleasantries and she asked why we weren’t working on signing the paperwork.  We told her of the change being made.

                “And she said she would be calling you,” I said of the little lady attorney.

                “I haven’t heard from her,” said the buyer.

                So I went up to the receptionist to tell her that the person the little lady attorney was trying to reach was in the lobby.

                “She’s in a meeting,” said the receptionist.

                “We are supposed to be in that meeting,” I told her.

                So the receptionist leaves.

                Moments later a door bursts open and the little lady attorney strode out.

                “What do YOU think is so important that YOU thought I needed to be interrupted,” she said.

                Pause.

                Enjoy that sentence for a moment, one transmitted from an attorney to a seller in a real estate deal.

                “YOU said you needed to get in touch with the buyer, she has not heard from you, she is here in YOUR lobby,” I said.

                “The matter is taken care of,” and she disappeared back into the bowels of her building.

                Minutes later as we all rearranged ourselves into our diplomatic best, during a moment of pause in the busy-ness of the signing I asked the little lady attorney where she was from feeling CERTAIN the answer would be New York City, Chicago or some cold northern city.

                “Pensacola, born and raised,” she said.

                I sat back in my chair and smiled.

                Yes, to be sure there are a few things I will miss about my time in Pensacola.

                Driven, overly-ambitious, rude people are not on that list.

                                                                                -30-