Just Sayin...

Sixteen black paws churn a sandy path, obscuring tracks of deer, racoons and feral hogs...night traffic punched out now and heading for sheltered hollows. Frenzied breath forms a leading cloud as if over a dog-steam locomotive speeding through the cool, damp air... before the sun claims the day as it's own. Now is our time to run the woods and chase all laggards home. My braying pack of misfits share a vision of what they they once were before couch and pillows formed their beds and meals doled out of cans never challenged them to a foot race...

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No one wants to drive through E. Palatka, much less live there, but the highway West leaves little choice. The area is low. Soggy cabbage fields turn into acres of mud with the slightest rain. Culverts run like train tracks sandwiching roads with dark water as polluted as the local culture. Closed business advertize failure with the remnants of makeshift signs, misspelled words growing smaller and more crowded to the right from lack of planning. Depression and desperation cover everything like a damp blanket, as inescapable as the pesticides that have poisoned the aquifer for more than 80 years.
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The restaurant is Corky Bells. You probably remember them from their former location. It was more fish camp, this one is more Jimmy Buffett. Now they front the river in Palatka with tiered decks and tiki bars. Mostly fried seafood, chowder, Hush Puppies, grits, greens, sweet tea...you know the drill. Great location to sit in the sun with a beer, watching obnoxious young men tear up the water on Ski Doos. Hoping that prayer is somehow more effective in Palatka, I pray they fall off and are encircled by alligators who glance in our direction for a quick thumbs down before we get to watch them eat their own lunch for a change.
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Perspective affords our own wise council... and I was flooded with it as Carla told me of the little girl taken prematurely by C section from her crackhead mother. The parent no more than a child herself. There lay the baby in a hospital bed, 3 months old, with a trach tube oozing and bubbling, stabbed into her neck, allowing...breath. Born without a working brain, deaf, blind...her two legs stiff and stretched out painfully in a permanent spasm. As a ward of the state she'll be taken care of as long as she lives...in her crib, alone. Carla spent her shift that night, rubbing the child's back, stroking her fuzzy head. We sat in the sunshine of our back yard after Carla got home and told me of her night. In the face of such horrifically sad images, all I could think about as was how bright and strong our own two girls had been, and are.

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You think gay marriage is controversial? I think it controversial that there are still those who would try to legislate just which consenting adults are allowed to marry. If the national elections were held today, Obama would get my vote. I have never played nor watched a game of football in my life and could care less about it. I believe that religion is largely a reflection of the culture one is born into and that there are many paths to spiritual fulfillment. You and I may be on opposite ends of many things and that's OK, but I also believe the world would be a much better place with more people like you in it and am proud to call you a friend. Republican, Democrat, black, white, gay, straight, Christian, Hindu...we are all more alike than different and that in itself is cause for celebration. Conversely, it is the closed minded zealousness of each different group insisting that their way is the only way that hurts us the most as we travel together through this blink of an eye we call our lives.

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Carla: Where's the scraper?

Hugh: The scraper? What scraper?

Carla: So I can get this stuff up off the bottom of the pan.

Hugh: You mean a spatula?

Carla: Yes

Hugh: It's in that end drawer with the can opener and ladles... where the kitchen scissors are.

Carla: Oh

Hugh: It's been there since we moved in, just a little more than...what? Three years ago?

Carla: Hum...

Carla knows and cares as much about the kitchen and things that go on in there as I know and care about most professional sports...or her collections of china and old fabrics...