In Washington you have buildings the pictures of which are printed on the money 

Washington DC to Key West

Did I tell you that I lived in Palm Springs for a while? Lord, Lord, how I hated the desert! This deep South humidity-loving cracker had no love at all for the desert. Uh-uh. My entire stay was a disaster, a real black hole in the fabric of my life. But everything else has been pretty good.
I love Washington DC. I've lived there three times. The first time I went there to fight the war in VietNam, I had hair down to my belt. Sittin' in a circle, smokin' dope and chantin' "Om." It is windy on the East Coast and the wind kept slapping in the face with my hair so I had it all cut off. I didn’t have any money so I gave the barber lady a joint. I wasn’t curing any problems with the war and I certainly was homesick so I went back to Chattanooga, got a job and went back to college again.
The next time I went to DC was after my divorce. I was called there to help a funeral home with personnel problems. After three months I went to administration and told them that their personnel problems were never going to be cured. "Your open door policy is great," I said, "but your closed ear policy isn't helping matters at all."
"Well, Jim," they said, "We don't like you either."
Now I had signed a lease there in Alexandria and I wanted to stay. (Alexandria is that part of Washington DC that Virginia failed to return after the War of Northern Aggression.) It is a wonderful place to live. I figured that I would have to get three part-time jobs to pay my rent while I looked for a real job. My first stop was a shoe store. The boss was giving me some kind of 75 cent interview when I interrupted him and sold a shoe. We got along pretty good after that. After a week he asked me to manage the store. After another week I sent him home saying, "You want to open a chain of stores? Go ahead. I have this under control."
He would sign the lease on a building and order the stock. I would get a crew, open the store, hire and train the staff, pick a manager and wait for Maurice to tell me where the next store was opening. We opened 23 stores before he pissed me off and I left for Birmingham. At my exit interview (Maurice always took people out on the sidewalk in front of the store to give them good news or bad news. I took him out on the sidewalk and fired his ass) Maurice told me that at 47 I probably would have a hard time getting a good job. I went to Birmingham and got a job as Special Assistant to the Senior Vice President of Deposit Operations at AmSouth Bank’s Operations & Technology Center. I chose Birmingham because for six months Maurice had parked me in Philadelphia. I wanted to be in a place surrounded by people who spoke the language the same way that I did.
After three years of facilitating and troubleshooting at fairly low pay (banks do that, you know) Maurice called me one day and asked, “Do you want to come back and play with the shoes?” Well, I went. I stayed for six months and moved to Key West.
After my divorce, my best buddy, Bill, told me, “Jim, I know you and I know Key West. You ought to move on down there.” Well, I didn’t.
While I was at the bank, one of my cubicle mates told me, “Jim you are footloose and fancy free. My husband & I go to Key West all the time. You would love it if you moved on down there.” Well, I didn’t, but I did notice that I had just gotten independent testimony and I started having the Key West Citizen mailed to me. With the newspaper I got to know the little town. After I left Maurice in Washington for the second time, I got a job with IBM for three months. One Friday I went into my office and emailed everyone that needed to know that come Monday Jim would never be back. I was in Key West by Tuesday.

"Mama, I live on an island!" 

Welcome Class of '66 !

Welcome to my web log! For those of you visiting from my Stephen F. Austin High School Class, I am going to recommend that you scroll down and start from the bottom. I notice that I haven’t made an addition since last October but that was when hurricane season ended and I have been so busy since then. Hurricane Wilma put 70% of the island under water so 9000 cars have been replaced along with hundreds of tons of sheetrock. My office got 4 inches of really dirty sea water. When I opened up the next day the place smelled like an earthworm factory. We replaced all the sheetrock from the hips down. Even so, life on this island is very satisfying. The official motto of the City is “One Human Family.” In daily life it really shows. This is the most tolerant community in America. It is an adult playground (leave your kids in Orlando) and folks can be found partying somewhere on the island at any time of the night or day. The cruise ships come up to Mallory Square to dock and they loom over all the buildings in the village. When they blow their horn to notify the passengers to return to the ship it echoes all over the island. I am always inspired to call my Mama in landlocked Tennessee and shout, “Mama, I live on an island!”

This invitation certainly gave the old guy a warm fuzzy. Oh, how I would like to have attended a party of 20-somethings. Just getting the invitation made me feel an inch taller and an inch longer. Since it was just 2852 miles away, I RSVP'd that I couldn't make it... but if I had made it, I would have worn my tux and introduced myself as the butler! 

There has been a lot of hurricane activity since I last posted to this blog. I've decided that it is time to leave Key West... the polar ice cap is melting and the GUlf is getting warmer and warmer. Surely these things will affect my life. Where to go next? Criminy, I'm 57 years old! Chattanooga is the obvious choice, but I want to arrive in style. This will require some thought and some savings. 

Catch 22 for Evacuees

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's decision to ask evacuees to call 800-621-3362 or browse to www.fema.gov to start the process of filing a claim for disaster assistance was greeted with disbelief by most relief workers we talked to, who noted that most of these people don’t have ready access to telephones.
It turns out, according to a Red Cross worker here, the response is even a bigger Catch-22 than I realized.
It turns out, according to the worker, who like the other aid workers spoke on condition of anonymity, that the call to the FEMA number does not open a claim; it results in a package containing the claim form being mailed to the address of the evacuee.
Since the evacuee is in a shelter, mail service has been suspended in many of the hardest hit areas and some of the homes are likely still under water, it seems clear that those claim forms won’t be mailed back any time soon.
from a blog by Mike Brunker, 9/6/05

This is Key West. I had to stop and take a photo of the drag queen enjoying Hurricane Katrina. 

Well, Katrina grew like Topsy and by Sunday, Aug. 28, she was as big as the State of Texas and boosting 175 mph winds. 

So I woke up Friday morning and what do I see? The tropical storm
that was liesurely making its way North along the East Coast is now a
hurricane and it is in my back yard! I had absolutely no time to make
preparations (alcohol) and was caught completely unaware. Katrina went on to become famous as the Storm That Ate New Orleans. Well, I "knew her when" back before she got famous. 

A Picture Share!

Thurs afternoon. There is a tropical storm in the neighborhood. 8/25