Raw, foggy, and wet today, with showers moving up the coast from the south, but no wind, and temps hovering mid-sixties.  Actually pleasant.  Seas very rough.  Even with everything closed up, you could hear the crashing of big surf last night.  There is a period between one and five a.m. when there are no cars on A1A and you hear nothing but the ocean.  Best in summer when we have all the windows open, of course.  We rarely have to use the air then; there’s almost always some kind of cooling breeze, so from the time we find our lows in the 60s, it’s all open.  Still a few weeks from that, I think; we don’t do cold well, and the heat running now feels very nice, thank you.

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Our mailman keeps the weather and climate thing in perspective for us.  A New York transplant, (naturally,) he in his mid-thirties, I guess, a stocky guy with buzzed hair, a very genial manner, and a heavy Long Island accent.  He drives his mail truck wearing official USPS shorts, even on the coldest days. I go out to the road to meet him when I see him coming, and he never fails to say something like, “Another day in Paradise, huh?”  He loves to relate how bad they’re having it back home, and how much he loves it here.  He was gone for a week, and when I saw him yesterday he said he’d gone back to New York for a visit.  He said there was three feet of snow out on the island; the roads were deteriorated, and everything was falling apart.  He said he’s been down here five years and will never move back.  I can see it.  He has probably the best route in the county, cruising up and down A1A and the side streets of Skinny Island, and I see him go back by around noon to stop into the convenience store for lunch, which he eats parked facing the ocean. I like the guy. So far he hasn’t once said how much better things were back in New York.  He can stay.

With the exception of our neighbors to the south, also Florida natives, everybody else you meet out here are from “up north,” as they say. A couple who own one of the condo units on our north side, live in D.C., so I guess that doesn’t count as being from up north to them, but it does to us.  They are very nice and only come down on holidays and for stretches in summer.  I’m thinking anything north of Atlanta is “up north,” and the way the winter’s been up that way, it is!

One of my favorite transplants was a guy named Charles, who was the live-in maintenance man at the condo building a little to the south.  I guess he got some discount living there by being Mr, Fixit, I never did hear the straight story on that.  He was a Boston native, about fifty, an early retiree from the fire department, and a funny Irishman full of stories. You’d see Charles go by every afternoon on his way to the convenience store, and a few minutes later headed back the other way with a twelve-pack of Bud. If I was out he’d stop and talk. Very interesting guy. He had an aluminum row-boat with a small gas engine he kept tied up down on the beach from his condo, and every now and then you’d see him haul it down to the water and push it in, and off he’d go fishing, nevermind the sea conditions.  I always thought he’d capsize and drown, but he never did.  Thing was, his trips to the convenience store started occurring earlier and earlier in the day, until finally he was going by about ten o’clock in the morning.  That went on for some time. Then one morning, maybe eight or eight-thirty, I went down to the beach to paddle out for some surf, and saw Charles down the beach struggling to get his boat in the water.  It clearly wasn’t a day he was going to be able to get out–the sand bar break was a good four feet– but as I soon discovered, I don’t think he knew that. I went down to see if I could help, or better, dissuade him from trying, and found him drunk as a coot. Red-faced and swearing him best Irish curses, he had the boat sideways in the shore break, and it was working him over. He got knocked down just as I got there, the boat rolled over him, and I thought that was it.  Nope, he popped up the other side laughing his ass off, but now convinced he should let this go for now. Together we pulled the boat up to dry sand, and then I sat him down.
“Do you need some help getting up to your place?” I asked.
“No, man, I’m fine,” Charles replied.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m just going to sit here a while,” he said.
He was so out of breath and red I thought he was going to explode, but he waved me off.           “Go on,” he said.  “I’ll watch you.”
“Okay,” I said, and started away.
“Hey,” Charles called.
I turned and looked at him and there were tears in his eyes.  “Thanks, Man,” he said.
That was eight or more years ago.  We never saw him again after that.

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Three p.m., and the sun is finally threatening to break through.   Gray-green clouds in the east, and olive water. Taking some coffee down and watch the waves in this new light.