Roadside

If there's one reuniting factor all my South Florida travellogues have in common, it's the colourful, and loving eyes I bring to our landscapes, down here.

It's true that I try to compose a visually stimulating array of photographs, from my many journeys around the area.

I do so specifically for you, my Sundries reader, hoping you can enjoy these pleasing sights as much as I do.

But I can also tell you that there is no artifice in these shots. They lay before me, and later you, like an open sesame of discoveries, one more vibrant and deserving than the next.

I have, of course, spoken of our next travellogue destination before.

Homestead was the topic of a May Day blogpost, which briefly showed you just how changed this rural part of South Florida had become, in the decade plus since Hurricane Andrew.

The area was LEVELLED, more than you can ever imagine Hurricane Katrina having done so to New Orleans -- which, of course, was more a question of water damage, than structural damage.

Homestead got both, and it got it good and hard.

Many thought the city, never prosperous, would struggle to re-build, and later to re-open, but it did both with such determination, and not a bit of funding from all concerned, that today, it's still redneck, blue-collar, working class, call it what you will, but call it a success first.

I was there a few weeks ago, just visiting the general area which I hadn't really done so since my Habitat for Humanity work in 1993. That's a long time, but in truth it's not unusual.

Rare is the South Floridian who doesn't live or work there, who gets down to that neck of the woods, which my mother not unwryly calls, "The End of the World".

Yes, there's very little to do there, despite the Homestead Speedway, and outreach campus of Miami-Dade (Community) College.

And it also can be a wee bit dangerous, since there is genuine poverty in Homestead, or what passes for poverty in America -- the struggling, Mexican migrant worker communities, and black population of cheek-by-jowl town, Florida City.

By the way, there's a rule about Florida that you should know we locals sometimes refer to. If it's got "City" in its title, it might just not be the safest place for you to be in.

Lemon City, Carol City, Florida City...

Perhaps not the safest places, as I say, but they have their own piquant, local charm, which I hope to show you in due course.

Now Homestead, being a rural town which is surrounded by the descriptive, and moneyed Southern white neighbourhood called The Redlands, is all country roads.

Sometimes you can go for seemingly hours without seeing another car in front or behind you.

It can get disorientating, if you're not used to it, as this British girl sometimes and still, isn't. There is hardly a non-built-up area in the UK, which would come close, to the desolate breadth of American country roads.

But faint heart and lack of compass has never stopped blogger lady.

So off I went, into one of these country roads, not knowing what I'd find...yet, knowing I would find something, something for you.

And sure enough, I did.


THE HOMESTEAD ROADSIDE TRAVELLOGUE






It took me several paragraphs of introduction above to describe Homestead's ruralness, which one photograph here can make you understand in a second.

Two men, two horses, a trailing dog, and endless space. Homestead.

It just doesn't get simpler than that.

Do you know what I love about the country, which maybe you do too?

I love how time stands still there.

It's as if the hand of time passes over it, and favours its city cousin to alter beyond recognition, from one decade to the next.

Tell me this scene wouldn't be at home in the 19th century, or the 15th century, or any century before the advent of mechanised transport.

The pickier amongst you might quibble about the corrugated iron shed in the back, or the t-shirts the men are wearing, or indeed, the fact that one is a heavy-set white man, and the other, a svelte black man, the combination of which dates it to a ballpark century.

But for me, this scene is without timestamp, and because of that, it's endlessly beguiling.






But in the 21st century we are, as my reveries of centuries past evaporated in one instant, when seeing this van up ahead.

I have a touch of the rebel inside me, I've always known, because I love nothing better than to beat the system.

It doesn't have to be in big ways. Perhaps a waiver of a late library fine here, and a wink about a token not used there.

But something that makes me feel a bit marginal, a bit naughty, such as loving the idea of an informal economy.

I know, I know.

Spare me your diatribes about lack of taxes, and deregularised, undocumented workers, which often make up a large part of this sector. I've heard it all before, and I still want informal economies to exist.

Anyway, I don't like the IDEA of taxes, and nothing shows one personal initiative, drive, and greed, which are the very motors that run any capitalist economy, than a guy selling stuff from the back of his truck.

Renesito here, or his able assistant, is offering passing motorists your pick of Key West lobsters. Mmmm!

Not the poor, bound up dears you see in supermarket tanks. Oh no, this is as fresh and as illegal as you can get.

What's not to love about this intrepid langostero?






Nevertheless, I passed on the lobsters and shrimp, since as you know, I'm a veggie and fruit person myself.

It's then when I saw IT...the reason for my travellogue, staring at me bright and greeny, on the opposite side of the road.

Now, you may remember my most recent travellogue: a visit to Coconut Grove's Fresh Market.

The scene which I chanced upon here, is about as different from that well-to-do experience, as you can get.

There's no air conditioning in this outdoor hut thingie.

There's no Coconut Grove matron emerging from her car washed Mercedes.

And there is certainly not the same kind of inventory available, as the cornocopia of goodies to be found in The Fresh Market.

Perhaps for its unusualness, though, I found it as wonderful an experience shopping there, as I ever could in the antiseptic, but not unseductive Miami one.






One look at these succulent green bell peppers, was enough to convince me to stop the car, turn around, and go back to get them, in one smooth motion of my car.

I was always a sucker for legumes.





Corn leaves me less intrigued, though.

They seemed a bit sad, this last pile of corn still on their cobs, waiting for the last person to take them home, butter them up, and eat them to the core.

I like corn on the cob, what newly-minted American does not, but I passed on this offering too...





...for it was for the green bell peppers, and the tomatoes that I had come!

Guess how much for just a whole bag's worth of peppers and tomatoes, each? 2 bucks!

Why you can't get ONE pepper in a chain supermarket these days, for a buck, and here I was being offered nearly a bushel! So I exaggerate, sue me.

By the way, see the vendor up top, selling some vegetables to the red-haired older lady in front?

He seemed like the owner, or the son of the owner, and though he was Mexican, he wasn't your archtypical Mexican roadside worker.

For one, he had on good, clean clothes, and though perhaps not white, he was not indigenous either, as the rest of the gentlemen inside the hut, were. He also spoke with a more cultured accent.

Later, I was to overhear a conversation with whom I presumed to be the boss man, and it went a little like this, in Spanish, of course.

"Do you have my W-2 form ready?"

"Yeah, I put it in your mailbox this morning."

"Thanks. I have to send it to Tallahassee next week."

"Don't claim more than 2 dependants, since they get suspicious after the 3rd."

"Yeah, so I heard. Oh, my cellphone. Thanks patrón, I'll be back tomorrow!"

Seems I'm not the only person, who likes to beat the system.






Having maxxed out my credit card, I mean, paid the four bucks for my tomatoes and bell peppers, I was about to leave, when the boss man told me, in English:

"We also have some great strawberries available.

3 dollars if we "build" you a pack, or 2 dollars, if you want to pick 'em yourself."

Seriously?! Awesome!

Short of being offered to pat the prize pig at a petting zoo, picking my own strawberries from a field was this city girl's dream come true.

So he handed me my little blue carton, and I handed him my 2 bucks, which really broke my bank account this time, and off I went, into the wild blue and green patchy yonder.






If only my old Headmistress could see me now.

She'd say, "That Vicky. I told you, I told you. Barefoot, pregnant and picking strawberries. And STILL unmarried!"

(I keed, I keed. Please, like I would have passed on the shrimp if I were pregnant)

My careful, expensive education had prepared me for much. But it hadn't prepared me to be a temporary migrant worker.

Respect.





Whew, picking berries is not as easy as I thought. It's thirsty, sweaty work, and so I started to leave with perhaps less than a full basket.

But what is it that my liberal dad always told me to do?

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Screw that, I went in for seconds!

Some system beater I would be, if I hadn't.

Nevertheless, at the end of my cotton pickin' exertions, I took shelter in this inviting, clean, white chair, and had me some soda pop, being relieved of all of 50 US cents.

The last time I had spent so little, total, shopping...was well, I don't recall when.

Maybe when I went into a 7/11 for a packet of gum, only I hate gum, so not even.






Remember that lady busy clearing the joint of corn, up top?

Well, girlfriend had a sweet ride.

Jeez, we went from Homestead to Southfork Ranch, in one sweep of JR's magic wand.

She had better not have been famous!






So here we are, finally at the end of our latest travellogue together.

I gathered my berries, my veggies, and with visions of future repasts to come, I followed the Texas Longhorn limo out to the dirt road, each of us going on our merry way.

Only hers seemed a damned sight merrier than mine, the cow.

Never mind, I still had all that country road to get lost in dreams in, endless miles stretching before me, just green pastures, and WHAT!

Barbecue Ponies???

Man, where are PETA when you need them, right? Probably picking strawberries in a field some where real poor and stuff. Oh, the humanity...





Oh yeah!

The strawberries.

I forgot to show you my sweet little carton of strawberries, which entitles me to the appellation of "guest worker", if I hadn't already a Social Security card.

Now, I know what you're thinking...

Vic, they're kind of mangy, IF colourful.

Yeah, well, see, in my hurry to return home to tell my friends and family about this sojourn, I actually left these little lovelies inside my car.

But just as soon as I remembered where I had left them, I took a nice photo for you.

Two days later.

Yum!

Thanks for accompanying me through yet another quirky, never dull, and sometimes downright tasty Sundries travellogue.

I am at your service.