I could not have done it by myself. I have to thank S&M and key family members and business associates for their help.

All of them are about the best that there is, in terms of pals, and I would have to thank the Government for getting me to the pastel palace of south Florida to begin with, and my lovely cousin on the way out of the chaos that is the capital of Latin America at Miami International Airport.

In fact, let me just say it up front: I fucked it up. I had to find a gas station, and it was really dark on the divide of Sunday morning.

The whole thing was messed up. When I was finally sitting on my cousin’s patio- an extraordinary home with soaring ceilings three stories up and alligators in the pond in back- I realized I was not scheduled to be going to my home for another week. The reservation in the system was either for that morning, when I was at the Truman vacation White House at the old sub base in Key West, or next week or something.

There was so much that happened after the conference in Miami, not to mention all the crap that went down at the meeting itself.

Thinking back, to the extent that I can, it is remarkable. South Beach. The Hilton Pool. OMG. My back is still itching from the shedding skin of the first decent burn of the season.

Alas, I still have not figured that out and I was wearing the prescription sunglasses which made it difficult to see the computer screen I realized I may never get to the bottom of the trip, or how it worked how it did.

It is that way sometimes, and the road has its own imperative. And this was a great road, stretching as it did from the Hilton downtown to the very southernmost point of the United States of America, down US 1 to Mile Marker Zero of fame and infamy.

Which of course is bullshit, completely in keeping with Key West. The marker is a few feet adjacent to the fence to the Navy Reservation, which clearly has some satellite dishes a quarter of a mile to the south, and there are further little patches of sand that periodically expose themselves to be legitimate claims to the Southernmost patch of America proper, but never mind.

Maybe my biggest question in all of this is about the Shell Station near MIA, the one this morning in Hialeah Gardens that featured the lovely blonde Latina at the counter behind the open exterior window and the muscular cop who had emerged from his cruiser and was pretty much a dead ringer for Eric Estrada in his better days. Of course, looking at the pictures of the last week, that is true for all of us.

I asked for coffee from the Latina, pour favor, who was flirting hard with Eric, as two or three burly guys sat in the interior of the mini-mart looking on. The convenience store is the actual money-maker for the Shell franchise people, or at least the ones who are awake in the daytime.

There was no coffee, and it was fucking five something in the morning, and I had to recalibrate myself. I asked for coffee in Japanese, I think, searching for the right language. I made a note to buy the Rosetta Stone Spanish curriculum, and sighed. The people here were all on the back end of their day as I was starting a new one, and it was A-OK.

They did not need coffee even if I did, and that is just the way it was in the darkness of a Miami Sunday.

I got back in the car after putting $44 worth of regular in the piece of crap rental Camry and decided to just give the car back and go home.

What a week. My God, what a week.

St. Paddy, Hemingway, Truman and family secrets all wrapped up in it. Better said, here are the individual adventures:

Driving US 1 south from the mainland to the Keys and back. Flagler’s railroad, and the original amazing bridges south. Key Largo and Marathon and the rest, the little isles dividing the Gulf from the mighty Atlantic.

Seeing what it is like to see a four-ship of Navy jets launching for OpArea W-78, the Sound of Freedom roaring toward a little good-hearted Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM). Did I mention that there is clear air-mass there 330 days a year?

People in Green Hair. OMG.

Duval Street. OMG.

The House Tour of Key West, five dynamite venues that show you how you could live, if you were clever and rich.

Drinking without shame in the afternoon with Michael McCloud, the anti-Jimmy Buffet singer where once the shrimpers would kick your ass and the pet tarpons swim below the dock in immense grace.

Continuing to drink without shame on Duval Street to Papa Hemmingway’s house, where his typewriter sits today where he worked.

The bar, now incongruously surrounded by a Hyatt Resort, and the table where Mel Fisher schemed to salvage the millions of the sunken Spanish galleon Ochoa.

Harry Truman’s aloha shirt, and the house that defined his poker-playing Presidency, and the desk where he signed the National Security Act of 1947, which, as amended, has defined my life.

I suppose we are going to have to triage this story somehow, against the backdrop of yet another war to be imposed on some imagined Strong Man- I was surprised to hear it, coming north through the Keys and listening to radio US1 in the rental, and even more surprised to hear it was the Frogs that made the first strike at the Libyans.

Interesting.  But enough for now.

Manana we can do the astonishing things that happened in the Keys, one by one, and then walk the cat backward through the gated community in Coral Springs and eventually on through the shower at 0430, and then the electric chaos of MIA and back to Washington.

I gotta tell you right now, though, it is really cool to have pals in nice places.

And God Bless Harry Truman.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com