“Cookadoodle doo!” crows the rooster as I jog out the door that early morning. A whole cackle of hens follows him around as they cluck and peck in the back field behind our house.
I glance over to see some garage doors opening and people hastening off to work. By this afternoon, the doors will all be open as people will be returning home to lounge in them. They treat them like patios in my working-class neighborhood and sit around and smoke and drink beer for hours. Of course, there are some retired folks that live here also. And some Latinos too.
As I dash down the street trying to get some exercise, I cross our little creek. It’s a generally stagnant body of water that breeds mosquitoes. Usually, someone is fishing in it. Next, there’s a huge sunken dry area that sometimes is a pond when it rains a lot. A fake alligator faces it one way and a man and woman statues dressed in Dutch costumes cavort on the other bank. In the middle, sits a lighthouse battered and scarred by the elements and when it rains, resting on its own island.
Down the street, I continue to jog past yelping dogs and meowing cats. A cow from out in the field sometimes sees me and turns my way as if to say: “And what are you doing this fine morning?”
Sometimes, an egret, a sandhill crane or a white ibis passes in front of me and an occasional person waves to me, too, either in a vehicle or walking in the opposite direction. I have to swerve to miss them by going on someone’s grass since our street has no sidewalks.
As I round the bend, I come to the halfway house and wonder what kind of troubled folks may live there. Then, I pass the house with the red door and usually, when the garage door is open, a nice man with a broad smile always raises his hand and says hello.
Around the next bend is a jungle we normally call “the woods” and finally I come to the end of the street.
I have gone in one entire loop and am greeted by a forlorn sight: a foreclosed home that has sat abandoned for 3 years…Its palm trees are burdened with dead branches and its lawn is littered with trash.
Every time I pass now, I pick up what garbage I find on it and bring it home to put in my trash. I like to start my day with a good deed. It lifts my spirits some.
Then, I’m back at Tom’s cheery but sterile place again, the house right next door to us, with its knock out roses, colorful tropical plants and stately palms. A growing magnolia tree rules majestically in his front yard. (His other tree got whacked down by the hurricanes of 2004…) I recall all the Halloweens and Christmas’s he would decorate his place and go all-out with it. Now, since the Great Recession started, he is more Spartan in his decorating which makes October just another summer month – and December, too. (He’s become more like the rest of us, in fact.)
But the sun is still shining relentlessly up in the sky and even though we have little money at least its hard to get depressed. .. (After all, this is Florida). You just try to stay thankful for whatever you have - and hope you can pay your mortgage every month. And life goes on in a poor man’s paradise…
