Monday, February 21, 2011

Music Man Under A Straw Hat

Scotty Lee Rexroat has never met me, and probably never will.  Nevertheless, I know him quite well.  This, despite the fact, that if I saw him without a straw hat on his head or a guitar in his hands, I probably would not even recognize him, unless, of course, he was singing.
Musicians, like writers, connect very successfully to others without actually having to meet them.  Musicians do it through music and lyrics, and writers do it through the written word.  In either case, powerful messages can be sent and received even though the sender and receiver have never met.  Artists send messages as well.  Through their carvings, statues, paintings, and, drawings, they communicate to succeeding generations.  Architects, too, send messages through time.  The wonder of the Great Pyraimids of Egypt resonates with all of us thousands of years after they were first designed, just as clearly as the more recent buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Scotty Lee Rexroat is a son of Pinellas County, Florida.  I really don’t have a clue how old he is, although I would guess that he is in his 50’s.  His age wouldn’t actually matter much if it weren’t for what he remembers about things lost.  Scotty Lee Rexroat remembers a Florida that doesn’t exist anymore, and sings about what he remembers through several of his musical styles, including, folk, country, blues, and rock.

Scotty Lee Rexroat

During his performances, through both his music and commentary, he reminds his audience of the numerous negative impacts the citizens of the "Sunshine State" have had upon the natural environment of Florida.  He jokes about how he  now refers to Pinellas County as “Pineless County,” given the widespread destruction of the once prevalent pine forests which covered the peninsula.  Through his songs like, “The Last Florida Waltz,” “Sweet Cracker Girl,” “Pineless County,” and, “She’s A Weeki Wachee Mermaid,” he challenges us to think about the past, and in some cases, the damage done to Florida’s once pristine and pure Gulf Coast.  Unfortunately, what has happened in Florida is neither new, nor unique.

Traditionally, Americans, in their zeal to always move forward, tend to forget about the importance of the past.  As a result, we have trampled upon and destroyed many of  our country's natural and historic treasures. Over time, virgin forests, life-sustaining wetlands, historic buildings, clean water, family-owned orange groves, and Civil War battlefields have all been destroyed under the banner of development and progress.  Sad to say, but progress once gained, is usually final. Scotty Lee’s musical gift to us is important because it causes us to slow down, however briefly, and take stock of what we’ve already lost, and what we continue to lose with each passing day.
In a day and age where it must be extremely difficult for the average person to appreciate a minstrel with a straw hat covered with silly fishing lures collecting tips in a plastic bait bucket; please take this one seriously, because he has an important message about the “price” of so-called “progress.”

Sunday, February 13, 2011

SOS In The Land Of Breakfast


There have got to be more places in Florida to buy a good breakfast than in any other state.  Of course, I have no statistical information to back up that claim, so I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.  My explanation for why there are so many places to eat breakfast in Florida is quite simple.  The only people who have time to go out in the morning and sit down and have a leisurely breakfast are retired senior citizens and tourists, and Florida has plenty of both.  The rest of us are working, or heading to work, and we just don’t want to get up early enough to make stopping at the local breakfast spot a reality.  The places I’m referring to don’t just serve breakfast in the morning, they serve it all day long.  And while they may also serve lunch and dinner, breakfast is their specialty, and the reason most people visit.  After all, you never know what hour of the day someone will develop an intense hunger for SOS.

SOS stands for “Stuff On a Shingle.”  Well, it doesn’t really.  I’ve politely substituted the original “S” word with the word “stuff.”  My mother reads my writing from time to time, and I’m sure she would not appreciate my use of the original “S” word.  So, in order to placate her, I’ll just use the word “stuff.”  Of course, I know what the real word is, and so does she, but some things are better left unsaid, or, in this case, unwritten.
 
My first introduction to SOS was during army basic training.  On one of those very early mornings in the company mess hall, partway up Fort Jackson’s Tank Hill, I remember going through the chow line and being served up, what appeared to me at the time, to be unrecognizable lumpy gravy slopped over toast.  The unfortunate soldier on KP duty, who was serving me the SOS, looked no happier than I looked being served it.  But looks can be deceiving, because after one bite, I fell in love, and have been in love with SOS ever since.

SOS is just another name for chipped beef on toast.  Like most prepared dishes, specific recipes differ depending on who is doing the cooking.  However, since so many people were first introduced to this culinary delight during the course of their military service, I think it is only appropriate that we look to the U.S. Army for guidance.  In the 1910 version of the Manual for Army Cooks, the ingredients for making creamy chipped beef were listed as being chipped beef, fat (butter preferred), flour, evaporated milk, parsley, pepper, and beef stock.  Those ingredients represented the “stuff” of SOS, and the toast represented the “shingle.”  Most modern chipped beef recipes eliminate both the beef broth and parsley, and substitute real milk for evaporated milk, but aside from those differences, the recipe has not really changed that much.
 
As noted earlier, I don’t make time for breakfast during the week, but I do get out occasionally on the weekends.  Breakfast places on Florida’s Gulf Coast, like around the rest of Florida, are plentiful, and they offer inexpensive menu items.  My problem with going out to eat breakfast is that eggs and breakfast seem to be synonymous in this country.  I don’t eat eggs, have never eaten eggs, and, in fact can’t stand the sight of them, especially if they're hard boiled or deviled.  Eggs, in my opinion, are simply not a desirable source of food.  Unfortunately, in most places, it’s hard to find a breakfast selection that doesn’t include a couple of eggs.  That's why I like the simplicity of SOS.  It’s just chipped beef on toast, and eggs have absolutely nothing to do with it in any way, shape, or form.

Luckily for me, there are a great number of breakfast places around which have SOS on the menu.  Making good SOS, like making a good grilled cheese sandwich, is difficult to screw up.  As a result, I am rarely disappointed.  The only place where I’ve had really bad SOS, was at an eatery in New Port Richey, Florida.  It was sweet, sickeningly sweet, and wasn’t worth finishing.  I’m quite sure that the cook had mistakenly added sugar instead of salt, because there is no other explanation.  No one, let alone a professional cook, would have intentionally desecrated SOS by adding sugar.  In any event, I’ve never been back there, and never will go back.

I’m always looking for new places serving SOS, and I get many referrals from people I know.  One such referral was to a place called The Broken Yolk Restaurant, in Holiday, Florida, which, I was told, had delicious SOS.  Now, given my aversion to eggs, I was immediately suspicious just based on the name alone.  I imagined a place filled with egg aficionados, trying to lure me inside with the promise of good chipped beef on toast so that they could convert me to their breakfast obsession of egg whites and yolks.  Despite my personal reservations about visiting the place, I reluctantly made my way to The Broken Yolk Restaurant, and I’m so glad I did.
 
The Broken Yolk, like so many of the breakfast restaurants in Florida, seems to be a social gathering spot for seniors.  It’s a place where the opportunity to meet and converse with friends is just as important as getting something to eat.  The restaurant is small, with no more than 15 tables, and it provides a cozy setting for a cup of morning coffee, a good breakfast, and friendly conversation.  Daily specials are written on whiteboards hanging on the walls, and a television mounted in a corner of the restaurant keeps everyone up to date with the latest news and weather.  On the day of my visit, however, I was not interested in conversation or watching the news.  I had come for one reason, and one reason only, SOS.

After quickly looking through the extensive menu, I selected the chipped beef on toast, and added a bowl of buttered grits and a cup of coffee to my order.  The service was both fast and friendly, and within just a couple of minutes, I was served my food.   My two pieces of toast were completely covered with piping hot, creamy gravy loaded with beef.  And, as a throwback to the old 1910 army recipe, it even had dried parsley sprinkled on top.  I knew, even before I tasted it, that I had hit the SOS jackpot, and it was sitting on a plate right in front of me.  It tasted even better than it looked, and my breakfast was enhanced by the bowl of grits, which were hot and buttery.

As reluctant as I was to come to The Broken Yolk in the first place, I was even more reluctant to leave.  I told the cashier on my way out that the chipped beef on toast was the “best I’ve ever eaten.”  And it truly was.  In a state where there are a thousand places to eat a good breakfast, I’ll definitely go back to enjoy the SOS at The Broken Yolk, because it’s just that good.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Hey Nineteen: My Rant About A Strange And Dangerous Highway

U.S.19 is an historic highway, which runs north and south, between Pennsylvania and Florida.  It is but one of the many old U.S. routes that carried automobile and truck traffic across state lines prior to the creation of the interstate highway system.  In Florida, the highway runs along the state’s western edge, and was once a main corridor for tourists heading into the “Sunshine State.”  Especially in the northern portions of the state, the highway is littered with abandoned motels, and the remnants of small and relatively unsophisticated tourist attractions which both time and traffic have long since passed by.  But if you’re coming down the highway from the north, and you’re the type of person who gets weepy when thinking about the “good old days” of the past, you better quickly wipe away those tears and get your head into the proper frame of mind before hitting the Pasco County line.

Highway 19, as it runs through Pasco and Pinellas Counties in Florida, can only be described as one wild, often bizarre, and dangerous ride.  Some locals refuse to even drive on this stretch of road.  Of those who do, they do so with caution.  Their caution is not unfounded, as this portion of highway 19 has been described as one of “the most dangerous roads in America.”   The extremely high death toll over the years is simply not acceptable, but, it is understandable.  The road, and the things that go on along its edges, can only be described as a circus.  Unfortunately, this “circus” not only delivers occasional humor, but also minor annoyances and frustration, and, all too often, injury and death.

Part of the problem with the highway is that from the Hernando/Pasco County line, on south through Pinellas County, both sides of the highway are nearly one continuous strip mall.  Every kind of business you can imagine is present.  Malls, hotels, RV parks, pharmacies, gas stations, restaurants, bars, tire dealers, used car lots, delicatessens and dollar stores, all compete with massage parlors, tattoo and body piercing studios, pawn shops, adult book stores, and supermarket size liquor warehouses.  And, there is an abundance of sign shops.  Quite frankly, the last thing Highway 19 needs are more sign shops producing even more signs which already distract too many drivers.

Vehicular traffic along the six lanes of the divided highway, is constantly slowing, stopping, and pulling in and out of the various businesses along the side of the road.   Hundreds of cross streets intersect with Highway 19, some with stop lights, and some without.  Right turn lanes veer off suddenly to the right, and U-turn lanes on the left appear without warning.  Sometimes the right turn lanes are strictly turn lanes, but sometimes they also allow traffic to go straight on through, inevitably resulting in a lot of rear end collisions.  If you think what I’ve just described is the major problem, it’s not.  The road and the environment around it are but a stage for the real problem.  People are the problem of course, but it’s not just the licensed drivers.  But, let’s start with them anyway.

It’s easy for the locals to blame the “snowbirds” for all the bad things which happen on Florida roads, and U.S. 19 is no exception.   To be fair to the locals, it is not uncommon to pull up behind a car with license plates from somewhere up north, going 20 miles per hour in the left lane.  Often the elderly driver and passenger cannot even be seen from the rear, as they are so small and frail, that they are completely hidden in their seats.  This causes many local drivers to honk loudly, as they swerve into the lane to the right, in an attempt to pass them.  And, as you might expect with these precipitous lane changes on a busy highway, accidents do frequently occur.

But most of the haphazard and dangerous lane changing I’ve witnessed has nothing to do with drivers attempting to negotiate around slow moving tourist vehicles.  Impatient Florida drivers, both young and old, are the real culprits.  Many local drivers on the highway consider the distance between one stop light, and the next stop light, a drag strip.  And, racing to the next light, while darting in and out of different lanes, really makes no sense.  Usually, if you are stopped at a stop light on U.S. 19, you will be stopped at the next one.  Like many places in the country, the stop light rule of “make one, make them all, miss one, miss them all” is in effect.  And, the vehicles involved in the improper lane changing and high speeds, like the owners who drive them, are diverse mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly.  BMW automobiles compete for dominance of the road with eleven foot high monster trucks and smoke belching junks.

As an aside, I don’t understand why so many of the Ford Tauras cars on this highway are missing bumpers?  I’m not sure it has anything to do with the highway itself,  but I’m just not ready to rule that out yet.  Perhaps we have our very own miniature “Bermuda Triangle” here on the west coast of Florida, which only strikes Tauras automobiles, and causes bumpers to disappear for no apparent reason.  It’s something I may want to ponder in the days ahead, but I suspect it’s just a case of bad driving.  And, there certainly is a lot of that on U.S. 19.

Before I stop commenting about the licensed drivers on U.S. 19, I have a few other things to mention.  Few things are more annoying than waiting in line at a short cycled left turn signal, and waiting for the “guy” or “gal” at the head of the line to turn once the light turns green.  Seconds seem like hours once the light changes, especially when there is no apparent movement from the front car. I can’t possibly imagine what takes some of these people so long to react once the light changes.  In some cases they’ve had 5 minutes to think about what to do once the light turns green, and they still can’t get it right.  I’m thinking about writing to the powers that be asking for a new law to be enacted which will only pertain to left turn signals on U.S. Highway 19 in the counties of Pasco and Pinellas in Florida.

My proposed law would require the removal of all existing green turn signals.  They would be replaced with what I believe is a much better system.   During the period the front vehicle is stopped waiting for the light to change, a camera would photograph the license plate, and immediately the car’s owner would be identified.  At the very second of the light change, blinking strobe lights would light up the intersection, followed with a quick blast of an ear-splitting siren.  Then, loudspeakers would blast an ultimatum to the owner of the front car, who had been identified by way of the license plate check a few seconds earlier.  I’ll leave it to the bureaucrats to come up with the exact language of the directive, but I’m thinking of something like, “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR MR. JOHN H. SMITH, OF 1212 PENELOPE LANE, THOUSAND LAKES, FLORIDA?  TURN LEFT DAMMIT, AND DO IT NOW.”

Under this new law, there would be zero tolerance for offenders.  Any front vehicle which did not begin to move within 2 seconds of a light change would immediately bring forth the following additional information from the loudspeakers.  “ATTENTION ALL DRIVERS WAITING TO MAKE A LEFT TURN BEHIND THE DAWDLING AND INATTENTIVE MR. JOHN SMITH OF THOUSAND LAKES, FLORIDA.  APPARENTLY MR. SMITH IS SO SELF-CENTERED AND SELF-ABSORBED, THAT HE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE REST OF US.  PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CALL HIM AT HOME AND LET HIM KNOW WHAT YOU THINK OF HIS POOR DRIVING, AND RUDE AND INCONSIDERATE BEHAVIOR.  HE CAN BE REACHED AT THE FOLLOWING PHONE NUMBER.”  Perhaps I’ve taken this a little bit too far, as I have a habit of doing every once in a while, but I’m sure it would solve the problem in a hurry.  And, so, Mr. Smith, my imaginary friend, I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you, but somebody has to be first.
 
In my opinion, and in the opinion of many others, the most significant problems on Highway 19 are caused not by licensed drivers, but by pedestrians and others on the road or along the side of it.  I know most states now vigorously promote “sharing the road” with those on bicycles, but there should be limits.  One of the limits should be no bicycles.  A case in point was the time I was driving down the highway, and there, cycling down the center lane, was an elderly lady on a recumbent bike.  In her defense, she did have one small blinking red light on the back of her bike, and, she was wearing a helmet.  Words escape me about what to really say about this.  I fear, if she keeps getting her exercise in the center lane of U.S. Highway 19, she won’t be around much longer.  I’m sorry to have to put it this way, but what she really needs is less exercise and more time sitting with her psychiatrist discussing her death wish.

Unfortunately, she is not alone.  It is a very common occurrence to see bicycles on the highway, although, normally, I see them in the lane closest to the side of the road.  Occasionally, however, I see bicycles in active traffic lanes, going in the wrong direction.  But, the most ridiculous thing I've seen on the road was not a bicycle, but a motorized wheel chair.   There was this old guy with no legs, racing down the highway, and loving every minute of it.  As I passed him, he had a huge smile on his face.
 
Hitchhiking appears to still be a common practice along the road, and while this might have been acceptable behavior in the America of the 1920’s through the 1970’s, it seems a little outdated today.  It seems that almost anybody who claims to have a thumb in Pasco County, at some point in time, feels the need to get out on the road and try it out.  The ultimate destination for these people apparently does not seem to be that important.  I was parked in a mall parking lot one day near the edge of the highway, and was about ready to get in my car, when a man who had been hitchhiking came up and asked me if I could give him a ride to Spring Hill.  Now, I know where Spring Hill is, but he seemed confused, so I asked him which direction it was.  “Well,” he said, looking up and down the road, “it’s anywhere man, just get me the hell off this road.”  I guess it's needless to point out, but I declined giving him a ride to “anywhere.”

Hitchhiking may not be the best thing, but at least it’s usually done along the side of the road.  The really scary people are the ones who walk across the six lanes of Highway 19 completely away from any intersection and pedestrian lights.  And, unfortunately, these people are not world class sprinters.  But it wouldn’t matter anyway, because they often just walk across, completely oblivious to the moving traffic, or, anything else for that matter.   As often as not, they push a shopping cart, or, walk with a cane.
 
Competing for the attention of drivers along the busy highway are those who stand on the median strips at intersections and panhandle for change.  It’s not just the stereotypical guy with a beard, a dirty ball cap, holding a sign which says, “Homeless Vet Looking for Work…Please Help.”  There are also people hanging out with plastic pails, asking for donations to obscure causes, so obscure in fact, that I’ve never heard of any of them.  And I doubt anyone else has either.  Other people sell bottled water for a dollar in support of no particular cause, except their own, and the fact that they are very concerned that every driver on the road is extremely thirsty.

On Sunday mornings, the newspaper people come out in force.  Wearing their bright green colored shirts, they hawk their papers at every intersection for miles along Highway 19.  I didn’t realize so many people read newspapers anymore, but these bright green vendors seem to do a brisk business.  I suspect that what people are really buying are the Sunday coupons.  I was stopped at a light one Sunday morning, and one of the newspaper men came up to my window.  When I asked him how much he charged for a Sunday paper, he said, “A dollar, but most people also tip me a dollar.”  Hopefully, local restaurant servers and taxi drivers will not find out about this new trend of tipping at the rate of 100%.  Otherwise it’s going to be a little expensive to buy lunch anymore, or take a cab across town.

The real problem with the people doing their own particular brand of business on the median strip is that they don’t stay on it.  When the stop lights are red, they move their business out into the street, meandering among the lanes of stopped traffic, looking for anybody willing to part with a little money.  Then, when the lights turn green, they have to quickly dash back to the median to avoid being flattened by the oncoming traffic which has already started moving.

Of course, distracting the attention of drivers can be done from anywhere, not just along the median.  The shoulder of Highway 19 has its own cast of unusual characters demanding to be seen.  While not unique to this highway, as these characters are present along roadways from coast to coast, U.S 19’s population of them is quite large.  Dressed up as Lady Liberty, Uncle Sam, Clowns, Cowboys, and who knows what else, they stand by the side of the road holding big foam fingers, tall flags, gaudy signs and unrecognizable props supporting income tax preparation services, mobile phone services, and buyers of gold.  And, they’re always waving.  They wave at traffic, wave at pedestrians, wave at domestic animals, wave at insects, or, wave at nothing at all.  And the sad thing is, with the difficult economy, they are probably all paid a “nickel ninety-five” for doing so.  Just another circus side show act, I guess, being paid carnival wages.

U.S. 19 is all pervasive and all consuming.  There is absolutely no escape.  Pulling off the road never seems to get it completely done, as you’re never truly far enough away from 19 to break free.  One day, during the noon hour, I pulled off the highway to get something to eat.  I ate alone, but had a good lunch.  Unfortunately, I knew that my brief respite from the road was nearly over, and the highway was starting to seep back in, when the waitress wanted to know if I would like my check “separate or together.”  Huh?  What?