II. The Reach
Dec. 6th, 2008 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisnewdayAt the Wyndham Reach, where I was a guest, I met an engineer who lived on Sugarloaf Key and did maintenance at the Reach and a sister hotel a few blocks away. He lived on Sugarloaf because it was more affordable than Key West. And he'd gotten the job in the first place because he was a licensed electrician and had some experience with HVAC.
I wondered afterward how many guys had started this conversation with him, how many times he'd shaken his head as they'd walked away with those improbable dreams of working in paradise still adrift in theirs. Not necessarily dreams of Hemingway and the legendary bars along Duvall Street, but simple dreams of a different life in a different place.
Years before, I'd actually done something like that. Unhappy in our marriage, my first wife and I had taken separate vacations, she to California with one of my sisters and I to Houston with some friends of a friend.
For me, it was one of those legendary weeks of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll at the poolside apartment of my future sister-in-law. It would also be the closest thing to paradise that I would experience for a very long time. If, in fact, it ever came 'round again.
The following week, I returned home to an empty apartment, thanks to some back-channel meddling by one of those previously-mentioned friends. But I was ready for the party to go on and six months later, in the dead of winter, was on the road back to Houston in a rented van with my motorcycle and tools and recently-acquired girlfriend.
The morning after we got there, I walked two blocks to Palm Center Toyota, where I'd said I would look for work if I ever got back there. The service manager asked if I could start that afternoon. I said, "How about tomorrow, since my tools are still buried near the front of the van?"
I was young then. My back was still good and I loved learning new things. But in the months afterward, there was only one party that I can remember. I worked and my girlfriend attended classes at the University of Houston. And when she got pregnant, later that spring, she insisted that we return home.
By that time, I had a number of friends in the shop and one of them advised that I not "go running off in the heat of the day." That was Earl, a native Houstonian who called himself "The Old Indian."
The other comment, as I was rolling my tool cab into the van after my last day, was from good ol' Gerald. He said, rhetorically, "Yer just a frustrated snowbird, ain'cha?"
I wondered afterward how many guys had started this conversation with him, how many times he'd shaken his head as they'd walked away with those improbable dreams of working in paradise still adrift in theirs. Not necessarily dreams of Hemingway and the legendary bars along Duvall Street, but simple dreams of a different life in a different place.
Years before, I'd actually done something like that. Unhappy in our marriage, my first wife and I had taken separate vacations, she to California with one of my sisters and I to Houston with some friends of a friend.
For me, it was one of those legendary weeks of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll at the poolside apartment of my future sister-in-law. It would also be the closest thing to paradise that I would experience for a very long time. If, in fact, it ever came 'round again.
The following week, I returned home to an empty apartment, thanks to some back-channel meddling by one of those previously-mentioned friends. But I was ready for the party to go on and six months later, in the dead of winter, was on the road back to Houston in a rented van with my motorcycle and tools and recently-acquired girlfriend.
The morning after we got there, I walked two blocks to Palm Center Toyota, where I'd said I would look for work if I ever got back there. The service manager asked if I could start that afternoon. I said, "How about tomorrow, since my tools are still buried near the front of the van?"
I was young then. My back was still good and I loved learning new things. But in the months afterward, there was only one party that I can remember. I worked and my girlfriend attended classes at the University of Houston. And when she got pregnant, later that spring, she insisted that we return home.
By that time, I had a number of friends in the shop and one of them advised that I not "go running off in the heat of the day." That was Earl, a native Houstonian who called himself "The Old Indian."
The other comment, as I was rolling my tool cab into the van after my last day, was from good ol' Gerald. He said, rhetorically, "Yer just a frustrated snowbird, ain'cha?"
