October 24, 2018

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 24, 2017, Hippie's song list 1988 - 2018.
Five years ago today: October 24, 2013, at the Desert Inn.
Nine years ago today: October 24, 2009, the Caddy in winter.
Random years ago today: October 24, 2015, 5 months is too long.

           I didn't win. Somebody in the Carolinas got the money. Only one ticket, too, making the lucky stiff the biggest single winner in history, plus that's one of the handful of states where you can still win anonymously. To my overseas people, you read that correct. In most states, if you win the big one, or any lump sum, you cannot collect without revealing your identify to every crook, conman, shyster, and opportunist in the country. You get declarations by winners that their lifestyle won’t change, but they soon get tired of people pounding on their door at 2:00AM. Hoping you’ll get angry.

           Miami has gone downhill. More accurately, south Florida has become a perverse parody of what America is supposed to be. It’s become like New Orleans on a larger scale, though not as bad as Detroit. Everybody at street level is either lazy, a scam artist, ugly, or playing the system. The homeless have moved in across the creek from JZ’s and the city won’t evict, chopping his property value in half. The system is broken, agreed, but let those who broke it pay the damages.

           Here’s your blurry sign saying “Miami 99”. I fly down Highway 27 when I’m in a hurry, averaging 72.5 mph on the barren stretches. There are two, Sebring to Moore Haven and South Bay to Tamiami trail out on Krome Avenue near the casino. You can only really sustain the high speed to Alligator Alley if you hit rush hour. It’s not a big secret, but I operate three wagons with only two vehicle registrations. I own three identical carts, all of which have the same modification. When purchases as a kit, the tongue is too long. There are bolt holes that allow this tongue to be moved back four feet.
           This places the VIN tag under the floor of the wagon. I get stopped as often as anyone, but nobody has yet asked me to rip up the floorboards to view that VIN. As long as you remember to never put a shiny new license plate on anything you tow (dirty them up first) you are okay. And if it ever did happen, I’d have the satisfaction of knowing they must have read this blog and know what I think of contemporary police tactics. I believe America should have the road law enforced by a separate force. That is, the regular police should have no part of enforcing traffic laws. Otherwise, they turn the roadways into a police state.

Picture of the day.
The Bayo-Hunter.
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           I could not find a public computer left in Miami, which is no longer an American city in any meaningful sense. The worthwhile people have vacated the place or moved into gated communities. What's left are the dregs so abuse anything free until there is longer anything free. That’s diversity for you.

           Later, JZ and I stopped at West Marine. I looked for the Almanac, no dice. He shops there because the locations that sell clothes have top-notch leather belts for sale. You heard me, go to a boat store for your leather belts in this town. Searching for a GPS unit worthy of the name, I remembered Garmin makes boat sonars, so I went over to the display and saw this. You know how those fish sonars used to be like early ground-penetrating radar? You had to read the graph-like display and guess that was down there? Take a gander at this technology, you are looking at the right half of the picture.

           While it is not Star Trek quality, this is amazing compared to what preceded. This shows a sunken wreck with enough clarity to easily identify key features. I doubt you’d get this performance in the field but it is a giant step, I’ll bet, in shallow water treasure hunting. Alas, while most of the lakes in Florida are less than 30 feet deep, there are no records of any treasures being lost there either. But you could get more done in an afternoon than Captain Cook did on many of his voyages.
           We then proceeded to the Pinecrest Library, where the most gorgeous women in Florida hang out. There’s a codicil, they are either underage or married. All you get to do is look but careful even how you do that. These women have been ogled since day one and will not put up with it in such a location. I had tried to get JZ to stop for coffee, but he has never been a coffee drinker. He’d pull into a gas station and gulp a tubful and call that a done deal. No, no, I mean we sit down somewhere comfortable for 20 minutes and take a break. The library cafeteria coffee is $2.41 plus tax for watery, tasteless something. But the housewife serving it was dynamite.

           I can’t let JZ stay long in the library because he will check out books that he will take home, never read, and forget. Then holler when he gets hit with late fees six months later when I’m back in town. If I lived in that area, I’d spend a ton of time in that place. Sooner or later, you would meet a decent and receptive woman in there. But it would not be right away.
           Using the recorder, I let the radio scan function across the entire AM and FM bands, looking for a single “white” station that was not religion or business. Not one. That’s the extent to which Miami has been “diversified”. They shut down everything except Spanish language, or more accurately, they subsidize the takeover of English stations by Latinos with taxpayer dollars. Until all the English stations are gone.
           Worst is the news of the deaths of ex-government employees. You retire, you get old, you get sick, you die. This is not news.

ADDENDUM
           Here’s a terrible telephoto of the homeless camping out across the canal from JZ’s place. This is one of around 30 tents in the roadside hedges. There’s your obligatory stolen shopping cart, and overturned black milk box, and the grey blanket is a poly tarp thrown over a plank to for a rudimentary tent. They panhandle and shoplift by day, who knows what by night. They’ve been there some six months now, lowering property values. The residents blame the city, but it is not that simple. There are nearby shelters with vacant beds, but they have rules that must be followed. The worse ones try to feed the homeless on porridge and religion.

           You might think because I’m redneck, I’m against the homeless. No, I am not. I’m against a system that favors immigrants over our own. The city denies responsibility, along with the state and the country at large. They have programs to help the homeless, but the programs are pathetically inadequate. You can’t fit these people back into a system that has already so horribly let them down. The jobs they could have done have been swept up by the illegals who get all the government services for free, so they can undercut.

           The training available for the homeless means low-end and low-respect jobs. Ask yourself if a homeless person, most of them over 30, are going to go back to a job where they are condemned to half a lifetime of paying the highest taxes (they would have no deductions for houses and family) just to, at the very end, have a few things that everybody around them was born with. They are better off staying homeless.
           I know, because I went through that meat-grinder. Half my life, down the drain. I do not expect any of today’s homeless to go through that and neither should the authorities. The other aspect is the law. Most of the homeless probably have outstanding warrants and they would be subject to arrest if they dared show up for work. The system here is flawed, deeply flawed.

Last Laugh

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