I am living in a town with a faded sign lettered “Luckiest Fishing Village in the World.” It has no plumber, and a bi-weekly newspaper that might or might not meet its deadline. During the summer months twenty thousand people pour in, and charter boats keep the tourists loaded with grouper and mai tais. Locals, tired of waiting on long lines of creeping traffic, plan their grocery trips early Sunday mornings when tourists are still recovering from their hangovers. Soon, the boon season will fade, beers will go back to a dollar apiece, and the endless fields of dunes will cover their crop of Dorito packages and deflated beach balls.
Sandpipers, like wind-up toys, bump off each other and poke around, and I can see a maintenance man hoist up a yellow flag cautioning the open water swimmers. Those details are in sharp contrast to the uncountable ocean waves that come forth, crest, then force power walkers to quicken their pace.
I was raised with murderous winters in an industrial town whose snow came down in blankets for sometimes days at a time. This was a whipping for the landscape, and the streets retreated into themselves afterwards, pouting. And then the quiet, the dead quiet after a big winter storm. I recall glancing outside and feeling as if I had been bleached in a wash cycle like a white t-shirt. I relished the clean cover of snow that turned my Lego town all one color. The monotone was unspoiled and awakened my drifting spirit – made it go deeper. There, my soul did the difficult work between grey and gray.
Now, I break out in a cold sweat as I circle the Sunoco parking lot looking for a bit of shade. Those spots are rare in Florida in the middle of the tourist season. Living here, I witness a line of neon-dressed people – snowbirds, spring breakers, and fish heads – rotating in and out of my neighborhood like spare tires. They cannot decide whether they are native or transient, whether they like the winter or the summer, whether they want to work or play, whether they want to be at the VFW or the beach. They are looking to be christened, like the new cobia boat whose name fades from view as it pulls out into the harbor.
I am an observer in a jungle of culture monkeys who swing from bar to bar wearing extra-large Tommy Bahama shirts. They smell like their closets back home, but they wear them with pride while their beach kids make magnificent sandcastles. For a couple of weeks or maybe months, this Luckiest Fishing Village is a new home. They can hang themselves out to dry and let the smell of their winter clothes wear off in no-man’s land, between the gulf and the mothballs.
I’m not looking for a dual residency. I’m having a hard enough time living with myself, in one place without wondering whether I belong both up north and down south, in a snow pile or a sandpile, feeling lucky or trapped. I sit in my car, working on my gratefulness, eating a gas station sandwich and watch pelicans flying just inches over breaking waves, harnessing small air pockets that allow them to glide for miles, never flapping. I‘ll move too, when it is time, when I can glide effortlessly from here to there, and still know where I am.
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Jeff Bender is a writer/artist who writes about life and has a life that is about his art. While the two skills often intersect, both reflect a zeal for the spontaneous, the curious and most things that are breathing. Always supplementing his stories with constructions and collages, his artwork is held in collections both regionally and internationally. In addition to his experience as a feature story writer, he has been published in several journals including Club Plum, Embers, Press Pause, and The North American Review. He holds an MFA in printmaking from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and a BA in Art from the College of Wooster.
© Jeff Bender
Halfway Down the Stairs 