Fort Myers Beach looks like this most every night in the summertime. This photo is from last night.
The Gulf is five miles from where I live. I head out around 7:30 p.m. and park for free under the bridge. I walk up to Times Square, remove the flip flops and sink into the warm sand with the joy of a 12-year-old.
If I turn right, it's a 30 minute walk to Bowditch Park, the north end of Estero Island. I can see Bunche Beach from that vantage - it's near my condo. One day I'll kayak across from Bunche, but not alone.
I'm doing this walk almost every night lately, it's combination exercise program and walking meditation. Who couldn't use a little more peace, a little more calm?
Thursday night there were dolphins. Last night the colors were incredible. The sun will set and THEN the colors EXPLODE from every direction. Pinks and purples - last night the bridge to Sanibel looked like it was on fire.
The surf was warm as bathwater.
It was a Friday. It's party night. The beach is alive - they say we're getting the tourism New Orleans lost to the oil spill. Good for us, bad for them.
I decided to walk past SOB's - the Steaming Oyster Brewery. It's a local favorite. The breeze roars through three open sides like nobody's business and the live entertainment is usually excellent. One guy, one guitar, one appreciative audience.
I spotted one of the few people in this area who's always a pleasure to hang out with and before I knew it there was a cold Coors Light on the bar and an empty stool with my name on it. Forget that I was hot, sweaty and sandy - everyone else was too. Well, hot and sweaty anyway.
My good friend was sitting to my left with his new girlfriend. On my right was an old drunk cracker with bright blue bloodshot eyes and long blonde oily hair.
A cracker is a Florida native. I believe the term came from whip cracking because many of the original Floridians had ranches with cattle. (See "The Land Remembered" - an excellent history of this area. I live near Punta Rassa, where cattle were herded for shipment to Cuba.)
Understand also, that being a cracker does not automatically mean you're a bigot. I know some awesome crackers.
When you live down here you don't necessarily want to know where people stand politically.
You just want to like everybody. They're usually easy to like.
So the cracker leans forward over my right hooter to talk to my friend. He buys my friend and his girlfriend a beer. My friend asks him how he's doing and the old guy starts talking about how much life sucks.
"My father would roll over in his grave if he knew there was a nigger in the white house."
Gasp.
What is this 1950s Macon Georgia??? Where are the white fountains?
I didn't say anything. I don't know what to say any more. If I see bigotry online on FB or something, I'll say something; but not when I'm out alone, in a place where I could get my tires knifed.
I ignored it.
Then he sez. "Yeah man, FUCK those assholes who voted for the nigger."
I quietly raised my right hand as I lowered my head to sip my my beer.
And as drunk as he was, he totally changed his tune. He apologized and was sweet as pie.
It's hard to know when to shut up and when to step up.
A few weeks ago I defused a situation on FB. I stopped a conservative friend in her tracks by saying "Love you, hate Palin. That's just how it is." She was so flattered by the "love you" that she just laughed it off.
I try not to talk about who I hate any more because there's too much of it. I've decided to stop hating Palin. I'll diminish my opinion to "that phony bitch who creeps me out." I'll reserve real hate for people who harm animals and kids and old people and the environment.
But then there are a few people on FB who will not leave me alone. As if putting "liberal" on your profile is some invitation to bang sticks on your cage. Or maybe it's just the challenge they like. Maybe I look soft and indecisive.
A week ago I "shared" the president's birthday on FB and a "friend" posted "your president doesn't even have an American birth certificate." I wrote back "Believe what you want."
Another guy convinced me to friend him. I don't know him. Facebook thought we had mutual friends or something. Turns out he's a smart guy, a good photographer, a solid writer. A cracker, a Vietnam vet.
He said he was a redneck and I told him I didn't think we'd get along. He persuaded me to try. He said "we probably have more in common than you think."
It's that curse everyone from Michigan seems to have: POLITE.
That's what being so close to Canada'll get ya.
In five days he has worked his way up the political-emotional chain of what I can handle one aggravating link at a time. Each email gets more and more upsetting.
People like him almost make me wish there would be another civil war so they could just blow each other to bits. Running out of stuff to say - and being steadfastly polite in replying at ALL - I wrote back suggesting that violence may have more to do with gender than race. It's MEN of ALL races who enjoy violence.
Today I woke up to five paragraphs on why blacks are naturally inferior.
I wrote back "stop".
He wrote back "You liberals CAUSE our problems with niggers by ..."
I wrote back "FUCK OFF."
And I unfriended him. It feels icky to unfriend someone at first, but then it feels pretty damned good.
There are a few more people like him lying in the weeds. I'm tired of waiting for the next attack.
And I'm tired of liberal friends who keep trying to drag me back into the fray.
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