the merry life

Today's walk to the USPO was another scorcher, sunny and hot (my skin color matches my red dress). A black water beetle lay in the middle of the sidewalk beside Monterey Road near the 10th Street footbridge; and a black turtle the size of a dinner plate came walking out of the bank of that underbridge slough. I tossed the beetle into the wet grass of the slough.

A pile of small mangoes lay on the berm outside a family property beside 10th Street, and a youth came walking out onto the sidewalk with a black spaniel/lab mixed-breed hunting dog.
A short distance further along that street, a rusting 'Do not park on berm' sign lay in the grass parallel to the curb, not far from the Council for the Aging complex.

The steak knife yet lay embedded in sand/soil at the corner of Palm Beach Road and 10th Street, so I picked it up with a discarded napkin and dropped into one of the trash containers within close proximity to the 10th Street Recreation Center -- truly, all eyes in the area were directed my way.

The Post Office was not crowded, and I was able to use the automated postage-label machine with no problems, then commenced another southward walk alongside U. S. 1 begun at the intersection with Johnson Avenue. Trailers parked within the Holiday trailer park appear to have been recently painted, as do other businesses along the east side of the roadway, the smell of fresh paint lingering in the air. Two thrift shops addressed in the telephone directory were found along SE Monterey Road after making a right-hand turn from U. S. 1 -- the Salvation Army thrift shop and a Treasure Box thrift store that had the air of a boutique, both near the intersection with Willoughby Boulevard -- but neither had any books pertinent to my literature search efforts.

I crossed the street at Willoughby to buy bananas at a produce store, then had to walk all the way to U. S. 1 along a Monterey Road paved Extension because there is no crosswalk to return to the east side of the road without returning to Willoughby first. There is one Extension merge-point where a crosswalk should be helpful if painted in so as to regain the east side of the street and retrace footsteps along a shorter route to Monterey Road moving northward.

Long John Silver restaurant on U. S. 1 issues receipts that name its co-franchise (KFC) only as the business premises -- they are also offering a contest (customers must compete a survey). My debit card use did overdraw my Wells Fargo checking account, which was resolved with a quick- fix Direct Deposit Advance.

There is reason to worry that populations who monitor my bank-account electronic activity in the region do foul up other business activities. Also, I have recently deduced that the weight of a number of health bars in an outside backpack pocket causes concern that I might be carrying a gun -- but I never have carried a firearm.

It is also the time of the year when many families leave Florida to return to northern homes, thus freeing-up wildlife until school ends in June, such as the black turtle which might normally be green. A Palm Beach TV station this evening broadcast a webcam video of a long-haired, healthy man being shot by a police officer alongside a roadway; the man had left his car in the median grass and moved away from it carrying a large knife as the patrol car approached his own. Because it is that time of the year when wintering families do leave the state and free up wildlife, it is not so unusual for some people to carry such knives or other weapons.