After a fantastic but extremely expensive supper at the Gris dining room (the fresh catch was swordfish, which is what I had), I went for a solo walkabout around town just after sunrise. Nowhere to get coffee until 7:30. The restored homes here are just beautiful. Some even have large lawns. The brick post office blew me away. What a difference from Fla where government buildings tend to be ugly concrete monstrosities. No missing link geezers running around with their pugilistically beflagged golf carts. No MAGA cadavers with creppy leather lizard skin lounging around the communal pool all day listening to right wing talk shows blaring on their moronic black transistor radios. It is such a relief being FAR FAR away from the Hate State. I only have to take 1 blood pressure pill not 3, and today it looks like I might not even need that. Talked to a pleasant guy, my age, who moved up here in April from, get this, North Carolina — yet another rancid Southern hellhole. He loves it by the water, which is why he bought in Essex. Otherwise, he said, he would have bought in Chester. That’s where we’re headed up to later this morning, to look at a house I saw listed in the window of a real estate office in Madison. You just take route 9 north, the guy said, and it’s only about 10 minutes away. Suddenly Florida seems a foreign third world country, a distant nightmare that I will be returning on July 20th, before leaving again on Aug 6th, perhaps for good this time.
Leaving Amerika 