We did not say "Hello? Is anybody there?"

I was really looking forward to the heat of the Florida Everglades, to seeing a 'gator or two, and to talking to the locals in one of the few towns around. We drove into such a town center one day.
“We’re all white, five-hundred and thirty-six people, and twenty-five blacks.”
“No Seminole?”
“One [man], and his wife is white.”
We could tell that conversation was going nowhere, even just a minute or two after wandering into the town hall office which was located at the end of a hallway with doors opening onto a playschool, the one-room local library and other civic sites. They had all been united into a tiny, eloquent municipal mall in this large, solid building. Outside the front door, columns and flowers adorned the front steps, which we quickly saw again. No one asked where we were from or how we liked it there, poised at the end of a road which led back into the old route running between Miami and Naples. Up-scale properties are close by, and landscapers sometimes take their customers into the Everglades to select plants for their gardens from the steamy plantations.

But this felt more like a frontier town, with swampland behind it and the Gulf of Mexico in front. Normally there are boat services for ricocheting through the water around the coast islands. There was nobody at the docks or at the ice cream stand.
We tried to acquire a cool drink at a local restaurant, where a large sign on one of the club doors caught my attention. Considerable time and energy go into arriving at that door, and when you do, you read the sign and get the feeling that they don’t appreciate all the effort that has gone into your trip. I was left wondering what was most important about the club’s history, whether rowdy sightseers had disturbed the atmosphere in the club in the past, or whether burglars had caused damage. Was a dress code firmly in place? I posed all of these questions in an e-mail, but so far there has been no reply.

Nobody Asked

My bicycle remained unused and inert while I was out of town. The tires needed air, so I stopped at the pump hanging outside of the bicycle store around the corner from where I live. Anyone can use it. I forced the kickstand down with my right foot and squatted to unscrew the tiny, black cap on the valve, coming face to face with a poignant world on the tire, its hub, the spokes: ladybugs stood out on the chrome center, tiny spiders hurtled through the dark, oily recesses of the chain guard. These and more bugs I couldn't name had colonized my bicycle in my absence. They would be forced to take refuge on the inner fender, I imagined, when I took off and built up moderate speed. I unhooked the air hose from the wall and bent down towards the valve as I connected the pump with the tire - and then I was knocked backwards by the blast of an exploding inner tube.

To passers-by who provided commentary, it sounded like gunfire, an attack. I felt the air pressure hit my body, finding it strange how even such a small blast could have a physical impact. A young woman came over to see if my ears were alright, explaining as she walked off that "these days you don't know what might happen." An elderly man said that he had been through 'the War' (WWII) and was used to everything, but that people today in Holland were only just starting to sense a connection between their own circumstances and today's far-off battles. I referred to internet options, both for getting news on wars and for getting closer to the war. Web-pages advertise jobs galore in Iraq, for example, such as on http://iraq.jobs.monster.com/ Car repair could just be a growth sector.

We chatted as I walked my bicycle in the direction of the repair shop. He was retired, receiving a pension. I mentioned this year's revelation of Dutch retirement funds being invested in companies producing cluster bombs. The money came from salaries paid to a wide range of professionals, including many thousands in the public broadcasting sector. The man shook his head and told me that he was proud that his tax money was going to pay for today's wars, because at least he knew where it was being spent, because with internet and all: "these days you can't tell where your money is going." We had different perspectives on whether or not it was a good thing to produce cluster bombs, but agreed on a bottom line: people expressed indignation about their money being used to support the arms trade, but nobody paying into the fund had bothered to ask until now.