Manaloosa Memories

Melanie Allen examines a wound in the center of her son Chuck’s forehead that is healing nicely. The hole where a small caliber bullet entered three weeks ago is now an angry pink mark, somewhat indented but no longer scabbed over. She gently raps her knuckles on Chuck’s skull as if expecting a rattle or clanging metal echo.             “I told you not to hang out with that kid,” she says, setting a plate of toaster waffles on the kitchen table in front of her distracted teen. He swipes and scrolls over the cracked display on his phone.             “What? Oh, yeah. He’s my friend Mom. It was an accident,” he says, though he knows it wasn’t. The truth would just make things worse.             “You could’ve been killed,” she says, “Accidentally.”          ...

The Harbor Vista Waterway stretched ahead like an undulating brown snake, stinking slightly of rotting vegetation, exposed along the seawalls due to low tide.                        “Can’t we go a little faster?” Jill pleaded. “The breeze would help.”             “No wake, honey, just a little longer,” Fred replied, just loud enough to be heard above the sound of a droning outboard.  Access to the Gulf of Mexico sounded like a dream come true, a life of leisure on the water. The reality was quite different, at least in summer. The Sunshine State drove eighty percent of coastal residents northward to second homes from May through October. For those left behind, it was a pleasant period of reduced traffic both on and off the water. But it also accompanied a blistering, incendiary attack from above. Flaming, relentless and intense, the s...

Manaloosa was all abuzz over my reporting that Johnny Maynard shot Chuck Allen in the head with a 22 on Wednesday. My interview with Melanie Allen, Chuck's mother, yielded only basic information. It was clear that she didn't want her son talking to me, and I respected that, but she told me off the record that she's as terrified of the Maynards as most people in town. The shooting affirmed her worst fears It sounds like Chuck will be fine so long as the bullet doesn’t move from the sinus cavity where it lodged, doing no damage to his brain and very little to his looks. He just may have to explain it to doctors and airport security personnel later in life. The incident barely made the Manaloosa   Shade . The police blotter noted the specifics of the 911 call and I kept the article short and sweet.  A small town reporter can quickly lose the protection of press credentials when the subject of an article feels singled out.    It’s generally been talked about at the din...

We Manaloosians have been a bit anxious this week, watching and preparing for our imminent doom as it inches closer in the Atlantic. I suppose I'm not helping, reporting on the storm daily in the Manaloosa Shade . The feeling is akin to that experienced by a banana about to be dropped into a blender as part of a protein shake. Poor banana. In this metaphor a Hurricane is the approaching blender, and we are both protein and banana. At least that's the story I'm going with. And if the buildup to a monster storm isn’t nerve wracking enough, this one has slowed, moving toward the coast at just one mile per hour. This means that evacuees can easily run away from the approaching danger. In fact, they can just turn and walk. No need to wait in long gas lines. Just bring an extra pair of sneakers. This is not meant to diminish the real horror being wrought on Puerto Rico again for at least the last full day. Those poor souls have a devil parked on top of their little archipe...