Flo-Ridah

Oh disgusting repulsive florida. How did I get here. I'll tell you how:
Over the weekend my DM had another driver drop his trailer loaded with "slinkies" great big coils of 1/4" wire, at my drop spot, and take my empty. The slinkies were headed to Mount Airy, North Carolina where they would be made into the sort of grids of mesh that reinforce concrete, say, in the roads. After that delivery I was sent up to Elizabethton again to pick up more metal buildings. This one was going to Boca Raton (RatMouth) Florida. So that's how. The delivery was to a country club/golf course/stuffy development. It was going to be a maintenance shed for the golf carts and lawn mowers. Again, it is nice to know I am doing the good work.
All of the construction workers were black Caribbeans speaking some sort of creole. The air was thick even at 8 am. There was a haze and a breeze and the sky was bright blue in the north and piling up with monumental clouds in the south.
It felt very foreign.
Just as I left I hopped out of my truck to talk to the guard at the gate and looked down the avenue of palms where I could see the rain advancing. I hopped back in the truck and drove up to the Home Depot and parked in the back to await a load.
I wondered about Florida. So many old people. Why do they come here? Do they retire from not only their jobs but also from the normal cycle of the seasons? Do they think that perhaps by escaping from Winter they are escaping from death, its metaphorical counterpart. That seems foolish. When i grow old I'll move to Minnesota so the cold darkness won't seem like such a shock.

Nothing doing after 4 hours I wrote my DM who told me to head up to St. Augustine where there might be a load tomorrow. And, after what always feels like an impossibly long drive through the beachy urbaness that becomes thick subtropical shag forest, I got here, to the Flying J. and I write you this letter. It is humid and I am sweating, in April.