Jonathan Kieran

Well, the scenic croisette or walkway along the seawall in St. Augustine, Florida, is likely in dire need of reinforcement or replacement as city planners and experts in infrastructure indicate in a new proposal. This rather lovely feature of the nation’s Oldest City has seen some serious battering over the years, most recently with the relentless fury of Hurricane Ian. (Guys named Ian ALWAYS come in with a touch of wrath and grandeur.)

Reinforcement is all well and good. What I’m potentially annoyed about is the plan by city honchos to remove the gorgeous posts and swaying chains along the bay-front fixture and replace it with a dull, raised concrete wall that obscures the natural beauty of the downtown panorama. The quaint and picturesque posts have been around since I was just a whippersnapper and are part and parcel of the charm of St. Auggie’s ambience, giving Florida’s “Ancient City” one of its many hallmark touches of architectural elan.

Part of me suspects that city planners are seeking to build a wall in their stead due to the fact that human beings have grown more clumsy, distracted, irresponsible, and all-around useless in the past thirty years, particularly given widespread dependence upon idiotic devices. In my experience back in the day, no one ever wobbled off and flipped over the chains into the choppy waters of the bay except drunks tottering around at 2 in the morning after a night of unfettered carousing at the old Scarlet O’Hara’s honky tonk. And they deserved to fall in and get a wet & salty wake-up call, if you ask me. Better than having them find their way to their vehicles and drive off to kill some innocent folk on the roadways.

Basically, human visitors to St. Augustine used to be quite capable of walking along the seawall and not staggering randomly off the substantial, secure path and breaching the chained barrier like zombies in the throes of brain-rotted chaos.

But our present society feels everyone needs to be super-duperly protected from themselves, held by the hand, over-coddled, and herded like moronic sheep. Perhaps they are correct: humans across the globe do seem to exhibit a ghastly lack of self-control and instinctive awareness, these days.

Still, I say, “KEEP the elegant posts and chains along St. Augustine’s glorious bay after repairing the seawall … and if people are too damned stupid to keep their asses from falling into the water, let the DIPS fall where they MAY!”

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[ Delightful new work by Jonathan Kieran is slated for major release in the near future so brace yourselves and think of England. This stuff is built for speed. Stay tuned for more … ]

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