Outside the OceanView Community United Methodist Church, the message board asks: WHO ARE THE MEEK?
The meek are either working construction or hanging out in the shadows of Palm Beach: the bus boys on break outside the cuban restaurant, the valet checking his cell phone, or the lost, local skater boys watching the tourist girls from the shade of a park restroom overhang. (Historical fact of interest: West Palm Beach was founded in 1894 as a community to house the servants of the hotels over on Palm Beach island.)
You wonder if you’ll ever get a chance to shack up in a town like this. Your best bet is to join the Romanians and get into a nine-month hotel management program, waiting tables at one of these Old Folks Homes. On your day off, you could traipse down Highway 1 and hit the duck pond, where the deformed ducks chase you around for bread. Visit Burt Reynolds park and the Burt Reynolds (and Friends) Museum. Put a fiver through the barbed wire fence around the Turtle Museum and try to bribe the curator to open up for a few minutes on Monday.
Pass PGA National and remember to call your dad and ask him how he did in the annual amputee golf tournament. He’ll say, “Did pretty good with four guys who only had six legs between them.” Don’t forget Christmas is coming, and stop at the Pro Shop.
For a real peek of Florida, check out the Grassy Waters Nature Preserve. After walking around in this beautiful swamp, the lizzards and grasshoppers scuttling at your feet, (disappointment: no alligators) with the dull roar of the highway in the background, it hits you: Florida began inhospitable to humans, and fifteen bazillion tons of concrete later, remains so.
On the way home at the draw bridge, the landscapers, delivery trucks and the rest of the 9-5 Joes wait and wait, while Jocko the Republican sails his yacht out to port. And Jocko thinks, “Well, the world stops on my very whim, therefore, I own the world, so why not steal an election and loot the country and send the sons of the schmucks up on the bridge to war?”
The meek shall inherit thy costs.