and Words
Saw you walkin’ out on sentimental street
What you doin’ out there?
Who you tryin’ to be?
I know what you’re thinkin’
‘Cause I’ve been there myself
I’ve been kicked so many times
I don’t know nothin’ else
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
On a typical winter day in South Florida, I start the moderately long drive from Palm Beach to Miami. The forecast may be cloudy, but the sun still beams and casts hard shadows upon the hot pavement. Well, I call it comparatively hot. I now live in Washington where it is around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Florida’s 70’s seem downright balmy. The southeast coast of Florida was my home during my late childhood, and in many ways, I still consider it my home. This is not an account of a particular trip, but it is instead an amalgamated account of many such trips.
Beautiful beaches line the southeast coast of Florida, ones that I took for granted while growing up. Uniformly along that coast, there’s a freeway, Interstate 95 (I-95 for short) that follows that coast. It consistently runs around a 15-minute-drive from the actual coast. It allowed for easy access to the beaches, but similarly it was far enough away to avoid many of the problems from being right on the beach. If we were to follow it north, it’ll run all the way up the east coast to Maine; I’ve driven it to Connecticut. If we were to drive it south, it eventually empties into Miami, directly onto South Dixie Highway (US1).