Tag Archives: siesta key

Captain Styles and his nightly flag ceremony

97 year old Captain Ralph Styles (USN, retired) presides over two flag ceremonies a day in front of his house on Beach Road on Siesta Key. Local Coffee and Tea has a short article on their website declaring Styles a “Local Treasure,” and noting that the ceremonies have been taking place for about 12 – 15 years. I’d swear they started before I moved away, but I must just remember them from visits home later on.

The evening ceremony takes place minutes after the sun sets, and since his house is located on the point, on possibly one of the nicest spots to watch the sun set, he always has an abundant supply of participants and onlookers. Some days, there are costumes.

Thanks to the magic of youtube, I can post someone else’s video, since I was too lazy to shoot one of my own. I’m sad this one doesn’t include a live drummer, but that’s okay:

I really should have shot one of the morning flag-raising ceremonies, which are just as nice but aren’t well attended because they’re, well, early.

If you’re interested, here’s Captain Styles describing his military experience at Pearl Harbor:

The Aquarium

You may be wondering why we called our hotel room on Siesta Key The Aquarium. Here’s a picture I took. In order to get even this much of the room in the picture, I had to climb up on the tiny counter that served as our “kitchen” – which consisted of a dorm fridge and a microwave. There wasn’t any room for a sink. We had to store our clothes in the bathroom because there wasn’t even room to live out of a suitcase unless one person left while the other opened the suitcase. The room wasn’t large enough for a dresser. At least the bed was just high enough off the ground that we could stash our shoes under it…

Life in the Aquarium

It might be more accurate to call it the Terrarium, but that isn’t as amusing to me for some reason. If we’d been in Tokyo, perhaps we would have considered this a spacious hotel suite; but we weren’t, and we didn’t.

On Sunday night we could have switched to a larger room, but at that point it wasn’t worth the effort to pack and move. Plus, we’d grown rather amused by the situation by that time.

CNN detox, day 2

Staying here on the beach at 20th high school reunion. Blogging via blackberry too challenging for my uncaffeinated self this morning.

I haven’t seen so much as a picture of John McCain in 24 hours.I feel better already.

Where is junglepete with my coffee?

He’s going to insist he should be let off the hook because he’s been out risking his life in the fakahatchee, but damnit man, I need coffee! And wifi. And maybe a banana-nut muffin, as long as you’re out…