Your Definition of Haves and Have Nots Depends on What You Have

A quiet afternoon on the sandbar.

I'm not the kind of guy who belly aches too much about First-World problems. At least I try not to be. My lawnmower issue of a couple weeks ago could, I guess, be categorized as a first-world problem. I mean, there are a lot of people out there who don't have either a yard or the wherewithal to own a mower to cut it. I guess to a person living in a cardboard box under a bridge, any problem I might have with my new $400 mower is fairly trivial. I'd have to agree.

Don't worry, this isn't another lawnmower post. I just present it as evidence that most problems are relative. To some third worlder, surviving by chewing the bark off a stick, would see not being able to find another stick as a huge issue. Me, not so much. I'm guessing you are right there with me.

On my recent trip to the Keys, I was with my friends who rent a place in Islamorada for a month every summer. I can pinpoint within a week the exact month they will be there by simply going from the weekend after Independence Day and tracing out the month on my calendar to a total of five weekends. Easypeasy. 

We were anchored on the sandbar about a mile off the beach of, what used to be the world-famous Holiday Isle, but is now called, ugh, Postcard Inn. Although there are boats anchored in the waist-deep water there every day of the week, Saturdays and Sundays will find as many as 200 smaller craft crammed into this rather tight area, each with its contingent of beer-swilling passengers and blaring music. The water around these boats is filled with people hanging onto anything that floats like survivors of a torpedoed trawler.

It is a social gathering of the haves. The degree of having is usually measured by the size of your craft (Insert your “size” joke here.) with the larger boats typically indicating those having more. From my perspective, if you have a boat and are on the sandbar in Islamorada, you certainly have more than I. But you might be amazed at the size of some of the boats, the age of those owning them and their stories.

On my first trip to the sandbar this year we met a 50ish couple with a boat in the 27-ft range. They were from Pompano Beach, Fla. They were spending the summer in the Keys. The boat they brought to the sandbar was their little boat. They also have a 57-ft boat that was docked a couple of miles away on which they were staying. Serious haves, right? The Kennedys might disagree.

On my last trip out to the sandbar, we met a family with a boat of similar size. The parents were in their late 40s with a 16-year-old daughter and a 13-yr-old son. They had two small dogs with them, one of which was a puppy with its leg in a cast. They were friendly, chatty people with whom we visited as we floated around on noodles with our beers. The dogs spent the afternoon on a huge float the size of a living-room sofa. Even the pets of a lot of these people are “haves.”

Driving home the whole first-world-problem thing: The wife related their latest story of woe. Seems they live full time in Miami, but have owned a weekend house in the Keys for more than 10 years. They are currently in the process of building a pool behind their Keys house. She regaled us with the misery of having the back of the house all torn up as this pool-building process drags on.

The really horrific part of the story is that while the pool excavation was going on two weeks ago, the pool builders cut an electric line running from the house to the dock. At the time, the pool contractor promised to get an electrician on site the following week to fix the problem. They returned this weekend only to discover electric to the dock hadn't been restored. The humanity!

Faced with not being able to lower the davits cradling their boat out of the water, they considered packing up and heading back to Miami. But, no, where there's a will and a wallet stuffed with 100-dollar bills, there's a way. Their solution was to have a generator delivered to the house. Using the generator, they lowered their boat, (I'm not making this up) named Positive Electricity, into the water, saving the weekend. Thank, God!

No question, having is a matter of perspective. And, no matter how much you have, you have problems. Last night we broke the cork off trying to open a bottle of wine to drink while watching the sunset from our dock. Panic was about to set in when I finally found a larger, better cork screw in the silverware drawer. Opening the bottle, I saved the evening.

Now that was a close call.