Cazual Conversation

The laughter is filtering through my office as I write this, little hoots meandering to the Island west of the Hathaway Bridge, as once again the tourists and hoteliers are stuck with raising tax money that benefits us all.

The one-cent increase approved in the bed tax Tuesday is expected to generate $2.2 million for the Tourist Development Council.

One commissioner’s argument, essentially, seemed to be that the rest of us ought to be glad it passed, because it means we won’t be paying it.

Weigh that against what is happening in the economy right now, and the idea that many people collecting the tax (home and private condo rentals) aren’t reporting it to begin with.

Is any amount of advertising going to drive tourism right now?

Do we need the tax or not?

How bad does it have to get for you to parachute out of an airplane thinking you are somehow going to pull off a fake death?

Marc Schrenker, an Indiana businessman, must have thought it was pretty bad. The picture of Schrenker and his wife posing in front of hundreds of thousands of dollars of toys, belies the inner turmoil.

Like most material things we can gain through chicanery, bravado and outright theft, the outside appearance we see rarely correlates to the inner self.

Schrenker, most would think, had it all. He had mansions, planes and a beautiful wife. He also was under investigation for defrauding people out of money entrusted to him for investments.

The wife said she wanted a divorce and the government was investigating, so an ill-formed plan apparently developed.

Schrenker rented a storage shed in a fake name and paid cash, police said, stashing a get-away motorcycle there. He flew his plane to oblivion Sunday  night after reporting he was in trouble.

The plane, minus the pilot, was found airborne by military jets scrambled to assist. It crashed some 200 miles away from the initial distress call, within a mile of a home.

Schrenker was found wandering  a road, wet and ruffled, but he disappeared before police put two and two together.

The man with the jets and wife and money and stuff was found in a campground Tuesday with just about nothing.

His life was a facade, but how many people envied him for it prior to last week?

Remember this: What people show you on the outside is the result of a lifetime spent building defenses so you only see what they want you to see.

If you fall into the trap of comparing how you feel on the inside to what people show you on their outsides, you will lose every time.

For me, I’m happy to be employed today, with health insurance, a car on which I owe no money, a place to hunt, my son and a roof over my  head.

How about you?

The sentiment is nearly universal: we want our schools superintendent and the district board to cut the budget, eliminate waste and be more frugal.

As long as it doesn’t affect OUR children.

What’s a superintendent to do?

Bill Husfelt is on the right path. He is floating trial balloons to the board in January so there is plenty of time to shoot them down and float some new ones. The tact last year by the former superintendent was to float a hindenburg in the summer only to watch it explode, leaving the district without alternative transportation, so to speak.

Husfelt floats one recommendation involving the repurposing of Springfield Elementary, for example, and the community reacts with emotion, just as I would if it invovled my child.

Husfelt related a story when he visited The News Herald last week of a woman who wanted her grandchildren to attend the same school her children attended, which is the same school she attended.

The school absolutely could not be closed, she said, and Husfelt needed to turn elsewhere.

Husfelt said, sure, he would go find a school that no one’s parents ever attended, where no one had any history, and where there were no emotional ties to the community.

He was being facetious but it is true. Someone is going to be hurt emotionally to benefit the masses.

The question here is if we really want the cuts, we must be willing to bear some of the burden.

Watching the video, you can see in his stubbly goatee, rocky nose and shackled ankles just how Anthony Davis conned not one, but two female guards into smuggling him contraband.

Absent that video, available by clicking here, one would wonder why in the world two women with careers would risk all to help an inmate, the same inmate, by breaking the law. And they did it within a month or so of each other.

But watching the exclusive video shot by S. Brady Calhoun during a jailhouse interview with Davis, it all becomes crystal clear.

The man, as one of the correctional officers put, is a silver-tongued devil.

Sure, you have your doubts when you hear something like that, but watch the video on our home page and you’ll see.

The man/inmate is part counselor, part psychologist and all hotness, it would appear.

“You see, some poeple like that are just submissive,” he told Calhoun. “That type of behavior … it’s just easier for them to along with it.”

Well, that sure explains why the first guard was smuggling in cigarettes, though Davis was quick to say the smokes never went straight from her hand to his, but instead went through an intermediary.

One doesn’t become the jailhouse Casanova without some degree of guile, after all.

And Davis is a man who worked his way up, a man with initiative and drive.

“I Iused to be what they call a floorman here,” he explained. “And both (the women) worked around me.

“I’m around them 12 hours a day during their shift, when they’re working, so you develop some kind of working relationship - even though you are inmate/officer, you understand what I’m saying?”

Oh yes, we understand. Who wouldn’t throw their lives away for a piece of that action? If he can maneuver like that while in custody, the sky’s the limit when he gets back into the free world.

Even his outlook on life, his inside desire to bring joy to others, bleeds through as he sits with his wrists handcuffed behind his back and his ankles shackled.

Seeing him so restrained, it is easy to understand why a married woman employed as a correctional officer would smuggle into this inmate nude pictures of herself.

Consider this take on life, which he says led to his cozy relationship with the two female guards: “When people come to work and they’re down and out, ‘I’m not someone who likes to see someone mope and be miserable,” he opined. “Life’s too short if you can’t put a smile on your face.”

I just may send the man some cologne. Strike that, it would appear he’s doing just fine without it.

It’s surely cultural, surely intellectual and surely revered in many circles, but I lost the battle not to laugh when I spied the ad in Fridays’ News Herald for “The New York Miniature Book Society Collection.”

Surely this was some kind of joke.

Beneath the headline in the ad for the month-long event - that’s right, this stuff is too small to appreciate in only a week or two - was a picture of someone’s hand holding what could only be three miniature books.

They appear to be the size of sugar cubes.

I’m sure this is something important and noble, and I’ll trust readers to make me aware of that. Until then, the questions persist, namely, how on earth did this come to be?

Can you read them? Do they have little pages? Perhaps they were props in “Honey I shrunk the kids,” with Rick Moranis.

Can you check them out? Smuggle them into jails? Can we carry this over to our children and revert to smaller backpacks?

The exhibit is open at the Bay County Public Library through Jan. 4, and it is free. That matches my miniature budget just fine.

My retired colleague Claude Duncan, as many of you read in the News Herald two weeks ago, died in a car wreck recently.

His memorial was a week ago today (Saturday), at 3:30 p.m. I knew I had been asked to speak at the memorial and assumed I was one of many asked to share a few thoughts about a man who in his last years alone wrote more moving pieces than I ever contemplated putting to paper.

It wasn’t until the morning of the memorial, however, that I realized I was not one of many speakers, but was the only speaker and was tasked with eulogizing my friend, an honor I did not feel I deserved.

What to say? I was in over my head. What could I saw about Claude that people who had known him for decades did not already know?

I counseled with trusted friends and was told not to worry, a higher power would be with me that day and the words would come. I believed that.

Driving to WaterSound, wondering what the heck I could say, I saw the blue lights in my rear-view mirror. I knew I was speeding, running a little late for my engagement.

The Walton County sheriff’s deputy took my license and information, asked about the speeding, and all I could offer was that I was a little late for a memorial at which I was speaking.

“What’s your friend’s name?” she asked, having heard a litany of excuses over the years, I’m sure.

“Claude Duncan,” I replied.

“Oh,” she said slowly, “I know that name. I was one of the first ones at his wreck and helped perform CPR.”

The family did not know, at that point, what caused Claude’s death exactly. Family and friends hoped it was medical related leading to a crash, as opposed to a crash without reason that ended with his car in a tree and suffering. The Florida Highway Patrol was still working on its fatality report.

The deputy offered to me that which I could never have ascertained for myself: Her observations and experience told her that Claude probably did not died as a result of the wreck, but rather from something medically related that led to the crash.

So as my friend foretold, I was able to offer something to the family at the eulogy, something they did not already know about Claude. He died in peace.

There was a time I would have believed the entire episode to be a big coincidence. I know better now.