The Salt Line, Vol. 70: The Index — Two Police Dogs With No Job Description, a Town Government Hosting a Meet-and-Greet, and a Lightning Detector Assigned to Friday Night Football
It’s The Index again — the Salt Line format where I stop writing paragraphs and just line the week’s real numbers up against each other and let them fight. The rules: every figure is true, every link goes to the people who reported it, and the commentary is mine. The Gulf is quiet this weekend, by the way — nothing in the tropics with a name or an opinion — so the only cone anyone on this coast is watching is the one on West Fern Avenue in Foley. We’ll get there.
🐕 The Canine Division Is Hiring for a Position to Be Determined
Number of weapons-detection K-9s Pensacola Police just retired: 1
Number of new K-9s on the way to replace him: 2
Number of those two dogs the department has decided what to use for: 0, per the department’s own framing
They’ll figure it out once the dogs get here. This is the exact hiring philosophy every condo board on Perdido Key Drive uses for a property manager: bring them in, see what they’re good at, assign a specialty later. The dogs at least get a vest.
📉 A Decimal Point Moves and a Press Release Is Born
Escambia County unemployment rate, last month: 5.0%
Escambia County unemployment rate, this month: 5.1%
Official descriptor chosen for that movement: “nearly steady”
“Nearly steady” is also how I’d describe a man on a paddleboard in the Pass at 4 p.m. when the charter fleet is coming home. Technically upright. Nobody’s betting on it.
🏢 The County Would Like to Meet You, Preferably With a Vendor Number
Date of the Escambia County Office of Purchasing’s free open house for anyone who wants to do business with the county: Wednesday, September 2
Hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Spelling of the month in the announcement: “Septempber”
A four-hour window to learn how to get paid by the government, posted under a month that does not exist. If you’ve ever invoiced a county, you already know this is the most accurate thing they’ve ever published.
⚡ The Radar Check Has Been Institutionalized
Number of Escambia County schools now using a thing called WeatherSTEM to decide whether Friday night’s game goes on: all of them
Number of dads in the bleachers who were already doing this on their phones with an app and a tone of authority: every single one
Good. Truly — lightning and aluminum bleachers are a bad pairing and August is when they meet. But understand what’s happened here: the 3 o’clock radar check, the sacred local ritual, the thing your uncle does at the condo pool with one eye closed — it now has a vendor. The dads have been outsourced. If you want the beach’s version, the beach page has had the radar up all summer, and it’s never once made anybody wait in a parking lot for the all-clear.
🏈 Week One, by the Numbers
Final score, Spanish Fort over Daphne in the Baldwin County opener: 18-15
What WKRG called that result: “revenge”
Number of games into the season at the time: 1
Revenge on opening night. You have to admire a rivalry that shows up to the first game already holding last year’s grudge, like a snowbird who remembers exactly which chair you sat in last February.
⚾ Four Runs, Two Swings, One Very Nervous Scoreboard
Wahoos margin of victory Saturday night over Knoxville: one run, 4-3
Home runs that produced it: 2
Career Double-A starts for Saturday’s starter, Jacob Kisting, entering the night: 2
What Knoxville tried against him early, according to the recap: “small ball”
Knoxville played small ball; Pensacola answered with two large ones. That is the most Gulf Coast outcome available — we do not bunt down here, we swing, and if it doesn’t clear the fence we call it a fishing story. After a week of rain, suspensions, and delays, the Wahoos have now won 12 of their last 14. Nearly steady.
🚧 Postscript, From the Alabama Side
Length of West Fern Avenue in Foley closed starting Saturday: from Highway 59 to North Alston Street
Number of people who have ever described the drive through Foley to the beach as “fast”: still 0
So: a county that can’t spell the month it’s inviting you to, a police department that hired two specialists before picking a specialty, and a weather app that took the only job the dads had left. The dogs will be fine. They’ll be assigned something, someday, and until then they’re the two best-fed “nearly steady” employees on the Florida side. The cone on West Fern will outlast all of us.
— Chris
