Key West and Captain Tony

That afternoon at the Whale Harbor Inn was spent reliving the previous four days until Mike Mullins had the grand idea to hop into the landship and sail to Key West, so we took off down the Overseas Highway for Mile Marker 0 to watch the sunset.  The drive through the lower Keys has a much different “feel” than that of  the upper Keys.  The lower the number of the mile markers along the Overseas Highway, the slower the heart beats, and the lesser the pressure in the arteries.  We stopped on Big Pine Key for fabulous pizza at No Name Pub  (no, it is NOT on No Name Key), and at the Blue Hole for a look at indigenous flora and fauna.  We saw Key Deer on Bahia Honda which, full-grown, are about the size of  German shepherds.  I rarely see them these days since the state built the Big Fence for their protection.

We watched the famous Key West sunset from the roof of La Concha, and it surpassed all descriptions I had heard.  Although it is beautiful and must be seen with one’s own eyes, it was neither the colors, nor the looking for the elusive Green Flash (two of which I have been lucky enough to see), but the heaviness of the sea air tempered by light breezes, the sounds of buskers along Duval Street and at Mallory Square, the smell of conch fritters being deep-fried, the old open-air Key West bars full of laughing patrons dancing in the sweaty heat, the sight of hundred-year-old tin-roofed homes–wooden, and built to sway in  hurricanes, and the throngs of people from all walks and persuasions of life that sent to my mind the Buffett lyrics–“I have found me a home…”.

Later, we ambled down to Captain Tony’s Saloon, which was the last location of Sloppy Joe’s  Bar–watering hole of Ernest Hemingway before Sloppy Joe Russell moved one block to the corner of Greene and Duval Streets.  This was explained to me by a scruffy little man in the back of the saloon who then introduced himself.

“I’m Tony Tarracino, and I’m running for mayor!  Vote for me, will you?”

I explained that I was a tourist, but I wished him luck.  He was sans the look of any politician that I had ever seen, but Mike Mullins assured me that he really WAS running for mayor and that the sign being installed by the stage at that very moment –TONY TARRACINO FOR MAYOR–really did bear the name of the man to whom I was speaking.  I got a personal tour of the bar by the man himself,  which included an explanation of why there are grave markers in the pool room (it was the morgue at one time), a live oak tree growing out of the floor and through the roof, an old skeleton behind the bar, and all manner and sizes of brassieres left by female patrons attached to the ceiling.

“I love women, and they love me!  All of them!” declared the little man. 

I believed him.  A placard on the wall proclaimed that,  “All you need in this life is a tremendous sex drive and a great ego. Brains don’t mean a shit.”–Capt. Tony

As we were leaving, the little man winked and pinched me on the posterior. 

“Thanks for the luck”,  he said.

I ran into Captain Tony again  five or six years later,  and reminded him of my initial visit and our conversation.

  “I won!”, he exclaimed, “Served two years!” 

He winked and pinched my hindquarters again, as he did every time thereafter that I had the pleasure of running into him.

Captain Tony died in 2008..   I wish I had gone to his funeral parade, but settled for lighting a candle for him on a fall evening.  The Captain had a colorful reputation.   After all, he had four wives.  He outlived all but the last, to whom he was married for more than forty years.  He became another of my “characters of life”.  Each time I visit Key West, I go down to 428 Greene Street, toss a quarter over my shoulder into the mouth of the jewfish over the entrance (for luck) and take my seat at the corner of the bar,  still half-expecting to see a tiny old man coming across the street from the Kino plaza. That campaign sign is still there by the stage, and I still miss that pinch on the rear.  Rest in Peace,  Captain.

The Captain

Islamorada

From Ned, I learned a few unexpected lessons which have come in handy since. “Don’t peek at rice!”, has improved my cooking skills immeasureably. A five-gallon bucket of seawater with a third of a bottle of Downy Fabric Softener poured in and onto oneself is a fabulous bath after all day in salt water and sun. His advice not to swim behind someone else’s fins over upside-down jellyfish in the mangrove area was appreciated, as I watched some of the gang pouring ammonia over themselves and digging nematocysts out of their skin after doing so. It reminded me of Yankee tourists along The Battery in Charleston slapping themselves on the head when the no-see-ums come out at dusk, except nematocysts seem to land further south, anatomically speaking. The jellyfish themselves are wonderful shades of purple and green, resembling anemones as they lie on the bottom and wave to and fro in a sort of cnidarian feeding frenzy, but those stinging cells pack a punch, especially when they go all personal on you.  The barracuda turned out to be friendly, meaning they didn’t tear me to shreds.  It seems they are merely territorial, and just want to see what you’re doing.  I could see them from the corner of my eye, and as soon as I turned to look, they scrammed, lightning fast, but those teeth were intimidating, like underwater guard dogs.

 
The reefs are stunningly beautiful.  We visited reefs with wonderful names like “Hen and Chickens” and “Molasses Reef” and we saw huge brain coral, sea fans, moray eels, all manner of colorful fishes, an array of sponge species, fire coral (no touchy!), ray eyes peeking from beneath the sand, and yes, a few sharks…I had a feeling almost like reverence, and an awareness that I was “allowed” to be there by the inhabitants.

In the evenings, we lounged aboard after cooking our dinner, enjoyed a few rounds of grog, and some great stories about the old ship wreckers and Dr. Henry Perrine, who lived and was massacred on nearby Indian Key, the pterodactyl–or large mosquito–attacks on Lignumvitae Key suffered by some of our gang, and a few baudy jokes, of course. I slept up by the mainsail, under a billion stars, rocked to sleep by the waves in a place that would later become nearly as familiar to me as my backyard. It was heaven.

We ran aground on the way back in, and it took all of us hanging butts off the side to rock off the bottom even AFTER the tide rose.   Ned fretted and paced, but we finally got going after a few hours, and escaped flogging since the captain takes the flack for that, and not the crew.

Twelve or so years later, I was in a marine biology workshop in St. Petersburg, and I looked up from my sponge specimen to discover a rangy fellow with scraggly blond hair and an outdated hearing aid hanging from his neck sitting across from me.
“Ned?”
“Aye? We’ve met?”, he asked.
I reminded him of the trip, and he remembered.  He explained that he had been run out of the Keys for running aground too often.  He had, however, on his last trip out to the reefs, met and fallen in love with Francia–the wonderful lady biologist who was conducting the workshop. The Moku Mokai was now moored in Coffee Pot Bayou in St. Pete, and he was happy.
“I remember you, he said. “You were the only one who listened and didn’t wind up diggin’ stingers outta yer craw!”
I smiled.
We agreed to meet up for grog sometime, but we know how that goes.  I heard that Francia retired, and I have not seen Ned the Pirate since.   Wherever you are, friend, thanks for the lessons!  And may you have fair winds and following seas…

Ned the Pirate

We rose early the next morning at the behest of Mike Mullins and climbed into the van, now loaded with four days of supplies and gear.

“Got to be on time or Ned’ll flog ya!”, he chortled.

Flogging–after a night of jokes, tall tales and “takillya” was not our idea of a way to begin an adventure, so we got a move on. A few miles down the Overseas Highway, we pulled into a small marina and in front of one of the prettiest sailing ships I’ve ever seen. She was shallow-draft, forty-one feet bow to stern, and stately. The Moku Mokai. Standing up by the mainsail was Ned the Pirate. I had expected him to be dark, bearded, and swarthy, seeing as how he was a pirate and all, but this man was tall, lean, beardless, and dressed in white, gauzy, loose-fitting garments that ended at the elbows and the knees. He had thin, very blond hair that fell to his shoulders, and he wore one of those old-fashioned hearing aids that had an amplifier that hung from his neck. No parrot on his shoulder. After a round of introductions and handshakes, I noticed that he had the gravelly voice of a pirate, and kind eyes which were green with flecks of yellow. He initially appeared to be a bit on the shy side–a strange attribute for one called a pirate. Ned would become one of my favorite “characters of life”–one of those people with whom you have a fleeting relationship and who, in later years, you remember at odd times and are thankful to include in your autobiographical musings.

“Grab your gear and come aboard, sailors, and remember boats are slippery”, he
growled. “Broken bones’ll slow you down. Hurry up or I’ll flog ya!”

One hour later, we pulled anchor lines and shoved off, motoring slowly out past the
shallows. Ned cut engine power. We all pulled sheets and tied off the main.
“POP-WHAP-Sssssssss…”, we heard.

Up went the jib, and off we went into the Straits of Florida, leaning into the wind. I understood then why people do crazy things like sell everything they have and sail around the world, for at the moment that those sails pop, Henley whispers into your ear, “I am the Master of my Fate, I am the Captain of my Soul.”

It was a mother of a storm…

We stopped for gas in Florida City– just south of Homestead which, a few years thence, was nearly removed from existence by Hurricane Andrew.  It occurred to me that I had neglected to tell my mother, who lived in South Carolina,  that I was going on a trip.  She is the kind of mother who, if you live under her roof, owns your life.    She waits up for you, offers unsolicited opinions, tells you what you can and cannot do, and surreptitiously reads your mail.  She would do this if you were eighty-five years old.  Once you move out, your life is yours and she mostly ceases butting into your affairs, so this was a courtesy call.  

 Generally, her first question when I called her in those days was, “Where are you?”  Today was no different, but when I answered that I was going on a little sailing trip off of the Florida Keys, her reply was, “You can’t go down there!  There’s a hurricane coming!” 

I had heard on the radio that a storm was near to passing over St. Croix, but paid it no mind. 

“Oh, don’t worry mama, I don’t think it’s a very big one, and it won’t come here.” 

“You don’t know that!  Florida has hurricanes all the time, so don’t you go out on that boat!”, she warned.
“I’ll call you when I get back!  Hi to Daddy, and don’t worry”, I said.  She was still
shrieking something having to do with “fool hijinks” when I hung up the phone. 

We traversed the first bridge on US 1 and there we were–Key Largo, one of more
than 4,000 keys.  On the left were the Straits of Florida, and on the right, Buttonwood Sound, part of the Gulf of Mexico.   The water looked like a painting I
had seen somewhere in a travel brochure–a medley of blues and greens depending upon what was underneath it, with mangroves and white sand lining the shore. 
Bertie Higgins was singing in my head, “Here’s lookin’ at you kid…”,  and it wasn’t
even annoying.

We passed John Pennekamp State Park–an underwater dive park which boasts a
statue of Jesus amongst the corals–and traveled over one archipelago after another
on the Overseas Highway until we reached Islamorada–The Island of Purple–our
destination.  The sky was blue, and the sea an amalgam of greens,  just the right
amount of natural beauty and tourista tackiness, and I got a feeling that this was to
be my new favorite place.  As a native Carolinian, I loved the smell of plough mud at low tide (mixed with a hint of jasmine, of course) in the lowcountry.  This was different, but it rendered in me the same heady feeling I used to get riding across the bridge to Garden City Beach as a child.  We made a quick trip to the IGA and settled in at the Whale Harbor Inn before our meeting with Ned the Pirate the next morning.  More about that sailing trip later.  Today happens to be Mothers Day, so I am skipping ahead.  Four days later, as we disembarked from the Moku Mokai,  I asked one of the marina hands who had helped us tie up,  “Hey, where’d that hurricane go?”  I was thinking that my mother would be still all a-twitter that I had, once again, defied her wishes.

“It was a monster”, he said, “Landed in South Carolina.”

Following is a photo that I snapped of the Moku Mokai on September 22, 1989 as Hurricane Hugo was battering the Isle of Palms, near Charleston.   It is entitled “Out of Hugo’s Reach”.

Happy Mothers Day, Mama!  Hijinks, indeed!

Fine Feathered Friends

The Everglades of Florida is the only ecosystem of its kind on Earth.  Its abundance and diversity of organisms is well-known and documented, yet riding across it on Old 41, I was struck by its sameness.  Miles and miles of sawgrass and sloughs.  Once you pass those, still more miles of sawgrass and sloughs until you get to a shock of an exit–Greater Miami. 

 Mike educated us the whole way across.  We learned all about the stuff we could not see, like periphyton, snakes and gator holes.  In dry seasons, gators use their tails to whisk big holes in the mud which conserves water and gives them a place to wait for better weather.  When an unsuspecting mammal or bird comes up to take a drink,  GATOR LUNCH!  What a way to go!  We learned about coastal and estuarine mangroves, the importance of fire and rain, invasive species, and the not-so-brilliant plan of the late ninteenth century land barons to drain the whole thing.  It takes a drop of water about a year to squeeze its way through the mud of the River of Grass from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay.  With no Everglades, there would be no Florida coral reefs, and no fish hatcheries for the southeastern Gulf of Mexico.  Good stuff–enthralling to a science buff like me.  After the Irishman  launched into a history of the millenery trade of the early twentieth century (nearly wiping out the big wading birds so ladies could wear feathered hats), it occurred to me that I had seen egrets, herons–Great Blues and Little Greens, cattle birds, vultures, and osprey, but NOT A SINGLE FLAMINGO the whole way across!  I had also not added a single tidbit to the round of discourse of the other adventurers and was feeling intellectually gauche.  Of course, I had to ask…., “Where are the flamingoes?” 

It was like lightning, then thunder.  Silence, then a deafening, simultaneous eruption of laughter.  After five solid minutes of shrieks and howls from my nearly-native new friends, Mike patiently answered, “This’d be the wrong park for that, kid.  You’ll be wantin’ to see Busch Gardens.”

And that’s how I learned that flamingoes are from South America…

Going south…

A few months after the landing,  I met a biologist named Mike Mullins.  He was an Irishman with all of the stereotypical features that Irishmen are supposed to possess–flaming red hair, freckles, and bright blue eyes -complete with the requisite twinkle.  He was jovial, crazy, and fearless.  After a late night pub visit and Guinness, Mike asked me if I cared to accompany him and a group of adventurers down to the Florida Keys to spend four days on a sailing ship called the “Moku Mokai”, refurbished from the waterline up by a friend of his named Ned the Pirate. (No kidding.)  We were going to snorkel the reefs and mangroves and check out fire coral, upside-down jellyfish, and–nurse sharks.  To that point, I had been intrigued by a trip to somewhere new that included a crazy Irishman, an old teak forty-one footer, a pirate, and was even okay with the fire coral and the jellyfish, but I was from the Carolina Piedmont where a snake is a snake, and a shark is a shark.  I had seen “Jaws” in the State Theatre in 1974, and after that, the waters of Myrtle Beach never lapped above my knees.  I balked.   Just a little.

“Aw, they only bite ya if ya step on ’em! More scared o’ you than you o’ them”,  he said, “Besides, tequila’ll take the fear outta ya and I carry a bit of it!”

After a safety speech like that, who would risk being called “chicken”?  Two days later, I had purchased new gear  and was riding in a packed-out rattletrap van headed across Alligator Alley into the Everglades.  Of course, Mike asked the inevitable question. 

 “No, I have never seen an alligator in the wild”,  I answered. 

The van suddenly Starsky and Hutched–cloud of dust and all–into a wildlife observation area.  I had only seen the Everglades on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and the alligators were mostly solitary and exactly where one would expect to see them.  Marlin Perkins NEVER SAID that they lie in clumps of thirty or forty,  and that they don’t KNOW they are not supposed to climb up onto the boardwalk where the people are.  He also never pointed out that they will lie still as though dead– prompting folks to wonder whether or not they are real.  Then, one of them slowly gapes open his jaws and then snaps them closed, sounding like someone slamming shut a large trunk.  That little gator trick ended our visit for that day, but I made an effort to remain composed as I walked –and did not run–back to the van.  So proud of myself–I was going to become a regular Floridian!

Throwing the van into reverse, the Irishman says,  “I did mention no jewelry in the waters over the reef, right?  Barracuda go fer that…”

Oysters and Friends

I love oysters in every form they are served. I could do a diatribe on them like the one Bubba did in “Forrest Gump”, because they have been a diet staple for me from the beginning of my Great Florida Adventure. I prefer them raw on a cracker with horseradish and hot sauce, a smidgeon of lemon, and shucked by someone else. Pat Conroy said in one of his novels that they taste like the sea.  No offense, Mr. Conroy, but I think I said it first while sitting on a natural oyster bar in the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of Mason’s Creek,  surrounded by turtlegrass and blue-green water–just me and my butter knife! One of the best nights ever was spent shucking a wheelbarrow full of Appalachiacola oysters and steaming them over hot bricks with a burlap sack. Many a rainy-season day has turned beatific as I sat in urban oyster bars in Tampa–the kind with benches pulled up to a thick cypress table with a hole in the middle and fish net draped everywhere–slugging a couple dozen with good friends, and a Mexican lager and lime.  I don’t know about that aphrodisiac claim, but my oyster occasions have involved lots of laughter and hare-brained plans for shenanigans.   I miss those days plenty.

Near Nirvana

I bunked in with a friend who was the only person I knew in Florida, and next on the agenda was to find a J-O-B. There are two tried and true methods here of finding employment. The first is to know someone. The second, nearly as effective, is to know someone who knows someone. I went the route of the second method combined with a bit of fortuitousness. It turned out that my soon-to-be boss was born in my hometown and he had heard of someone who I knew!  It was a match made in heaven, because nearly everyone who is here is from somewhere else, so that made him and me almost like blood kin in the larger perspective.   Since I had a job already as assistant basketball coach at the local college, teaching at the junior high would turn out to be a great way to make some extra money, meaning the pay was lousy, but it came with benefits–including a pension.
“We pay your pension for you, so don’t worry about the low pay. Plus, since you’re here, you don’t have to move to retire!”
Sold!!!

Landing in Paradise

I landed here twenty three years ago.  In the words of the great poet, James William Buffett, Jr., “Amore primera vista…”– Love at first sight!  Sun, sand, palm trees,  an incredible laid-backness, and people from every corner of the world–an environmental and cultural conflation the likes of which I had yet to experience. Hailing from a tiny cotton mill town in the Carolinas, I had found my hometown environs to be limited and stifling to my wandering soul.  I had endured a schism of cultural views and an alienation of spirit that marked much of my young life, until one day, I told my beloved Carolina to kiss my mill-town ass and headed down the escape hatch of I-95 South. It was my first-ever moment of liberty.