Well, naturally enough, there is nothing to be afraid of in Key West, except an outbreak of immoderation. I thought I could resist anything but temptation, like Oscar Wilde, and walking through the deliriously sun-drenched streets toward the Historic District that I might suddenly find myself healed, and hurl away the cane and begin to dance.
The streets are starting to come into focus after several forays out from White Street on foot, fearing only a fall of my own initiative. White Street, my base of operations, is just a little north of the main Key West Cemetery. The building that houses the apartment is nearly a hundred years old- built on the site of the block cleared by the old cigar factory that went up in 1923.
Just up the block is the historic armory, a spired wooden building whose existence is due to the allegiance of The Rock to the Union during the Civil War, and the proximate cause of the informal national cemetery next to my building. There are several views about the cemetery, held by the drivers of the Island Trolley the rumbles under my balcony. “..found bones…” says one, depending on where he or she might be in the script, or “…Union dead of yellow fever…” or, “…never will built upon…”
So, the dead are next door, and also up a couple blocks on Angela Street. I was wandering that way because my journey to the Botanical garden would require either actually getting in the Panzer or buying a bicycle. I elected to do neither, dragged out the cane, stumped down the steps of the apartment building’s central staircase, and popped out into the street.
I adore the homes here- they evoke the pleasant gingerbread cottages improbably located in Bay View, the old Methodist Retreat in the Little Village By the Bay. Those pleasant Victorian fantasies are not winterized, by intent, and wait the long months in the winter fallow, even as their chronological cousins open up for the snowbirds, and harbor locals all the year round.
Here is Bay View in Michigan:
And here is Key West.
No wonder I feel like I am home. My pal in the Shenandoah sent me a link to a fine book that will help me decipher the styles of the homes: “A Field Guild to the American Houses,” by Virginia and Lee McAlester. I ordered it, not that it will arrive in time to help this trip, but what the hell.
And hell (and heaven) occurred to me as I passed the gate to the real Key West Cemetery, not the accidental national cemetery next to the building on White Street. The real one is something else completely: a jumble of white rectangles that houses perhaps 100,000 former residents- hell, not former, they still are here in the off season- of The Rock. The full-time population is only 30,000, so it is an impressive thing.
The guidebooks tell me it is a sprawl of almost twenty acres on the highest point in town, Solares Hill. Non-residents might not notice the hill at all, but even a few feet of elevation can make an enormous difference when the hurricanes come, as they always do.
The city began to place their dead here after the storm of 1846, when the wind and waves washed human bodies from the earlier plot on the coastal sand dunes on Whitehead Point near the West Martello Towers.
I wandered into the cemetery looking for the memorial and graves associated with the disaster on board the USS Maine, a controversial event that propelled the United States into the mad imperial quest in the Caribbean and Western Pacific.
I took a bunch of photos- there are two new albums on the Facebook page with all of them- but will not trouble you with them here. Once I had my quota of time with the dead, I wandered again down to Truman and took a left, heading downtown. It may have been five o’clock somewhere, but I was determined to postpone cocktail hour to a reasonable moment, and savored the sun-drenched streets.
I wandered down past Mile Marker 0, and looked for a way onto the old Navy Base from Whitehead Street. I managed to find the Key West version of the Projects, and realized I was going to need a better plan to find my way to the Fort Zachary Taylor, which a new pal indicates has “got a lot of ghosts.”
I have not seen that many since I was in the engine room of Admiral Dewey’s Flagship, the ex-Olympia, so I guess I am ready
I won’t tell you the moment my feet began to follow the cane back in the direction of Duval. I passed the Green Parrot, thinking of the note from a pal about why Ernie Hemingway had no association with the closest (and oldest) bar to his home.
My pal Point Loma used to live here, and he has an explanation: “Word is that Hemingway got tired of being challenged to boxing matches on Whitehead Street, which is one of the reasons he fled to Cuba (as well as some of his relationships that were chasing him over some legal affairs). According to the legend, they used to have boxing matches upstairs in the corner building, that is now the Blue Heaven compound.”
It makes complete sense to me- when Ernie used to hang out at the Park Grill in the Little Village By The Bay, boxing matches were a regular event for him. I imagine the years and the booze kind of took the edge off things- and that the bartender at the Green Parrot was wrong. Papa probably was avoiding the pugnacious drunken Sailors who inhabited the place.
Nor can I tell you the precise reason I found myself sitting at the open-the-the-air downstairs bar of the The Bull, located conveniently below the Whistle Bar (second deck) and the clothing-optional Garden of Eden (rooftop). I do know that dark-haired Frank the carpenter and his bride Donna to my left, and that crazy drunk couple from New York’s Finger Lakes to my right had their issues.
I resisted the temptation to shop for souvenirs at the Lost Weekend Liquor store on the way out- I was still wearing my Ray Bans and realized I was going to have some problems navigating back to White Street in the deepening dusk. I resisted the temptation to shop for souvenirs at the Lost Weekend Liquor Store, and took the opportunity to hail a pedicab out on Duval.
I had not been in one of those contraptions since that visit to New Delhi years ago, and on this one, I had every expectation that I could be unafraid that terrorists would drag me from the seat and behead me.
We creaked along at a civilized pace, and it turned out the peddling cabbie was from Ukraine, and we had a quite animated discussion about Mr. Vladimir Putin and the future of the East as we rolled along. Most folks on foot were headed for Duval, a perfectly rational thing to do, but I thought maybe I might visit again tomorrow.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
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