(Image of artist Sanchez, at the Sanchez Corner at the Green Parrot Bar. Photo Socotra).
I understood from Debbie, the sturdy and personable blonde morning bartender at The Bull that the muralist would be around in the morning to touch up his masterwork- the gigantic mural at the end of the downstairs bar featuring sailors at leisure.
The pictures from the day are posted on the Facebook page; I will attempt to be more focused here, though things are a bit foggy this morning through no direct fault of my own. I was doing historical research to buttress the odd mirror-images of Key West and Petoskey, the Little Village By The Bay.
Debbie wasn’t in, the usual morning drunks were distributed around the bar. The hard-edged older woman was behind the bar doing a crossword puzzle as the tempo of life on Duval started to come alive on a Friday. I leaned over to get her attention, and asked if the artists was around, and she said he was. Sure enough, a burly bearded man was at a back table surrounded by pots of paint and assorted brushes, working on a rectangular canvas depicting a bottle of rum.
I asked if he was the artist who painted the mural, and sure enough, he was. He said his name was Steve Heuel, mostly of Wisconsin, and he does heroic murals for a living. I asked him about this one, and he launched into the description.
A fellow named Waldo Peirce, of Maine, had been a pal of Ernie Hemingway’s, and had been encouraged to come down and play with Papa. He was an outdoorsman, fisherman and hunter, and a painter. He captured the Fleet of the mid-1930s at their leisure at the Silver Slipper Dance Hall, which was adjacent to the Hemingway hangout, Sloppy Joe’s.
This is the original, as done by Waldo. It is at Sothbey’s auction house for between ten and fifteen thousand bucks. The artist is the bearded man to the upper left. Through the door in upper left middle is Ernie, back to viewer, in ball cap, being served by the imposing African-American bartender-cum-bouncer, Skinner, in Joe’s proper.
Steve tried to find who had the Peirce estate rights to the work, and managed to track down an elderly woman who was the last of the family. She gave him permission to do this version:
Anyway, Steve told me how he had done the work and been faithful to the original artist’s intent. I thought it was cooler than shit, and would mention it to the owner of the Park Grill, the doppleganger bar to Sloppy Joes in northern Michigan. Ernie used to box in the lot next to that restaurant, too, and that is part of the spooky continuity of the Hemingway legacy. He thought he would like to get across the Lake to Michigan to do it, so I am putting that on my list of things to get on right away.
I thought about that, writing notes at Rick’s up the block, The men’s hockey game between the US and Canada was on, sort of appropriate, and I chatted with Kelly the bartender until the place filled up with Canadians shouting at the TV and with the singer shouting at the Canadians, and beseeching the women to lift their tops.
Rick’s offers a discount on drinks to military personnel, active and retired, which is a good deal unless you have things to do, which did not get done.
I did wind up getting an excellent Cuban sandwich at one of the oldest bodegas on the island, the Five Brothers, as a man opened the door as I was trudging by. weaving my way home for a siesta, which would enable me to power on to hook up with Marlow and his wife W, and then embark on another voyage of musical discovery.
That one wove its way, eventually, from their amazing home and through the Green Parrot with and a jazz fusion band with horns and enthusiasm and a host of aging Parrot Heads- real ones, not the Jimmy Buffet kind- and then to the upstairs cigar bar of the 90 Mile Lounge. Marlow knows the right people, and we watched the set unfold by the blues guys, the trio known as the Delta Swamp Rats, Steve Arvey, up front, who frankly knocked my sox off.
And not just mine. We puffed some of Marlow’s fine un-Cuban cigars, and were amazed when an older gentleman in a stingy-brim hat joined in on Fender jazz-base. The singer said he was a Cuban who had toured with Tito Fuentes, and by God it was cool to see his dextrous fingers pluck that bass. A complete professional from another age.
A couple good enough to be professionals were putting on a demonstration of dance, the almost scary stuff with the female inverted at times, and the drinks were cold and pleasant, and eventually we were cooking everything left in the fridge at the apartment on White Street. I was praying I had enough bandwidth left in the month’s account to post the pictures and the last story of the Key West part of the trip, and prayed I would not be too hung over to drive, and then wondered why the hell I am going back north at all.
I thought about Peirce the artist, and the vibrancy that continues apace on this strange little island in the sun. Maybe sometime soon people will be asking where I got off to, a sort of “Where’s Waldo?” in the mural of our lives in suburban DC and I will actually know.
Crap. Gotta get on the road. I need to call Marlow and W to say good-bye- or what is that thing the French do? Not ‘good-bye,’ but “adieu?”
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
twitter: @jayare303