The highest §1 point in Key West FREE Vol. 1, No. 19 ' Key West, F l o r i d a J u l y , 1976 i I TWt MONSTER noomom KECWEST,FLA • SUMMER MENU-- SANDWICHES- SALADS SEKVINd DAILY • EXCEPT i LAi r Condi tione4 PiscoPminr 6 Teadari Opening July 2 Sportswear, Casuals, & Accessories 505 Duval St. From the Editor Many people were very concerned .about the Cattle Quarantine Station that Gil Ryder wrote about in the June issue. Mainly they wanted to know if it was official and unstoppable and if not> what could they do to help stop it. Gil stated in the article "that a 25 year use agreement has been made between the U.S. Department of Agri- culture and the Naval Facilities Engi- neering Command." Also the City Com- mission adopted a resolution endors- ing the Cattle Quarantine Station on September 15, 1975. Gil feels that probably not all plans and details have been nailed down and that a fight can be carried on. He suggests that individuals write to Senator Chiles and Represen- tative Dante Fascell and send copies of letters to the Governor and the Attorney General. "Fifty protesting letters with one signature or one let- ter with 50 signatures can make a big difference in the thinking on this subjeat" Gil says. Be points out also that a citizen who has time and money could probably get an injunction against this project. One of the points of the injunction might be questioning if the Navy has the right to turn this land over to another agency in the first place. But, even without a citizen with time and money to personally fight it, letters with signatures should be got- ten together and sent to these offi- cials . Our cover this time is by artist Robert Carawan. Robert has been study- ing at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota and, at present, is working for Greene Street Graphics. Robert is another example of the exceptionally high calibre of art we have had on our covers. Martha dePoo, Conrad Lamm, Joe Regan and now Robert Carawan. It's a great start and we have a fine cover by Steve Roberts on tap for the next issue. Sharp-eyed readers were able to spot a mistake in the June article on "Crip" Lastres. The paper read that he was born in 1922 and had died one year ago at the age of 46. The arithmetic doesn't work and the many people who knew "Crip" knew that he had died 8 years ago. Had I done my job and proofread this article I would have caught this error. Another mistake and a horrendous one indeed happened in the Italian Gardens ad where we advertise a 3 os. Martini for $1.99 when, egad, the cost is but 99$. What happened was that originally we had put down a $1.99 but Richard Lischer spotted the mistake and told us to change it to 99 fhrnh and call • 2=14- 644O it y:3C am - HGTOS some remarks Here it is, July, the month that high- lights this bicentennial year. Fire- works , parades and flags flying. These are good things to remind us of our heritage — even the crass commercial- ism probably serves a purpose. It might be a good time for each of us to study and define our own personal individual patriotism - or lack of it. Our feelings of patriotism are too often rather narrow- ly confined to wartime activities and occasional celebrations. Patriotism should really mean much more. We should be not only willing but proud to accept jury duty, to register and vote, not only for candidates but on referendum issues. We should, each of us, take the time to study candidates and issues, and to dis- cuss candidates and issues with our fam- ilies, friends and neighbors, ready to listen quietly to opposing viewpoints. If we all go to the polls armed with knowledge and are completely honest with ourselves, we are bound to put the right people in office and make proper deci- sions on issues most of the time. Quite often the choice is limited, but there ij3_ a choice, and a small move in the right direction is better than no move at all. Improving government is at best a slow process but it can be done if enough people participate. If a parti- cular candidate impresses you favorably, do more than vote -- send a contribution in the amount you can afford to his or her campaign fund. Volunteer to address mail, stuff envelopes, make phone calls, or help in some way. Remember, candi- dates favoring special interests have less trouble acquiring funds that the candidate who wants to represent the best interests of all the people. Ask yourself what problems really bother you: Inflation? Crime? Drug addiction? Medical costs? Auto Insurance? Lack of Nursing Home facility? Would you like to put a stop to the senseless vandalism that goes on? Would you like to see more of good things such as the beautification of Duval St.? It is well within your power to correct the evils and continue to im- prove the good things. You not only have the power, it is your patriotic duty to use that power for the betterment of the community, state and nation. There is an obvious effort to take the power away from you. For instance, there will be a referendum in the next election, in- volving doing away with the referendum law on bond issues for the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority. If you lose your right to vote on these financial matters, you are giving a few people the right to saddle you, your children, and your FABRIC WORLD 4 613 SIMONTONi TEL.294-1773/KEY WEST.FLA. granuchildren with a monstrous debt, with out so much as a "by your leave". We all thought that we were going to elect our FKAA members of the board - now that subject will be on the referendum ba l lo t . Thomas Jefferson said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty", and you'd bet- ter believe i t ! The advocates of 'Special Interest are constantly working to under- mine the power of the people. They even have some good people believing that only Communists advocate the power of the peo- ple. " . . . and that government of the peo- ple, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Not a quota- tion from Marx, Trotsky, Lenin or Khrush- chev, but from Abraham Lincoln, an Amer- ican president who believed in the people . A gentleman named Alcuin, in a le t t e r to Charlemagne (A.D. 800) advised him, "Vox populi, vox Dei". (The voice of the peo- ple is the voice of God.) God may not be as popular now as he was ' in those days, but the thinking is s t i l l sound. A l i t - t le more Latin wisdom: "Vox pecuniae, vox diaboli". (The voice of the dollar is the voice of the devil.) See if you can locate the author of that yourself. It won't do anyone a bit of harm to study something besides the sport pages. The future of the community and the country * is in your hands, for good or evil — and the greatest evil is done by good people who do nothing. Every flaw in our culture may be corrected by electing the right persons to the right offices. The right persons are of neces- sity the most intelligent people we can possibly get to accept.the offices. Our revered forebears had a tendency to elect the ignorant to office. They did things like putting a bounty on bobcats and then couldn't understand why they became over- run with ra ts . Today we have intel l igent people available who would know better — let ' s work to get them elected. Everyone who can vote cannot get openly involved in a battle for intell igent can- didates and good government — i t ' s not the arena for sensitive souls — but they can al l vote and, in this bicen- tennial year, express their patriotism quietly but powerfully at the polls . The issues are important and there are definite differences in the candidates. Gil Ryder GOOD NEWS! Mannie James, Key West City Attorney, said that the Administra- tive Appeal submitted almost two months ago will be heard after the new Commis- sioner is appointed. This Appeal, if you recall , asks the city to take some action on the building going on at Rest Msch _We'll let you know what happens. ARTISTS UNLIMITED A&m pp quality wnt , 4T \ one block k/ TTJ soorh of "the J^^ Erjjoy goad "wine / \ \ >v WIITljTCIIIllDr fv p v \ on our candlelit j i n w wu t̂ vAia ^ . &&Gf) e*-unoh ©t^fts At i^. n«>A share together a common love and that is love of their homes, their streets, their friends, their city. We have witnessed the harnessing of great rivers to creat electricity for the good of man, we have witnessed the harnessing of great fears to cre- ate wars to the detriment of man - let us now witness the harnessing of the great force that makes Key West so strong. Love for Key West brings us together; i t can work for us, also. If, as i t appears, our economic survival depends on tourists, can we not all together paint this town in beautiful colors? Imagine a ride down tree and flower filled lanes filled with cottages painted in bright Ca- ribbean colors. Could we not put the unemployed youth of this town to work painting, fixing up, and improv- ing? Could we not receive funds to help us in this project from the gov- ernment, thereby beautifying our town, putting our local unemployed to work, and attracting tourists at the same time? Could we not dot the whole is- land with beautiful l i t t l e parks that would be cared for by the people of that area? Is i t not possible that a large manufacturer of playground equipment would donate swings and slides to us as a community service? Would not the work being done by those who love Key West be first rate?' Would not this community enterprise help overcome any angers that may s t i l l exist between different groups of Its citizens? This is not idle talk. Actually i t is more important than beautifying our town, giving employment to our people, and attracting tourists. Our troubled country has no place to look at nor example to draw from where peo- ple can work together in harmony, live together peacefully as neighbors, play together happily as friends. Though in Key West we be many different peo- ple culturally, racially, factionally, religiously, and ideologically, we are united by our common love of place. Whatever wounds we have among our- selves here, they are small compared to the deep, unhealing wounds of the mainland. Key West can show our coun- try what it desperately needs to see. And then, as the toe of the country heals, so heals the country.. (For a bicentennial me'ssage I have chosen to return to an editorial I wrote over 5 years ago. At this time I was run- ning for City Commissioner and I wanted to put down, as close as I could, what I felt was the "why" of Key West. I feel the same now as I did then but there have been some changes in Key West's history- I wrote then about Key West that "it Con't on p.15 Come, Sample, Enjoy! 528 Rant Street 540 Greene Street Key West, Florida 33040 Over 100 Unique Fragrances - beautifully packaged! Fine Cosmetics, Sun, and After-Sun Products — Made from high concentrations of Aloe extract in our own laboratory in Key West...where the Afoe grows. YOU AU WCLCOMC 70 WAKH O0« lAiOKATOKY AT WO«Ki Also: Milemarker 82. Islamoradjj. Key West Island Bookstore oj he fa in. a GALLERIES July 1st. we are moving 711 Duval St.' (at Angela) Customer Parking at Rear of Store custom framing art supplies gallery 294-6911 619% Duval St. 294-2904 \n Old K ^ West next to the Aquarium at* Mallory Square •REEF TRIPS • for inexperienced, and experienced alike • small groups •free snorfcelirg instruction BIKE RENTAL. • «see Old Toum from Old Tbtun PICNICS AND EXPLORING •campmg on out inlands 9pec»aTarronc|em«nt bu SAILING CHARTERS 8* 3O- 5*- SOS- MOWER NATURES 60UNTV, Frvtfand Vegetable Juice Bar WATER a crisis by Art Weiner (This is the first in a series of scientific articles to deal with the ba- sic resources of Monroe County and what we can do to best preserve them. Art Weiner 's next article will deal with re- verse osmosis we'll systems, cisterns, etc. ) WATER Like a modern-day Ancient Mariner, the seeker after a water meter or a cold shower in the Florida Keys often finds "water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink". Ironically, the problem of a water shortage, rather than being local to the Keys is becoming increasingly widespread throughout the world. The irony of the situation is that, by far, water is the most abundant single substance on the earth's surface, cover- ing more than two-thirds of the planet. The earth's oceans, ice caps, glaciers, lakes, rivers, soils and atmosphere con- tain 1.5 billion cubic kilometers of wat- er in one form or another. So how can i t be that we face a wa- ter crisis? In order to understand the problem, we must know something about the substance-water-H^O. In nearly all of its physical and chemical properties water is unique. And from these unusual characteristics flows the biological significance of wa- ter. For instance, at temperatures and pressures characteristic of the earth's surface, water is one of the few sub- stances which occurs in all three forms of matter - solid, liquid and gas. More- over, according to results from the most recent space probes, the earth is prob- ably the only celestial body in our so- lar system to contain any liquid water whatsoever. The unusual thermal properties of water give the world's oceans an extra- ordinary degree of control over our climate. Because water has such a high heat capacity i t can absorb great amounts of heat while i t s own temperature rises only slightly. Conversely, as energy is released i ts temperature drops more slow- ly than most other materials. This slow warming and cooling, together with other important factors [great thermal conduc- tivity and large latent heat of evapora- tion] affects yearly, daily and even hourly changes in the temperature of oceans, lakes and the atmosphere. Thus this buffering effect prevents wide var- iation in the earth's surface temperature thereby creating a mild climate conducive to the existence of l i fe . But what is it that is so special about water itself that makes i t essen- tial to the existence of life? It is no mere coincidence that the region of the earth where life exists - the "biosphere" - is a region in which liquid water can be found in substantial quantities. Life most probably originated in water - i t makes up over 80 per cent of the bodies of most organisms, serving as a median of transport and as a solvent. More substances can be dissolved in water than in any other solvent, and since nearly all chemical reactions take place while the reacting molecules are in solution, most life processes depend upon materials being dissolved or sus- pended in a watery medium. For example, during the digestive process, when large food molecules such as starches are bro- ken into smaller sugars, water is essen- t ial . Water molecules also directly enter into that most significant of processes - photosynthesis, wherein water is used as the source of hydrogen atoms needed in making sugars. And during respiration, the surfaces of your lungs must be wet in order for the molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide to move to and from your blood. As well as performing these essential functions within the bodies of living things, water also serves as the "habitat" of many kinds of organisms. A great many of the earth's million or so creatures live in the ocean or in fresh water. Those which have evolved to 'a land exis- tence s t i l l carry within themselves, en- closed against evaporation their own wa- tery worlds. This absolute requirement for water by living things is , in the case of land- dwelling creatures, a requirement for freshwater. T Canal oM *5fvue-ture. of Ger\eralize4 Herein l ies the problem. The seawater of the world's oceans and seas make up about 97 per cent of al l water. Of the remaining'3 per cent, three quarters is locked up as solid in •the polar ice caps and in glaciers. And when one measures the volume of water in a l l of the world's lakes, r ivers and streams s one finds that i t represents only 1.5 per cent of the plan- e t ' s l iquid freshwater, since 97-5^ per cent is to be found underground. The remainder is in the form of atmospheric water vapor and moisture in the soi l . Man's exploitation of groundwater is quite extensive. Each year in the United States, about 500,000 wells are dug and approximately half the ^0,000 water systems in the U.S. use some sub- surface water. This dependence upon groundwater i s increasing throughout the d In the next century the world wide demana ior water is expected to in- crease eightfold. In the U.S.. water consumption has doubled since 1950 and Is expected to double asrair. ov the v<;-,":~" 2000." The continued aval lab i I it v of hii"h groundwater Is especially important to the residents of the Florida Keys irlnc- the primary source of water for thic ar-a is the 18 inch, 130 mile long aqueduct constructed by the Navy in 19i,0 . The water for the aqueduct Is pumped fron wellflelds in Florida City which tap in- to the southern end of the Elscsyne Aq- uifer, the top of which is at ground sur- face throughout much of Dade Count" [z~e fig- 1]. An aquifer is essentially a porous geological formation which has formed over an impermeable or non-porouE reck layer. The Impervious layer serves to trap and channel the water which has ac- cumulated in the level above It. Ee- charge of the Biscayne Aquifer is accom- plished in two ways. Rain falling di- rectly over the aquifer seeps through the soil and into the permeable rock be lew. Additional recharge is managed by the Central and Southern Flood Control District which maintains and operates a system of levees, canals, control struc- tures, pumping stations and water stor- age areas [see fig. 2]. This regional water system controls the freshwater re- sources of Palm Beach, Eroward, Dade and Monroe Counties. The heart of this system is Lake Okeechobee whose primary source of water is the Kissimmee River, the headwaters of which lie in the Orlando area. Levees Impound water in the lake and in three water conservation areas to the southeast. The system is designed to provide flood protection and to conserve water for the urbanized and agricultural areas of southeastern Florida. Water levels in this region rise during the rainy season until they reach annual highs, usually in October. Flow in the canals of the system is regulated so that groundwater levels in the urban areas and farmlands are maintained low enough to prevent flooding. During the dry season, these canals transfer water from Lake Okeechobee and the conservation areas to Everglades National Park, the Everglades agricultural area and to the east coast to replenish groundviater sup- plies thereby preventing saltwater in- trusion into municipal wellfields. As large as this water system is, it is still highly susceptible to problems of pollution and mismanagement. Damace or contamination of aquifer recharge areas in the Kissimmee watershed could have ramifications way downstream in Key West. Therefore careful management of this large and interdependent system is essential for the survival of both the natural and man-made communities of south- eastern Florida. SHOP TOYS, T*3OA JVLT© 6 P.M./310 >OR LUNCHE H&H 218DUVALST. (294-3717) AN EXCITING DISCO WITH EVERYTHING YOU'RE LOOKING FOR. And once you find that special person get to know each other at the New Street Bar and The Top. m ~mc ^rytnifta far patie $ qtvten miEym^KX "V CHAPPY From Yamaha automatic transmission 118 mpg FLORIDA KEYS CYCLE 2222 N. ROOSEVELT BLVD. 296-8600 KEY WEST MARY IMMACULATE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL 700 Tiusan Ave. "A traditional school with a co nonsense policy' We are East excited about our easing school year. In addition to oar college prep, coarse of studies *e now have a business education pisgrair:. We accept students regardless of RACE, COLCH, OR CREED. {Grades 7-12). Er.trar.ee examinations will be held en August 3rd. (Tuesday) at 9 a.ra. in the school li&rary. All families interested in enrolling their children please obtain sa application at: St. Mary's Catholic Rectsry 191!) Windso: Lane Kev West. 29-5-131? LOUIES EAXYA DRINKIN6 AND DIN1N6 ON THE OCEm IN K LUNCH {2 noon'-fe 4pm DINNER 7pm fe 12 mi 305- 2235 Con't from p. 3 with its marvelous porch and 60 foot square dance hall was torn down. Around the time of World War II an acquaintance and former colleague in the barber trade, Arthur "Kitty" Gomez, ad- vised Berlin to run for the office of sheriff. ("What the hell do I know about being sheriff?") Gomez had traded his barber scissors (which Berlin had always sharpened for him) for a gavel, eventual- ly becoming circuit court judge. Some- thing convinced Berlin to give it a try. He was elected, of course, serving 12 years, and apparently the only man in Keys history to serve three terms, as Sheriff of Monroe County from 1941 to 1953. During this time he attained the standard requirement for Key West citi- zenship, namely, a nickname --"Daddy". A contender for his office during the campaign for his third term turned out to be another local boy, John Spotts- wood, but Berlin predicted to him that he would beat him by four or five hundred votes but this apparently did not dampen Spottswood's political aspirations. Besides his obvious spunk Mr. Sawyer attributed his 90-odd years to the fact that he "doesn't know the taste of beer, wine or liquor" and limited experience with cigarettes.. That experience in.- volved one pack of cigarettes (he still remembers the brand — "Cycle") for which he traded three eggs (stolen from his grandmother's chicken coop and worth about ten cents at the time) to a local merchant. All twenty of these cigarettes he smoked in relatively rapid succession while sitting under a large tamarind tree which then grew in the cemetery. The resultant hours of nausea and vomiting among the gravestones (it was 1 A.M. be- fore he left the cemetery) and a subse- quent beating with a "modified" horse brace* discouraged the youth from taking up the habit. "Limpia calle! Limpia cal le!" ("Clean the street! Clean the s t ree t I " ) yell the Spanish-speaking children as they walk by Mr. Sawyer's house in the 600 block of Fleming S t ree t , for a f r e - quent sight is Mr. Sawyer with rubber- tipped cane ("I wear out one cane t i p a week.") coaxing a bi t of l i t t e r or a l e a f off his sidewalk and into the gut ter . This ri tual is often performed even b e - fore daybreak — the man r ises between three and four A.M., having re t i red a t eight the previous evening — and the day begins early for Berlin Sawyer ( u s u - ally before that slugabed the sun has risen!) with a morning walk to the ocean at the foot of Duval S t ree t . *0ne of two leather straps connecting the horse's harness to the vehicle. One end had been spli t into five sections on. the order of-a cat~o-nine t a i l s . r ZZTZ, T-li W w. FORMS and TEXTURES CAPT.TONFS GREENE ST. HAWPop MAW- THE OLDEST "ACTIVE BAR IN FLORIDA! ESQUIRE MAGA2INE... 'ONE Of THE TOP TEN GREAT BARS IN THE NATION" CAPT. "FONTS SALOON 4-28G-REENE ST. 425 Greene Street • Key West, Florida 33040 OF THE LA CONCHA 430 VUsJAL ST. re. t h e son a.rv% +ha seou rneef- daily for a drink." Ham. — 4arn> HtflttUU POM cmswe E*ennc*u,Y Umam , ̂ ma US.! AT tkc frlis tack i tt Harbor House. ;in# tn vitreous emmels -SS" DARBY AND MITCHELL DARBY & MITCHELL CABINETMAKERS r, 9m ha?* j qihqp US \> Stock Island 294-7377 10 CBROWSE zA "BRAUN SHOPPE Art Gifts Handcrafts Harbor House Arcade 423 Front St. 294-3900 Open Daily The Tape Ape "M-M-M Who's Got It Now ?" 'The Tape Ape Got It' TAPES AND RECORDS 918 KENNEDY DRIVE SHOPPING CENTER 296-6655 RESmURflOT OPEN 6:30 am til 10 pm Phone 294-9279 Maloney Ave. & 4th Ave. ACROSS FROM BOYD'S 9 1 lb. T Bone Steak $4.95 ®Beer&Wine Bar B Que Ribs, Chicken & Pork • Complete Breakfast Shrimp, Oysters & Scallops Hot Corned Beef & Pastrami Coney Island French Fries • Homemade Chili • Conch Chowder & Fritters WE COOK YOUR FISH 1 1 SPEEDER by John Hellems THEY OFTEN CALLED HIM SPEEDO... One thing is for certain about fa- miliar sights: when they are no longer where they are supposed to be, they are missed. Being missed is often the only tribute paid to an everyday situation, occurence, or person. A person, for in- stance, someone you see and to whom you say "mornin" every day for years, one day dies and takes his "mornin" with him. You feel a loss, something has been taken away, never to return. No doubt, a subtle affection has dropped from your life, and only when it is no longer there do you . stop to think that a close neighbor, one to whom you've only nodded or smiled, but were close to, has met the dark moment. That final moment (who can say whether it is dark) awaits us all, hut in the interlude the loss we feel for others is partly filled by our memories of them. Anecdotal remembrances often assign a person to a higher level of es- teem than he ever guessed would be his while alive. One such everyday and unassuming person was Edmundo Gonsalves. Most of us in Key West knew Edmundo by his nick- name, Speeder. Speeder was a corpulent soul who for years rode his bicycle not at all speedily around the Island City. He had been a twenty year man in the Navy, •a first class commissaryman, and after his discharge he continued cooking for the Navy as a civil service employee. Speeder's nickname had been pinned on him during his first few minutes in the Navy. Mistaking the Portuguese name Gonsalves for the Spanish Gonzalez, Speed- er's first commanding officer said to him, "Gonzalez, eh, O.K. Speedie Gonzalez pick up that dufflebag and MOVE!" Speeder thereafter was referred to as Speedie, TIKALTMDING COMPANY CENTRAL AMERICAN BIKINIS 400 Speedo, or Speeder, the three handles being interchangeably used by his friends. Being a Navy cook, Speeder always got up early. In fact, he got up so . early that he could have a morning beer before the bars closed at 4 a.m. He would have an eye-opener among the bedraggled remnants of the night crowd, enjoy his first cigar of the day, and then be off to work. Speeder was punctual, and despite his steady rather than speedy pace, down- town people could always be sure that i t wasn't too many minutes after 1 p.m. when his bicycling form would come drift ing down Greene St., exiting the galley after work. Speeder's afternoons were his own, and frequently he would pass his leisure hours in the downtown taverns. He fel t a home-sweet-home coziness in the bars, and he would talk with virtually anyone about anything. He especially delighted tourists intent on hearing f i rs t hand accounts of what Ernest was really l ike . Speeder could gossip or throw the bull to suit the occasion , and his slight drawl, somewhat akin to W.C. Fields, dusted his contrived commentaries with additional humor. One particularly real is t ic put-on, perpetrated by Speeder and his good friend Bookie, used to involve an across the bar shouting argument over which of them was going to have to leave — the place not being big enough for them both. This was the scene. Speeder s i t t ing at the bar with some tourists. Enter Bookie, slow and wobbly, who stares across at Speeder and says loudly, "What that Portagee doin in here? Don' 'How no Portagees in here!" Conversation stops. All eyes are drawn to Bookie. Speeder is the last to look across at the accusative Bookie. He takes his straw hat off, sets i t on the bar, stretches both arms out s t raight , then crosses them, flicks his °igar, and in a dry drawl says, "Boy, I thought we done straighten that out las' week? Youse Indians are off the reser- vation coming in here. Go back to your reservation Chocoho, be a good Indian." Bookie appears not to hear. He stumbles on to a barstool, orders a beer, and commences to heap verbal abuse on Speeder and the Portagee Indians. "You dirt scratching swine ain ' t fi t to be among people. How you ever get in here un- noticed is beyond me. How come you ain't out at the dump lookin' for lunch? You betta git out a here 'fore the Sheriff comes by an runs you in for trespassin' on human bein' terr ' tory." Speeder, frowning, leans forward slightly and points his l i t cigar at Bockie and says, "Hell no I ain't goin' anywhere. But my advice to you Tonto is to back out that door right now, before I come over there and kick your ass clear back to Alabama." Meanwhile, apprehension wrinkles the brows of the two older couples to Speeder's r igh t . . They look at each other a bit in- credulously, and they seem to wonder, "Gads, are we caught in the cross-fire of a racial incident? After all we are in the South and people here are slow to change, but wait? Why are these two cu- rious fellows denouncing each other as Indians? This fat guy here doesn't look anything like an Indian. With that narrow chin and tiny moustache he looks maybe French, but not Indian. And that other guy is obviously Black, he's no Indian!" The threats continue to fly back and forth. The only concession to civil- i ty is that the combatants do not inter- rupt each other. They take turns like two musclemen alternately bashing each other in the bicep. If neither adver- sary has a new barb at his turn, he mere- ly repeats one already used. "Chocohos are yellow" "Portagees drink dead rat juice" "ChoQoho.s. are never sober" "Portagees drink dead rat juice. Tourist think it only bad breath. Ha, Ha, Ha." "Come over here you sorry yellow cotton picker. You soon to be dead rat!" "You come over here you corn fed Por- tagee!" Then, just as the tourists are about to abandon their half empty drinks, Bookie and Speeder simultaneously buy each other a beer and share a long laugh. One notable characteristic of Speed- er was his insistence on being a gentle- man in the presence of ladies. To him al l women were ladies. He was not merely an opener of doors, or lighter of ciga- re t tes . Beyond these regular courtesies his amenities toward the fairer sex in- cluded a decent tongue, deep bows (with hat in hand), and lavish compliments run- ning the gamut from, "My, my, you look lovely tonight" to "My word, haven't I seen you somewhere before? In the movies? Yes! You are . . . no you couldn't be her, you're so much more beautiful than she. . ." One afternoon several years ago Speeder stopped into the Midget to have his regular refreshment. It was quiet there that day except for three fishermen who sat across the bar behind three sep- arate piles of money. The gentlemen ap- peared to have been there some time, for their laughter was somewhat raucous and very continuous. Speeder paid them no mind, got a beer,- and was informed by the bartender that the fishermen had paid for i t . In fact, they had bought everyones' drinks since opening time that morning. "Huh, i t ' s a wonder the joint a in ' t packed" said Speeder, and he nodded his thanks across the way. He was about to start reading the "Citizen" when a thin and drawn woman about 50 appeared at the door, and with some effort came up the two steps into the room. Speeder looked up, and with a smile said, "Hello darl in ' . Would- ja care to join me for a cocktail?" The woman smiled acceptance and sat down with Speeder. Meanwhile, the six bloodshot eyes across the bar were slowly focusing in on the new arrival. The first man to recog- nize the smiling woman exploded in laugh- ter . "Whoooeeee", look who's here fel las, i t ' s Ringworm Rozie! Hey Rozie, how's i t goin' babe?" Roz, seemingly not at all perturbed by the loud greeting, kept smiling and gave a l i t t l e wave to the chattering men. Another of the men then yelled for Roz to get whatever she wanted, i t was on him. Roz quickly ordered a double Scotch, and the man flippantly pushed his h i l l of crumpled bi l l s toward, the bartender. At t h i s , Speeder stood straight up on the bars footrest to pro- tes t , "Just one minute! Bartender don't take that man's money! I'm buying this lady's drink. I offered f i rs t , and the lady accepted." This challenge brought the men's hilarity to a sudden hal t , and i t was a few seconds before the f i rs t man answered, "Zat so Fatso? Well, we done bought every drink in here so far today, and t i l l i t suits us ta stop were a goin' to continue. Over dead bodies, if nec- Con't on p. 1** PINING ON auf\ op&J 5I2 "See You in Cuba" TShirt available at: Environmental Circus 518 Duval St. feturn to Eden Gardens Marathon's Secret" Tropical fhmti&e of Exotics PLANTS rWe $ Old Favorites $ Otherwise,- • •Aquarium pWtrvts • Magnificient pon4 -Fish •. ko\g i i e t p Infinite. Ninety $etfe f r i feuemrw 7 pm +» ^pm Appoit&menf: "fSors.. We44 tVig* Landscape ConsoHt*f|o«* intend US"! 745-5506 or OH restaurant francais serving lunch & dinner in a provincial atmosphere Reservations accepted 305-294-6252 • Harbor House Arcade Upstairs 423 Front St. Key West, Fla. 12 13 The Florida Keys t>y Benedict Thielen (This is the second half of an ar- ticle written for EoZiday Magazine in the early 1960's. Again our thanks to Helen Thielen and to Holiday Magazine for permission to reprint. We are rerunning the little draw- ings of Malcolm Ross that appeared with this article in last month's issue as well as the new ones he has drawn for this month. Hopefully by using a "half- tone" process this time we will be able to better reproduce the subtle greys and shades of dark and light that high- light these beautiful little drawings.) In 1931*, two years before I first came to Key West, the city had declared itself bankrupt and turned Its affairs over to the Florida Emergency Relief Ad- ministration. Once it had been the rich- est city per capita in the country; now It was one of the poorest, with more than three quarters of Its population on relief. The streets were filled with pot- holes and no trace of paint showed on any of its houses. But because the streets were bad what little traffic there was moved with a tranquil slowness. Because there was no paint on the houses, they were the softly silvered gray of the driftwood. Against their sides the blos- soms of the bougainvillaea, the hibiscus and the flame vine blazed like colored lights. Poverty and neglect lay over the town like a thin film of dust. But in the simplicity of these old houses, with their slender columns, their second-story porches and captain's walks, there was a __ great dignity. There was also a sense of toughness, of an ability to survive. The town, you felt, was not dead but merely going through a temporary hard time. You felt it in the people too. No one seemed to worry or, if he did, he had the natural courtesy not to show it. From the open doors of the bars on Duval Street the radios, tuned in on Havana, blared out rumbas that covered the roll of dice and the spinning of roulette wheels in the back rooms. At Pena's Garden of Roses people danced or sat out in the warm night under the stars. A few blocks away on the dark streets there were no sounds except your own footfalls and the clicking of the -iconut fronds above your head. Cuba nearer that the mainland of the United Key West was an outpost. Like ,r surrounding the Keys, its color x / North American but Caribbean. . Since then much of what is happening to the Keys has also happened to Key West. The concrete-block-stucco houses are being jammed together on newly filled land on the outskirts of town. The graceful wooden fronts of many of the old houses on the main street, now turned into stores, have been covered with imitation stone and sheets of chromium and glass. Other houses have been torn down to make parking lots. On the north side of the island, where once there were bird rookeries among the man- groves, there are filling stations, super- markets and drive-in restaurants. What used to be a small Navy yard is now a large naval base. Pena's was torn down to make room for it and there are no more roulette wheels in the back rooms. The word of Key West'a incomparable winter climate has spread and people from the morth and mid- west eome here to retire. There are times when I have the uneasy feeling that I am living in some big-city suburb that happens to have palm trees growing along its streets. But sooner or later the feeling passes and I know that in spite of these changes Key West is still in many ways an outpost and is still Caribbean. Sometimes it is enough just to open my eyes and look about me. The city's colors are bright but faded from the hot and steady sun. In the salt-filled damp air, under the heavy night dews of winter and the crashing rains of summer, the metal roofs of its houses quickly rust to the dull red-brown of dried blood. Where they have been freshly silver-painted the intense light glitters in every point and angle. Plants grow here that will not grow outside the tropics. When spring begins, in February, the trees burst into bloom; the yellow puffs of the Women's Tongues, the curled pink shell shapes of the frangipani, the golden shower of the yellow alder, the pure white or deep pur- ple of the orchid tree. It is a time when people cross to the shady side of the street. There is this heat, this slowness and this heavy bloom. There is also the past, rich in lawlessness and violence, In piracy, smuggling, gun-running and wrecking. Here, In Key West, its traces remain. Key Westers speak casually of the ghosts that haunt their houses, of knocks on the wall and dim figures that drift over the garden or across the living room. Around the corner from my house an old man dug up a crock of Spanish doubloons. A pirate, he said, directed him to it. Let us go down to the harbor and look at the shrimp boats, passing on the way a s m a l l but picturesque skid-row whose fa- m i l i a r winos seem to have discovered the secret of immortality. The shrimp fleet w i t h Its strung nets and its high-prowed b o a t s with the engaging names - Cracker B o y a Blue Seas, Miss Pud - is a pretty Illustrated by Malcolm Ross Key West has a past but it also has a present. It has always been a going concern. Cigar-making, salvaging, spong- ing, fishing have always been more im- portant that the tourist and the winter resident. If they were to stop coming they would be missed but the city could still get on. It is something that can be said of few other Florida towns. There is no tourist center where senior citizens gather and play checkers. There is only a token handful of shuffle- board courts. But some two hundred shrimp boats operate out of Key West, and in and above the deep water of the Straits of Florida the destroyers and submarines and airplanes of the Navy spend the day trying to outwit one another. At night their crews go ashore, the juke boxes begin to boom, and the sweet scent of night-bloom- ing jasmine becomes laced with the malty aroma of beer. The city is alive. The casual winter tourist has no inkling of how frantically alive It really is. He takes the Conch Tour Train around the island and visits the aquarium. He admires - or is bored by - the architec- ture of the old houses. He is charmed by - or deplores - the carefree seediness that clings to many parts of the old town. At the Turtle Kraals he sees the sad-eyed, deeply sighing turtles that have been brought by schooner from Grand Cayman and are waiting to be made Into soup. He. takes a snapshot of his family posed in. front of the Southernmost House and per- haps has a look at the old brick forts or the recently restored house where Audubon once stayed. He swims at one of the pub- lie beaches and if he goes fishing he will probably catch more fish than he ever dreamed possible. These are all pleasant and worthwhile things to do. But there is more to life in Key West. It is not so simple. In fact it is not simple at all and I think that the origin of "Rock Fever" - a gen- erally understood term which means that there are times when you have simply got to get out of there for a while - stems from this fact. Too much goes on. Below the lazy calm of its surface Key West is in a chronic state of fermentation. It is a combination of the violent and the absurd. This is not easy to explain. Such a place does not lend itself to the pre- cise analysis that a team of sociologists, coming to study a town, would expect to find. If someone were to ask me to take him on a guided tour of Key West, which would include not only points of interest but comments on the habits and customs of the natives, I should be glad to do so. The subject never ceases to fascinate me. Notice these handsome old houses. S o m e of the well-to-do Conch families l i v e In them, as their ancestors did be- f o r e them. Conch is what the native Key W e s t e r of Bahamian descent is called, because in the Bahamas the muscle of the q u e e n eonch is highly esteemed as an ar- t i c l e of food. It's very good, like a c r o s s between a scallop and an abalone, ancl local folklore credits it with power- f u l aphrodisiac qualities. There used to be another really beautiful old New En- gland-style church just around the corner, b u t It burned down. So did a nearby dry- ele-aning establishment, a lumber yard, a historic mansion and a gambling parlor - a l l within a few months. It turned out, as people began to suspect after a while, to fc»e the work of a single, enterprising pyicornaniac. Key West attracts all sorts of interesting people. The old stone house with the brick •wall where the sight-seeing bus is stop- p i n g Is Ernest Hemingway's. The last t i m e he lived in it was over twenty-five y e a r s ago but that doesn't matter. Ten- n e s s e e Williams owns a little house with big grounds on the other side of town. You're quite right in your impres- s i o n that many people connected with the a r t s come to Key West. Some spend the w i n t e r , others come for a short vacation. T h e r e are many bad painters and a few. good o n e s . At the Sun and Sand you will some- t i m e s find Doris Lee lying face down on the wrong side of the beach, hiding among the tourists. Sally Rand, the fan dancer, u s e d to have a house here and I was once an interested listener to a conversation between her and Thornton Wilder. With fascination mingled with alarm I have Wat clned Witter Bynner demonstrate a Rus~ siaurx dance that shook the termite-riddled f l o o r s of the hundred-year-old house I living in at the time. I have swum the silent Mademoiselle Franeoise Sagra.ni, fished with the S.J. Perlmans and, Pusning a cart of groceries, reverently followed Tallulah Bankhead through the neon-lit mazes of a supermarket. I-have seen Robert Frost at a distance. For m a n y years John Dewey was a neighbor of B i n e - Although Human Nature and Conduct was written before his Key West days the sub J ect was still close to his heart arid we shared an interest in the Key West of it as reported by the local paper. Such as? Well, such as the large front-page ad that read: "NOTICE! The Garcia involved in the shooting at 150 8 Washington St., yesterday Is NOT Robert Garcia, Owner and Manager of the Key West Fence and Awning Co." Or, in a later issue, a more cryptic plea which read simply: "I HOPE that you fisher- men will attend to your own business and leave someone who is trying to lead an innocent life alone. Andrew Jenkins." Or the story of the old man who beat a woman with a hammer, claiming she was a witch - and the medical examiner's re- port which stated, "While he talks about witches and persons who are trying to poison him, we would say he Is perfectly sane and can stand trial. It is a phobia, his talk about witches and other things that are following him." Or that of the yeggs who drew up to a centrally located store on a Sunday afternoon, jimmied the lock, rolled the company safe onto a truck and drove away. Or of the young woman who pumped a clipful of 45 * s Into her husband, went to her room to re- load, fired the second clip, and next day was acquitted by a coroner's jury on the grounds of self-defense. If you'll excuse me for a moment I'd like to have a word with that old gentle- man in the beret who is walking on the other side of the street with his husky dog. He Is a Frenchman, a violinist by profession, who has been working for fif- teen years on an invention, a boat whose motive power is to come from a captured shark. I heard the other day that he finally succeeded and has been whizzing all over the Straits of Florida. I want to congratulate him. I'm sorry to have been so long but you know how these things are. Time Isn't of great importance in Key West. Let's see, where were we? What? You're tired? Already? Why, we've scarcely scratched the surface. We haven't been to a single bar or seen a single stripper. We haven't been to a City Commission meet- ing and listened to the audience being indignant about everything from the gar- bage situation to the recent removal of the Cuban flag from behind the mayor's chair. We haven't been to a cockfight or bought a bollta ticket. We haven't eaten bolichi or bplloR or molletes or Key Lime ,pie. We haven't been to a rumba session at the Cuban Club. You say one must need nerves of steel to live in this place? Well, yes, in a way that's true. Either that or plenty of adrenalin, such as you get from the barracudas when you go skin diving. There are times when I find it exhausting. Now and then it becomes necessary to. leave and find relaxation in some quiet place. Such as Broadway and Forty-second Street. But I come back. A habit? Like a drug? Probably. By the way, I know this shrimper who, whenever he comes back from the Campeche Banks, brings a supply of marijuana and .. Not now? Well, some other time perhaps. Thank you, I enjoyed it too. Though, as I said, we've barely scratched the sur- face. I could go on and on and on. But I won't. Instead, I will walk down Whitehead Street, past the Naval Station and the old lighthouse with its enormous banyon tree, to its end. Lined up along the low sea wall and on the pavement below are the conch shells which boys sell to the tourists. They look like pieces of glazed sculpture, pink and gold and porcelain white against the background of the blue-and-green striped sea. Out on the water an old rowboat, sculled with the peculiar jerky grace of the Bahamian, is moving toward the shore. The man standing in the stern is big against the sky, dwarfing the freighters that make their way, hull- down on the horizon, through the ocean- river of the Gulf Stream. The boat, the man, the ships are all held In a great downpouring of light. To stand there is to be one with them, to hang for a few seconds suspended in time as though it were the clear water above a reef. Beyond the turmoil and the won- derful nonsense there are these moments of sudden beauty and profound peace. They are not hard to find. They are • another reason for returning. Bill The article made me very nostalgic and nostalgia overwhelmed me in regard to the drawings. The Keys were this type of place when I came here 8 or 9 years ago and these were the things about the Keys and Key West that kindled the love affair that I became involved in. I hope the drawings are suitable and the sort that you wished. With more time I might have been able to come up with some more. The conch house is fictional, a ghost of the past* an essence of conch houses, a romantic impression, an ideal, the way conch houses are most comfortable, surrounded by lush vegetation - (not by neatly cropped hedges and manicured lawns), looking •somewhat lonesomely out to sea or into the setting sun, aloof to the 80th century. The button- wood is also non-existent, the essence of buttonwood-ness. The heron is another spirit,(Did you ever see one at night- especially in the car lights? They light up like ghosts!) his legs lost among the spider legs of the mangroves. Malcolm 12 13 The Florida Keys by Benedict Thlelen (This is the second half of an ar- ticle written for Holiday Magazine in the early 1960'a. Again our thanks to Helen Thielen and to Eoliday Magazine for permission to reprint. We are rerunning the little draw- ings of Malaolm Boss that appeared with this article in last month's issue as well as the new ones he has drawn for this month. Hopefully by using a "half- tone" process this time we will he able to better reproduce the subtle greys and shades of dark and light that high- light these beautiful little drawings.) In 193^, two years before I first came to Key West, the city had declared itself barkrupt and turned its affairs over to the Florida Emergency Relief Ad- ministration. Once it had been the rich- est city per capita in the country; now it was one of the poorest, with more than three quarters of its population on relief. The streets were filled with pot- holes and no trace of paint showed on any of Its houses. But because the streets were bad what little traffic there was moved with a tranquil slowness. Because there was no paint on the houses, they were the softly silvered gray of the driftwood. Against their sides the blos- soms of the bougainvillaea, the hibiscus and the flame vine blazed like colored lights. Poverty and neglect lay over the town like a thin film of dust. But in the simplicity of these old houses, with their slender columns, their seeond-story porches and captain's walks, there was a great dignity. There was also a sense of toughness, of an ability to survive. The town, you felt, was not dead but merely going through a temporary hard time. You felt it in the.people too. No one seemed to worry or, if he did, he had the natural courtesy not to show it. Prom the open doors of the bars on Duval Street the radios, tuned in on Havana, blared out rumbas that covered the roll of dice and the spinning of roulette wheels in the back rooms. At Pena's Garden of Roses people danced or sat out in the warm night under the stars. A few blocks away on the dark streets there were no sounds except your own footfalls and the clicking of the coconut fronds above your head. Cuba was nearer that the mainland of the United States. Key West was an outpost. Like the water surrounding the Keys, its color was not North American but Caribbean. . Since then much of what is happening to the Keys has also happened to Key West. The concrete-block-stucco houses are being jammed together on newly filled land on the outskirts of town. The graceful wooden fronts of many of the old houses on the main street, now turned into stores, have been covered with imitation stone and sheets of chromium and glass. Other houses have been torn down to make parking lots. On the north side of the island, where once there were bird rookeries among the man- groves, there are filling stations, super- markets and drive-in restaurants. What used to be a small Navy yard is now a large naval base. Pena's was torn down to make room for it and there are no more roulette wheels in the back rooms. The word of Key West'a incomparable winter climate has spread and people from the morth and mid- west come here to retire. There are times when I have the uneasy feeling that I am living in some big-city suburb that happens to have palm trees growing along its streets. But sooner or later the feeling passes and I know that in spite of these changes Key West is still in many ways an outpost and is still Caribbean. Sometimes it is enough just to open my eyes and look about me. The city's colors are bright but faded from the hot and steady sun. In the salt-filled damp air, under the heavy night dews of winter and the crashing rains of summer, the metal roofs of its houses quickly rust to the dull red-brown of dried blood. Where they have been freshly silver-painted the intense light glitters in every point and angle. Plants grow here that will not grow outside the tropics. When spring begins, in February, the trees burst into bloom; the yellow puffs of the Women's Tongues, the curled pink shell shapes of the frangipani, the golden shower of the yellow alder, the pure white or deep pur- ple of the orchid tree. It is a time when people cross to the shady side of the street. There is this heat, this slowness and this heavy bloom. There is also the past, rich in lawlessness and violence, in piracy, smuggling, gun-running and wrecking. Here, in Key West, its traces remain. Key Westers speak casually of the ghosts that haunt their houses, of knocks on the wall and dim figures that drift over the garden or across the living room. Around the corner from my house an old man dug up a crock of Spanish doubloons. A pirate, he said, directed him to it. illustrated by Malcolm Ross Key West has a past but it also has a present. It has always been a going concern. Cigar-making, salvaging, spong- ing, fishing have always been more im- portant that the tourist and the winter resident. If they were to stop coming they would be missed but the city could still get on. It is something that can be said of few other Florida towns. There is no tourist center where senior citizens gather and play checkers. There is only a token handful of shuffle- board courts. But some two hundred shrimp boats operate out of Key West, and in and above the deep water of the Straits of Florida the destroyers and submarines and airplanes of the Navy spend the day trying to outwit one another. At night their crews go ashore, the juke boxes begin to boom, and the sweet scent of night-bloom- ing jasmine becomes laced with the malty aroma of beer. The city is alive. The casual winter tourist has no inkling of how frantically alive it really is. He takes the Conch Tour Train around the island and visits the aquarium. He admires - or is bored by - the architec- ture of the old houses. He is charmed by - or deplores - the carefree seediness that clings to many parts of the old town. At the Turtle Kraals he sees the sad-eyed, deeply sighing turtles that have been brought by schooner from Grand Cayman and are waiting to be made into soup. He. takes a snapshot of his family posed in. front of the Southernmost House and per- haps has a look at the old brick forts or the recently restored house where Audubon once stayed. He swims at one of the pub- lic beaches and if he goes fishing he will probably catch more fish than he ever dreamed possible. These are all pleasant and worthwhile things to do. But there is more to life in Key West. It is not so simple. In fact it is not simple at all and I think that the origin of "Rock Fever" - a gen- erally understood term which means that there are times when you have simply got to get out of there for a while - stems from this fact. Too much goes on. Below the lazy calm of its surface Key West is in a chronic state of fermentation. It is a combination of the violent and the absurd. This is not easy to explain. Such a place does not lend itself to the pre- cise analysis that a team of sociologists, coming to study a town, would expect to find. If someone were to ask me to take him on a guided tour of Key West, which would include not only points of interest but comments on • the habits' and customs of the natives, I should be glad to do so. The subject never ceases to fascinate me. Let us go down to the harbor and look at the shrimp boats, passing on the way a small but picturesque skid-row whose fa- miliar winos seem to have discovered the secret of immortality. The shrimp fleet with its strung nets and its hlgh-prowed boats with the engaging names - Cracker Boy, Blue Seas, Miss Pud - is a pretty sight. Notice these handsome old houses. Some of the well-to-do Conch families live in them, as their ancestors did be- fore them. Conch is what the native Key Wester of Bahamian descent is called, because in the Bahamas the muscle of the queen eonch is highly esteemed as an ar- ticle of food. It's very good, like a cross between a scallop and an abalone, and local folklore credits it with power- ful aphrodisiac qualities . There used to be another really beautiful old New En- gland-style church just around the corner, but it burned down. So did a nearby dry- cleaning establishment, a lumber yard, a historic mansion and a gambling parlor - all within a few months. It turned out, as people began to suspect after a while, to be the work of a single, enterprising pyromaniac. Key West attracts all sorts of interesting people. The old stone house with the brick .wall where the sight-seeing bus is stop- ping is Ernest Hemingway's. The last time he lived in it was over twenty-five years ago but that doesn't matter. Ten- nessee Williams owns a little house with big grounds on the other side of town. You're quite right in your impres- sion that many people connected with the arts come to Key West. Some spend the winter, others come for a short vacation. There are many bad painters and a few.good • ones. At the Sun and Sand you will some- times find Doris Lee lying face down on the wrong side of the beach, hiding among the tourists. Sally Rand, the fan dancer, used to have a house here and I was once an interested listener to a conversation between her and Thornton Wilder. With fascination mingled with alarm I have watched Witter Bynner demonstrate a Rus- sian dance that shook the termite-riddled floors of the hundred-year-old house I ;was living in at the time. I have swum uwith the silent Mademoiselle Francoise Sagan, fished with the S.J. Perlmans and, pushing a cart of groceries, reverently followed Tallulah Bankhead through the neon-lit mazes of a supermarket. I have seen Robert Frost at a distance. For many years John Dewey was a neighbor of mine. Although Human Nature and Conduct was written before his Key West days the subject was still close to his heart arid we shared an interest in the Key West brand of it as reported by the local paper. Such as? Well, such as the large front-page ad that read: "NOTICE! The Garcia involved in the shooting at 1508 Washington St., yesterday is NOT Robert Garcia, Owner and Manager of the Key West Fence and Awning Co." Or, in a later issue, a more cryptic plea which read simply: "I HOPE that you fisher- men will attend to your own business and leave someone who is trying to lead an innocent life alone. Andrew Jenkins." Or the story of the old man who beat a woman with a hammer, claiming she was a witch - and the medical examiner's re- port which stated, "While he talks about witches and persons who are trying to poison him, we would say he is perfectly sane and can stand trial. It is a phobia, his talk about witches and other things that are following him." Or that of the yeggs who drew up to a centrally located store on a Sunday afternoon, jimmied the lock, rolled the company safe onto a truck and drove away. Or of the young woman who pumped a clipful of 45's into her husband, went to her room to re- load, fired the second clip, and next day was acquitted by a coroner's jury on the grounds of self-defense. If you'll excuse me for a moment I'd like to have a word with that old gentle- man In the beret who Is walking on the other side of the street with his husky dog. He is a Frenchman, a violinist by profession, who has been working for fif- teen years on an invention, a boat whose motive power is to come from a captured shark. I heard the other day that he finally succeeded and has been whizzing all over the Straits of Florida. I want to congratulate him. I'm sorry to have been so long but you know how these things are. Time isn't of great Importance In Key West. Let's see, where were we? What? You're tired? Already? Why, we've scarcely scratched the surface. We haven't been to a single bar or seen a single stripper. We haven't been to a City Commission meet- ing and listened to the audience being indignant about everything from the gar- bage situation to the recent removal of the Cuban flag from behind the mayor's chair. We haven't been to a cockfight or bought a bolita ticket. We haven't eaten bolichi or hollos or molletes or Key Lime pie. VTe haven't been to a rumba session at the Cuban Club. You say one must need nerves of steel to live in this place? Well, yes, In a way that's true. Either that or plenty of adrenalin, such as you get from the barracudas when you go skin diving. There are times when I find it exhausting. Now and then it becomes necessary to. leave and find relaxation in some quiet place. Such as Broadway and Forty-second Street. But I come back. A habit? Like a drug? Probably. By the way, I know this shrimper who, whenever he comes back from the Campeche Banks, brings a supply of marijuana and .. Not now? Well, some other time perhaps. Thank you, I enjoyed It too. Though, as I said, we've barely scratched the sur- face. I could go on and on and on. But I won't. Instead, I will walk down Whitehead Street, past the Naval Station and the old lighthouse with its enormous banyon tree, to its end. Lined up along the low sea wall and on the pavement below are the conch shells which boys sell to the tourists. They look like pieces of glazed sculpture, pink and gold and porcelain white against the background of the blue-and-green striped sea. Out on the water an old rowboat, sculled with the peculiar jerky grace of the Bahamian, is moving toward the shore. The man standing in the stern is big against the sky, dwarfing the freighters that make their way, hull- down on the horizon, through the ocean- river of the Gulf Stream. The boat, the man, the ships are all held In a great downpouring of light. To stand there is to be one with them, to hang for a few seconds suspended in time as though it were the clear water above a reef. Beyond the turmoil and the won- derful nonsense there are these moments of sudden beauty and profound peace. They are not hard to find. They are • another reason for returning. Bill The article made me very nostalgia and nostalgia overwhelmed me in regard to the drawings. The Keys were this type of place when I came here 8 or 9 years ago and these were the things about the Keys and Key West that kindled the love affair that I became involved in. I hope the drawings are. suitable and the sort that you wished- With more time I might have been able to come up with some more. The conch house is fictional, a ghost of the past, an essence of conch houses, a romantic impression, an ideal, the way conch houses are most comfortable, surrounded by lush vegetation - (not by neatly cropped hedges and manicured lawns), looking -somewhat lonesomely out to sea or into the setting sun, aloof to the 20th century. The button- wood is also non-existent, the essence of buttonwood-ness. The heron is another spirit, (Did you ever see one at night- especially in the car lights? They light up like ghosts!) his legs lost among the spider legs of the mangrdves. Malcolm I Ti 3 i I s i Ti Ti Ti 15 Ti 15 Ti 15 15 Ti IS B 15 I! i I I i METAL. SCULPTURE CREATIVE DESIGN s 1 s fj fil a si si | si BRASS| COPPER § SILVER | IRON WORK WE DO CUSTOM WORK COME IN AND WATCH US PRINTINGS — PHOTOGRAPHY — GRAPHICS WATCH FOR SOMETHING SOON, MAYBE OR WHENEVER fil 9 fil a sia STUDIO WORKSHOP — GALLERY 532 DUVAL STREET REFLECTIONS Many minds in contemplation hold naught to one mind at peace. Knowledge without understanding as words without thought. Time is our teacher; experience our guide. Allen Con't from p. 11 essary." This ultimatum was seconded by the other two men who banged their man on the back indicating their full approval. Before Speeder could reply, the mirth broke out anew among the men. Speeder screamed for the bartender to take his money, but the bartender had retreated to a neutral corner with a been-through- it-a-thousand-times-before weary look coating his face. The men's attention returned to Roz. "Hey Rozie, how's life down at the warehouse? You been out to the clinic lately? Why don't you stop by the boat later for some snapper. Haw, Haw, Haw." Speeder, by now enraged, was still trying to make it clear that he was the one buying the drink. No use. One of the men had gone to the jukebox and Charlie Pride was soon in the cacaphonic conversation. Screaming to be heard, Speeder expressed outrage at the mens' crassness in the presence of a lady. "Youse damn animal-s sound like you're ten days out at sea looking at girly maga- zines. Didn't your mothers teach you any manners? Only God knows what evil lurks in the hearts of you drunken shrimpers." It was no use, he could not be heard. Reduced to sputtering indignation, Speeder reached over the bar and got two plastic cups. He transferred his and Roz1 drink into the plastics, and stood up with dig- nity, saying to Roz, "Well, my dear Roz, it's obvious that these cattle brained fatheads were reared by monkeys. Will you accompany me to a more civilized es- tablishment?" Roz stood up, accepted Speeders arm, and they went to the door amid catcalls from the three men. At the door was a very large floor fan which, due to the cool day, was not in use. Speeder reached up and flicked the ap- pliance on high speed, and as he com- posedly glanced back at the men, their heads were encircled in a whirlwind of bills. Speeder's most ebullient moments were usually in the giggly presence of pretty girls. College co-eds on vacation, sitting in the hallowed halls of Heming- way (Sloppy Joes) sipping Cocongas, at first never quite knew what to make of Speeder. Imagine, a rotund man in straw hat, wearing a flamingo emblazoned shirt and baggy pants, walks up and with one arm in the air to signal silence and the other waving cigar smoke in sweeping mo- tions says, in the voice of a ringmaster, "Ladieees, allow me to tell you about the time I was introduced to Fidel Castro." The girls would give a short, not quite skeptical laugh and then glance at each other and shrug shoulders. Speeder would interpret the girls' smiles and silence as an invitation to continue, so with ' vaudevillian dramatics he would sit down and continue, "We was hoisting lobster traps off the Cay Sal Banks when this • mean black squall came right at us out a the East. Within five minutes the waves1 was up to seven feet. We had to run for it but to stay out in front of 'er we had to run West in toward Cuba. We was more than 11 miles offshore when this big Cuban gunboat come out at us..." The story would continue with embellishment so great as to be obvious to the girls, yet their attention would stay glued to Speeder's dramatization of the episodes. It didn't matter what twists or turns his narrative took, the girls always delighted at his way of telling them. It was on a hot morning last Augustl- that the news of Speeder's sudden death in a motorcycle accident spread among his many acquaintances. It had been only a few months prior to then that he had been forced to move his mobile home across town from its berth at the Greene St. Trailer Park. Progress has forced Speed- er and the other residents of that lot to move elsewhere, for on the lot was to be built a hardware store. Speeder was some- what inconvenienced by this move, and the greater travelling distance to work caused him to replace his trusty bicycle with a motorized one. It is ironic that the hardware store has never yet been built, and that some- one so inappropiately named as Speeder would fall victim to the one character- istic that neither he nor his pedal bi- cycle had - speed. Yet, the memories of Speeder's antics live on, not only among those who he knew well, but also in the memories of hun- dreds of visitors to Key West whom he en- tertained and whose legs he pulled. He was a comedian with something of Oliver Hardy or Lou Costello in him. A show- man, he timed his delivery well, kept his audience in tune, and filled in the spaces with cigar puffs in the best tradition of George Burns. Speeder will be remembered as long as his contemporaries get together1 for a cold one and talk about the good old days - and that is quite a tribute. 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Con't from p. 5 has been outside the waves of dissension •that are ravaging this country. " Since •then we had riots and people were hurt and buildings burned down. I wrote further on "In a country inhere larger and larger numbers of its cit- izens are scared to go out at night, Key West streets remain friendly and unthreat- 0tting. " Unfortunately there has been a r-Lse. in violence at night on the streets Jyut still this is a very safe town to walk fiifound in at night. When I suggest in the second to last •paragraph that "we paint this town in beautiful [Caribbean] colors" today I would be running afoul of a stricter painting &ode for old Key West. But when I say Key West has heart and we who live here have a "common love of place" and that Key West "can show the •peat of the country what it desperately needs to see" I feel I remain on target. I feel it could be the destiny of Key West to become a town united in a brother- hood of love. We are not that way now. Confusions and uptightnesses still harrass •us today and keep us divided in this "bi- centennial year. But there are some early evenings when the breeze is right and the sunset •is beaujbiful and the air smells good and aZear in which a common sense of goodness passes in us and among us and we seem to "be the One we are meant to be. To whatever degree Solares Hill can be a force in bringing about this Oneness we are so committed. Editor Dear Bill, It's hard to argue with the relent- less logic of Gil Ryder's last column. Yet, to help maintain a balanced per- spective, I thought I'd submit these lines in defense of dung. * Ernie Szetela "From the dunghill he has lifted up the poor..." (Psalm 113) TO A DUNGHILL Hail, salubriously smelling heap! Mod man may ignore and despise you -- Yet you were the throne of Job. And you are still a rich hoard on the steppes of Central Asia and the teeming subcontinent beneath. There you are treasured. Patted and dried, you are stacked in neat cake-pyramids, saved for the hearth whence you radiate life-saving warmth in deepest winter, giving meaning to the wasteland. Or, diluted, you coat the walls, become the floor-washing of the hovels of the masses there. Western man has fled you. Even to his farmers you are untouchable, Scraped mechanically from gutter to spreader, Then flung afield by flailing arms of steel. let you serve him, Returning nourishment to the grass roots, Metamorphosed into the milk he cannot spurn. You can be fresh, dark, warm pungent, rich, Or dry, light, thick, caked, and bleached, Yet always useful. As down to earth as a man oan get, A fine foundation for humility and hope. On you Job grew a greater, godlier man. E.S. *[Ernie is referring to Gil's arti- cle on the Cattle Quarantine Station and the impending (undesirable according to Gil) mountains of dung it will produce.] Fifty Years of Service to the Rsople of Ke_y West" In the Heart of "Downtown '76" George Fielder, Director THE F&RTm ALLEN CO., INC. insurance since IHI 513.WILLIAM A.FREEMAN . •WILLIAM A.pKESAAM JR. PAVID W. FREEMAN, People who come to the Sea Crest come back and come back.. EA CREST motel f'ON THE BEST BEACH IN KEY WEST EFFICIENCIES • TV • AIR COND. Moderate daily - weekly rates 1423 Simonton St. Phone 294-3707 BankAmericard MasterCharge Sea Crest Health Bar Mango Smoothies, Fresh Squeezed Juices Pocket Sandwiches ^ 6 Selaetions 1i.^ ously literary" In 1940, due, no doubt, to the Hemingway crowd and the WPA writers and artists. There is a story (in James McLendon's PAPA) that Hemingway punched the shy, meek, frail Stevens because Stevens upset Hemingway's sister with dis- paraging remarks about Hemingway's talent. This story, however, Is not unanimously credited. Stevens', poem, "The Idea of Order at Key West," ( The Collected Poems'of ..Wai-' lace Stevens; Knopf, NYC; 1961) sums up the philosophy he had evolved during his Key West years. Having suspended his be- lief in God, he recognized in himself that primal human need to believe in some- thing tangible that can be reached through the imagination, a fiction "recognized as a fiction, in which men could propose to themselves a fulfillment." The female figure in the poem has been said by one critic to be a human being, but it seems more likely that she is the spirit of Key West: "She sang beyond the genius of the sea ... what she sang was what she heard ... she was the maker of the song she sang ... She was the single artificer of the world/In which she sang ... there never was a world for her/Ex- cept the one she sang and, singing, made. This is a suggestion that in Key West dreams can come true. The first use of Key West as a fic- tional setting is apparently James Feni- more Cooper's final melodramatic scene in the novel Jack Tier, Or The Florida Reef (D. Appleton, NYC; 1848). Cooper describes Key West as "a town yet in its chrysalis state, possessing the promise rather than the fruition of the prosper- ous days which are. in reserve." The action takes place just before the hurri- cane of 1846, the most destructive in the town's history. "A very few weeks after the closing scenes of this tale, the to\vn was, in a great measure, washed away!" Captain Stephen Spike lies mortally injured in the Naval Hospital, the victim of shipwreck. He had abandoned his young wife, Molly Swash, and a seaman, Jack Tier, on an island so that he could pur- sue the lovely Rose Budd. Jack died, and Molly assumed his identity, following the life of a sailor for ,20 years, twice shipping with Captain Spike, whom she still loves and forgives.1- She spills the beans on Spike's deathbed for pages and pages, not noticeably adding to the dying man's peace of mind, but she feels that it is important that he know that she forgives him. At least it makes her feel better, knowing that her beloved died shriven. Cooper probably did-not come to Key West to gather material. There were ample descriptions available at that time. An old bachelor reminisces about his boyhood adventures in The Young Wrecker of the Florida Reef or, The Trials 'and Adventures of Fred Ransom, by Richard Meade Bache (Claxton, Remsen & Haffel- finger; 1870), a boy's yarn about wreck- ing, turtling, the Indian Key Massacre, and saving a beautiful young girl from trhe foody a/nd, Vltcwrwnfl- at, owi* Psyche- Seeing in Key "West by Richard Marsh a burning ship. "The chief burliness of the town [Key Went] consisted in fitting out and supplying' the wreckers, and all the people were devoted to nothing else: if perhaps we except a few travellers., who came for health, and sometimes left their bone;:;." "Whether a man :u; a na- tive Bahamian, reuident in Key West, or whether he is born in Key West, seems to make no difference: he is known as a Conch." Bache repeat::, the then current assertion that a Conch could dive 12 fathoms and crack a.nd eat a conch under- water. He la not convinced of the truth' of the story, but admits that "rules which apply to most men, do not apply to them," that i::,, the Conchs. A double agent, drugged cigars, mor- phine mickeys, filibustering, and plots and intrigues among Key Went Cubans dur- ing the years of the Spanish oppression of Cuba just before the United States barged in to make it the Spanish-Ameri- can War: Don Ba.la.3c0 of Key West, by Archibald Clavering (Gunter, Hurst & Co.; 1901), would make a better than average movie. Well-written, fast-paced, and cleverly plotted, this novel makes ex- citing reading. Turn-of-the-century Key West "is devoted to cigars, cigarettes, sponges, and Cuban patriotism." The real hero (you don't know who until the end) is suffused with "that love of freedom most American boys have, despite Ameri- can statesmen," a radical statement for the time, but one wonders If the book might have been written before I898 as part of the popular sentiment in favor of American intervention. Ernest Hemingway wrote To Have and Have Not (Collier; 193^) while he was living In Depression Key West. The hero, Harry Morgan, is a charter boat skipper who learns, at; Key West learned, that "One man alone ain't got." In spite of the book's disclaimer — "...both the characters and their names are ficticious ..." — local readers enthusuastically dissected the characters and applied their attributes to Hemingway's acquaint- ances, reversing the process that the author later admitted doing. Hemingway came to town in 1928 at the urging of John Dos Passos as a promising young, but not yet famous, author. By the time he left ten years later, he had become the "Papa" legend of his own making, giving substance to Stevens' words. 5 f3OT»iAvaC s ty Wests (©west prices dmetis* Thelrna Strabel's Reap the Wild Wind (Triangle Books, NYC; 19*10) is probably the best known novel about Key West. -It- takes place during the early wrecking days in the 1830s with the daughter of one of the founding fathers, a wrecker, as the heroine. The life of the times is charmingly recorded: the day to day ac- tivities, the thrill of shipwreck and hurricane, the town's social ties to Charleston, the fear of Indian attack. Many historical characters are referred to or make cameo appearances: "Major Dade, In charge of the small garrison, who went -by on a prancing; chestnut and swept off his hat to the two pretty girls in the landau." This :i s an entertaining,' old-fashioned, romantic historical novel that places wrecking in a deserved favor- able light: "All over the world the news has spread that an owner whose vessel Is wrecked on these Keys can expect both bravery and justice from you who sail to the rescue." Cecil B. DeMille made a movie of the book. Richard and Prances Lockrldge set a Captain Heimrich mystery at the Coral Isles Hotel In Key West, which strongly resembles the Casa Marina (Death by Association; LIpplncott , NYC; -1952). .A renowned Commy-hunter is found stabbed from behind through the heart in the bushes by the tennis court before break- fast in February. Duval Street is tour- •istly described. Captain Heimrich had such a good time at the Coral Isles that Pam and Jerry North dropped by one February ten years later and found another couple of bodies (Murder by the Book; Lippincott; 1963). The Lockridges always did well with their sleuths-next-door, the Norths, and the light, urbane wit makes this an enjoyable yarn. Richard Lockrldge found in Key West the perfect stage on which to dramatize his heroine's inner turmoil in Encounter in Key West (Lippincott; 1966). Boats, the Navy, and the higher social strata are represented. Ambivalence is re- solved by playing the human character against the island's atmosphere. This is a tragi-comedy of manners, and the quirks and customs of the inner circle of local society are delineated as faith- fully as possible without lapsing into burlesque. The plot involves a vulner- able girl who divorced her husband be- cause he preferred boys. She comes to Key West to get away from' it all and finds him here. Lockridge's treatment of the boys-with-boys/girls-with-girls scene is incredibly naive. It is Feb- ruary again, or still. Either the Lock- ridges frequented Key West during the height of the seasons, or they took lots of notes once. The characters are from New York, as usual, and the usual talk about the cold weather up north is heard. Every other page someone is buying or RESTAURANT Fresh daily, right-from-the-ocean SEAFOOD Raw Oysters Shrimp Steamed in Beer Conch Ghowder Lobster & Turtle Steak Homemade Key Lime Pie Open 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Daily 908 Caroline St. 294-9005 Con''t on p. 22 Take a guided tour ot a 168-foot Spanish treasure gotieon built by Treasure Salvors, Inc, of Key West, the world's largest treasure hunting organization. See what life aboard ship was like in tlve lCOQ's. See some of the treasure that has been found in Florida waters. See the cannons from the "Nuestra Senora de Atocha" which sank in 1622 off Key West. She carried a cargo valued at over 100 million dollars. See the techniques Treasure Salvors is using to recover her gold, silver and gems, WRECKERS WHARF 633 Fcont Street 20 21 ANYWHERE BUT HERE by Stan Windhorn EDITOR'S NOTE: Last October Stan Windhorn, former staff writer and colum- nist covering the Keys and Key Vest for The Miami Herald, and his wife, Jan, left their home here in quest of a mutually agreeable location where he aould com- plete several writing projects. After more than two months and 12,000 miles of driving they settled (in a burst of in- sanity, Stan says) in Sarasota 350 miles from their former home. Bright morning sun filters through three massive live .oaks heavily burdened with Spanish moss and air plants and in- to the room where I write. Last night one of the cats over- turned an uncapped bottle of rubber cement onto my desk and'the cleanup was com- pleted an hour.ago. The lingering acrid odor of the gummy mess has finally dis- appeared and the more pleasing aroma of six blossoming citrus trees and two gar- denia bushes perfumes my quarters. When I look out of the window to my left I watch a flock of muscovy ducks, and one mallard, swimming in the stream which flows for 309 feet to mark our rear property line. They are competing with brim and bass,for the last morsels of day-old bread habitually cast into the creek for them each morning. Lest some confused reader suspect this is a prelude to some saccharin ac- count of idyllic existence let me give assurance that I would eagerly trade these moments for a stool at the counter of Dennis' Pharmacy where Audrey could be relied upon to keep the coffee cup filled, for a breakfast of cheese, grits, honest-to-God Cuban bread and some noisy conversation at El Cacique, for a con- venient and leisurely bike ride to the post office and the knowledge that be- fore attending Sunset at Mallory Docks or Simonton Beach something interesting, unusual and uniquely Key Westish will happen to give value to life. Hell, I'd rather be sitting in one of Dr. Bervaldi's dental chairs than here in this despoiled abomination on Florida's West Coast. As a fund-raising notion I have been toying with the thought of of- fering my right arm (won't miss it; I'm left-handed) or any other aging, but still serviceable organ in exchange for a modest Key West pad. The trouble is that I fled here from Chicago 23 years ago and Sarasota was my Florida home for the first 12. When I came here population was in the neighbor- hood of 18,500, the 12-mile long island on which we bought a beachfront home har- bored 200 year-round residents, one major shopping center was a *t00-acre Snowcrop orange grove, another was a priceless palm hammock and a third was a 2,200 acre ranch stocked with Brahma cattle. In summertime grass grew between the bricks of Main Street, as a newcomer you were accepted enthusiastically, every third beer was on the house and it was possible to cash a check in a retail store without submitting to every indig- nity short of being hooked up to a "lie box." Along the now-eroding beaches I waited 10 years before seeing a "no tres- passing" sign. Then in the neighborhood of 1965 "outside" money, "outside" workers, "out- side" speculators, and the super wealthy geriatric cases poured in. Well fields were exhausted and new ones were"opened by county commissioners dedicated to "growth at any price and profit." The new well fields were to be adequate to supply all comers beyond the year 2000. Six years later they were dry and more fields opened with longevity again guar- anteed beyond the year 2000. Here in 1976 a county commission finally - — and too late dedicated to "ungrowth" has hirelings combing the boondocks for enough water to last out the year. Boughten lock, stock and barrel by officialdom was the developers' promise that.all this growth which gobbled up the beaches and a once-magnificent bayfront would broaden the assessment base and create lower taxes for "the little fellow the average home owner." Talked to one of those old-timer lit- tle fellow home owners the other day. He reports taxes on his modest property rose 320 percent in 10 years and forced him to sell. Beneficent officialdom has rented him and his wife a three-room apartment in a senior citizens' high rise. Population is a pure guess but today a majority say Sarasota harbors 120,000 inhabitants. But that is beside the point. It is merely a link in one mas- sive urban sprawl extending 100 miles from Tampa-St. Petersburg to Punta Gorda. And, as in the Florida Keys, a sin- gle road (U.S. Hi) is the sole link except for an unbelievably traffic-tangled U.S. 301 which by-passes Tampa and ends in Sarasota. "Never mind traffic," the GPhillip*s fine wines and cheeses i I growth at any price and profit league was crying 10 years ago. "Interstate 75 will be extended down from Tampa in a year or two. " Today the first foot of 1-75 remains to be built. Result is that a motorist could travel from North Miami to South Miami faster than one can from North Sarasota to South Sarasota. To the immediate north lies Manatee County where a 4 to 1 commission major- i t y s t i l l cries for growth (industrial) at any profit even if it kills an unde- termined number of residents. Four major companies are in line to g a i n approval to mine phosphate, one of the worst and most deadly of pollutants, in Manatee County. Chief of the Manatee Health Department has already been forced to resign and leave the area because a lung condition makes i t impossible for him to live amid existing air pollution. Every health, environmental and land planning agency in the county, the state and. the nation has strongly recommended against further phosphate mining everyone except four of five Manatee County commissioners. The majority holds adamantly to its posi t ion despite proof that even If strip mined phosphate land is reclaimed it will exude for the foreseeable future a cancer- inciuclng radioactivity which will make it t o t a l l y unusable, uninhabitable. Now in t r y i n g to undo the wrongs of i ts prede- cessors , the compass has turned the full 360 degrees and commissioners of Sarasota County have taken to several courts the commissioners of Manatee County in a none-to-hopeful attempt to ban further phosphate mining just across the county line. So there is another view from this mistakenly idyllic setting cited In this a r t i c l e ' s first three paragraphs. Approx- imately one day in every four existing a i r pollution from Tampa and Manatee seeps down here and sunset is colored a sickly yellow sort of like anodized aluminum. We watched one of those from beneath a spreading oak last night. We've seen the same sunset before from towering buildings of Manhattan as sunset comes over the chemical plants and refineries across on the New Jersey shore and from mountains overlooking Los Angeles. Jan finds solace in Sarasota when- e v e r we patronize one of the better rest- aurants . Here, with us in middle age, she will gaze around the room at the other d iners who have emerged from their high r i s i n g pre-burial vaults which line and obscure the city's bayfront and beach- f r o n t s . "Well," she will then beam, "we a r e the youngest couple here. Doesn't t h a t make you feel good?" I take a different view of situation in replying, "No, i t reminds me of a prevue of things to come." Con't from p. 17' at the emergency room at one of our hos- pitals first." On the local level, besides Navy Relief, there are private social service agencies here, such as those which bene- fit from the United Fund. Among these are the Red Cross, the Salvation Array, and church-sponsored services such as the Catholic Service Bureau. These can often provide some emergency financial assistance for food, clothing, shelter, etc. to a limited extent. A,recent ad- dition to these is the Key West Community Involvement Council, a non-profit group chartered by the State of Florida, which seeks to inform and coordinate community Involvement in areas of real need, and attempts to provide immediate financial assistance in cases of real need when no other assistance is immediately avail- able. The Catholic Service Bureau can also provide emergency financial aid, among other services. This survey of social services, avail- able in Monroe County, and particularly the Key West area, is sketchy and incom- plete. It is also somewhat impersonal, not reflecting the deeply felt human tragedies and crises of the real people involved. Perhaps only personal experi- ence, and direct contact with the persons concerned, can give an inkling of the dimensions of the problems that exist even here, at the end of the rainbow. And perhaps the very nature of social service, or "welfare" agencies is changing — from somewhat passive acceptance of the status quo to dynamic involvement by and with Informed, concerned members of the whole community, attempting to utilize every human, physical, spiritual, moral, and financial resource available for the common good. It was concerned citizens in the Upper Keys who got what they felt they needed, when igb wasn't going to be provided in their area — an extension of the Senior Citizen'a Nutrition Program into the Upper Keys. Perhaps an extension of home health care Into the Lower Keys could result from similar action here. Steps taken by the County Commission to have the county assume the administration of the Senior Citizen's Nutrition Program, Homemaker Service, and other programs would seem to indicate greater sensitivity to community needs. And by seeking grants and matching funds for programs, services and facilities which seem most-needed here, Monroe County can multiply the effective- ness of its resources. The setting up of a TV translator system seems virtually assured because of pressure by a concerned citizenry. Surely such basic needs as a primary health care facility and an in- patient psychiatric facility can also be- come realities here, once enough people see the need. For in seeking the common good, we seek what is best for ourselves. 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(Guess where you can find out.) ********* This card entitles bearer to one FREE old fashioned fountain Coca Cola or one FREE song on our antique Nicolodean with ANY purchase. * * * * * * * * * 7 making someone a drink. It is said that the spirit of a time is truly captured only in the writ- ings of the minor authors. This is prob- ably because a minor writer is not able to create an interesting enough plot or character from his own imagination, so he draws directly from life with little more than a change of name to disguise the flesh and blood person or the his- torical event. Since he writes of real people and events without more than a superficial recompositlon3 the minor writ- er can be depended on for a fairly accu- rate account of the life and activities of a time not revealed in stark history. The publisher's blurb for David Loovis' The Last of the Southern Minds (Seribner, NYC; 1961) says of the hero, Carl Solon, "he derives an understanding of what he is and what he'must do." As in Encounter in Key Nest, inner conflict is played against the Island^ atmosphere. This is a fine example of a minor writer making use of ready-made Key Westiana for fictional purposes. The book is a merely adequate novel, but it will be of; great interest to the student of Key West. Loovis' appraisal of the spirit and atmo- sphere of the town is narrow, limited, and one-sided, but his depth of perception makes the book a worthy psychological guide to the city beneath the surface. Solon finds the atmosphere oppressive and threatening. Alan Houlton, a budding young novelist (who is said to-be a thinly disguised Gore Vidal), explains to Solon: "The secret, truth about Key West is that it brings out whichever side of the 'am- bivalent conflict a man or woman has been repressing" and attributes it to "the supercharged atmosphere of sensuality and tension on the island." Valid observa- tions, whether from Vidal or Loovis. Solon's interior monolog alternates be- tween his own inner conflicts and their externalization in Key West life: "Why, in Key West, did matters seem to follow such a wild pattern, always the farthest one could go in commitment?... Key West, the classic jumping-off-place...this was the town in which One lived, in a sense, fairly close to physical reality, to phys- ical violence ... what was it on this island that undid one's civilized reconciliations, that caused one to exist, defensively and offensively, in the center of perhaps more primary life forces?" The female lead in Loovis1 book is instantly recognizable as Key West Citi- zen writer Dorothy Raymer. Dorothy was pleased to see herself in the book per- fectly preserved for posterity -- except for two things: Loovis changed one of her husbands into a coal miner and her dog into two cats. "I'm not a cat per- son. I'm a dog person," Dorothy howled in protest. Tennessee Williams' play The Gnadiges Fraulein (included in Dragon Country; New Directions, NYC; 1970) might be called a dark comedy of manners or a tragic farce, except that it is risky to attempt to fas- ten down Williams' work with a label. The action takes place on Cocaloony Key, named after "the vicious, overgrown sea birds," degenerates, who live off throwaways from CENTER iooijmimwBiai«3tag«jiHiicX5itvm»«ijWBV)>i* ragHC«:»6-3

1976-07 Solares Hill Newspaper, Vol. 1 No. 19, July 1976

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Florida Keys History Center

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