The Things I’ve Seen

“I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed.” - Marco Polo on his deathbed, 1324, apparently? Uncharted said so.

“I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.” Pierre de Fermat, though that was about maths.

I’m one of today’s lucky 10,000: https://xkcd.com/1053/

This edition starts off slowly in Key West: I find what will be "my restaurant", I visit a little museum, and of course I need to see Hemingway's Bar. It turns out, that's not so simple.

Someone asked after the last edition, how do I plan my trips. That's a great question, and not one I have a great answer for in this case. This Key West trip was a bit unique, in that it was a road trip and vacation just for myself. Usually I'm with family, and on the rare solo road trip I'm usually going somewhere to do something, and people are involved. The other bulk of travel was work travel, which is great in that I get to see things, but there's again a primary agenda that governs much of the trip. In this case, I had a degree of freedom I haven't had in a long time.

That was very difficult! For once in a long time, I had a truly blank slate. I started off with my boundaries: I had to drop people off in Miami one way, and pick them up in Orlando the other. I also knew I not only wanted to go to Key West, which I had never seen, but I wanted in particular to drive U.S. 1. That was easy, since I planned on having my car anyway. From there, I looked at my schedule and divvied up the drives. I knew I wanted to be a tourist on the way down U.S. 1, so I planned for my drive through the keys to take all day. I initially planned on staying on Key Largo the first night, and I even made room to stay along the way (Marathon and Duck Key were both candidates) if I wanted to extend the drive down. They're not far from each other, but I could really take in the scenery that way.

Another important element was I wanted to bring some books, eat fresh fish, and drink a beer or two for dinner in some little seafood place on the shore most nights like I was on the Eastern coast of the Carolinas, or Georgia. As it turns out: that's just not a big thing in the area. Key Largo wasn't all that happening, and when I started looking into fish options, Hiden came across my radar. The first night was moved to Miami. I started digging around, first through friends and then online, for museums, historic sites, good views, and snorkeling areas. I found out most of what I really wanted was in Key West proper, and while I made several stops on the way (the Turtle Hospital being a big one) the roughly 3 1/2 hour drive took me closer to 8 hours, easy to do in a day. If I had infinite time, or Key West didn't look as interesting, I probably would've broken that first day up and stopped at more scenic areas. But, the lion's share of what I wanted was within a few blocks of my hotel on Duval, and that's where I put the bulk of my time. I didn't really schedule things: I wasn't sure what the actual territory would be like, and again - I was unfettered in my approach to life for a week. It was my goal to get as much done as I could.

Mary Ellen's Restaurant

But first, every trip needs a home restaurant. Something where I could get a quick meal at a fair price, a place I could call a home base of sorts. There's lots of good options in the area, but I found myself gravitating toward's Mary Ellen's Bar and Restaurant. The street has a pretty interesting history, though that's not really fair: Key West packs so much history into so little space, I'm surprised it hasn't collapsed on itself. Saying any block in Old Town has a lot of history is basically meaningless. You end up sounding like you're trying to explain to people that gravity exists, or air goes in the lungs because that’s where air goes. Not really lunatic fringe stuff, just…blandly obvious.

The bar is great, and the menu is loaded with bar favorites and a few surprises. I can't recommend the tots enough. If your doctor won't freak out, the Dirty Tater Tots are my personal favorite and I'd recommend you give them a go. It's plenty: you can have them as a side, but I'd consider them a meal. There's no breakfast service, but I wasn't much on sitting down for breakfast anyway. If you want to head back to your hotel and write down some notes, they have a take-away window that's quick. Otherwise, there's probably something going on like trivia. They have weekly vibrator races for charity, which sounded fun. Unfortunately they did not hold them when I was there because it coincided with another regular event, the 4th of July, and fireworks won the toss-up in town.

The bartenders are professionals of their trade: I had great conversation when I wanted it, space to write when I used it, and a good human connection when I needed it. Plus, I was never left with an empty glass unless I requested it be that way. Mary Ellen's was my living room while I was in town, incredibly welcoming, just what I needed. It wasn't eating some fresh fish at a dockside restaurant, but in many ways, it was so much better.

Audubon Geiger House

In what will become one of many themes, I visited the Audubon House. The first thing you learn is that it's Captain John H. Geiger's house. Built on what was nearly the shore at the time, it sat just outside the port and its buildings. It was prime property for someone whose business was the sea, and Captain Geiger's was. Or rather, wrecking. The Florida Keys are not just a series of low islands, they're also nestled inside a coral barrier reef, the only one in the continental US. This was dangerous territory for ships who didn't have accurate charts. Fortunately, wreckers would come and help. In the Keys, this was a regulated industry where they'd haul your ship to port if they could and take everything that wasn't nailed down. They were required to offer to sell it back to you, though prices were not regulated. Basically legal piracy, without the cannons and swashbuckling. Wrecks were apparently common (allegedly as much as one a week) and the competition to get to a wreck first could be fierce. Thus, the Geiger House's location.

Anyway, the family fell into misfortune, and so followed the house, until it was purchased, refurbished, and eventually turned into the John James Audubon house. Furnished with "period antiques", it houses some really cool history and some incredible pieces from Audubon's The Birds of America. Collected over a decade, the work was funded by offering subscriptions to those who could afford it. Each illustration would be etched onto a copper plate, then stamped onto Double Elephant Folio sized paper "plates", then hand-colored. The work would either be marked up by Audubon or signed off as a proof, and production would begin. Subscribers would get their 5 birds here, 5 birds there, assembling a full folio of 435 plates. Later editions were smaller, mass-produced, but still highly regarded as a great work.

Some of those proofs, and plates, are spread throughout the house. Only 120 full folios are known to still exist, but there are plenty of individual prints from various subscriptions and editions. As you walk through the house, with all his work spread out before you, you can almost imagine where Audubon sat on the porches, in the garden, illustrating the birds of South Florida.

You'll also see this room. I'll just...here you go:

However, Audubon did not work in this particular period appropriate room, nor any others. He didn't work on the grounds. It's unclear if he ever set foot on Key West itself, though he was in the area, landed on other islands including Dry Tortugas, and reportedly made acquaintance with and had nice things to say about Geiger. It turns out, there's really no connection between Audubon and the Geiger House, especially not as it involves The Birds of America. I can't make it much clearer than to say the book was illustrated between 1827-1838, and Geiger built this house in the 1840s.

Another theme we'll find is that, yes, this museum also has a gift shop. This one's a bit unique though, in that it has a gallery as well, and you can buy Audubon illustrations (as well as some other art). This ranges from prints for what seem like common print prices all the way up to original plates. No complete folios are available, but apparently plates are pretty common. The plates come with, where available, original pages on the illustrations sent with the plates as well. There's also pages from the later mass-produced editions, again usually with pages if they survived. I'm not a gallery person, but I've worked with a few sales people, and it's pretty much what I expected from that angle. It's pretty cool, though, that they have folks specializing in these works because of how the book was originally financed and published. Birds aren't my thing, but even I could see one of those originals up on the wall in my home.

Sloppy Joe's and Captain Tony's

At this point I was in too deep: I just had to swing by and see Hemingway's haunt, Sloppy Joe's. This actually required two stops to be faithful, which I'll get to soon. Sloppy Joe's has been on Duval and Greene since 1937, and I suspect a lot has changed: their historical photos definitely imply it was not the juggernaut of an establishment that imposes today. Stepping in, it feels like the Disney of dive bars: a sanitized, safe experience for tourists to have a good time. A well choreographed show, put on with careful, thoughtful effort to immerse you in an experience, even if inauthentic. The rough edges have been rounded off, even though it's the rough edges that would have provided the actual character. Orange-shirted "security" folks saunter, cast members in a show designed to part visitors like me from their dollars. But folks definitely come here to have their fun. I walked past a "Finally 21" sash, figuring they were on a bar crawl. On the wall was the proprietor Joe Russell's bat, which he used to keep order long ago and has since been relegated to artifact status. And of course, if you so choose, you may exit through the gift shop.

That being said, it's clearly a place where people, not just tourists but also some locals, come to have fun. That mayor of "Finally 21" town and party? They were already served when I got here, and were still going when I left, so if it was a crawl they were spending the lion's share of it here. I got to pet several dogs, all locals who came in for the live music and some fun. I must assure the record is correct here - while making the security folks stand out is for show, they clearly weren't insufferable folks on a power trip. Talking with locals in the area, the most common assessment was it attracted a lot of tourists, but it's also not a bad hang. I had a beer and some key lime pie, at a reasonable price, and heard a good band. All things considered, it wasn't my favorite stop, but I had a lot more fun than I expected.

My notes have failed me, which is a shame. I took one of the last stools remaining at the bar, far at the end. As I was sitting and the bartender greeted me, I noticed the stool had something on it. I looked closer, and it was a little plaque with a name. "Oh, they do that for the serious regulars." Ah, should I move? I don't want to take their seat if it's reserved. "No, it's not reserved. And...yeah, he passed away. About 10, 15 years ago? I can't remember." I had his name somewhere, but lost it. Apparently he was a regular for decades. I did keep it long enough to do a little digging on the guy, but that information is now lost to the digital aether.

Sloppy Joe's may put up a facade for its tourism, but it is a facade built on some solid foundations, deep enough to protect it from the frost line of a bar a thousand miles further North.

It's also missing a urinal.

Half a block southwest on Greene is Captain Tony's, home of some of the cheapest beer and lowest ceilings along the Duval tourist corridor. Formerly serving as a morgue, it's also the site of Sloppy Joe's, from 1933 until 1937. In a fight with the landlord, Joe Russell hatched a plan. The landlord would be out of town when his lease ran out. What his landlord didn't know, was Russell had purchased (or signed a new lease, or?) on the current location of Sloppy Joe's. Everyone in the bar was promised, if they helped him move, they would drink for free until they were closed down for the night. And move they did: everything except the walls and the tree the bar was built around. Known as the Hanging Tree, it executed the capital sentence of 17 people. It now holds up bouquet of bras, proving that nothing in this area escapes us tourists.

Funny enough, while everything moved, not all of it moved to the new bar. So the story goes, Hemingway (in his usual drunken stupor) told Russell, "Joe, I've poured more money into this urinal than anyone else here. I'm taking it home." It stands today on his grounds as a water trough, which allegedly the cats use. I never saw a single one take a drink from it, but maybe they were less discerning when they weren't the stars of the property like they are today. More on that house later.

Captain Tony's is definitely a bit more rough around the edges, a cave worn into its nook next to but off of Duval. I'm reminded of The Karate Kid 3, where Daniel plucked a rare bonsai from a cliff side. Or, of Fred the Tree, if we're inviting comparisons to things that have tenaciously found a niche and exploited it. Back to point: the house beer, Captain Tony's Amber, is $4.75 for a 12oz. pour. Not at happy hour. All day. You'll be hard pressed to do much better in this part of town. Captain Tony's also has a gift shop because it's Key West. Overall, though, the bar has kept its age more. Perhaps it's gone through fewer renovations, perhaps that's more its style, but it feels old. The beams have been here since before this was a bar, and perhaps part of the original ice house and morgue still remains. Of all the things I've seen, this place has forgotten even more.

I transcribed some of this¹ in various bars on my trip. It makes me wonder if Hemingway wrote in his bars while drinking. There were several portable typewriters in his second wife's house (Remington, Corona, Underwood Standard Portable). I could see him rolling in at opening, banging out a few pages, putting it behind the bar, and tying (more than) one on. I would guess not - his studio was pretty great, and that seems like a lot to haul around in a time when your work was only as durable as the paper it was punched onto. Of course, he lost his studio in his divorce, and his third wife to my knowledge didn't have a rich uncle to build him a new one. More on that in another newsletter.

Until Next Time

I think next time will be back to the ride in for a bit, but it's going to be neat...it's on the railroad that used to go to Key West! That may sound boring if you're not into trains, but the Overseas Railroad was a marvel of engineering for its time. Built on the varying substrates of South Florida and the Keys, and the bodies of many laborers, its foundation was the only option other than ship to get to Key West for a while. Then Pan AM flights and roads to ferries to roads again mixed in, and even after the Overseas Railroad was no more, it provided road beds for part of US 1, extending the Dixie Highway to the southernmost point of the continental U.S. Still today, it provides scenery and recreation, such as fishing. That's probably the entire edition.

Thanks! Until next time, see you on the Internet. Here’s all the beehiiv stuff that is required to be here

— Lou

1  I can't call it typing as I'm a prodigious "swiper", though I had to correct "prostitute" for "prodigious"