Hi buckaroos! Had enough of "the Good Life" for a few minutes? Want to ESCAPE the happy, well-planned, boring life that everyone has scheduled for you today? Want to remember what YOU had in mind for YOUR life? Well, you’ve came the the right place! Settle back, and indulge yourself in a nice, heart-warming story from "down there", on the beach, in the Little Latitudes. It’s always warm and welcoming here. There’s NEVER a deadline or a meeting to attend. There’s just you, some special friend or friends of yours, and ME, ol’ Bill, spinning you a yarn – a tall tale of the tropics, around the old beach fire.
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, my wife, Cissy, and I had a booming high-end women’s apparel business. New York, mostly. That is a high pressure industry! She was the designer. I helped with the business.
I finished off the orders as best I could, with the help of Jack “August”, a “retiree” from New Jersey. He lived next door. He had been in the “waste management” business, up in ‘Jersey.
I met Gardenia Halligan. She was a pretty, vivacious, red-headed lawyer from up in Hollywood, Florida. She won all her cases.
Gardenia is the woman who walks into Sam Spade’ black and white office, with a little, white 1930’s hat on. She’s wearing a well-tailored, navy blue woman’s suit, with a big, white navy collar and large, round, white buttons down the front, She has on white gloves, and is clutching a beaded white purse. She, shyly, sits down.
Bogart asks, “What’s the problem, doll face? You look kinda nervous.” She says, “Gosh (She always said ‘gosh’.), Mr. Spade, I think my husbands’ gone missing.”
b.) She had a voice that only Minnie Mouse could imitate – “Gosh, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, does THAT look like the face of a murderer to you?” (Never mind the fact that he had been convicted of murder twice before.)
I moved down to Key West. (“It’s the best.”) I got a place way down in Bahamian Town, past Hemingway’s house. (He wrote most of his better works in that house.)
We spent a lot of time on the beaches, riding bikes, and hanging out on the pier, watching the sunset. We spent a lot of time in the closest bar up Duval Streetfrom me, The Green Parrot Lounge, “The Final Step Down”. Their motto was, “See the Lower Keys on your hands and knees.”
Captain Tony’s Bar was a dive, a REAL dive. It was an old, wooden, conch bar. There was all kinds of shit hangin’ from the ceiling – lots of underwear, bras, life savers, moose heads – stuff like that. It was dark – REAL dark. It was old – PLENTY old! It is one of the oldest bars in the U.S. It was nasty. REAL nasty. It was easy to miss. It made a good hide out. Mostly, it attracted a motley crew – bikers, drunk, lost tourists, head-bangers, fishermen, druggies – folks like that. Not an intellectual crowd.
And, most of all, it had Capta’n Tony. (Yes, Virginia, there really was a Captain Tony.). He was a lanky, gnarly-lookin’ old fisherman, who had opened a bar in upper Key West.
He was a legend, a real, walkin’, talkin’, breatin’, spitin’, drinkin’, fornicatin’ legend. His motto was, “All you need in this life is a tremendous sex drive and a great ego. Brains don’t mean a shit.”
He was the Godfather of the Conch Republic. Well, a little more than that. As the Conchs (native Florida Keys people) say, “All conchs look alike, and we all look just like Capt’n Tony.”
He wasn’t a bad sort – a classic bar tender on a Caribbean island. A good listener, with a wit and wisdom to boot. He was usually in a good mood. He was, I’d guess, about 200 years old. He loved mangoes. Sucked ‘em dry. Then, threw the seeds out in the street.
Now, Gardy (Gardenia) wasn’t, at all, a bad lookin’ lady, herself. But, her best friend, Carol Nixon, was EVERY man’s pick as the best lookin’, most unbelievably sensual woman in all of South Florida. Gardenia hated Carol for that!
Carol Nixon was an aging (30 something) hippie. She never wore many clothes. Hated undergarments, and LOVED sex. She’d pick up guys like a rag picker picks up rubbish.
She was tall and tan, with long, black hair that always had a few extra things livin’ in it. She kept a joint glued to the corner of her luscious, laughing, red mouth. She, basically, oozed sex.
Capta’n Tony was madly in lust with Carol Nixon (Wasn’t hard to be.). He’d always ask when she was comin’ down next, whenever we were in the bar.
We looked forward to our daily conversations with Capt’n Tony. We liked the dark, dingy atmosphere of the bar, in the middle of a hot, sultry day. But, mostly (And, I think Gardy was more guilty of this than me.), we craved the chairs!
In Florida, there’s a long standing tradition of painting the name of a person who frequents your bar, on the back of the chair that he of she always chooses. The very old places still preserve this noble tradition.
The chairs in Capt’n Tony’s were beyond belief! They were just ordinary high, wooden bar chairs from a bygone era. But, they had seen some history!
What did you have to do to merit having your name on a chair in Captain Tony’s Bar? Well, you had to:
a.) Be a friend of Captain Tony. He had to like you. He had to know you – the real you. And, Captain Tony had a way of lookin’ right through you. He didn’t like no bullshit.
b.) You had to, pretty much, frequent the… Read more…
