I settled into my seat on the A320 plane destined for Fort Lauderdale. I clipped my seat belt and waited for takeoff from LaGuardia Airport! Having an early morning flight we had moved swiftly through the airport security despite all the craziness of the last month and the unfortunate fatal accidental death of two pilots the previous week. I opened my Kindle, which I had stored in the seat pocket before me to The Old Man AND THE Sea by Ernest Hemingway which I had downloaded before leaving home and had not read in many years.
The story was of an old Cuban fisherman, well beyond his prime, struggling to survive while working alone to catch a big- game fish to improve his impoverished life. Hemingway had experienced deep-sea fishing, and therefore the story rang true. The flight time passed quickly and we arrived on time.
The next day at the Port of Fort Lauderdale we boarded THE CELEBRITY REFLECTION and set sail for Key West. Key West is a beautiful town that reminds one of a fusion of the West Village of New York City combined with a New Orleans bohemian flare mixed in, with its artists, beautiful southern architecture and varied culinary cuisine.
Key West’s lifeblood was tourism and in the April of 1982 that tourism had been severely reduced when a blockade had been put up by the Border Patrol on the road leading to the Keys, the southern point of the Florida peninsula in search of illegal drugs. Key West could not stop the blockade in court, so on April 23rd,1982, the mayor Dennis Wardlow staged a mock secession from the union. The mayor became Prime Minister of THE CONCH REPUBLIC a micro- nation, named for the term used by the locals to describe themselves, and declared war on the United States of America, surrendering after one minute and appealed for $1 billion in foreign aid to replace the lost tourism revenue. As a result of all the publicity generated, the blockade was soon removed, increasing the traffic to the Keys. The resolution was a great financial relief for Key West. April 23rd has been celebrated each year since 1982, as a new avenue to attract tourism.
Our destination was the home of Ernest Hemingway which was now a museum. The city center of Key West is very commercialized and filled with bars, souvenir shops and restaurants. Duval Street is the main thoroughfare and as you move away from the center of town there is a gradual transformation to a beautiful tropical residential neighborhood filled with a preponderance of beautiful multicolored roosters crowing at will while hens and chicks roam freely about. Ornate old houses with wonderful wrap-around porches and bright flowering plants bring floral fragrances to your trek and huge, gorgeous, green tropical plants are nestled in among the old Banyan trees that line Duval Street. Birds of every size and description serenade you with your own personal opera as you move along. Finally, after about a mile walk you come to the Ernest Hemingway Home where we paid our admission and wandered the grounds waiting for the tour to start. There were fluffy, pompous well cared for polydactyl cats with six toes everywhere we went. Years before Hemingway had befriended a Captain Dexter who had a polydactyl cat on his ship named Snowball, which Hemingway was fascinated with. When Snowball had kittens, Captain Dexter gave a kitten to the author. Hemingway’s sons named the cat Snow White. Hemingway once wrote about cats” One cat just leads to another”. Hemingway named subsequent cats after his famous friends. They're on now 61 cats who have their own kennel on the grounds, many of which display this trait. There is also a cat cemetery behind the house for those cats that have passed. There is a person dedicated to taking care of the large clowder of cats who does an impeccable job. All of the cats are named after movie stars, friends and acquaintances of Hemingway, a custom started by the author. If you visit, stay away from Betty Grable as she can be very cranky, while Betty Davis and Ava Gardner are absolute sweethearts!
We arrived early at the Hemingway home, and I had finished rereading THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA about 6:00 AM that morning in my cabin, so it was still fresh in my mind.
The grounds of the home were beautiful, lush, tropical gardens with stone pathways. One had to be very careful not to step on any of the 61 polydactyl cats which lived there enjoying the lush, gorgeous gardens. The home was built at 907 Whitehead St., a block from Duval St., in 1851 by Asa Tilt a wealthy marine architect and salvager. The home was designed in a Spanish colonial style using native limestone. Pauline Pfeiffer had fallen in love with the abandoned home and it was purchased as a wedding present for the Hemingways by Pauline’s father Paul Pfeiffer, a wealthy businessman and realtor for the $8,000 of back taxes that was owed to the city. The pre-civil war home is filled with antiques of that period and the walls are covered with pictures of Hemingway’s deep sea fishing trips and safaris as well as posters, paintings, and memorabilia related to his literary works. About seventy percent of his life works were written here in a separate guesthouse originally connected by a bridge to the main structure. The bridge was later destroyed in a hurricane, and the Hemingway study is now reached by an exterior staircase. Also on the property is an in- ground pool colloquially known as the boxing pool which was built by Pauline Pfeiffer, his second wife, after having Hemingway’s boxing ring ripped out of the site subsequent to finding out that while he was away in Europe, he was spending time with Martha Gellhorn, his soon to be third wife. Upon his return from Europe, Hemingway found his boxing ring replaced with a $20,000 in ground pool filled to the brim with water, and their bank account completely drained. To give some perspective $20,000 in 1932 dollars would be worth $477,000. today. After perusing their finances Hemingway handed Pauline a penny from his pocket saying,” Pauline this is my last penny you might as well have it!” Pauline took the penny and promptly had it encased in a glass box and cemented into the freshly poured concrete patio surrounding the pool. The penny although corroded can still be viewed today.
The Hemingway house was enjoyable to visit, and I would recommend it to anyone.
Jim-April-26’
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