Month: April 2016

When I was a child in the 50’s, the Key West Citizen was an afternoon newspaper.  Picture:  (Pinterest/Poyer).  After school, boys would roll up the 10 page or so newspapers into thin easy to throw 12-inch cylinders, secure them with small rubber bands and stack them in the big baskets on the front of their bikes. This was when news wasn’t so immediate. Most people got their national news from the Newsreel at the picture show on weekends. The paper was lovingly called the mullet wrapper as it was mostly used to wrap bait for fishing or to line the bottom of birdcages.

Today the Citizen is a 7-day a week morning paper. It’s mostly all the local news that’s fit to print and some that isn’t, although there is a half page of national news in the back, but even that’s mostly celebrities in trouble or making zillions. There is a pretty nice even-handed op-ed page with a couple of national pundits or columnists daily, and some editorial comment about local or national issues. So the paper is not just fluff, but the fluff is what’s so great.

Maybe by being only a quarter inch thick on most days, the Key West Citizen seems to be read by almost everyone. Not a large paper, it tells us what’s going on in our hometown in a way that is interesting and informative and brief. At the top under a synopsis of the daily weather is a charming colored drawing of the weather by an elementary school student. It’s usually the first thing I look at. The rest of the page is full of local news, fishing or boating calamities, accidents on the Overseas Highway, roadwork slowdowns, and other bad news. The good stuff is saved for the Sunday Entertainment section.

I really like the second page: club or organization news and activities at the top for those who are overinvolved, but just interesting for others. The rest of the page has some good reading. One of the most fun is Citizen’s Voice. Here residents can write in anonymously with gripes about other gripes, traffic, city government, rude neighbors or tourists, bicyclists, really almost anything that irritates. Someone will say,” I hate it here,” and the next day someone will write, “Then go somewhere else.” And occasionally a Thanks or Job Well Done will appear.

One of my favorites is Today in Keys History. Almost always with an historical picture, lately this has begun with an excerpt from a diary kept by the local magistrate in the first half of the 19^th century, when Key West was an island only accessible by sailing ship and with a population of 500 whites, 76 free blacks, and 96 slaves. (From a History of Key West by Jerry Wilkinson.) A slower way of life is revealed and commerce very dependent on the sea. The rest of the column has something printed in the newspaper 100 years ago, 50 years ago and 10 years ago. Not a history, but a report of what happened on that day. The local Crime Report is also on the second page, mostly done tongue in cheek I think, but not always sure.

The next page has obituaries and as you age, you read them thinking you might know the person but you hardly ever do. And also there is a photo of the Citizen of the Day, a nice tribute to people who have adopted Key West as their home. Then there is the comic’s page with a nice fairly simple Crossword and Sudoku.

The other daily section is the Sports page. It has a High School senior athlete profile each week honoring players in various sports from all of the schools on the Keys. There are fishing advisories with what’s biting, also powerboat races and a swim around the island every year. On Saturday all religious services are listed for the benefit of errant tourists in need of healing, sustenance or peace.

The Key West Citizen is a really good newspaper, a paper you can peruse unlike the Internet when you’re never quite sure where anything is, as it seems to change daily. I know print media is slowly disappearing, but I hope small town newspapers will continue to prevail and delight. It certainly helps bind Key West together as a community.

The last you heard from me on this subject, I was totally flummoxed by the way the whole thing had evolved. The bees were ensconced in the tree, the contraption to lure the queen out was not working well, I’d had to renew my 6 months permit to remove the tree saying the bees were proving to be more of a problem than I thought and I was mightily frustrated.

At the beginning we were trying to preserve the hive. It took the better part of a year to get the bees stressed enough to get the queen out. Eventually the bee people assumed the queen was out and came to remove them. They vacuumed them into a large barrel and took them way. We called the tree removal man and he noticed some residual bees in another part of the tree; so we had to get the bee people back. They told us to remove the tree as soon as possible. The tree soon came down.

It actually didn’t look too bad, a little sunnier which was good for the bougainvillea under it that never bloomed from lack of sunshine. I missed the beautiful bright red blossoms and shade of the Poinciana Tree, but not the eternal mess on my back porch. So things were generally better…until

A letter came from the Key West Tree people saying we had to replace the Poinciana tree with new plantings equal to the diameter of the tree we had cut down or pay a hefty fine. Well that was an old tree and the diameter at the base about three feet; and most of it was hollow. We had planted in the last year two Avocado and two Mango trees, a couple of Key lime trees and a few coconut trees lining the driveway. The coconut and lime trees didn’t count. The person responsible for controlling rampant and irresponsible plant growth on the island, who was very helpful in extending our permit, said she was coming to inspect the new plantings. We met her at the door, talked to her while she measured the trees we had planted.

Then we took her into our back yard to show her the Gumbo Limbo tree, which is quite magnificent. It has showy red bark; interesting branches low to the ground and a nice shady canopy. It is indigenous to South Florida. We were trying to show her that we really were a tree-hugger kind of people and only cut down the Poinciana tree because it was diseased and had been badly damaged during Hurricane Wilma. The Gumbo Limbo has to be thinned out occasionally, as the canopy will block out all sun, if left alone. It’s a good thing we like it, as getting rid of it will have to wait for another generation. Then the Key West Tree Person said, “We’re done here.” Not knowing exactly what that meant, we were hopeful. Since we heard no more, that was the end of it.

There was a time when you could plant anything you wanted, and dig up anything you didn’t want. Not true anymore in Key West. THEY want indigenous trees on the island, and you can’t cut them down. In Peter’s office, one of his guys had a sign which said, “They, who they? ” Who they, indeed.

The Southernmost Point is at the junction of Whitehead and South Street. We’ve gone down Whitehead. Now let’s go down South Street. Thelma Strabel supposedly lived in the house right next to the Southernmost Point. Ms. Strabel wrote,“Reap the Wild Wind” as a serial spread over six issues of the Saturday Evening Post from April To June 1940. In 1942 it was made into a movie. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille this ocean adventure dealt with honest salvage masters fighting dishonest ones. It had a battle with a giant squid as the climax. The movie had many well-know actors and actresses, including Ray Milland, Paulette Goddard, John Wayne, Raymond Massey, Robert Preston, and Susan Hayward, all big stars at the time.

 

One block later on the corner of South and Duval is the Southernmost House, a beautiful large Victorian mansion built in 1896 as a private residence for Vining Harris.Picture:   (State Archives of Florida). It became a Cuban nightclub called Cafe Cayo Hueso in 1936 and converted back to a private residence in1954 and remained that way until 1996 when it underwent a three million dollar renovation that converted it into an 18-room hotel.

Across the street is South Beach where as a child I went for a swim with my father when he got home from work each day. It was also where I had my first job working at the Luncheonette stand on the beach.  Picture: (State Archives of Florida).   I was 16 and the man who ran the place about in his 50’s. He was a gruff old man and I a know-nothing newbie. For a first job it was pretty cool.

 

Down the street a few blocks is a Stone House, built of coral rock in 1909-10 by Richard William Harrison.  Picture:  (State Archives of Florida/McDonald).   When I was a child my family often visited this house. Mr. Homer Herrick then owned it. He was a civil engineer and taught my father surveying and the two of them surveyed the Keys prior to the building of the Overseas Highway in the late 30’s. They remained lifelong friends.

Diagonally across South Street is Reynolds Elementary School. I went there first through third grade. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Wooten, would actually put, mostly boys, in the corner with a dunce cap on their heads. My Mom said her teacher back in the Dark Ages would say. “ Sixty seconds make a minute, big fat head with nothing in it.” Children were not so coddled then as they are today. I always walked home the two blocks for lunch. No school cafeterias even then for me. There was a traffic light at the intersection of South and Reynolds Streets.

Mr. Kirchembaum in uniform was always there under the traffic lights, a friendly presence keeping us safe from marauders, brigands and speeders.  Picture: (State Archives of Florida/McDonald).  I saw a picture of me the other day, probably third grade, oxford laced–up shoes with socks and a schoolgirl dress, which I exchanged for play clothes each day. We even wore dresses in High School and the hem had to touch the ground when we bent down on our knees. That was when teachers could make you do such things. No more.

Ernest and Pauline Hemingway lived at 1100 South Street in 1928-29 while their house on Whitehead was being renovated for them. He finished “A Farewell to Arms” while there. In his introduction to the 1948 edition of “A Farewell to Arms,” Hemingway wrote:

“This book was written in Paris, France, Key West, Florida, Piggott, Arkansas, Kansas City, Missouri, and the first draft finished near Big Horn, Wyoming. It was begun in the last winter months of 1928 and the first draft finished in September of that year. It was rewritten in the fall and winter of 1928 in Key West and the final writing was finished in Paris in the spring of 1929.

During the time I was writing the first draft my second son Patrick was delivered in Kansas by Caesarean Section and while I was rewriting my father killed himself in Oak Park, Illinois. I was not then quite thirty years old when I finished the book and the day it was published was the day (sic) the stock market crashed.”

That sort of says it all about Mr. Earnest Hemingway, who lived a fast-paced life.