THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501210022
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: Long : 259 lines
KEY WEST as a getaway? Getaway from WHAT? Oh, you've been there. Maybe you're saying, ``Yeah, Duval Street, Mallory Square, the sunsets . . . been there, done that.''
If that's all you know about Key West, then you don't know Key West. Or Cayo Hueso . . . or the Conch Republic . . . or Margaritaville . . . or whatever you want to call it.
True, the inmates of noisy and tiresome Mallory Square try very hard to maintain its reputation as the place where the weird turn pro. As sunset approaches, the adjacent pier is a mad maelstrom of street theater, hucksters and bemused spectators. It's something you ought to see maybe once. When the sun sets, everyone applauds.
Not only is this as far south as you can go in the contiguous 48 United States, it's about as far out.
And Duval Street is, well, something else. It's only about a mile long, but it extends, locals like to boast, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. It's where you go to see and be seen.
It's a little like New Orleans' Bourbon Street, without the honky-tonk shills; without the occasional drunk using the side of a building as a toilet; and a bit like Nassau's main strip, without quite as many ``3-for-$10'' T-shirt shops.
Key West claims to have more bars per capita than anywhere in the country .
Those are the things that day-trippers from cruise liners see. It takes a bit longer to get to know Key West.
The atmosphere is that of a Caribbean island. One where everyone speaks English and uses ``regular'' money. The vegetation is sub-tropical and lush, the clear water turquoise to deep blue. The temperature averages 77 year-round and rarely varies more than 10 degrees. They've never had a frost and never seen the thermometer go above 97, thanks to balmy breezes off the water.
The people are a laid-back lot, tolerant to the extreme, with a live-and-let-live, do-your-own-thing attitude.
Life here is what you want to make of it . . . serendipitous . . . eccentric . . . funky . . . loud . . . flamboyant . . . gay . . . straight. It's all of that and more. Yet everyone seems to get along with everyone else, thank you very much.
There are times when I am entertained by this sort of open-air theatrics, and there are times when I like to escape from it. I found the perfect place, a secret hideaway. It's called The Gardens Hotel and it is, well, only semi-secret, I'm afraid. Bill and Corinna Hettinger's place has just been listed in the very upscale Small Luxury Hotels of the World guide. I did beat the Conde Nast Traveler listmakers and polltakers and the people who award diamonds and stars to this discovery. They will come.
It's in the heart of Old Town, just a block off Duval Street, but isolated almost as if it were in a jungle. That's close.
The hotel, a 17-room complex of restored old buildings and recently completed new additions that bear the approval ``star'' of the Historic Florida Keys Preservation Board, sits amid what was once a local attraction called the Peggy Mills Garden.
It's at the high end of the Key West accommodations scale that runs from budget to ultra-luxury.
It is said that perfection is not of this world. I do not agree. The Gardens Hotel is the sort of place people in heaven dream about. The richly appointed guest rooms are comfortable; the deep-cushioned white wicker porch chairs with spinning fans overhead are inviting.
The hotel grounds contain many exotic tropical specimens that are presently unidentified. Orchids hang from trees, bougaivillea grows everywhere in purple profusion. Brick walks meander through the greenery. Sunken cisterns have been transformed into dark, mysterious pools surrounded by ferns and a myriad of ornamental plants.
And hidden here are several rare antiques Fidel Castro would like to get back. They are tinajones (teena-HONE-ease) - enormous clay jugs that were transported from Cuba at great expense in 1950. Dating from 1785, it is said the water-collection vessels took a potter eight years to make. It's a long-lost technique.
The walled complex has the languid pace of, say, Caneel Bay Plantation on St. John in the Virgin Islands.
I once saw a garden very much like this at a villa where I was staying in a remote section of Venice. But that was a melancholy place, a reminder of what things must have once been like; like much of Venice, it had seen better days. This place, though, could never have looked more wonderful.
It's a very convenient base from which to explore the little city . . . if you can tear yourself away.
To know Key West, the real Key West, you also have to get off the main drag, away from the crush of people (1.2 million visitors a year). The back streets are hauntingly quiet and filled with architectural gems called conch architecture (see conch glossary, page E4).
It's a collective term, for like Key West's culture, the island's architecture is a melting pot. It has been influenced by Victorian, Bahamian, New England Colonial and neo-classical styles. You'll see Cuban cigarmaker's ramshackle clapboards, gabled mansions with towers, and small classical revival cottages; narrow ``shotguns'' (one room behind another), bungalows and ``eyebrows'' (their second-story windows peeking out beneath a porch overhang).
Though many have elaborate details - gingerbread trim and fancy picket fences - they are first and foremost practical: louvered shutters to catch the breeze, tin roofs and cisterns to catch rain runoff (no longer necessary since the pipeline from the mainland was built during World War II) and, occasionally, widow's walks, which were used mostly by salvagers to scout for offshore shipwrecks.
``. . . time past . . . has a lovely way of remaining time present in Key West.''
- Tennessee Williams
Some of the greatest literary talents of the 20th century have lived and worked in this environment: Williams, Ernest Hemingway, John Hersey, Elizabeth Bishop, Jon Dos Passos, Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens. Stevens, a poet, unfortunately may be better known as the fellow Hemingway allegedly punched out in Key West.
Hemingway's presence, during his nine-year stay here and even today, was and is the most visible. The large Spanish Colonial-style stucco home with wrought-iron porch and balcony he bought for $8,000 in 1931 is the island's No. 1 tourist attraction. If you're a cat lover, you will be fascinated by the 50 or so six-toed descendants of Papa's originals.
If you're not a cat lover, you may find Hemingway's second-floor study in the mansard-roofed pool house of interest. The room is long, airy and book-lined. His Cuban cigar-maker's chair sits beside a round, wooden gateleg table on which rests an ancient Royal typewriter (although I heard somewhere that Hemingway wrote mostly in longhand). Here the master produced eight major works, including ``A Farewell to Arms,'' ``Death in the Afternoon,'' ``The Snows of Kilimanjaro'' and ``For Whom the Bell Tolls.''
The swimming pool was the first on the island. It was ordered by Hemingway's second wife, Pauline, while he was off covering a war. Dug by hand beginning in 1937, it took two years to complete and cost a staggering 20,000 Depression dollars - about $250,000 today.
It is said that Hemingway was so enraged by the expense that he threw a penny into the wet cement and said to his wife, ``Here, take the last cent I've got.'' The coin is still there.
My favorite stop in Key West was Harry Truman's favorite as well. He made the hastily refurbished U.S. Navy submarine base commandant's quarters, a rather ordinary-looking, two-story, wooden barracks-type building, his vacation White House after his first visit in the spring of 1946. Altogether he came here 11 times - 175 working days - during his presidency and five times after he left office.
This plain-spoken man, so totally without pretension, is more popular today than when he was president, probably because we have seen the alternatives. But the people of Key West always loved him.
The Little White House looks as if the Trumans - Harry, Bess and Margaret - had just gone out for a while, maybe deep sea fishing. The decor is eclectic. It was furnished ``off the shelf'' from stores in Miami in 1949, and it would give a proper interior decorator apoplexy. To me, a child of the '40s, it looks comfortable, very homey. The president thought so, too.
Dear Bess, he wrote, You should see the house! . . . the place is all redecorated, new furniture and everything. I've a notion to move the capital to Key West and just stay.
Bess and Margaret's twin-bedded room is '40-ish quaint. Bess' pink hat and gloves are on the dresser. There are Holiday magazines and Agatha Christie mysteries on the table. The president's room has a double bed, a working desk with papers atop it. His cane - more of a stage prop than an aid in his daily walks - and his Stetson sit nearby.
Downstairs there's a round table where very serious poker was played by the president and his cronies. People who were there say this room had a frat-house atmosphere and Bess insisted it ``looked like a saloon.'' It's said the bar once held 400 bottles of booze. After Truman left, it was all removed. Strangely, 37 years, later a single fifth of Yellowstone bourbon was anonymously returned, unopened, by a guilt-plagued souvenir hunter.
The music book on the living room piano is open to Chopin's waltz in D major. Across the room more papers, marked secret but no longer so, lie on another desk.
Presidents Eisenhower (recuperating from a heart attack) and Kennedy (during the Cuban missile crisis) also stayed here, but it will forever be the Trumans' place.
There are many other varied attractions in Key West. Among them:
Fort Zachary Taylor, built about 1845, is one of three pre-Civil War fortifications on the island. It never fired a shot in anger, but its presence, in Union hands, severely restricted the Confederate blockade runners' activity around Key West.
The best of Key West's several man-made beaches is nearby - best mostly because there are plenty of shade trees very close by when the sun gets too hot.
The Audubon House (where the painter-ornithologist did not live) is a restored 19th century mansion that pays tribute to Audubon's 1832 visit to the island.
The Mel Fisher museum holds a king's ransom of doubloons, gold and silver bars, jewelry and other loot that Fisher's expeditions brought up from 17th century Spanish treasure galleons that sank off the Keys.
A tiny aquarium, where you can actually pet a shark. (You should not try this in open waters.)
Across the street from the Hemingway House, there's an 1848 lighthouse (88 steps to a spectacular view) and adjacent museum.
I was drawn into the one-room Rodriguez Cigar Factory by the rich cured tobacco aroma. There I watched Angel Rodriguez, a Cuban native, hand-roll cigars. He's 69, his wife told me. He's been doing this since he was 8.
A couple of doors away is the Kino Sandal Factory, where the smell of leather and glue is strong. This footwear is quite famous. You can pay as much as $10 for a pair, but you'll probably find something you like that's several dollars cheaper. If you don't see what you like, they'll make something up for you on the spot - unless they're closed for lunch.
As for watering holes, You can't miss Sloppy Joe's. It's very loud and filled with middle-aged tourists looking a little self-conscious. This is billed as Hemingway's hangout, but his main boozery was actually Capt. Tony's. It's the original Sloppy Joe's, established in 1933. Thousands of business cards line the wall. Remember to take yours.
If you want to drink with the locals, try the Green Parrot, an open-air joint established in 1890 that is pure conch, or the Turtle Kraals at Land's End Marina. Once a soup cannery, the Kraals, as the sign outside proclaims, is now a Bar, Restaurant, Zoo. Conservationists have turned the old turtle pens into a rehab station for injured sea creatures and waterfowl.
The Key West cemetery provides a final commentary on the island's character. The epitaph of the gravestone of Bertha, a hypochondriac waitress, says, ``I Told You I Was Sick.'' And a vengeful wife had the final say on her husband's marker: ``Now I Know Where He Is Sleeping.'' ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN
Key West is famous for its street theater. A fire juggler, above,
and the Cookie Lady, right, are part of the mad maelstrom at the
pier adjacent to Mallory Square. When the sun sets, everyone
applauds.
Graphic
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
KEY WEST (pop. 25,000) is 150 miles southwest of Miami, 90 miles
north of Havana, Cuba, 65 miles above the Tropic of Cancer and 2,209
miles south of Van Buren, Maine, on the Canadian border, the other
end of U.S. 1. This is the end of the road, so to speak; or, as the
tourism people like to say, the last resort. The island is 4 miles
long, east to west, by 1 1/2 miles, north to south; Old Town, the
tourist center, is about 10 square blocks on the west end.
Getting there: Key West International (they claim the first
international flight left here for Havana in 1927 . . . for $9.95)
is served from Miami by commuter flights including American Eagle,
Delta's Comair and USAir Express. An alternative is a flight to
Miami and a 3 1/2-hour drive. Four airlines have daily flights from
Norfolk to Miami with intermediate transfers - American and American
Eagle (through Raleigh), Continental (through Greensboro), Delta
(through Atlanta) and USAir (through Charlotte). All major
car-rental agencies serve Miami International Airport.
If you drive: You must keep in mind that the destination is worth
the 150-mile drive. It can be a long, slow, tedious journey along
the two-lane strip of U.S. 1 blacktop called the Overseas Highway
and over 42 bridges - the longest seven miles - connecting coral
outcroppings. Mangrove swamps that threaten to overtake the highway
often mask the view; elsewhere there are ticky-tacky motels and
swanky resorts, strip malls and a remarkable number of car
dealership-sized American flags dwarfing their poles. The highway,
rebuilt in the 1980s, at least is wider than its predecessor built
in 1937 over an abandoned railway right-of-way. That railway, built
in 1912 and eventually destroyed by storms, ended Key West's
boat-only isolation and started its tourism industry.
Getting around: Old Town Key West is a walking and cycling
(rentals are amazingly inexpensive) place. You also can rent a motor
scooter after you demonstrate you can operate one. For a proper
introduction to the sites, which you can revisit later at your
leisure, take a narrated tour on either the Conch Train, which is
not really a train, or the Old Town Trolley, which is not really a
trolley.
Costume de rigueur: Pack light. Laid back, ultra-casual stuff. No
need to dress for anything here.
For more info, including accommodations, which range from budget
to super deluxe: Contact a local travel agent or Florida Keys & Key
West Visitors Bureau, Box 1147, Key West, Fla. 33041; (800) FLA-KEYS
. . . that's 352-5397. Also, Greater Key West Chamber of Commerce,
402 Wall St., Key West, Fla. 33040; (800) LAST-KEY . . . that's
527-8539.
For Gardens Hotel info: 526 Angela St., Key West, Fla. 33040;
(800) 526-2664.
- Stephen Harriman
by CNB