The Customs House

It’s a fortress of a building. Towering over Mallory Square is a red brick edifice surrounded by sculpture that can only be described as peculiar. It was once the Key West Customs House and is now home to the Key West Art and Historical Society. I was ready to skip it, but the kids were taken by the massive dancing figures, especially the abstract nudes in the back.

Twenty bucks got the five of us through the door. The first floor is largely taken up with these displays that allow the public to pose with La Belle Epoque scenes from French symbolist paintings. The girls posed for pictures with well-heeled Frenchmen out for a picnic. I think we were the museum’s only visitors that day.

The mindblower for me was on the second floor which is home to a room dedicated entirely to Hemingway’s life in Key West from 1926 to 1939. One exhibit tells the story of how many of Hemingway’s belongings were found in a back room at Sloppy Joe’s bar, which eventually found their way to this exhibit in the Customs House after his death. The collection is nothing short of astonishing. Here you can see Hemingway’s blood-splattered uniform from his service in Italy during the Great War. His leg had been laced with shrapnel, which had him laid up in a Milan hospital for several weeks in 1917. A case could be made that this was the central event of Hemingway's formative years, the circumstances that would define him as a writer when he was at the height of his powers. As the preeminent figure of Modernism, you could extrapolate that the movement's seminal moment could traced back to this blood-stained ambulance driver's uniform from the Great War.

While laid up in the Milan hospital, he was cared for by a nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, a Red Cross nurse (shown on the left in the above photo; Hemingway is on the right). Hemingway fell in love and asked her to marry him, but she declined. In lieu of being his wife, she would serve as a literary character, becoming the heroine in A Farewell to Arms and the love interest in the aptly named short story, “A Very Short Story.”

Years later, long after Hemingway had become wealthy and famous, Agnes made her way to Key West where she attempted to make contact with the man who once been in love with her. Happy, healthy and married to his wealthy second wife, Hemingway, refused to see his old flame. And who could blame him? Key West wasn’t easy to get to back in the 1930s. So what brought her here? Presumably she hadn't come here to fish. One is left with the unmistakable impression that Agnes had come to tell her old beau that she had reconsidered his earlier offer.

Incredibly, this room also has what looks like the original typescript of Hemingway’s bullfighting classic, Death in the Afternoon.

Half a lifetime ago, as a young writer, I had read all of Hemingway’s short stories and all of his early novels. By the time I found my way to the English Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder, I had read all the Hemingway I could safely digest. Jeffery Meyers, the renowned biographer, taught here. A few years earlier he had written one of the great Hemingway biographies which contained the FBI files on the writer. According to the new disclosures, Hoover and his G-men didn't think much of the man who spent his days quaffing frozen drinks and hunting German submarines off the island of the Gulf during World War II. Meyers' biography is one of the best on Hemingway, offering both a literary and psychological view of the writer.

I remember seeing Meyers in the hallways of the Hellems Building where many of the English profs had their offices, and it seemed he always had a copy of Death in the Afternoon or A Farewell to Arms in his hand. He had a Hemingway-esque moustache and was said to have Hemingway-esque interests (deep-sea fishing, hunting, bullfighting, the written word). Some saw Meyers as a Hemingway caricature, a Hemingway-head, obsessed with the Hemingway legend. I had sat in on a couple of his classes and found him remarkably interesting. I remember him comparing Hemingway to Lord Byron, the defining literary figure of British letters. Hemingway, he claimed, was one of those authors whose work would live as long as there were books.

In any event, this walk through the Key West Customs House resurrected these dormant literary interests from decades ago. After surveying Hemingway's life, it was hard for me not to feel a little old and small. That young man packed a lot of living into a short period of time. By the time Hemingway was my age (45), he was way past his prime and had long-since moved from Key West. I wasn’t here to fish for marlin. I was here to sample frozen cocktails and to shepherd my family in and out of t-shirt shops. Perhaps to my discredit, I was having a splendid time.

In, on, and above the Water

First on the following morning’s docket was an hour-long sail on a catamaran out to a reef on the edge of the Gulf Stream where we and 50 other tourists were slated to snorkel. The wind was blowing 15 knots out of the south making for seas of three to four feet. I worried that the kids would be intimidated by the rowdy waters, but the moment they saw that clear aquamarine, they were ready to go.

They took the plunge donning fins, goggles, snorkels and buoyancy control without any prompting. Within a few minutes they found themselves swimming over a five-foot long gray shark. Georgia ripped off her goggles and made a bee-line back to the Catamaran. Meanwhile, the rest of us lumbered over the water, mindlessly bumping into complete strangers as we observed everyday life on the reef.

Forty minutes later, a horn sounded, calling us all back to the boat. Soon we were sailing back around the far side of Key West, behind Sunset Key where the Sebago company had a floating pontoon platform which they could deploy jet skis, the banana boat and a center console boat all set up for parasailing. A floating trampoline floated over the aquamarine water just a few feet away. Curiously, this floating dock wasn’t visible from Key West, eclipsed by an uninhabited key, and you had to wonder if that was on purpose. Was it a bit too waterparkish for the locals? Did they think the whole production a little unbecoming?

In any event, we did it all, and needless to say, it was fantastically fun. Lunch was sliced fruit, submarine sandwiches and cookies – all nicely prepared. An open bar served beer and wine. The parasailing, however, was the highlight. Jennifer and I went up together. We were both amazed at just how peaceful it was up there. For this one brief moment we felt utterly alone, suspended in the sky on a cloud silky nylon as we looked down on our children and niece from 400 feet.

Parasailing might be the ultimate ocean-as-waterpark experience. But it's also a soulful ocean-as-waterpark experience. Whenever I see the familiar parachute hovering over the water, I think: Right now somebody is seeing the world in a whole new way.

By day’s end even the kids were whipped. The following morning my entire body had that lactic acid ache. Jennifer was less sore, as she works out in a “boot camp” group back home four times a week. After breakfast, I spent the balance of the morning writing and drinking coffee. By noon I was at once sore and jittery. The best therapy, we agreed, was to lounge poolside, chug-a-lugging margaritas. The tequila quickly overpowered the caffeine and infused the aching muscles with a most pleasant numbness. My body was telling me that I had exercised, I’d done right by it. Now it was offering up the reward in the form of a sweet little buzz.

Key West Address

It began with our arrival in Miami just before dusk, followed by a four-hour hopscotch drive through from key to key with the Atlantic Ocean to our left, the Gulf of Mexico to our right. The 150-mile drive terminated at the end of Duval Street, the last 500 yards of which was a carnival with a distinct Bourbon Street feel to it. The kids rolled down the car windows, wide-eyed with wonder.

We arrived around midnight at Ocean Key Resort, which is at the opposite end of Duval from the southern-most hotel on the continental U.S. Duval begins on the Atlantic and ends at the Gulf. It’s the only party in the world that I know of that divides two seas. When we woke up the following morning, we discovered that our balcony overlooked Sunset Key and a mooring field where dozens of sailboats were weathervaning in the sea breeze. My wife broke out her first Diet Pepsi while I put the hotel coffeemaker to work. For an hour we just sat at the glass table, recovering from a day of travel, completely mesmerized by the view.

The first day we wandered the streets of Key West, orienting ourselves, trying to separate the locals from the visitors, trying to figure out exactly what kind of people live here. By our reckoning, it’s largely boat operators, charter fishermen, and an army of service industry folks who prepare rooms, restaurants and watercraft for people just like us. No surprise here. But there were also street performers and a significant number of artists and artisans – especially painters. The sun had clearly taken its toll on the skin of those who worked on the water. The artisans were generally less weathered; fashioning jewelry and painting Key West mangroves and sunsets were sidelines. One lady who made ladies handbags was a loan originator at a local bank. We also came across a haberdashery.

On our walk we came across several "gypsy chickens" who also call this island home. Word has it that they are descendants of cockfighting roosters originally from Cuba. Cockfighting was banned here in the 1970s, so the chickens spending their days strutting about the streets like everyone else here.

In the afternoon the family and I hung out at the pool which overlooked five or six keys on the western horizon. Tired and a little drunk, we mindlessly watched boat traffic transit between the Atlantic and the Gulf. Soon we livened up as our kids splashed and Mom and Dad knocked back margaritas served in plastic cups. The second day Jennifer took in a two-hour massage while I absorbed more margaritas. Afterward, while walking down Eaton, a street vendor announced discounts on a snorkeling-jet-skiing-banana-boating-parasailing-water-trampolining excursion. Adults: $129; kids: $75. It also came with a sunset cruise on a catamaran that departed in a few hours.

The catamaran cruise turned out to be a slow sail with an open bar and 52 strangers. The mainsail went up in a light breeze, and the engines idled but never shut down. Furthermore, the main was the only sail to go up; the jib, apparently, was thought unnecessary. I’d never actually sailed on a catamaran, so I was perhaps a bit too enthusiastic as about what this experience actually promised; even now I still feel as though I’ve never sailed on a catamaran. In any event, the following day promised to be good old-fashioned stupid fun.

I’m not one for playing in or on the ocean as though it were a swimming pool or bath tub. Jet skis, water skiing, banana boating are not my thing. I’m embarrassed to say that I’m kind of uppity about it. In some weird way, in spite of all the action and excitement I find it dull. These are things anyone can do in any amusement park. Why waste a vacation on the ocean with something you can do at Six Flags? My wife and kids, however, don't see it this way. And this vacation, my wife explained before we left, wasn't all about me. Confused and saddened, I asked: "Then what's it all about?"

I have yet to get an answer. But I'll be sure to report back the moment I do.