talesofthetropics.com

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.

The Chairs

I went down to Captain Tonys to get out of the heat

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, my wife, Cissy, and I had a booming high-end womens apparel business.New York, mostly. That is a high pressure industry! She was the designer. I helped with the business.

We lived inCoconut Grove,Florida, onMary Street. It was beautiful.

One day, Cissy went to the post office and never came back. I was devastated.

I finished off the orders as best I could, with the help of Jack August, a retiree fromNew 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 inHollywood,Florida. She won all her cases.

Gardenia is the woman who walks into Sam Spadeblack and white office, with a little, white 1930s hat on. Shes wearing a well-tailored, navy blue womans 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, Whats the problem, doll face? You look kinda nervous. She says, Gosh (She always said gosh.), Mr. Spade, I think my husbands gone missing.

Gardenia Halligan had four dependable characteristics:

a.) She had red hair, REAL red hair! No jury in South Florida had ever seen such red hair before.

b.) She had a voice that onlyMinnie Mousecould 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.)

c.) She was a TOTAL alcoholic. (An Irish lawyer stagers into a bar )

d.) She was good at getting pregnant!

I moved down toKey West. (Its the best.) I got a place way down inBahamianTown, past Hemingways house. (He wrote most of his better works in that house.)

One night, Halligan showed up, and, basically, moved in.

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 upDuval Streetfrom me, The Green Parrot Lounge, The Final Step Down. Their motto was, See the Lower Keys on your hands and knees.

But, mostly, we hung out in Captain Tonys.

Captain Tonys 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.

But, it had class. REAL class.

Its where Hemingway had past his days (not that stupidSloppy Joes place, across the way).

And, most of all, it had Captan 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 theConchRepublic. Well, a little more than that. As the Conchs (nativeFlorida Keyspeople) say, All conchs look alike, and we all look just like Captn Tony.

He wasnt a bad sort - a classic bar tender on aCaribbeanisland. A good listener, with a wit and wisdom to boot. He was usually in a good mood. He was, Id guess, about 200 years old. He loved mangoes. Sucked em dry. Then, threw the seeds out in the street.

Gardenia and I liked Captan Tony. He liked us.

But, I think, mostly, he liked us because of Carol Nixon.

Carol Nixon was also a legend inSouth Floridaand the Keys. Nixons the one.

Now, Gardy (Gardenia) wasnt, at all, a bad lookin lady, herself. But, her best friend, Carol Nixon, was EVERY mans pick as the best lookin, most unbelievably sensual woman in all ofSouth Florida. Gardenia hated Carol for that!

Carol Nixon was an aging (30 something) hippie. She never wore many clothes. Hated undergarments, and LOVED sex. Shed 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.

Captan Tony was madly in lust with Carol Nixon (Wasnt hard to be.). Hed always ask when she was comin down next, whenever we were in the bar.

We looked forward to our daily conversations with Captn 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 thanme.), we craved the chairs!

InFlorida, theres 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 Captn Tonys 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 Tonys 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 didnt like no bullshit.

b.)You had to, pretty much, frequent the bar. You couldnt be just someKey Westbar hopper, who stopped by occasionally. And, you had to be a real person, with something to talk about, when you came in. You had to believe in things, whether Captn Tony agreed with you or not.

c.)You had to be drinker, a drunkard, perhaps - someone who consumed serious amount of alcohol (Gardenia had me beat there too!).

d.)And, heres the hard one you had to be famous. Not just well known, but as famous as Captain Tony, himself. That was not easy.

A tough test. But, there they were, always, the chairs, staring at us, making us ... uneasy, somehow.

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 Most all the pictures and posting are from yours truly,

Bill Bohannon.

This one's from Bantayan Island, The Philippines.