After 50 Years, Remembering Hemingway's Farewell : NPR

After 50 Years, Remembering Hemingway's Farewell : NPR: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

You know you are on the north side of middle age when you can remember stuff like this. Hemingway was always so much larger than life and no one saw this coming. He was a literary genius and who knows what he could have accomplished. Or not. Maybe he could have kept Key West from becoming the extravaganza it is now. That would have made his life much more meaningful. It used to be such a great place.

I first saw the Keys in the late Sixties and finally got to Key West in about '73.  The extravaganza was already starting but it was the remnants of the hippies that were searching for the last place on earth.  It still was not the money sucking, condo covered tourist trap it is now.  All the counter culture denizens would congregate at the pier for the daily worship of the resting of the Sun God and demonstrate whatever entertaining skills they had or thought they had. There were still Mom and Pop shops up and down the Keys.  Little sand floored seafood restaurants and pizza joints.  Mostly it seemed to be people that had gotten fed up with New York and New Jersey decided to drop off the edge of the continent. The Floridians didn't consider the places fit to live in.  I loved it.  Sloppy Joe's was already boosting itself as Hemingway's favorite watering hole and I loved it too.  Little cobblestone streets that were not asleep but not fully awake in the early morning hours.  Rain every day at 4:00 P.M.  More like the Caribbean than the U.S.  Now a memory of a more leisurely time.  Now we even rush to relax.