For some reason Dan and I couldn’t wait until Kentucky Derby weekend for our annual pilgrimage to the Florida Keys this year. Actually I could probably bore you with a list of say…100 reasons to go earlier. Expense is not one of them Going to Florida in March is a much more pricey endeavor. And we opted for ocean view rooms in Key Largo, which added some expense. But since most nights we end up on our balcony by 10 pm drinking margaritas and staring into space anyway we took the plunge. Since we’ve been friends for almost 30 years we figured we were worth it.

The drive down was a little adventurous. Unusually high winds blew rain in, every hour or so. Consequently there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth …. Old Testament jargon for “stopping the car”. Putting down the convertible top. Stopping the car…putting UP the convertible top. This may have added up to another hour to the drive to Key West but hey … we didn’t fly all the way to Florida to sit in an enclosed vehicle. And of course we stopped at Lorelei’s on Islamorada for our first sampling of conch fritters, fish dip and cold beer.

Initially I had planned a vacation long survey of which eating establishments had the best conch fritters. I abandoned this idea quickly as you’ll read later on. Lorelei’s would have won easily anyway. But only 5 hours into the trip it was impossible to know.

  
 

We arrived in Key West late in the afternoon…shortly after another brief pit stop at Pappa John’s on the opposite end of Islamorada Key…a second story Tiki Bar where the wind blew so vehemently that it toppled my full bottle of Red Stripe. Adding insult to injury, the place was out of conch fritters! (Life can be difficult indeed.) But we were soon cruising the streets of Key West and made our way to Captain Tony’s…the original Ernest Hemmingway hang out once known as Sloppy Joe’s (There is a Sloppy Joe’s today but Hemmingway never set foot in it.).

  

  

Dan and I always hang at Captain Tony’s because it’s the most authentic drinking establishment on the island. Tony himself still makes his presence known almost every day and our good buddy and musician extraordinaire Gary Hempsey (www.garyhempsey.com) is most likely playing everyone’s favorites on his Martin guitar. I enjoy listening to Gary because he is able to maintain a level of quality for the music he plays with a definitive air of respect. Oh sure he cajoles the drunks who wander up and want to sing say…what they remember of “McArthur Park”. But I know from experience this is not an easy task. When I play music…and I have done this extensively through the years…whenever some inebriated soul stumbles up…no matter if it happens to be a young woman resembling Catherine Zeta Jones…my initial response is to say “Fuck you!” and smack them on the back of their head with my guitar. Hempsey takes it all in stride. And he’s good too. Although he knows the same million tunes from the 70’s you hear coming out of the other 100+ bars…Gary keeps a distinguishable quality to his performance that Dan and I both appreciate year after year.

    

Case in point…shortly before retiring to our room we stopped in to my namesake…a place called Rick’s. I considered picking up a t-shirt. But the guy playing music in this joint (I wouldn’t put his name here if I remembered it.) was more interested in luring women (and I use the word loosely) to come up on stage and show him their tits than he was about playing music. The women were then rewarded with a string of beads. Amazingly, in the 5 minutes we put up with this smarmy excuse for a musician, one chick did just that. I passed on the shirt and we retreated to our hotel where we began a concerted assault on a bottle of 1800 tequila. Each year we seem to get better and better at not only making margaritas…but also consuming them. By the time the dust settled and we were on our flight home 3 separate liter bottles of 1880 Tequila were suitable for recycling.

  
  

Next up were three nights at the Marriott Resort on Key Largo. This key is a wonderful place to just veg out. And since the wind made it impossible to consider sailing or snorkeling, the pool and/or balcony was the perfect environment. After checking in I perused one of those brochures that are always lying around hotel rooms just to see what was advertised. There was something I had never seen before that jumped out at me from one page. It was an ad for “Fishing Escort”. For an hourly fee a deliriously beautiful woman would accompany you on a deep sea fishing trip!! I imagined paying upwards of $300 for an afternoon of witnessing a scantily clad woman in 5 inch heals heaving her lunch over the rail of a fishing boat. Now that’s eroticism at it’s best! (Your puke is so HOT my lovely!! The retching sound of your vomiting really floats my boat bay doll!!) There were also special rates for something called “night fishing” and I immediately doubted this had anything to do with fishing at all.

One afternoon we took a drive south to Marathon Key after reading about an annual seafood festival. What could be better in Florida than a seafood festival? The fact that it was being held at an airport should have been our first red flag. But we jumped in the car…put the top down…and went on our merry way. Upon entering the parking lot the attendant that took our money set the tone for the rest of the experience. She leaned into our convertible and said something like this, “Y’all be careful parkin’ ya hear! Some a these here folks been here most of the day…uh…havin’ a lotta fun. Know what I mean?” As soon as Dan and I entered the gate I noticed a group of about 12 convicts picking up trash. That’s when I KNEW I was in Jeb Bush’s state! And these prisoners seemed to be having as much fun as anybody. I guess getting out in the fresh air at the airport with a couple thousand drunks might be better than sitting in a jail cell. A lot of the folks who weren’t inmates looked as if they had at one time been one…or might very well be one in the near future. But they were friendly enough…biker types…women who have had a suntan continually since age 5 months…their daughters-in-training…boat heads. It was typically middle America a la Florida.

  

We figured at least the food would be good. So we started with some conch fritters. After the first one we both agreed we should drop the fritter rating contest altogether. We threw the rest away and listened to a god awful rock band for a little while. Then we checked out some boats. I was amazed at the flying boats…vessels that were part fishing boat….part helicopter. Supposedly you can fish while FLYING! (Do you catch flying fish?) I thought it sure would be a hoot to take a fishing escort on one of THOSE!!

The remainder of our time was pretty much taken up chilling out next to the pool. It was warm…but unlike Florida in May…not so hot it drove you nuts. We found a little diner where we ate a big breakfast for half the cost of the hotel café. DJ’s Diner was the place to be in the morning. The best meal we had was at Pierre’s on Islamorada…not a prisoner in site at this “just short of snooty” place. The food was superb. But most of the time you could find us at poolside…margarita in hand.

The last afternoon of our lost weekend we were lying in the sun. There was an older gentleman who took care of the towels…flotation devices…and such. You could have your picture take with him and his exotic parrot. He was an old hippie type guy who whenever you asked him how he was would reply, “Another day in paradise”. I like the Keys…but I don’t equate it with paradise. But the guy appeared relaxed and content. But he was noticeably absent on this day. The pool…that isn’t small by any stretch of the imagination…was full of giant dinosaur floats…huge inflated rings…beach balls…giant turtles. There barely existed a patch of water under these floats. Kids were running around jumping off the side of the pool onto floating plastic animals. I commented to Dan about the pool full of chaos and he mentioned perhaps those floats were to be rented, and the kids took them without asking while the hippie pool guy was on break or something. Sure enough, the guy soon returned and patiently went from dinosaur to ring to turtle asking the children to bring them back where they belonged. His calmness amazed me. And there it was again…the swimming pool!

  

So while the two of us lay there bemoaning the fact that we had to leave the next morning I wondered out loud, “You know. Being a pool guy like that might not be a bad thing to do after I retire.” Dan looked up at me and said, “Are you kidding? Some guy would ask you to get him a towel and you’d say ‘Fuck you! Get your own damn towel.’” “I would not!” I protested. “Yes you would” Dan knowingly re-iterated. Then I thought about playing guitar and having some drunken moron walk up to me and ask, “Hey! You know ‘McArthur Park? I wanna sing it NOW!” I laid back down…put my hat over my eyes…and sighed, “Yeah…I guess you’re right.”