Category Archives: History

GTT ’26, With a Small Side of NM

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Never cared much for the term snowbird, with its connotations of getting up every morning to play golf during winter in some arid place, or spending the evenings with members of your cohort in some gated community, maybe drinking but definitely grousing about the state of the world. Still, considering that in the winter of 25/26, I’ve spent two out of the last three months – the hard winter months, up Illinois way – in warmer places, it would be churlish to cast shade on fellow old people who happen to enjoy golf or grousing.

On the other hand, I’m not about to claim snowbird as descriptive for myself. I just happen to be able to take long trips during the cold months (along with my laptop, for work). In December, Florida. In February, Texas.

Back on February 3, I got on a plane and flew to Austin. I flew home from Dallas on March 3. In between, I spent time – and Yuriko joined me for a while – traversing the state of Texas, going so far west at one point that we ended up in New Mexico. By traversing, I mean long drives, in a rental car part of the time, and in my brother Jay’s car as well, a blue Subaru known as the Blubaru.

I drove from Austin east to Houston, mostly on US 290; from Houston to Nacogdoches, mostly on US 59; then to Dallas on various state highways, such as Texas 21 and 19; and from Dallas to San Angelo to Marathon, Texas, on US 67 and on the grandly remote US 385, which will also take you to the desert reaches of the Big Bend.

From Marathon, Texas, across to Carlsbad, NM, our route took us along US 90, then Texas 56, then US 62/180. Later, US 62/180 took us from Carlsbad part way back to Dallas — to Sweetwater, Texas — but mostly we went on the faster but less interesting I-20. Dallas to San Antonio was partly I-35, but also US 281, which takes you around the perma-gridlock that is Austin.

Of all those, the road between Nacogdoches and San Augustine on a day trip, Texas 21 heading east, winding through greenish (for February) rolling hills, was a favorite.

The towns listed above were just the places I spent the night, alone or with Yuriko or with my brothers. In between were such places as Bastrop, these days a day-trip from Austin, with the requisite boutiques and restaurants; Huntsville, home of Sam Houston and memorials to the first president of Texas; San Augustine, rival with Nacogdoches in claiming to be the oldest town in Texas; Stephenville and Ballinger, geographically about as deep in the heart of Texas as you can be; the West Texas art town of Marfa and the way station of Van Horn; a string of oil patch towns such as Hobbs, NM, and Seminole, Lamesa, Snyder, and Sweetwater, back in Texas. Later, traversing north to south and back again, I stopped in Hillsboro and Belton, along the I-35 axis; and Lockhart, which has claimed for itself barbecue capital of the state.

Along the way, oddities were encountered. Otherwise, why drive on smaller roads?

Such as an ice cream shop in Waller, Texas.

Or a highly visible ad for Rockets RV Park in Gaines County, Texas, not far east of the border with New Mexico.

A former Texaco station on an obscure Texas highway (Farm-to-Market 1690).

Had various encounters with the historic El Camino Real, whose various tendrils crossed a large slice of the future state of Texas, once upon a time.

Yuriko and I visited Big Bend National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I saw the National Museum of Funeral History in the city of Houston and the museum devoted to Houston (the man) in Huntsville. Also, Roadside America in Hillsboro, an eccentric collection of American commercial art, complete with a personal tour by the proprietor, and the outdoor art at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, that is, brutalist concrete structures in the brutal desert environment. I became acquainted with the splendid Glenwood Cemetery in Houston and the smaller and more ragged, but no less interesting city cemeteries in Huntsville and Nacogdoches. I stopped and looked at about a dozen county courthouses, of which Texas has many.

We ate a lot of meat along the way. As one does in Texas.

Also, Mexican food.

Eat like that and you’d better do some walking, and I did: various places in Austin and Houston and Dallas, in all three national parks, around downtowns and courthouse squares in a number of small towns, and a handful of local parks.

All that was good, but of course best of all, I had time to visit friends and relatives, of whom there are many in Texas: Tom and Nancy in Austin, Kirk and Lisa in Nacogdoches, another Tom and Steve and Ron and Greg and Judith in San Antonio, to list the friends; both brothers, two out of three nephews and their wives and all four of their children, to list relatives, along with the mother of one nephew’s wife (niece-in-law sounds peculiar, but that fits too). Also, I met for the first time two good friends of Tom’s, and one of Kirk and Lisa’s granddaughters.

I’d set out to do four long drives when I was 64, but this makes five. Guess I’m an overachiever about driving, anyway.

Big Four Bridge

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Even the last day of a long trip can include – should include – something to see. With that in mind on December 22, after we crossed the Ohio River from Louisville on the I-65 bridge, which I have done many times, we took the first exit to go to Jeffersonville, Indiana, which I have done only once, in 1990. Then we went back across the river to Louisville, this time on foot on a massive iron structure known as the Big Four Bridge.

The Jeffersonville side of the bridge offers views of that town and its riverfront, where I took a wintertime stroll all those years ago. At that time, Big Four Bridge was a decaying relic, inaccessible to the public.

You can also see the I-65 bridge from that vantage. It too is an elegant design.

But not as impressive as the sweeping ironwork of Big Four Bridge.

The Ohio sweeps along as well.

I couldn’t take enough pictures of Big Four.

Once upon a time, Big Four carried the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, also nicknamed the Big Four Railroad. The 2,525-foot span contains six trusses, beginning as a late 19th-century project, the sort of pre-OSHA work that killed dozens of workers during construction (so why not ghost stories?).

Completed in 1895, “The Big Four Bridge allowed freight traffic to dramatically increase in Louisville, and began carrying high-speed interurbans on September 12, 1905…” says Bridges & Tunnels. “Due to bigger and larger trains, not only in size, but in weight, contracts were let in June 1928 to build a larger Big Four Bridge. The new span, constructed by the Louisville & Jefferson Bridge Co., was built on the piers of the old bridge, while leaving the existing span intact while it was upgraded.”

That is the structure we see today, except that in the early 21st century, it was redeveloped into a pedestrian/bicycle bridge.

At the Louisville side of the bridge, views of the city.

And looking back at the bridge from the Kentucky (Louisville) side.


We saw the daytime bridge, of course. But “the Big Four Bridge has an LED lighting system that wraps the iron fretwork in vibrant colors,” says Our Waterfront. “The lights can be programmed to have a rainbow effect, highlighting the beauty and strength of the bridge structure. At night, the bridge becomes a colorful beacon in our city. Lights operate daily from twilight until 1 am.”

Another reason to come back to Louisville-Jeffersonville, obviously.

Pardon Me, Boy –

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It was some years before I got the joke.

For good reasons. I was only 13 when the movie came out, with no memory of the original reference, and you couldn’t just dial up any old song on your machine in those days. Still, I’m happy to say I saw Young Frankenstein in the theater, as I did Blazing Saddles that same year, which also included some references I didn’t understand until later, notably the names of Lili Von Shtupp and Gov. Le Petomane.

On the road home from Florida, we passed through Chattanooga, a city I hadn’t visited since sometime in the 1980s. I also have handful of memories of Chattanooga during our family road trip around the South in 1969, especially the hotel.

This time I noticed that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo was only a few blocks from the Interstate. So we paused our drive for a short visit.

“This landmark Chattanooga hotel located on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga initially served as the Southern Railway Terminal,” the Tennessee Encyclopedia says. “Designed by Beaux-Arts-trained architect Donn Barber of New York City, this magnificent architectural gateway to the Deep South opened during the Christmas season of 1909.”

With the mid-century decline of passenger rail in the U.S. came the near-demolition of the terminal, but the lesson of Penn Station and the era’s other thoughtless architectural destruction was apparently enough to fuel the Southern Railway Terminal’s preservation. With its redevelopment into a hotel-retail-entertainment complex came a new, instantly recognizable name: the Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

Inside, the sort of grand hall that marks grand old train terminals.

Behind the main building, relics of past choo-choos.

In case you’ve forgotten where you are.

Shovel all the coal in, gotta keep it rollin’
Woo, woo, Chattanooga, there you are

World of Coca-Cola

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Years ago, when we visited the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota, I noted with satisfaction that Monty Python’s Spam Sketch was playing on demand in one of the exhibit rooms. I understand the museum has moved to a different location in Austin since then, but I hope they still play the sketch.

As far as I noticed, there was no clip of One, Two, Three playing at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta last month. The scene I’d pick is the back-and-forth about Soviet scientists’ efforts to replicate Coca-Cola without its famously secret formula: “Even the Albanians wouldn’t drink it.”

I’d have this clip playing, too.

Or even the jingle scene from The Coca-Cola Kid. Nice jingle.

The World of Coca-Cola shares a plaza with the Georgia Aquarium. Pemberton Plaza, named for the doctor who invented a particularly successful “brain tonic,” back in the days when enterprising doctors and druggists did that sort of thing. Interestingly, the museum doesn’t play up Lt. Col. John Pemberton’s military service for the CSA, or his morphine addiction, which drove him to experiment with a new wonder drug, cocaine, to kick his habit. That didn’t work out, but he did leave a lasting soft drink legacy.

At 300,000 square feet, the museum is expansive, a 1990s design by architectural firm Jerde.

In December, decorations outside and in.

As a museum, the place includes a number of interactive exhibits and activities, starting at the Coca-Cola Theater with a six-minute commercial. I mean, a short history of Coke. You can also see the vault where the secret formula supposedly resides —

— check out various smells associated with the cola-making process, “explore Coca-Cola’s iconic influence on art, music, fashion, sports, and entertainment,” and “engage with interactive displays and AI magic that bring Coca-Cola’s legacy to life in new, unforgettable ways,” the museum explains. You can even, if you register – maybe with some app? – stand in line to have your picture taken with a person in a polar bear suit.

“The Coca-Cola Polar Bear… became truly iconic in 1993 with the launch of the ‘Always Coca-Cola’ campaign. In the famous ‘Northern Lights’ commercial, created by Ken Stewart, animated bears gather to watch the aurora borealis while enjoying Coca-Cola — a scene that brought the Polar Bear to life and captured the hearts of viewers worldwide,” the museum notes.

Does it rise to the level of icon? Somehow the Coca-Cola Polar Bear had made only a faint impression on either of us, so we took a pass on it. Also, there was a line. And it cost extra? Always with the revenue streams. But I did enjoy the more standard sort of museum exhibits on offer at World of Coca-Cola.

A seasonal observation.

Artifacts from long ago.

Ads from long ago.

And from distant places.

I seem to remember a similar political cartoon of featuring the Earth being nursed back to health after the ravages of WWII, but I can’t quite place it.

There were video clips, including of course the “Hilltop” commercial. That, I remember. Many people old enough do too, which naturally gave the final moment of Mad Men its punch.

The museum also featured Coke product cans and bottles of various kinds (but not a collection of caps that I saw), many more than you see in everyday grocery stores. For instance, Sting and Bon Jovi had their own cans at one point, as part of a musician series.

Cans from around the world.

A very crowded room includes soda and water dispensers that allow visitors to sample Coca-Cola products from around the world. We went to town trying the various concoctions, as did a lot of people, and eventually I found my favorite: Bonbon Anglais, a wonderful fruit drink from Madagascar.

The web site Madagasikara tells us: La boisson gazeuse Bonbon Anglais est fabriquée à Madagascar, un pays reconnu pour ses produits naturels et son savoir-faire artisanal. I would expect no less.

The gift shop was crowded, too. I took pics but bought no Coke merch. (I might have bought a postcard, but found none.)

To my way of thinking, the Coca-Cola Co. should pay me – even a little – to advertise its products on my person. Also, while I’m on that particular hobby horse, the World of Coca-Cola shouldn’t charge admission, especially not as much as a standard museum.

I ran the numbers, and World of Coca-Cola admission costs more than twice as much as admission to the Taj Mahal. Sure, Georgia isn’t Uttar Pradesh, but it’s galling that you’re paying at all, just to be marketed to. Obviously Middle America disagrees with me – and Yuriko didn’t mind paying for both of us – so that idea will just have to be a quixotic hobby horse of mine.

Downtown Jacksonville

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The coolest building in downtown Jacksonville: the Old Morocco Building (a.k.a. the Morocco Temple).

That’s my opinion, formed pretty much instantaneously on December 18, during our wander around downtown. We only spent a few hours in that part of Jacksonville, meaning my exposure was necessarily limited, but I’m sticking with my opinion. After all, what could be cooler than an Egyptian revival-Prairie School structure with sphinx-like guards out front? (And how about them toes?)

“The main facade features Egyptian-style terra-cotta columns with lotus-leaf capitals, tinted art-glass, sphinx-like sculptures, and a terra-cotta sun disk ornament with cobra heads,” notes Prairie School Traveler.

The Shriners – who else? – tapped architect Henry John Klutho to design the building, which was completed in 1911. Klutho had been based in NYC, but after the Great Fire of 1901 in Jacksonville, he came south to participate in the redevelopment of the city. If he did nothing else, the Morocco Temple would be enough. I understand the interior is similarly exotic, though modified after the Shriners moved out in the 1980s, but we didn’t venture in.

The aftermath of the fire. Redevelopment opportunities galore.

We’d come to Jacksonville, two days after leaving Key West, for two reasons. One, to visit old friends. Last year, I managed to visit old friends in Austin, San Antonio, Tokyo, rural Tennessee, coastal North Carolina, central Georgia, Denver, New York, suburban Boston, and finally Jacksonville. An essential ingredient for the year, these visits.

Also, I wanted to visit the generally ignored Jacksonville. A place one doesn’t hear about much. Miami has its Vice and Orlando its Mouse and Key West its Jimmy Buffett. But Jacksonville?

We were advised that parking would not be an issue in downtown Jacksonville, even on a weekday. It wasn’t. We set out to see what we could see.

It was almost spooky how empty downtown was. Even the downtown Detroit of recent years is more active.

Downtown Jacksonville included some large but closed churches, such as the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.

But at least Padre Pio is near the basilica to greet you.

If I’d known what to look for – because I had to look him up later – I’d have noticed the bandages covering both of his wrists. Among other things, St. Pio was known for his stigmata.

Down the street, also closed: First Presbyterian.

St. John’s Cathedral, Episcopal. At first I assumed it was closed.

This is the third church on the site. An 1840s structure burned down (and sank into the swamp?) in 1862, during one of the times the city changed hands between Union and Confederate. A grander church replaced it after the war but, oops, along came the aforementioned Great Fire of 1901. The current structure dates from 1906, the work of noted church architect Howard Nott Potter.

We found a way in, almost hidden around back. We were well rewarded.

Fine stained glass. St. John makes an appearance, as you’d think.

So does St. Longinus.

You might say he had a bit part in during the crucifixion, mentioned in one line exactly (John 19:34) and not even by name. But from such small acorns large bodies of belief grow.

The Overseas Highway

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A few days ago, I sent the following email to the curator and historian at the Key West Art & Historical Society, Dr. Cori Convertito:

Dr. Convertito,

I recently visited Key West for another pleasant visit, and came away with a question I haven’t been able to answer, though perhaps I haven’t looked in the right places.

Who is credited with the creation of the Conch Republic flag? I understand that it appeared at the same time as the infamous roadblock and the “secession,” but detail on its creation is lacking. Do you happen to know that?

One reason to ask is that it’s a handsome design, though I’m not sure about the star pattern asterisms — is one or another supposed to be the Southern Cross?

Today she answered:

That’s a perceptive question, and a difficult one to answer definitively. The Conch Republic flag emerged alongside the 1982 ‘secession,’ but attribution is complicated by the fact that several individuals have, over the years, laid claim to the original iteration of the artwork, and reliable contemporary documentation is limited. As a result, it’s hard to credit a single creator with certainty.

What is clearer is the intent behind the design elements. In addition to the conch shell and sun, the star groupings are generally understood to represent two navigational asterisms: the Southern Cross and the Northern Cross (Cygnus). Their inclusion appears deliberate, reinforcing Key West’s maritime identity and its symbolic position between hemispheres.

I hope that helps clarify what is known, and what remains unresolved.

So the short answer is, like with a number of historical questions – even ones as recent as this – no one is sure. Good to know. Thanks, Dr. Convertito.

The Overseas Highway, from mainland Florida to Key West, or vice versa, is epic all around: an epic construction project once upon a time, and an epic drive in our time. Through the Upper Keys, the likes of Key Largo and Islamorada, the ocean isn’t usually visible, obscured behind thick development: commercial and residential buildings and omnipresent marinas. But it isn’t long before you’re skipping from key to key, some larger, some smaller, with water widely visible on both sides of the road.

The most epic section of the crossing, as far as I’m concerned: Seven-Mile Bridge.

On an ordinary highway, seven miles isn’t much of a stretch at highway speeds. Listen to one song or another on the radio and you’re practically done with it. Those same minutes have a different quality over the wide water, glinting in the sun and spotted with boats and occasional small keys in the distance. There’s a sense of the mildly impossible. Of course it’s entirely possible, via a feat of 20th-century civil engineering, as is the 100-plus miles of the whole highway. I don’t believe my civil engineer grandfather ever drove the Overseas Highway, but I’ll bet he read about it with considerable satisfaction.

“The original 7 Mile Bridge, also known as the Knights Key-Pigeon Key-Moser Channel-Pacet Channel Bridge, was constructed in the early 1900s as part of Henry Flagler’s ambitious Overseas Railroad project,” notes the Key West Blog. “This railroad connected mainland Florida to Key West, revolutionizing transportation and trade in the region. However, after a devastating hurricane in 1935, the railroad was destroyed, and the bridge was converted into a highway.”

The history is a little more complicated than that, with the current bridge a 1980s work, leaving part of the original as a pedestrian and (especially) a fishing bridge. I’m no sport fisherman, but I understand tarpon, snook, snapper, grouper, bonefish and barracuda swim these waters.

At Big Pine Key, we stopped for a visit to the National Key Deer Refuge, a place focused on giving key deer a place to live, as it says in the name. For human visitors, there is a trail.

It goes partly around a pond in the refuge. No deer were to be seen.

We did spot a gator, however. Or maybe a croc. Hard to tell at this angle. They both live in southern Florida.

A sign on the trail warns visitors not about reptiles, but a nearby poisonwood tree.

Poisonwood? A native to the Keys. It sounds bad, and it is.

“Metopium Toxiferum [poisonwood] is related to poison oak, poison ivy, and poison sumac,” says the Tree Care Guide. “The tree produces the same irritant, urushiol, which causes an itchy, blistering rash. The oils from Metopium toxiferum cause dermatitis ranging in severity from a light red rash to intense skin blistering. Tea made from Metopium toxiferum leaves and twigs combined with bleach has been used to induce abortions but has also tended to kill the patient.”

Yikes. We took the advice of the sign and didn’t go near it.

Across the road from the refuge parking lot, some undeveloped key landscape. There couldn’t be that much of that, at least on the keys connected by the highway.

In Islamorada, which is spread across five small keys much closer to the mainland than either Key West or Big Pine Key, we stopped to pay our respects at the memorial to those who died in the 1935 hurricane.

Also in Islamorada, we drove past Betsy the Lobster, but sorry to say, didn’t stop for a closer look. What was I thinking?

Hemingway Visits the Key West Aquarium

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Land meets sea in Key West. For encounters with sea creatures, one can hire a boat and some deep-sea fishing gear and make like Hemingway. We went to the Key West Aquarium instead. A sedate sort of place, a legacy of early 20th-century Key West, when tourists started coming in numbers.

I managed to make one of the employees, or volunteers, laugh a bit. A youngish woman, she took our tickets and said that if we wanted to touch any of the sea creatures – there were a few large tanks with rays and the like, touching allowed – use only two fingers.

“So you’ll still have three, right?” I said.

Most of the aquatic life was in smaller tanks. A nice selection, “home to over 250 specimens of fish, sharks and four of the five species of sea turtles that inhabit the waters of the Florida Keys,” the Aquarium web site says. Also, the place is a more manageable size. Not a big-deal world-class mega-aquarium that takes all day to visit. Not that those can’t be impressive. But we had a good hour as childfree adults at Key West Aquarium, and that was about the right length for a visit.

Besides fish, there are fishermen. Depression-era murals of fishermen, that is.

What a pleasant surprise. By the Civil Works Administration, a short-lived predecessor to the WPA. Not the originals, however, which were by an artist named Alfred Crimi (d. 1994). The Living New Deal says they’re more recent replicas.

Come to think of it, Hemingway would have known about the aquarium. Key West isn’t that big a place, and the attraction would have been fairly new when he and Pauline lived mere blocks away. Wonder whether he ever went there.

Of course, we’re used to thinking of the youngish Earnest as a hard drinking, hard fishing sort of guy. Notions that, I believe, Hemingway carefully cultivated. Not only did he create memorable characters for his books, he did for himself as well.

On a whim, I turned to an AI writer available on line, and fed it the following prompt:

Write an account of visiting the Key West Aquarium, in the style of Earnest Hemingway. Three paragraphs is sufficient.

All of 15 seconds later, the machine gave me this.

The aquarium sat low and white against the glare, and the heat lay on the street like a weight. Inside, the air was cooler and smelled of salt and old wood. The tanks were clean and plain, and the fish moved with the calm certainty of things that belong where they are. A tarpon held itself still in the water, strong and watchful, and its eye followed me as if it knew I was only passing through.

I stood by the open pool where they fed the fish, and the water broke suddenly with life. The fish came hard and fast, flashing silver and green, their bodies cutting the surface and falling back again. It was violent in a small way and honest. The men who worked there spoke little, and when they did it was direct, as if there were no reason to waste words on what could be seen.

When I stepped back outside, the sun struck again and the sea wind came down the street. The aquarium stayed behind me, quiet and contained, holding its ordered slice of the ocean. I thought of how the fish swam without doubt, and how good it must be to live so close to what sustains you. Then I walked on, feeling the heat, and the day continued.

I was expecting something from a bad Hemingway writing contest, but no. This is pretty good. Better than that, actually. A little wow moment for me, and the day continued.

Key West Cemetery

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Back on Tuesday. A holiday’s a holiday, even if it comes in the pit of winter, where we definitely find ourselves. The memory of Sunny Florida gets a little more distant each time I feel the wind in single-digit temps.

In diminutive Key West, you’ve gone a long way after a few blocks. So a long way from Duval Street in that town is Key West Cemetery, which is also at a distance from the ocean — one measured in a few thousand feet. At the cemetery you’ll find a mix of above-ground tombs and standard stones. Styles from Old Florida and later, in other words.

We drove into Old Town Key West our second day rather than take the hotel shuttle, which we had the first day. I was gambling that the local parking information I’d picked up first-hand more than a decade earlier wasn’t obsolete yet, which it could well have been. The town has notoriously tight parking, for obvious reasons.

Two prayers for such a situation.

O Lord, by your grace

Help me find a parking space

…

O Jesus, full of grace

Help me find a parking space

Just the thing, provided you’re sure one of the many attributes of the Almighty is a sense of humor. Parking is perhaps a function of Plastic Jesus? (And I like this version, among the many out there.)

Then again, asking for a parking intercession might only seem to be praying for something trivial. For all we know, parking a certain car in a certain place on a certain day might via the butterfly effect prevent a deadly typhoon somewhere.

Anyway, my strategy worked out and we parked for no charge a stone’s throw – and I mean that almost literally – from Key West Cemetery.

Once upon a time, mid-19th century Key West had a burial ground nearer to the water. A hurricane in 1846 applied a large amount of water and wind to that location in a short time, smashing tombs and markers and returning bodies to the open air. Gruesome to consider, but the incident did inspire Key West city fathers to open a new cemetery on high ground. High for Key West, that is, 16 feet above sea level.

That has worked out. As many as 100,000 permanent residents now rest across 19 acres, roughly three times the living population of the city: all races and stations of life; Protestants, Catholics and Jews; Cuban cigar workers and Bahamian mariners; soldiers, sailors and civilians.

Many sad stories, as usual. Even if we can’t know the details at this distance.

Other residents include one Abraham Sawyer (d. 1939), a dwarf who reportedly refused to be a part of carnivals, instead working for manufacturers to advertise their products. He requested to be buried in a full-sized grave, but since I didn’t read of him until later (today), I didn’t go looking for him.

There is also the story of Elena Hoyos (d. 1931). Read the Find a Grave story, which I promise will be one of the stranger things you’ve read in a while, true or not.

The U.S. Navy Plot is square in the middle of the cemetery.

The centerpiece is a memorial to the dead of the Maine. Note the mast behind the sailor statue. That’s from the Maine.

The monument’s granite base says:

IN MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE DISASTER OF THE U.S. BATTLESHIP ‘MAINE’ IN HAVANA HARBOR FEB. 15, 1898, ERECTED BY THE CITIZENS OF KEY WEST, FLA.

Some of the men who died on the Maine ended up in the Navy Plot: the closest U.S. cemetery when they needed to be interred, and fast. Twenty-four of them, only seven of whom were identified.

Other sailors repose there as well. Such as Sub-Lieutenant Donald Henry Smith, Royal Navy.

That’s a little odd, but foreign servicemen do sometimes end up in American soil (such as at Vicksburg). I looked around a little, then asked Google AI how Sub-Lieutenant Smith came to be there.

The hive bots said: Donald Henry Smith (1929-1952) is buried in the Key West Cemetery, specifically in the U.S. Navy Plot, likely because he was a young man who died at age 23, possibly serving in the Navy or connected to the naval community, with the plot itself dedicated to fallen sailors, a common burial spot for service members in Key West.

So, navy guys get buried with other navy guys, sometimes. Or maybe because a navy is a navy? Thanks for nothing, AI.

I spotted a Cuban flag and went to investigate.

A Los Martires de Cuba.

Not all of them are with Jose Marti in Cuba itself. Guess this counts as another of the Little Cubas to be found in warm climes close to the home island.

The cemetery is under the flight path for planes headed for Key West International (EYW).

Then again, most of the island must be.

The Harry S. Truman Little White House

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Nightmarish human faces weren’t invented by demented AI, but have long been with us. Case in point.

There’s Harry Truman in there somewhere. This particular wax dummy watches patrons in the small gift shop at the Harry S. Truman Little White House, which we toured on our second day in Key West.

The property belongs to the state of Florida these days, but of course was once a federal facility. Specifically, used by the Navy as officers’ quarters for the base at Key West. Truman took a cotton to the island early in his presidency, and visited often, and this is where the Navy put him up. He came to relax and play cards and fish and drink, naturally, but also to be president somewhere besides Washington in winter, since by the 1940s communication tech could facilitate such a thing.

The museum has been restored to its appearance in the late 1940s, and damned if it isn’t like walking into my grandparents’ time, entering an ordinary sort of American house of the period. The president might have stayed there, but Harry and Bess weren’t the sorts who went in for the latest expensive styles, but rather the sort of things available at a department store or via mail order: couches with some color but not too much, wooden coffee and end tables, mid-century lamps, etc.

Except, that is, for the handsome custom-make card table. That wasn’t available from Montgomery Ward.

“The poker table was a gift to Truman in 1949 by three civilian contractors working in the U.S. Naval Station cabinet shop,” says Wood Shop News. “The table is a marvel of craftsmanship and one of the most popular pieces at the Key West facility. Measuring 58” in diameter and 28” high, according to Little White House executive director Bob Wolz, it is based on a poker table that was used on the U.S.S. Williamsburg presidential yacht. The piece is made of mahogany with built-in chip holders and ashtrays crafted from recycled brass shell casings. A solid tabletop can be used to cover the poker table to turn into a dining space.”

The limo parked on the grounds of the Little White House wasn’t standard mid-America either.

A nearby sign says that it is a 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Presidential Limousine. One of nine that the Truman administration used, since in those days presidential vehicles weren’t transported by air, as they are now, so the government had them stationed in various parts of the country, ready to use.

The car is a museum piece, but no mere museum piece, since I understand that the current owner, the Key West Harry S. Truman Foundation, rents it under specific conditions. Namely, you pay some large fee, and are driven around Key West for a while. I learned this when we saw an elderly couple get in the back seat, followed by a uniformed driver, and off they went.

One more thing about the Little White House: the grounds are a small arboretum.

Flora includes well-known varieties, such as avocado, coconut, date palm, mahogany and mango, plus less-than-household names, such as Fiji fan palm, soapberry tree, and my own favorite name, gumbo limbo, whose “wood, though soft, was used in the past to carve carousel horses,” the museum tells us.

Earnest Hemingway House, Key West

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“How many of you came because you’ve read some of his books?” our guide at the Earnest Hemingway House in Key West asked our small group. We’d paid our entrance fee, waited outside the house for a few minutes, then started on the tour. I was in that group. Most of his books, in my case.

“OK, some of you. How about because someone else dragged you here?”

A few more hands went up. I don’t think he was taking a survey, exactly, just kicking off the tour in an interesting way.

“What about to see the cats?” Hands went up. Some laughter.

Yuriko came for the cats, mostly, though she told me Hemingway is a writer than isn’t hard to read in the original English. We’d come to Hemingway House after our Duval Street stroll. It was about as pleasant a day as possible for such a walk. Everything is a short distance in Key West, so we arrived after a short walk.

The house is a block off Duval, on as high a spot as Key West provides, and in the shadow of a lighthouse about a block away. The grounds are lush, the house itself a handsome two-story legacy of one of the 19th-century Key West booms. One Asa Tift, a Key West wrecker, completed the house in 1851.

Tift was one of the more successful wreckers, looks like: a man who led small boats out from Key West to the nearby hazardous reefs when ships foundered there. Wreckers were eager for valuable salvage from these vessels, and if the Hemingway House is any indication, the rough-and-tumble of salvage — and you know the process was dangerous, full of natural hazards, but especially other violence-prone wreckers out for the same prize — nevertheless produced at least few men of means in isolated, pestilential Key West.

Emphasis on pestilential. Just ask Asa Tift, whose sizable family, for whom the house was built, were carried away in that all too common 19th-century way, by communicable disease.

The Hemingways showed up some decades after old man Tift died, acquiring and renovating the property using her family’s money. They did what they did, and these days the house is a museum to their presence.

No one lives there anymore. No hefty, dark-mustachioed man staggers home from Sloppy Joe’s bar good and drunk and flops to bed there, or goes to the upstairs office-studio and bangs out famed literature during sober periods, or argues with his wealthy wife under the sub-tropical shade trees – quarrels whose root seemed to be Hemingway’s roving eye, with a dash of alcoholic irresponsibility added to the mix.

The pool was an addition by his wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, which caused consternation for Earnest. Something about taking the place of his informal boxing ring on the same site, done while the author was out gallivanting somewhere. Terrific writer he might have been, and I certainly admire his talent for gallivanting, but he also seems to have been a touchy bastard.

Tourists and staff come and go, but in our time, only cats live at 1301 Whitehead St., a property enclosed by sturdy brick walls. Said the be the descendants of Hemingway’s son’s six-toe cat, the herd is large. Our guide told us how many, though I can’t remember the exact number now. In the range of dozens, beyond the dreams of even the most thoroughgoing cat ladies.

They are everywhere.

I mean everywhere, except maybe the pool.

My favorite story about the house doesn’t involve cats. The guide didn’t tell it this time, but I heard it before. By the mid-1930s, Hemingway was already a Famous Author, and without even telling him, the local chamber-of-commerce or the like put the house on a pamphlet given to tourists, as one of the local sights. Inevitably, people started showing up at odd and inconvenient hours, or entered expecting a tour. The brick wall all the way around the house is a legacy of that situation.