Key West – Oz Film, Trick Transition – Audubon Folio – Sloppy Joe's (2024)

Urban Relationships It's a fact of life that relationships change. The parent tends to the child, and decades later, the child might have to tend to the parent. Those of us who've followed the story know that Key West had been the most populous city in Florida at the turn of the 20C, and that Miami when founded had had a population of 300. In addition, we know that Miami was founded almost as an afterthought on Flagler's rush to Key West. How times have changed. Today Miami is a large metropolis, while Key West remains quite modest in size, just over 25,000.
Key West is too far from Miami to be considered an exurb, but its dependence on the mainland (= Miami) is obvious. The vast majority of visitors to Key West come via Miami and along the umbilical cord of the Keys. We know that the bridges have conduits and cables bringing water and communication out to distant Key West. There is obviously a historic relationship between the two cities. However, Key West has its own mindset and remains fiercely independent, as shown by the following story.

The Conch Republic In 1982, the US Border Patrol established a roadblock and inspection points on US 1 at Florida City, stopping all northbound traffic returning from the Keys to search vehicles for illegal drugs and undocumented people. The Key West City Council repeatedly complained about the roadblocks, which were a major inconvenience for travelers and damaged tourism.

Various unsuccessful complaints and attempts to get a legal injunction against the blockade failed in Miami federal court. So the pretext was used that, since such checkpoints occur only at international borders and not internally, a de facto border evidently existed at Florida City, and so beyond that was "foreign territory". On 23 April 1982, Key West mayor Dennis Wardlow and the city council declared the independence of the city of Key West, calling it the Conch Republic. After one minute of secession, Wardlow, as the "Prime Minister", surrendered to an officer of the Key West Naval Air Station, and requested one billion dollars in "foreign aid".

The faux secession was a great publicity stunt. Not only did the public attention generated soon after cause the roadblock and inspection station to be removed, once the term was expanded to refer to all of the Florida Keys, it became a tourism booster and provided a new source of revenue for the Keys and Key West by way of tourist keepsake sales. At a later date, a national anthem was written called "Conch Republic". It was recorded by the appropriately named Key Lime Pie band, and voted on and accepted by the City Commissioners of the City of Key West.

We should comment on the word "conch". I think most of us recognize it as being a popular kind of large, pointed sea shell. The first confusion arises from its pronunciation. It derives from Latin concha "shellfish", and earlier from Greek konkhē "mussel". Note that neither language has a CH sound as in English. Conch rhymes w "honk", and is a hom*onym of "to conk [on the head]", and this is the pronunciation in the Keys. However, the spelling is misleading to many, so some do rhyme it with ponch[o], and that is now usually considered to be an alternate pronunciation.

But how is it applied to people? The answer presents another example of Bahamian influence on Key West and on all the Keys. After the American Revolution, many loyalists migrated to the Bahamas. Some loyalists looked down on the original Bahamians of European descent and called them Conchs, probably because the shellfish was a prominent part of their diet, as in conch chowder, also popular in the Keys to this day (Photo by Eugene Kim).

As we've said, Bahamians began visiting the Florida Keys in the 18C to catch turtles, cut timber, and particularly to salvage shipwrecks. During the 19Century and the first half of the 20C, most of the permanent residents in the Keys outside of Key West, and many in Key West, were Bahamian in origin. Conch was reported to be a term of distinction for Bahamians in Key West in the 1880s, and the term eventually spread to all residents. Thus calling it the Conch Republic was perfectly fitting.

Island Geography I'm sure others have their own conception of the layout of the island. After five visits, this is mine.

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Keep this "island map" for later reference. Key West island is about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1 mile (1.6 km) wide. Do keep in mind that the original Spanish name was Cayo Hueso ("Bone Key") and that Spanish-speaking people today still use this term when referring to Key West. Here, "West" is a (really quite logical) misinterpretation by English speakers of Hueso (WÉ.so).

Far in the west is Mallory Square, famous for its sunset views. This whole corner of the island is where the city started. It apparently expanded to the south first, which is what the grid also shows us. As in the case of cities that use a term like Altstadt ("Old City") in Germany or centro storico ("historic center") in Italy, this part of Key West is called Old Town and is an official Historic District. Find Bayview Park. The street that runs diagonally (NE-SW) along its east side is roughly the eastern extent of the Historic District. You have now discovered Oz.

The oldest, and to me most impressive, part of Old Town is the northern half. Find Truman Avenue. (President Truman had his "Little White House" in Key West—see below.) I believe locals as well consider it a kind of dividing line. To my mind, Truman Avenue delineates Oz proper to the north from what I call "South Oz". (You will note that, because of where Old Town began, the grid is diamond-shaped, requiring a bit of zigzagging when trying to drive east-west.)

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Hold on to this Old Town map along with our island map. Notice the activity area around Mallory Square; that Duval Street is the main drag 1.1 miles (1.8 km) long, with Whitehead Street adjacent; how entering by Flagler Street at the bottom requires zigzagging; how there's a neighborhood called Bahama Village. Also make note of Key West's populist fraud, the so-called "Southernmost Point", and check out even on this simple map that the area to its west in the US Naval Reservation is already further south. Much more about that later.
You'll also see that the Navy has a major presence, not only here on the south side, but in the north on Trumbo Point, which is also off limits to the public. It's hardly shown on this map, so look at the island map, and you can tell exactly where land was reclaimed for the Over-Sea Railroad station, rail yards, and ferry connection to Cuba. The military presence is significant. During the American Civil War, while Florida seceded from the Union, Key West remained in Union hands because of the naval base. Most locals were sympathetic to the Confederacy, however, and many flew Confederate flags over their homes. This fact makes the pun in the proposed Conch Republic motto even more significant.

https://www.cityofkeywest-fl.gov/ImageRepository/Document?documentID=1189

This is the third map we'll be referring back to (clickable), showing the exact borders of the Key West Historic District. It excludes those neighborhoods in the southeast, which are presumably transitional to the modern areas to the east. It also notably excludes the Naval Air Station at Trumbo Point in the north, as well as the US Naval Reservation in the southwest, pointedly also excluding the so-called "Southernmost Point" area east of it at the end of Whitehead Street. The Key West Historic District is the largest historic district in Florida and is believed to be the largest predominantly wooden historic district in US. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

We've talked about (and used) some of the free shuttle bus systems that have been initiated for visitors to get around urban centers. Here in Lower Manhattan we have the Downtown Connection for locals and visitors. I've talked about using the free shuttles in Baltimore, and we'll see shortly how handy the free shuttles in Miami Beach are.

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I've since discovered that Key West also has a free shuttle that runs every 20 minutes. We'll just use this map fleetingly, then drop it. Since I had a car, I did not need the shuttle, but offer it to show which parts of Old Town the shuttle visits, since those are the areas people are interested in. You'll see the loop surrounds (but does not enter upon) Duval as well as Eaton.

ARCHITECTURE: The charm of Old Town Key West lies in its architecture, which provides its very typical atmosphere. Between 1763, when Great Britain took control of Florida from Spain, and 1821, when the US took possession of Florida from Spain, there were few or no permanent inhabitants anywhere in the Florida Keys. Cubans and Bahamians regularly visited the Keys, the Cubans primarily to fish, while the Bahamians fished, caught turtles, cut hardwood timber, and notably, salvaged shipwrecks.

However, the influence of Bahamian architecture on Key West is palpable. Generally, the structures date from 1886 to 1912, with the houses being constructed from wood by shipbuilders. The craftsmen created the Conch style, which is houses characterized by two stories, wraparound verandas (or covered porches, balconies, or galleries) , and side-hinged, louvered shuttered doors and windows. These houses are often accented by bright pastel colors. Exterior characteristics are peaked metal roofs, horizontal wood siding, and gingerbread trim.

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On the first link, note the horizontal siding on the wraparound verandas. On the second, the louvered shutters, including on the front door, stand out, as does the peaked roof.

There's another type of house that appears in Key West, tho it's not limited to there, as they're typical of the American South. I got to know Shotgun Houses, also called Cigar Cottages, from seeing so many in Tampa, but they're also typical of Key West.
A shotgun house is a narrow rectangular residence, usually no more than about 3.5 m (12 ft) wide, with rooms arranged one behind the other and doors at each end of the house. It was the most popular style of house in the Southern United States from the end of the American Civil War (1861–65) through the 1920s. The design is similar to that of railroad apartments, with one room lining up after another. The term "shotgun" is a humorous reference to the thought that if all the doors are opened, a shotgun blast fired into the house from the front doorway will fly cleanly to the other end and out at the back door, either room-to-room, or down a side hallway, if there is one.
In the late 19C, many Cuban cigarmakers immigrated to Key West (and Tampa), where they constructed single-story cottages. These houses usually featured a long side hall lined by three rooms. In Key West there are rows of these quaint cottages, many of which are painted with bright tones inspired by the tropical location. This is a typical layout of a floor plan of a shotgun house (Sketch by Susan Murray). To my mind, a layout such as this lacking a side hall is even more basic, and perhaps more original, of the style.

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The first link shows a typical shotgun house that seems to be one of a kind, but the second one shows a more typical row of such houses. Note the bright colors in both cases.

Approach Route-South To continue talking about island geography, go back to the island map. As we said at the end of the last posting, when you take the bridge from Stock Island across the narrow channel and arrive at the far end of Key West island, you cannot go straight, since you're directed to go either south or north on Roosevelt Boulevard. As chance would have it, on our first trip in 1991, for no good reason whatsoever, we turned left and took a southern approach route to Old Town, apparently then taking Flagler Avenue. Being creatures of habit, we took this same southern route on all four trips in the 1990s. The neighborhood traversed is residential, with occasional commerce, but is very mid-20C suburban in style, very "pass-thru", and not quaint in any way.

HOTELS: Now refer back to our Old Town map to see how we zigzagged when we reached "South Oz" before finally finding a street to turn north on. Thus the introduction to charm was gradual and passed thru three stages: uninteresting to mildly interesting to delightful.

(1) Find Eaton Street and, a half-block east of Duval, north side, is where we stayed three times. (You'll notice that a half-block further, the next minor short street is the appropriately named Bahama Street.) We've just located what was then called Eaton Lodge, but is now called Old Town Manor. The two of us stayed there in 1991, and we liked it enough so that we stayed there with Beverly's brother and mother in 1994, and later with my sister and her husband in 1998. We obviously enjoyed it there, and I have particularly nice memories of breakfast in their expansive garden.
I just considered it good luck in having found a nice place when planning the first trip, but now I find that it's well-known enough to have its own Wikipedia page! Old Town Manor, formerly Eaton Lodge, is described as a three-story Victorian manor house and bed and breakfast inn. It was built in 1886 in the Greek Revival style as a grocery and butcher shop, but was extensively remodeled in 1937 by an architect who kept its historic character intact. By then, the property had become the home and office of a doctor and remained in the family until the death of his widow in the early 1970s.

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The building still has the original cypress front door (see above) and much original woodwork. Each story has a front porch. The lobby contains a fireplace and a built-in mahogany bookcase, with a Colonial staircase leading upstairs (below).

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The building boasts one of the first ornamental gardens of the Keys, which is what I remember best as our breakfast site.

(2) Now find Truman, and go 1 ½ full blocks east, north side, between Simonton and Elizabeth. In 1996, between the visits with relatives, we stayed at the Déjà Vu Resort, which we'd specially sought out because it was clothing optional, also co-ed. It had a nice pool area in the center, completely surrounded by the hotel for privacy, and we enjoyed it a lot, despite the further distance from the downtown area. I always pictured it to be located in "South Oz", but since it's on the north side of Truman, I see that's not accurate. However, today it's become the Truman Hotel, and is no longer clothing-optional.

(3) Finally, a block south of Eaton is Fleming. Go three+ full blocks east, south side, and between William and Margaret is the Equator Resort, where I stayed solo in 2019. It was happily once again clothing optional, but for gentlemen only. We'll discuss it below.

Eaton Lodge (Old Town Manor) was a perfect venue as a traveler, enjoying the history and beauty of the place, all while enjoying Key West. But the Equator Resort was a perfect venue as a vacationer, enjoying the pools, hot tubs, happy hours at the bar, full body massage, and socialization with others, also all while enjoying Key West as well as a traveler.

Approach Route-North Back to the island map. In 2019 I must have had some sort of epiphany, because well in advance, I had decided my "yellow brick road" would turn north off the bridge and approach "Oz" from a new angle, on the north approach, plunging directly into the best part of Old Town. This new entry was a major discovery and feature of this most recent trip. However, it was an emotional roller-coaster. It started out very disappointingly, but entering Old Town by the back door I found ended up as being the best arrival ever and a high point of the 2019 trip.

As it turns out, I discovered that this north shore route, in an area sometimes called New Town, is the contemporary shopping area of Key West. Forget the walkable, quaint corner convenience stores in Old Town, this area I stumbled onto was 20C-21C modern in every way. I do realize Key Westers have every right not to remain in the 19C for their shopping, but, having blundered into it made me feel indignant. You'll notice a couple of shopping centers on the map. One was supermarket-oriented with a lot of parking, but the next one was a complete mall. You've seen them—a mall building in the center lost in an unspeakably large parking lot, so big that drivers had to memorize the name of the area where they'd left their car. I did not come to Key West to see this.

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Take a quick look at this to show one thing—how just boring turned into mind-numbing. Note how North Roosevelt Boulevard turns into the Palm Avenue Causeway. As the road approaches the Trumbo Point military base, the base—shown in yellow--overflows its namesake, and a flood of military buildings, mostly navy barracks, surrounds Palm Avenue and comes perilously close to the Historic District—it actually borders it. The Historic District map will reflect this. Military barracks and similar cookie-cutter housing actually border both sides of Palm Avenue. And this is adjacent to the Historic District. Who would have thought that hell would border heaven. How more yin/yang can you get? Where is our "yellow brick road" now leading us?

Oz Film, Trick Transition We'll switch topics momentarily to one that will help lead us into Old Town shortly. But for now, we'll make reference to the 1939 film of the Wizard of Oz, which surely to most minds is the definitive story, tho modified from the original (14!) books by L Frank Baum (rhymes with "home"—I've always mispronounced it). Even the modern name is a modification, since the original book's name in 1900 was four words long, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The 1939 film is celebrated for many things, notably its use of Technicolor, and we're going to concentrate on that as it affects our entry into Key West's Old Town. However, there are many other interesting points about the film, so we will also go a bit off our main topic to include the best ones of them.

COLOR: It's amazing when you think about it how color has gradually entered the media. It started with the cinema, where early attempts finally became viable in the early 1930s, then spread to TV by mid-20C, and finally reached newspapers most recently.
The film used the most successful early movie color system at the time, Technicolor, and for years, color films and ads for them boasted the phrase "Color by Technicolor". The "Tech" in the name is based on MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the two founders had studied as undergraduates, and later also instructed. By the 1950s, Technicolor was gradually replaced by Eastmancolor by Kodak, named after George Eastman, founder of Kodak. Early Technicolor was known for its very deep colors—a red rose in Technicolor came out as a really RED rose. Such lush color might have been considered too much in some films, tho it was ideal for Dorothy's spectacular arrival into Munchkinland.
The Wizard of Oz wasn't the first film to be shot in Technicolor; that was Becky Sharp, a full four years earlier, in 1935. But the Oz film used color in a very clever way, as you know. Only the central bulk of the film, which took place in Oz, was in color, so-called three-strip Technicolor. The first and final scenes (plus opening and closing credits) were in sepia-tinted black-and-white. The obvious purpose was to show how special Oz was, and how mundane the Kansas farm was. We can speculate why it wasn't left in plain B/W. Maybe sepia reflected old-timey sepia photographs? Maybe sepia was meant as an indication that Oz would be in color?
We are so jaded today when "everything" is in color, but need to visualize how people felt seeing the film at the time. The use of color alone was so novel, but the sudden transition mid-scene from sepia to color is said to have elicited gasps from contemporary audiences. Keep those gasps in mind when we shortly enter Key West's Old Town.
It apparently wasn't easy at the time to make decisions based on color, as a lot of attention had to be given to details not arising in B/W. The production crew favored some shades of color over others. It took the studio's art department almost a week to settle on the shade of yellow used for the Yellow Brick Road. Both the Ruby Slippers and Dorothy's dress raised color problems (see below).

TRANSITIONS: If you're going from sepia to color, then back to sepia, there are two transitions. The one late in the film was done simply: we'll see again in a video in a moment how color went to blackout before going to sepia. But early in the film, they wanted to reveal of the color sequence spectacularly. You'll remember how a sepia Dorothy opens a sepia door to a Munchkinland in blazing COLOR!!! But Technicolor was an entirely different technology to filming in black and white. There was no way to combine the two types of film in the same frame for the color change effect. Today you could pull off such a stunt simply, with computer-assisted technology. But in 1939, you had to use your wits. That's why I called this section the Trick Transition in the Oz film. So how'd they do it?
Look at this short clip (0:31), which shows the spectacular transition from sepia to color: Dorothy Enters Oz.
Now let's look at it again together, with pauses.
0:01 It starts out in sepia, which had been the case from the start of the film. She's in her room in the house that's been blown away from Kansas by the tornado.
0:16 She passes another door, which is a faded light brown. This is the actual end of the use of sepia until the end of the film, back in Kansas.
0:17 She comes to an outside door, which is a suspiciously deep lush brown. But if we don't pause the video, we have no time to get suspicious, since the trickery goes by so fast. This is actually where the Technicolor film begins, but where the inside of this door, and the rest of the set, has been PAINTED sepia to trick us all!
0:18 to 0:20 Dorothy in this frame is not Judy Garland, but her body double, Bobbie Koshay, wearing a gray dress (see below). She might be wearing sepia makeup on her face and arm, but not necessarily, since the shot is so dimly lit and so very short that skin color might not be noticeable. That is apparently really Toto in the basket.
0:21 This shows is the magic of the technique used. It looks like sepia is being replaced by color, whereas it's all in color, with the door and figure in dark brown and in darkness.
0:24 The Dorothy here is indeed Judy Garland, who steps out of the shadows, takes Toto from Bobbie, and steps around her to pass thru the door into Oz.
0:29 There's a cut here, after which Dorothy is indeed holding Toto, but right before that, what she's holding is inconclusive.
The viewer is oh-so cleverly tricked into thinking that the color shot begins at 0:21, but it actually begins back at 0:17, so it's a four-second transition. It happens so fast and we're dazzled by color, that we don't perceive the clever trickery.
This is the end of the point we wanted to make, but there's more fun we can add.

NAMES: The rumor I'd always heard is that Baum got the name Oz from a pair of filing cabinets, one labeled A-N and the other O-Z. Snopes, the fact-checking website, reports that that's basically true, with slight variations. In a 1903 press release announcing the reissue of the original book, Baum himself explained as follows:

Thus to be exact, it was actually a small three-drawer desktop cabinet. But the last one did indeed suggest Oz.

It was probably Baum's own niece, Dorothy Gage, who had died in infancy, whose name was reimagined as Dorothy Gale. There is speculation that Baum inserted her slightly modified name into his stories as a memorial.
Dorothy's last name is never mentioned in the first two Oz books, but was disclosed in the third book in 1907 after it had been originally mentioned in Baum's script for the 1902 Broadway stage version in which it had been a setup for a punning joke. (Dorothy: "I am Dorothy, and I am one of the Kansas Gales." Scarecrow: "That accounts for your breezy manner.") It's also possible that it's an oblique reference to the tornado that upends Dorothy's life.

Southeast of Chicago is Bass Lake, Indiana, where the Baum family had a cottage. To the northwest of the lake is the small town of Toto, Indiana (below), the inspiration for the name Toto for Dorothy's dog.

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This was the train depot in Toto in 1915, during Baum's era. Toto was played by Terry, who was uncredited--the final credits said Toto was played by "Toto".

CHARACTERS: A character invented for the film who was not in the books, is the wealthy landowner neighbor in Kansas, Miss Almira Gulch. Dorothy's four friends had Kansas counterparts in the four ranch hands, and the Wizard's counterpart was the carnival huckster Professor Marvel. The film people felt that the Wicked Witch of the West should have a Kansas counterpart as well, and so they created Miss Gulch. For obvious reasons, Miss Gulch is the only duplicate character who doesn't return in the Kansas bedroom scene. Margaret Hamilton famously played both roles.
What must be some sort of record for duplication of roles, Frank Morgan had six roles in the film. Not only did he play the Wizard and Marvel, he also appeared as the gatekeeper at the Emerald City, the coachman of the carriage drawn by "The Horse of a Different Color", the Emerald City guard who initially refuses to let Dorothy and her friends in to see the Wizard, and the Wizard's scary face projection.

QUOTES: The film has become the source of a number of quotes in contemporary popular culture. I'll mention two. Repeated a number of times at the end is There’s no place like home, and actually, those are the last four words of the film. However, the quote is not original to the film, but comes from the 1822 song "Home Sweet Home": Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam / Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. Thus, tho it is iconic to the film, I'm sure more people will associate it with that song.
It doesn't compare to a quote so deeply connected to the film like Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore, quoted whenever one finds oneself in an unusual situation.

APPAREL: The Ruby Slippers are the famous pair of shoes worn by Dorothy. Because of their iconic stature, they are among the most valuable items of film memorabilia. Several pairs were made for the film, though the exact number is unknown. Five pairs are known to have survived.
In the original 1900 novel, Dorothy wears Silver Shoes. However, the color was changed to red in the film to take advantage of the new Technicolor film process. Consideration surely had to be given about how silver shoes would appear on the Yellow Brick Road as opposed to red shoes.
The shoes are covered in sequins, about 2,300 for each shoe. The film's early three-strip Technicolor process required the sequins to be darker than most red sequins found today--bright red sequins would have appeared orange on screen. Two weeks before the start of shooting, butterfly-shaped red leather Art Deco bows were added to the shoes. This is an original pair of Ruby Slippers on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington (Photo by dbking). The value of a surviving pair of Ruby Slippers has been quoted as $3.5 million.

Dorothy wears a blue-and-white gingham pinafore dress. Gingham refers to a style of small checks forming a two-color checkerboard pattern (Photo by Ossipro). A pinafore is a sleeveless apron-like garment worn over a blouse, a cream-colored one in this case. (The name "pinafore" reflects that the garment was originally pinned to the front [afore] of a dress.) Several copies of the dress were made for Garland to wear during production, which were styled to make her appear both younger and thinner on camera.
We always picture Judy Garland as Dorothy. However in the story, Dorothy is 12 years old, but Judy was 16. One reason filmmakers opted for the checked dress was to make Garland look younger. Also, the studio famously thought her to be "too fat" and fed her diet pills. In addition, they felt the checkered dress would make her look thinner. She also had to wear a tight corset to make her appear thinner, but also to hide her breasts.
Despite being widely perceived as blue and white, the dress was actually blue and light pink, which was considered easier to capture in the new medium of Technicolor.
Only two complete surviving "Dorothy dresses" are known to exist. The dress is one of the most famous—and therefore valuable--costumes in cinematic history. Several auction houses have sold the dress for upwards of a million dollars. Its popularity is credited with popularizing gingham.
Since the beginning of the film was in sepia, audiences do not see the dress's true color until Dorothy appears in Oz. Here she is next to Glinda (click).

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A grey version of the dress (the only one of its kind) was created specifically for the moment the film transitions from sepia to color, but was, as we know, never worn by Garland herself. Instead, Garland's body double, Bobbie Koshay, was filmed from behind wearing the grey dress while opening the farmhouse door.

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This is Bobbie Koshay's dress for use in the iconic "opening the door" scene.

THE NON-GARLANDS: As was common practice, in an effort to allow stars time to rest, Garland was given two actresses that would support her during the Oz project. The already-mentioned Bobbie Koshay served as her (Body) Double and Stunt Double, replacing her in some scenes where faces were not visible, and doing stunts for her in for the more action-oriented scenes. Caren Marsh would serve as her Stand-In to model costumes under hot lights to set up camera shots. Each actress was given a replica gingham dress, blouse, and pair of Ruby Slippers. However, Bobbie Koshay spent a lot more time on set than Caren Marsh. As was common, neither actress was credited as being in the film.

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The first link shows Bobbie Koshay on set standing in for Judy Garland as a scene is being prepared. The second link shows Judy Garland (left) on the set with munchkin Olga Nardone and Bobbie Koshay, wearing the same dress.

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And of course, we have to see Bobbie again in her big scene as she barely cracks open the door, then steps out of the frame, while Judy Garland walks into a Technicolor Munchkinland.

But Bobbie had another moment of glory, with the Ruby Slippers, since she's the one that taps her heels together three times at the end of the movie that brings Dorothy and Toto back home to Kansas.

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When the Ruby Slippers first appear, it is Judy Garland wearing them (above), here standing in front of Glinda. But now let's look toward the end of the film in this YouTube video. We pick it up as Glinda is about to send the group back to a sepia Kansas.
At 3:14 and 3:39, that's Bobbie clicking her heels. At 3:41 the frame just starts fading from color to sepia (my guess—a fake sepia again on color film for two seconds), then at 3:43 it goes to blackout—an easy way to switch to sepia--after which we have the sepia bedroom scene.

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I find very little on Caren Marsh at the time of the film, tho here she is on the right, facing Judy, possibly in the studio canteen during lunch. But I do know she's a survivor, and is one of the last, if not the last, person working on the film. This is Karen Marsh Doll (her married name) at her 95th birthday in 2014 (Photo by Boyd Magers). And as of her birthday this year on 6 April 2024, she turned 105 years old and is still going strong. As a former stage and screen actress and dancer specializing in modern dance, she's one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. To this day, once a month she volunteers as a dance therapy instructor at the Palm Springs Stroke Activity Center. She has appeared in Wizard of Oz film festivals, conventions, and reunions.

RE-RELEASE & FAME: While the film was sufficiently popular at the box office, it failed to make a profit for MGM until its 1949 re-release, making it MGM's most expensive production at the time. The 1956 television premiere of the film reintroduced the film to the public. Today, in a time when all old films are available at will, we must remember that back in the day, you'd see a film again only if it were re-released to theaters.
The film frequently ranks on critics' lists of the greatest films of all time and is now the most commercially successful adaptation of Baum's work. According to the US Library of Congress, it is the most seen film in movie history. There was talk about doing a sequel as soon as the next year, but Judy Garland by then had become so famous that she had too many other offers, and nothing ever came of it. It's another example of Fame killing Art.

Day 4: Mon, Nov 4 (Cont'd): Key West I Back to our Yellow Brick Road, where we'd left the Wicked Witch of the West in Miami and, once on Key West island, went thru mundane contemporary shopping centers, then navy barracks and housing. Would this ever improve on our quest to reach Oz?

Entering the Oz of Key West's Old Town Our island map shows how North Roosevelt Boulevard does enter Old Town via Truman Avenue. But I'd noticed in advance that a connection to Palm Avenue leads right to Eaton Street, a major street, this one being closer to my hotel. You'll notice how, once it meets Eaton, there's still one last block of Eaton before White Street, the border of the Historic District. The Eaton/White intersection would prove to be prophetic. Confirm this location on both the city map and Historic District map, as it became the highlight of this entire Florida trip for me.

I suspect some readers will doubt that the following really happened, but I assure you, it did. The moment I crossed the Eaton/White intersection, the ambience changed so rapidly that my jaw dropped and I gasped, perhaps like those 1939 viewers when sepia became Technicolor. I then grinned broadly. I'd found the back door to Oz! I suppose lots of locals use this to drive to go supermarket and mall shopping, but I doubt that too many visitors find this entrance.

The mundane naval barracks and housing gave way suddenly to the Bahamian architecture of Old Town Key West, and it was a delight. These were residential streets, with the occasional convenience store or restaurant at the corner. I knew I needed to make two right turns to get to the hotel, on William, then on Fleming, and I'd be unpacking my bag in a trice. I looked for street signs for William and didn't find them. I figured out why after it was too late--I should have known better.

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Key West does have some standard above-your-head street signs, especially in busy tourist areas like Duval Street, mostly because that's where tourists expect them. Above is an example in front of Sloppy Joe's—more later. But I'd been away from Key West long enough that I'd foolishly forgotten to look downward.

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It took a few moments until I finally remembered where to find the street signs used in the "real" Key West, down below, on low posts. By then, I'd passed William, but I didn't care. I was having too much fun! I passed Old Town Manor (ex-Eaton Lodge) on the right. I came to Duval, where there was an upper sign like above at Greene Street. It was lots of fun, and I didn't want to stop. In one more block, I came to Eaton and Whitehead, as shown on the above post, where I finally made my first left turn. In a block, at Eaton and Fleming, I stopped for a red light before making my second left on Fleming, and found by chance I was suddenly sightseeing at an old favorite location. Look at the city map where you see a green sign saying MM 0. This is a Key West landmark, Mile Marker Zero where US 1 starts (Photo by Anita Walz). Beverly and I had visited this point on our first trip, so it was nice to come across it again.

The sign might be modest, but here it's taken very seriously. The Mile Marker Zero sign in green and white has been trademarked by an aggressive local t-shirt shop owner after an extensive and eyebrow-raising million-dollar court battle.

Making my second left turn here, Fleming Street in a few blocks brought me back east to my hotel, on the south side between William and Margaret.
In stark contrast to New Town, Old Town is charmingly subtle. Just as we saw the small, discrete sign above to Old Town Manor, note the small, discrete sign below to Equator Resort:

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As I discovered on arrival, the hotel—again, clothing-optional, but this hotel was just for gentlemen--actually was formed from at least two adjacent previous hotels. This is one at 816-818 Fleming, and its official address—and actual entrance--is to the left (not shown) at 822. As we look south at the building, we see façades that fit into Old Town perfectly. The sign just says Equator, and doesn't even mention that it's a hotel or resort. The hotel does not have its own parking, but not to worry. I'd been informed about the parking code shown on the curved curbs. You see in the picture it's white, meaning it's a loading zone only. I parked, checked in, and left my bag at the desk; then I drove around the block, and saw red curbs, allowing parking for local residents only (permit required in windshield), and chose one of the plenty of unpainted curb spots.

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This is the property map for Equator Resort, but it looks overly complicated. Start at the bottom black area with addresses. The property is merely the rectangle above that. You see the main door at 222 Fleming, with the front desk. The breakfast area is right beyond that. Since the resort was a "vacationer" spot for me amid what was otherwise a "traveler" visit to Old Town, I got up for a late continental breakfast with quiches (8:00 to 10:30) with few others dining late. Free Starbucks coffee was available at all times, as was free wi-fi and robes. Usually the resort cat was curled up sleeping on an adjacent chair during breakfast. This is what you call low-key.

Step out on the porch and you see one quirkiness of this hotel. Since it was formed from two hotels joined together, there are two swimming pools and two hot tubs! I enjoyed every one of them—one was built in to a pool and one was at a distance from its pool. In the back, in front of the housekeeping area is the pool bar, where a complimentary happy hour took place from 5:00 to 6:30—I didn't miss a single one. The room I'd booked was 27C, since a queen room was at a more reasonable price, and very well located (exit near 29A).
Now look at the "exploded" area of the map, which makes it a bit confusing. The green "explosions" show a second floor, and a third floor at one point. The resort has 34 rooms converted from 5 historic properties—I'm not sure just how.

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The first link looks east across the west pool to the stepped entrance to my section. The bar is to the right. The second link is a high-level view over the west hot tub to the east pool. The east hot tub is behind the glass-brick wall.

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This first high view looks south from the main building across the west pool to the bar area in the shade. The second view looks north from the bar over the west pool to the porch to the lobby and main entrance.
But the time I got settled in on this arrival day it was time for happy hour, with some interesting conversations. It was then dinnertime, and when at a clothing-optional resort without a restaurant, "dressing for dinner" takes on extra meaning. I'd checked out interesting neighborhood restaurants long in advance, and this first night I walked two blocks up William to Caroline to the Onlywood Grill, an Italian restaurant. I enjoyed Spaghetti Aglio-Olio with Pepperoncini (hot chili peppers), nice and al dente, and of course then had a genuine Key Lime Pie.

Day 5: Tue, Nov 5: Key West II While staying at the resort hotel was to be one of my rare "vacationer" experiences, I did schedule two "traveler" experiences in town, one driving and one walking. I only needed two because I'd been here so much before. Arriving Monday evening was pool time with the happy hour, and most of Tuesday was also pool time. But by mid-afternoon I got dressed and got the car for a drive, partly in Old Town, but mostly to easily reach "South Oz", below Truman Avenue.

The first thing to see was quite close, one block north on William at Eaton, the interestingly named Bahama House:

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While the car shows that this is an older view of Bahama House it does show its history nicely. It was built in the northern Bahamas, on Abaco island, and is one of two houses that were dismantled and brought to Key West in 1847, this one as the home of a Bahamian shipbuilder. It has wide airy verandahs on both stories, louvered windows and doors, and low interior ceilings, all features that are typically Bahamian. A unique feature of this house is that there are no nails used in its construction--all timber is secured with wooden pegs.

Almost at the end of Eaton and a half-block north (see green city map) is the Truman Annex Little White House Museum, which we visited earlier with Beverly's brother and mother. The Truman Little White House (Photo by Judson McCranie) was the winter White House for President Harry S Truman for 175 days (roughly 5.8 months) during 11 visits. (Truman was in office from 1945 to 1953.) Truman Annex is also a neighborhood of Old Town.

The house, a wooden duplex, was built as officer's quarters in 1890. The first President to visit the site was William Howard Taft in December 1912. He arrived by Flagler's Over-Sea Railroad and stayed in Key West before sailing to Panama to inspect the canal then under construction. During World War I, Thomas Edison resided in the house while donating his service to the war effort, perfecting 41 underwater weapons during his six-month stay.
Truman became a resident because, in November 1946, he was physically exhausted and his doctor ordered a warm vacation. Truman first arrived in that month. His second trip came in March 1947. This set the pattern for additional visits every November–December and every February–March.
Truman realized that where the President was, so was the White House. Documents issued from the Little White House read "The White House, US Naval Station, Key West, Florida." Advancing technology allowed him to communicate with multiple political or world leaders at one time and he could summon staff to Key West for a meeting in three hours' flight from Washington.
On his visit shortly after his 1948 re-election, Division Street (a name that already tells a story) was renamed Truman Avenue in his honor. After Truman left office, he returned to Key West several times and stayed at various other places.
Later on, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton also stayed in the house. After renovation, the house was deeded to Florida and converted to a museum. Truman's famous "The Buck Stops Here" sign is still at his desk:

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It's not far back to Duval, the main drag, and to Whitehead, also an important street. I'm shocked after five visits that only now do I learn that Duval, named after an early governor, is not pronounced du.VAHL, as Beverly and I had always thought, but instead DU.vəl, which sounds to me very inelegant, close to "devil". In any case, it's a touristy street with lots of restaurants and locations for those who like to bar-hop (Photo by w_lemay) Duval. However, it does have Bahamian and Spanish-influenced Victorian Mansions that have been well preserved through local preservation efforts starting in the 1960s (see below).

Down Whitehead at Olivia is the Ernest Hemingway House, where the author lived from 1931 to 1939. It's an attractive building and grounds, which we visited on our first trip (Photo by Andreas Lamecker). You'll recall that Hemingway survived the Labor Day Hurricane here, then traveled by boat to see the destruction in the Middle Keys.

The most unusual quirk of the house is that it's populated with descendants of Hemingway's cats, which are all polydactyl (having more than the usual number of digits). All the cats have six or seven toes per paw (Photo by Marc Averette).

Keep going down Whitehead to its end, at the so called "Southernmost Point", which I called above a "populist fraud". Even the green map shows there are points further to the south nearby. It's always crowded by tourists enjoying the delusion. We'll talk about it a lot more later.
We'll circle back to the resort in time for happy hour. Afterwards, it's a two-block walk north of the resort to Caroline, still between William and Margaret, to Pepe's Café & Steak House, which advertises itself as the oldest restaurant in the Keys, dating from when Teddy Roosevelt was President in 1909. It's the second oldest in Florida, behind the 1905 Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City in Tampa, where I dined regularly. Harry Truman was a regular here. My notes say I had the filet mignon with baked potato, and of course, the Key Lime Pie.

Day 6: Wed, Nov 6: Key West III This was a lazy vacation day. At 3:30 I was in a hot tub, but by 4:30, I was having my "Massage by Brad", who's been doing this for 25 years. He comes in as an independent contractor, and the front desk arranges it. Since my queen room was too small, we were set up in a vacant larger room for the hour. Very relaxing.
For dinner it was two blocks up and one block east to Eaton and Grinnell, at Bien Caribbean & Latin Food, which I now understand is closed. I enjoyed a West Caribbean Roll, which is a flour tortilla stuffed with jasmine rice, black beans, cheddar & mozzarella cheese, sour cream, cilantro, jalapeños, pickled cabbage and roast pork. Followed by Key Lime Pie.

Day 7: Thu, Nov 7: Key West IV Tuesday's "traveler" outing during a "vacationing" visit was a drive, and Thursday's was a walk, this time all within the northern part of Old Town, especially in the area around Mallory Square. On the map, take Eaton to Whitehead then turn right for two blocks up to Greene to the Audubon House & Tropical Gardens, probably my single favorite site in town, which Beverly and I visited way back on our first visit. We not only enjoyed the visit, but I remember it as being a bit unusual in that normally, a house museum is where a notable person either was born or lived, such as Hemingway. But the Audubon house commemorates instead the ornithologist, naturalist, and painter Audubon's VISIT to Key West in 1832, resulting in researching local birds and painting some of the famous folio pictures of them to add to his iconic ongoing work The Birds of America, published in parts between 1827 and 1838, and discussed below.
However, after all these years, tho I still love the house museum and gardens, present additional research I've done for this posting has shown me that, while I got the main facts right, there are a lot of irregularities in my recollections that I've now corrected as best I can. I see that the history and location have to be looked at as three separate, but related, stories.
AUDUBON: The tropical garden at the corner of Whitehead and Greene came first, and whether or not there was an earlier house there at all is unclear. I have no idea who established and maintained the tropical garden on this corner lot. Contrary to the fact that it's called the Audubon House, Audubon never lived in the present house at all, or even saw it—it's just dedicated to him, based on his earlier visit to the tropical garden. I have several descriptions dealing with Audubon's visit, and will present them. I do not know which is correct.
When he'd first arrived in the US at age 18 in 1803, he caught yellow fever in New York City and had to be nursed back to health. It's true that years later, he arrived in the Keys on the US Coast Guard Cutter Marion--the Coast Guard website confirms this. He then spent six weeks in Key West in 1832. He would have been 47. Version One: Audubon was terrified of getting yellow fever again and vowed he would never sleep on the island of Key West to avoid the sickness. Instead, he stayed offshore onboard the Marion, making repeated day trips into town and around the adjacent Keys, including the Dry Tortugas. This would mean he never actually slept anywhere in Key West at all, tho he did visit it constantly.
Version Two: A certain Dr Benjamin Strobel owned an earlier house somewhere on or near what is now the Audubon House's property, and he hosted Audubon in his home for that period.

After his six weeks in town, Audubon left Key West having sighted and drawn 18 new birds for his folio. It's believed that many of those drawings were conceived in the Audubon House garden, since it was the beautiful plants which drew Audubon to it during his visit.

GEIGER: We already know that the Keys were a center for wreckers. I've now discovered exactly what being a wrecker involves.
The Florida Strait between the Keys and Cuba was a heavily used shipping channel in the 19C, and we know about the many coral reefs near the Keys, which is where many ships ran aground. Wreckers would watch for ships in distress on the reefs, since it was the wrecker’s job to rescue the crew and salvage the ship and its cargo.
The first wrecker to reach the grounded ship would be named the wreck master and would direct the salvaging operations. To be able to lift a grounded ship, the ship’s cargo had to be off-loaded to lighten it. The salvaged cargo was stored in the area it was found until it could be taken to Key West, the closest US port of entry. A federal court would then decide how much the wrecker would be paid for their services--usually around 25% of the value of the cargo.
One sea captain who grew increasingly successful as a wrecker was Captain John Geiger, who amassed a fortune. After a major hurricane (we know about those!) in October 1846 ruined many Key West homes, he started construction, using the finest materials, of what is now called the Audubon House between the years 1846 and 1849 .

Being a sea captain, Geiger, one of Key West's wealthiest men, had what is now known as the Audubon house built right next to the port. He chose a prominent location for his Neoclassical home on the corner of Whitehead and Greene Streets so it could be seen and admired by all coming and going from the waterfront. There were no buildings blocking the view then—they came later.

Four generations of the Geiger family lived in the house over about eleven decades. The last descendent was Geiger's great-grandson, Captain William Smith. Smith was a recluse who lived alone in the house for over two decades without electricity, running water, or an indoor kitchen. At the time of his death in 1956, the house had fallen into disrepair, with the windows shuttered and nailed closed.
WOLFSON: In 1958, the house was scheduled for demolition, not for a newer residence, but for a gas station!!! Key West native Mitchell Wolfson and his Florida-native wife Frances stepped in to save it. They purchased and renovated the house and furnished it with antiques dating to the first half of the 19C, including several items originally belonging to the Geiger family. However, they dedicated the Geiger House to be an Audubon museum, based on his earlier garden visits. The Wolfson Family Foundation now maintains the house. (Their son founded the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, which specializes in Art Deco. We'll visit it when we get there.)

In addition, this restoration sparked the restoration movement in Key West that is evident today in the city’s Historic District. However, this building, with its garden, is still considered the gem of the island's restoration movement.
This is the view of the Audubon House as seen from Whitehead Street (Photo by _lemay).

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The first link shows that the house represents a style typically found in a prosperous Key West home in the 1800s. Since it also serves as an Audubon museum, the second link shows that the house has a fine collection of 28 original Audubon engravings. You can see how very large they are. Bound, they make for quite a large folio.

The Birds of America It behooves us here to discuss the original set of this publication, known as the Havell Edition (also, mid-19C, two posthumous sets were published, some incomplete). Audubon’s Havell edition of The Birds of America (1826-1838) was a monumental undertaking and the most comprehensive representation of North American birds at the time. It comprised 435 prints and showed 489 different species of American birds. It was engraved exclusively on double-elephant folio-sized paper. Given that large size, the prints are notable for their grand proportions of approximately 67 x 100 cm (26.5 x 39.5 in).

The printing of the folio began with a Scottish company in 1826, but the assignment was promptly taken over by Robert Havell Jr of London—hence the name--who completed the project in 1838. Havell’s workshop translated Audubon’s watercolor paintings into aquatint engraved plates from which prints were made that were then hand-colored with watercolor and gouache. They originally produced approximately 200 sets of the complete folio, around half of which are currently still bound and in various public institutions and private collections. The remaining sets have since been broken up and the prints sold separately. Additionally, there are a number of prints that were never part of a complete set that remain in circulation. Individual prints in excellent condition range in price from about $4,000 up to $250,000. Because of the numerous large illustrations, the original Birds of America is the most expensive printed book in the world. In March 2000, Christie's sold a copy for $8.8 million; in 2018 they sold one for $9.65 million. A sale surpassing $11 million for a complete Havell edition was also recorded.

Back to the house museum. Audubon painted 18 birds in the Florida Keys (22 total in Florida), including the famous Blue Crane or Heron, Plate 307, many of them on the grounds of what became the Audubon House. (I can't explain why at the bottom it says it was a view in Charleston, SC. Maybe he painted it well after he saw it?)

In addition to birds, Audubon is also associated with a certain tree he found on the property that he would later write about and paint. The story is that he entered the property's garden to retrieve a branch of a certain tree to depict in a painting. It's the Cordia tree, which has many varieties; the one he found here is the Cordia sebestena. It's a shrubby tree native to the American tropics. Its range is from southern Florida and the Bahamas, south to the Caribbean and Central America. While the tree is generally known elsewhere as the Cordia sebestena, in Florida it's called the Geiger tree—for obvious reasons.

This is a Geiger tree / Cordia sebestena still growing on the property, with the house in the background (Photo by Deror avi). The sebestena variety has showy, frilly flower clusters in vivid red-orange that contrast nicely against the tree's coarse green leaves—which are used as a substitute for sandpaper! The greenish fruits are edible (Photo by SKsiddhartthan).
Audubon took cuttings from the plants growing on the property, and used them as backgrounds in many works. He once painted a picture of a White Crowned Pigeon, Plate 177, in a Cordia tree that was on the property where the present house would later be built (Photo by Rawpixel, digitally enhanced for better online appearance). Click to enlarge the writing at the bottom to see that the branches are of the Cordia sebestena (Geiger tree). Also note at the lower left that it's "Drawn from Nature by J J Audubon".
I have a few more online copies of Audubon's bird prints. This is Plate 1 (!), depicting the Wild Turkey; a very popular one of his prints is Plate 321, depicting the Roseate Spoonbill; also popular is Plate 431 showing the American Flamingo; finally, and very appropriate, is Plate 167, showing the Key West Dove (Photo by Rawpixel, digitally enhanced for better online appearance). I've found some of Audubon's notes on this Plate 167:

Cruise Ships On our walk this day, it was just a few steps over toward the marina and port, where cruise ships dock (see green map). However, on the way I saw something I'd never seen in Key West before, or, for that matter, in any town. Happily pecking the grass near the curb right in the street was a colorful rooster (Photo by Watts). I was taken aback to suddenly see something so unexpected—this was one bird that was not Audubon's. More about roosters in a moment.

I'll now mention how today was scheduled as the centerpoint of this entire "replacement" trip. You'll recall I'd been scheduled to sail on the Holland-America Line's Veendam out of Fort Lauderdale to two stops in Cuba, then around the Caribbean, but the Trump administration cancelled stops in Cuba and HAL had to give me my money back, and I scheduled the current land-based trip instead. But I did find out that HAL had replaced the missing Cuba stops with one in Key West, then one in the Caymans, keeping the later stops. When I found out the date the Veendam would be stopping in Key West, on Thursday, November 7 from 8 to 5, I used that day—today—as the centerpoint of all my Florida plans instead, just so I could walk up to see the Veendam as a connection to the cancelled trip. Which is exactly what I did on this day.

Cruise ships stop either right at Mallory Square or in the hotel area just south of it, which is where I saw the Veendam (which I've never sailed on). While I don't have a picture of the Veendam docked in Key West, I do have a rather dark one of Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Seas, right where the Veendam was, the view looking to the south from Mallory Square, where people were waiting for the sunset—west is to the right (Photo by Deror avi). We also have a picture in the same location of what used to be Celebrity Cruises' Galaxy, now called the Marella Explorer (Photo by GrahamPearce at English Wikipedia). In a low-rise city, the height of cruise ships so close to shore can appear to be astounding.

Mallory Square Sunsets Steps to the north on the waterfront is Mallory Square (actually a plaza), the location of the Sunset Celebration, which is considered one of the main tourist attractions of Key West (Photo by Pietro Valocchi). It involves hundreds of tourists who arrive each night to view the sunset. The celebration includes arts and crafts exhibitors, street performers, and food carts. It begins two hours before sunset, every day of the year.

In 1984, the city opened another cruise ship pier right on Mallory Square. The decision was met with considerable opposition from people who felt it would disrupt the tradition of watching the sunset. I remember the only other time Beverly and I went to see the sunset, on our first trip in 1991, but the best view was blocked by a ship. I understand now, the city has an ordinance requiring cruise ships to leave port two hours before sunset, enabling them to return after sunset without an additional docking fee. But no ship was blocking the Square on the current visit.

This time I looked around the Square, and found a low wall to sit on to watch the sunset. But it was very hot, with no shade. I stayed until 4:30, ½ hour before the Veendam sailed at 5, and 1 ¼ hours before the total sunset at 5:44. Still, I got to see the sun quite low in the sky. This is a view of Mallory Square as seen from a departing cruise ship (Photo by Roger W), and this is an online view of a fully completed Mallory Square sunset (Photo by CedarBendDrive).

Roosters At the southern edge of the square, I did see quite a number of roosters. Watch this YouTube video (0:57) of roosters (and hens) in Mallory Square. So I finally researched what this is all about.
Key West roosters descend from roosters bred in Cuba and the Keys for fighting. For many years a winning fight rooster would be a source of income and, of course, bragging rights. co*ckfights are no longer legal in the United States. Because of this, a lot of chickens were released and left to their own on the Island. While hens were prized for their eggs, the roosters were prized mainly for their co*ckfighting, making for good back-alley entertainment. All was fine and dandy until co*ckfighting was outlawed in Key West in the 1970s, leaving many roosters without purpose and set to aimlessly roam the streets.

Sloppy Joe's Deciding what's worth seeing when traveling is really quite personal, which is one reason I don’t like guided tours, where an authority figure takes you to what he or she wants you to see, for better or worse (I've had both). But in traveler mode, you can research what you want to see—or skip. Of course, one frequently likes to see places associated with famous people. We've just had two examples for Key West, both Audubon and Hemingway. But truly dedicated Hemingway fans would also be interested in Sloppy Joe's, a bar made famous when Hemingway regularly met there with local cronies during the time in the 1930s when he lived in Key West. Fans might even want to sit down and have a drink, and maybe sit on the barstool Hemingway could have sat on. My only interest tho was just in seeing the outside of the place—actually two places--since I'd be going to my own happy hour back at the resort right afterwards.

But even more interesting for me was the Caveat Emptor/Buyer Beware factor that dedicated Hemingway fans have to be careful about in Key West. If not, they may end up visiting a place that Hemingway never even saw the inside of.
Go back to the green map, find the Audubon House again, and walk down Greene Street to find two places not shown on the map. (However, BOTH are shown on the Key West map in the Michelin Florida guidebook, which says a lot about the quality of that guide.) On the south side, between Fitzpatrick and Duval, is Captain Tony's Bar. Then go a half-block further, and at the southeast corner of Greene and Duval, is Sloppy Joe's Bar. I saw them both from the outside, but which one should a dedicated Hemingway fan visit? Therein, of course, lies a tale, a tale involving Havana, a tiff about one single dollar, and a midnight migration.

Since Hemingway is so involved in all this, I had to look up more about all the wanderings he did, given his adventurous lifestyle. He lived in many places, in Europe, Africa, the US. He famously was also involved with Cuba in addition to Key West, and often commuted between Key West and Havana. Thus I've reduced the Hemingway story down to these two cities.
He and his second wife (of four) first came to Key West in about 1928, but were renters and also kept on the move, traveling. Finally his wife had her rich uncle buy what is now the Hemingway House for them. They lived there from 1931 to 1939. In 1939 Hemingway left his wife and moved to Cuba, first renting, and in 1940, buying, the Finca Vigía (Lookout Farm), 13 km (8 mi) southeast of Havana, from which there was an excellent view of Havana. He did this just after he married his third wife. He remained in Cuba from 1939 to 1960, the latter date involving the Cuban Revolution. In 1961, he committed suicide due to depression in his home in Idaho at age 61. His was a very complicated life.

THE HAVANA STORY José Abeal y Otero emigrated from Spain to Havana in 1904. He worked there first as a waiter, and then worked in New Orleans and Miami. He eventually returned to Havana and in 1918, purchased a grocery store named La Victoria in a neo-classical 3-story masonry building located on the corner of Animas and Zulueta streets in la Habana Vieja (Old Havana).
The Prohibition era of 1919 to 1933 in the US was a major windfall for Cuba, which became a paradise for American drinkers from all over, certainly helped by Flagler's ferry connection between Key West and Havana. Prohibition spurred Abeal to change his emphasis from food service to liquor service when he found American tourists visiting Havana for the nightlife, the gambling and the alcohol they could not obtain back home. This success continued even after the impetus that Prohibition had given was over. This is a view of Sloppy Joe's in Havana c1935. Note again the elegant neo-classical style of the building—and the period cars.
Abeal's affable personality and familiarity with English from his years in the States helped make his bar a favorite among English-speaking drinkers. His establishment gradually evolved into a wildly successful, popular bar and hangout for American tourists visiting Cuba in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. It also became a celebrity hangout for Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Tyrone Power, Spencer Tracy, Ava Gardner, Don Ameche, Alice Faye, César Romero, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, and others.
Perhaps because the floor of the establishment was always wet with melted ice—seafood on ice was a major feature--his American patrons teased this Spanish "Joe" (José=Joseph) about running a "sloppy" place. The jocular name stuck with the clientele, and so Abeal adopted the name Sloppy Joe’s—in English--as the name of his Havana bar. Sloppy Joe's offered over 80 co*cktails in addition to the bar's own brand of 12-year-old rum. It has been described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the most famous bars in the world" with "almost the status of a shrine."

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Above is a postcard of Sloppy Joe's showing its elegant clientele. It's most likely from the 1930s, given the sleek Art Deco style of the illustration, so very typical of that era. (We'll be getting to Miami Beach soon with its magnificent Art Deco district and talk more about the style.)
Sloppy Joe's remained popular and welcomed guests for over four decades, from 1918 until the Cuban Revolution in January 1959. Shortly after that, in March 1959, the bar became a temporary movie set. Graham Greene (above) was having his novel Our Man in Havana made into a film, starring Alec Guinness. (Interestingly, in his novel, Graham Greene had apparently quipped: "No Havana resident ever went to Sloppy Joe's, because it was the rendezvous of tourists.")
This is Guinness filming a scene at the Sloppy Joe's bar. Shooting went relatively smoothly. When they were shooting scenes at Havana's Cathedral Square on 13 May, Fidel Castro visited the film crew. The unit then moved to London and filmed at Shepperton Studios.

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Above is an iconic photo of Ernest Hemingway chatting with Alec Guinness and Noël Coward (also in the film) at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Havana during Hemingway's visit to the set of the film.

The period after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 saw the bar's business nosedive, since some 90% of Sloppy Joe's clientele was American, and relations were cut off. A fire in 1965 closed Sloppy Joe's for good. The building remained intact, but deserted, with its single-piece mahogany bar and photos of celebrities. Finally, in 2007, the Office of the Historian of Havana started restoring Old Havana, including Sloppy Joe's. However, laborers discovered that the wooden floors, rotten from tropical humidity and years of neglect, had collapsed into the basem*nt and the mahogany bar had broken into three pieces. Renovation work was completed in early 2013, and its doors opened to the public on April 12 of that year after being closed for 48 years.

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Judging from the cars, this undated picture would seem to be showing the restored Sloppy Joe's today in Havana.

THE KEY WEST STORY Of the two properties we mentioned in Key West, the story starts with the one at 428 Greene Street, which has a very colorful history. When first constructed in 1852, it was an ice house that doubled as the city morgue—shocking today, but it does make sense.
In the 1890s, it housed a wireless telegraph station. The station's most important message came in 1898, at the outbreak of the Spanish–American War. The battleship Maine, having sailed from Key West, had exploded in Havana harbor, and as the news came in from Havana back to Key West, it was sent on all over the world from this very building. (On the green map, note the Battleship Maine Monument in the Key West City Cemetery.)
In 1912, the building was home to a cigar factory. Later, it was a bordello. Prohibition started in 1920, and it then became several speakeasies, the last of which was named the Blind Pig, specializing in gambling, women, and bootleg rum.
Joe Russell was a local Conch who was a charter boat captain involved in rum running to Cuba. At this point, the story has two variations. One says that after Prohibition ended in 1933, Russell came along and opened a legal bar here. The other variation suggests that he'd been the operator of the Blind Pig all along, and that the rum-running and speakeasy were what made him enough money to make the bar legal in 1933. I lean toward the second version. Joe Russell also became Ernest Hemingway’s boat pilot, as well as his fishing companion for over twelve years, and his bar became the place Ernest Hemingway spent most of his evenings between 1933 and 1937.
The Blind Pig was a door-less run-down building that Russell leased for three dollars a week, as he did not own the building. That rent might seem low, but it was during the Great Depression and times were hard. Key West itself was on the brink of complete financial disaster. The bar was open 24 hours a day. It was a free-wheeling fisherman’s bar featuring ten-cent shots of gin and nickel beer. The regular customers not only included, but were largely centered around, Hemingway and his cohorts. When a dance floor was added in the back, the rowdy Blind Pig saloon was renamed the Silver Slipper.
It was Hemingway who, in 1937, instigated the bar’s latest name change from the Silver Slipper to Sloppy Joe’s. The new name was adopted from the Havana bar of the same name. One account says Hemingway just convinced Russell to make the change, while another account says Hemingway took Russell to the Havana bar on several occasions when they both visited Cuba, to see for himself. Again, I lean toward the second version. In any case, somehow, the name seemed to fit Joe Russell’s bar just as well—and his name was Joe, anyway. And so, the Silver Slipper in Key West became another Sloppy Joe's, in hommage, perhaps, tho not connected to, the original in Havana.

I've come across a picture that captures the era very nicely. It was the Depression and the Works Progress Administration was hiring people to carry out public works projects. Notable was the largest project, the Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1943, which was a relief measure to employ artists and artisans to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photography, theatre scenic design, and arts and crafts. Eric Johan Smith was a member of the Key West Public Works Art Project and created this picture called Hemingway and Friends (Photo by InfoOnSloppyJoesKW). I understand that the original is a mural somewhere, but this copy of the scene hangs in the current Sloppy Joe's. I think it combines a feeling for the WPA era along with a scene of Hemingway's cronies at Sloppy Joe's.

In 1937, a pivotal change took place, a change of venue, which accounts for the two locations in Key West we've mentioned. It's surely the most fun part of the story, one which I like to call the Great Migration.
Joe Russell leased the premises from his landlord, Isaac Wolkowsky, son of Abraham Wolkowsky, a Russian Jewish immigrant who moved to Key West in 1886 as a peddler but who eventually bought some real estate. In 1937, Joe and Isaac had a heated dispute, when Isaac raised the rent on the bar one dollar, from $3 a week to $4. While that might sound today like a tempest in a teapot, this was the Depression, and those figures were typical of the era. In any case, the one dollar amounted to sudden increase in the rent of 33 1/3%. Joe was so incensed that he decided to move, even tho a clause in his lease prohibited him from removing any of the furnishings and other accoutrements in the bar.

As it turns out, the former Victoria Restaurant, a half-block down Greene Street at Duval, was vacant. It had been built in 1917 and had some beautiful Cuban tilework, ceiling fans, and jalousie doors. Joe Russell quietly bought the building for $2,500, a figure again reflecting the prices of that era.
Shortly after his dispute with Russell, Isaac Wolkowsky took off on a business trip. Joe’s lease expired while the landlord was away, and it was then, on 5 May 1937, that what I'm calling the Great Migration took place. Joe, figuring he was no longer bound by the terms of the expired lease, recruited a midnight mob of Key West drinkers to help him. Together, they carted every scrap of Sloppy Joe’s Bar--down to the walls--from 428 Greene the half-block to, and across, Duval to the new location at 201 Duval Street. Google Maps tells me the walking distance is just 58 m (190 ft) and takes all of one minute.
Remember that the bar was open 24 hours a day, so it never actually closed during the migration. Bar patrons just picked up their drinks and carried them away along with everything else. Service resumed, and drinks were on the house for the rest of the night. Wolkowsky was obviously furious when he returned and found he was no longer Joe Russell’s landlord, but there was nothing he could do about it. When Hemingway, who, not unusually, had been in Spain at the time, was informed of the saloon’s sudden relocation, his response was simple and to the point: "only in Key West." With the change of location, the bar's size nearly doubled, yet its atmosphere remained the same. It since expanded to a second building dating to 1892, which houses the kitchen and Joe's Tap Room. In 2006, Sloppy Joe's Bar--at its Duval location--was added to the National Register of Historic Places (Photo by Roger W).

OK, now what about the abandoned premises? The deserted building went through several iterations over the following years. In 1940, the building was leased to someone who opened a gay bar called the Duval Club, despite it only being near and not on Duval. It was a bar popular with the Navy, where the gay patrons propositioned sailors. Despite warnings from the Navy, nothing changed until the Navy placed the Duval Club "off limits", which caused an 80% drop in business, forcing the bar to close.
It remained shuttered until Isaac Wolkowsky died in 1962 and his son David inherited it. David is credited with transforming Key West from a navy town to a tourist destination and has been called Mr Key West--in 1972 he was the first to hire Jimmy Buffett to sing at one of David's venues. David restored the building as a bar and named it The Oldest Bar.
In 1968, a local charter boat captain (the same as Joe Russell had been), Tony Tarracino, called Captain Tony, purchased the bar from David Wolkowsky and renamed it Captain Tony's Saloon. As such, it made its own history. In its latest iteration, the bar is where Jimmy Buffett extended his start in Key West. Buffett played at Capt Tony's in the early 1970s and was often paid in tequila. Buffett immortalized the bar, and Tony himself, in his song "Last Mango in Paris" ("I went down to Captain Tony's / To get out of the heat / Then I heard a voice call out to me / 'Son come have a seat'"). On occasion, Jimmy made surprise appearances at the bar, but only performed at his own place, the Margaritaville Café, three blocks south on Duval, at Fleming.
Captain Tony's Saloon has been patronized thru the years by many well-known artists, writers and celebrities. An interesting feature of the bar is that when any celebrity visits, a barstool is added with that patron's name. There are barstools painted with the names of the likes of Ernest Hemingway—reflecting his earlier history--Truman Capote, Jimmy Buffett, and even John F Kennedy and Harry Truman, among others. Bob Dylan, who released the song "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" in 2020 with references to Key West landmarks, has frequented the venue over the years, resulting in his name being painted on a bar stool.
Here's a picture of Captain Tony's Saloon (Photo by Judson McCranie). While it steadfastly retains its own name and identity, note the sign making plain the years it was the home of the original Sloppy Joe's.

The Dilemma For me, having visited the Hemingway House years ago, seeing both bars from the street was as much as I needed, especially since I was going to my own freebie happy hour right afterwards. I knew some of the story then, which was compelling, and now I've learned all the rest.
But how about the dilemma of the dedicated Hemingway fan who's really deeply interested in Hemingway locations? Let's look at his choices.
It's perfectly legitimate that a business would move to a new location, yet keep its identity. It's done all the time. I think of Macy's flagship building in New York on 34th Street and Broadway at Herald Square (2023/3). It had earlier been located in a building 20 blocks further south at 14th Street, but no one would deny Macy's identity and presence at 34th Street. Thus Sloppy Joe's on Duval is THE Sloppy Joe's in Key West, and is rightly on the National Register as such. It has every right to claim that it was Hemingway's favorite bar in Key West--and it was! But beware! There's no evidence that Hemingway ever set foot in the Duval Street location, where it moved in 1937, altho Hemingway continued spending time visiting Key West on and off until 1940.
Remember my phrase HIC LOCUS EST / This is the spot. While Sloppy Joe's does have a Hemingway connection, it's more emotional than tangible, and this is NOT the location connected with him.

I refer to the expression "if walls could talk". If they could, the walls at the Duval location could say lots of things, but having seen Ernest Hemingway with his cronies within them—as that WPA picture shows--is not one of them. On the other hand, the walls at Captain Tony's, which witnessed in 1937 the total removal of the bar, wall-to-wall (!), could indeed say they had witnessed Hemingway and friends, to which can be added the later history of Captain Tony's.

So the dilemma is easily solved. With the proviso that he know the story, the dedicated Hemingway fan should first visit Captain Tony's for a drink, and commune with the knowledge that Hemingway and friends also did so, right within those walls; then walk east for one minute to Sloppy Joe's for another drink, to ponder the lengthy colorful history of that venue.

Walking back to the resort, it was a no-brainer to take another shower, given the heat of the day, before joining the happy hour. Restaurants were so easily reached in this neighborhood. For dinner I just walked one block east on Fleming to Grinnell to Azur. My notes say I had a very good dipping oil for bread (garlic, rosemary, smoked paprika, served warm); steamed mussels (rosemary, tomato broth); an excellent Malbec, and Gnocchi Amatriciana. And of course, Key Lime Pie.

The Sloppy Joe Sandwich As I was just completing the current research, the topic of the Sloppy Joe sandwich struck me. I'd never associated the sandwich with the bar! I'd always assumed it got its name because it was so sloppy to eat. Was there any connection?
Let's first make sure we're all on the same page. A sloppy joe is a classic American sandwich dating from the 1930s consisting of ground beef, onions, tomato sauce (or sometimes, unfortunately, ketchup) and other seasonings served on a hamburger bun. It's great fun for "fast food", and may make one think of eating a hamburger. But one gets promptly disabused of that thought, since a hamburger stays in the bun, while this stew-like mixture develops a mind of its own, and demonstrates what is meant by "sloppy".
There are several theories about the sandwich's origin, two of which are prominent. The director of the consumer test kitchen at HJ Heinz in Pittsburgh says their research at the Carnegie Library suggests that the sloppy joe's origins lie with the "loose meat sandwiches" sold in Sioux City, Iowa, in the 1930s and were the creation of a cook named Joe.

Another, more compelling theory reaches back to Havana, and that in 1917, Havana bar owner José "Sloppy Joe" Abeal y Otero created and served in his bar "a simple sandwich filled with ground beef stewed in tomatoes", which apparently originated as an Abeal family recipe. It was possibly his interpretation of ropa vieja (Photo by El Mono Español).
Ropa vieja (ro.pa.BYÉ.ha) "old clothes" is a national dish of Cuba, but originated in Spain and has variations elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. It normally includes some form of stewed beef and tomatoes with a sofrito base (aromatics, such as garlic and onion, also bell pepper, sautéed in oil). The unusual name probably originates from the fact that it was often prepared from leftovers from other meals. I had it once in Florida. Obviously, I want to lean toward this latter story.

I haven't had a sloppy joe in years, since Beverly would make them for a simple dinner in the 1970s. If I remember correctly, we largely solved the "sloppy" problem by eating them with knife and fork. Think about it—it makes life much easier.
It's been a while, and I've never made them on my own, but have been reviewing online recipes. I think that, rather than working completely from scratch, I'd use the commercial sloppy joe sauce called Manwich. It seems best to fry a pound of lean chuck in oil, add a can of Manwich sauce, then some green bell pepper, chopped onion, garlic, maybe some canned jalapeños, and simmer.
I think hamburger buns (also hot dog buns) are not the best quality of bread our culture has to offer. It was suggested online using hoagie buns. I keep commercial ciabatta buns in the freezer, and can see splitting and toasting one for a dripless, and even tastier, sloppy joe. I'll try this in the near future.
Having made that decision, I was surprised to find this next picture online. It professes to be, not a sloppy joe, but a ropa vieja sandwich, here described as consisting of shredded steak, peppers, onions, and tomatoes (Photo by alanagkelly). In contrast to that, this is a standard sloppy joe, on a regular hamburger bun, being served with coleslaw (Photo by Buck Blues).
Out of curiosity, I just checked and found that Sloppy Joe's in Key West does tout a sloppy joe sandwich on its menu, and that the menu of the new Sloppy Joe's in Havana does include a "messy ground-beef sandwich".

Day 8: Fri, Nov 8: Key West V This was another "vacation day", where I spent the day at the resort's hot tubs and pools, and also in my room to enjoy a bit in the air conditioning. For dinner I did the only restaurant repeat of the visit, going to Azur again, where the recognized and greeted me from the night before. I had a nice seafood risotto with saffron, mussels, clams, scallops, shrimp, whitefish, chorizo, sweet peas, and roasted peppers. And Key Lime Pie.

Day 9: Sat, Nov 9 (First Half): Drive Keys to Miami Beach After I checked out of the hotel, I fully planned to exit thru the "back door" I'd entered in, but the one-way streets got me started in another direction, and I felt it was easier to exit by the southern route instead. I got down to Truman Avenue, ready to zig-zag over to Fleming to leave the island, and as always, checked out a certain laundrette. Checking the green map, you'll notice there are several streets that have people's first names, such as Elizabeth, William, Margaret, and Frances. Now note how Margaret Street innocently crosses Truman Avenue.

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This is the site of the Margaret-Truman Launderette. It had been pointed out to us in some guidebook on our very first trip here, and we passed by it every time since when leaving town. The hyphen shows it's a reference to streets, yet appears to evoke President Truman's adult daughter Margaret. I continue to suspect that, as the years go by, fewer and fewer people will get the humorous reference.
The lengthy drive along the Keys was uneventful, but after I turned north off Key Largo, I had a seemingly unobtrusive scare that still bothers me.

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Note the causeway I was on that used to carry the rail line to the mainland. It's really very low, and close to the water, here called Barnes Sound. We've all had the experience of a car driving thru a puddle and splashing water to both sides. That's really quite innocent. But the day had clouded over. It wasn't raining, tho there would be a downpour that evening when I was in Miami Beach. But it was quite windy, and here on the causeway, I drove thru water that was not a puddle. The wind was blowing up Barnes Sound, I suppose causing a bit of a small storm surge. Water was being blown up the sound, and up the low grassy slope to my right on the causeway. The water came under the chain-link fence at the edge of the roadway, covered at least my northbound lanes, and I splashed thru it. The scary part was that this wasn't some rain puddle in the road. This was water connected to the "live" Atlantic Ocean that was partially flooding the roadway. It was a creepy feeling seeing how low in the water Florida is.

The causeway led to the mainland, the open sawgrass area, Florida City and Homestead, and the Dixie Highway back to Miami. Since this was the first day of a three-day Veterans' Day weekend, there was considerably more traffic than I'd had when I left Miami. This was also the time to fill up the rental car on gas.

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Follow the orange roads. Since US 1 then moves into Brickell's city streets, I reversed what I'd done on leaving and got onto I-95 north. The above map shows how that highly elevated section over the Miami River enters Downtown Miami, offering a very nice view of where the trip had started from. But for the sake of convenience, I'd arranged to return the car in Miami Beach, so I continued north to I-395, leading to the MacArthur Causeway. All land located in Biscayne Bay is totally artificial, built on landfill in the shallow waters. That accounts for the unusual neat oval shapes of some of the islands. It struck me odd, tho logical, that there were traffic lights on this main road, to allow for traffic to turn, first onto Palm and Hibiscus Islands, and later onto Star Island.

The long island marked "P" is Dodge Island and serves as the Port of Miami. In 2011, I sailed on Oceania's Regatta from Miami up the Amazon to Manaus and back. We left thru Government Cut, the artificial channel built to serve the port, that separated the now ultra-wealthy Fisher Island from the rest of Miami Beach. I was unaware of this local geography at the time, and on departure, was surprised to see us sailing thru this bit of land. I clearly remember seeing people waving at the ship from South Pointe Park in Miami Beach (see map). On this trip to Miami Beach, I made sure I went to the park to myself wave to any passing ship. What goes around comes around.

You'll see on the map (click) that MacArthur Causeway leads to 5th Street in Miami Beach, a major divider of north and south, as I was learning. The car agency, where the two polite gentlemen who helped me were the total opposite of that harridan in the Miami office, was at the corner of 5th and Euclid, just steps from Collins Avenue and Ocean Drive ("Z"), where I'd be staying. It couldn't be more perfect.

The agency's statement said I drove 347 mi (558 km), so roughly half of that is the distance from Miami to Key West.

The next posting will take us into the fabulous Art Deco world of South Beach in Miami Beach. However, I never got to talk about Key West's populist fraud, the so-called "Southernmost Point", so on the next posting, before discussing South Beach, we'll start with discussing extreme points of land around the world.