After our day of drinking on Saturday, we decided Sunday would be the best day for doing the typical tourist hot spots and learning a thing or two about this place called Key West. I readied my SLR, we studied our map, and off we went. First stop: Hemingway House.
The Hemingway house was home to Ernest Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline, for eight years. They bought it together for $8,000. (By together, I mean Pauline pretty much paid for everything with money from her uncle. Hemingway was notoriously poor.) The property is one acre in size, and the single largest property in Key West. The grounds are lush with gardens and local fauna, and every corner seems to be imbued with a little slice of oddity. The tour was rather typical of famous house tours, but we did learn a few things about Hemingway. Hemingway suffered from a bipolar disorder and back then there was no medication for severe depression or mood swings. As a result, there were periods of his life of great productivity and also unproductive periods. His time here in Key West was the most productive of his life. In his quaint writing studio adjacent to the main house he notably wrote “The Snows of Kilamanjaro”, “To Have and Have Not” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, among others. He was a disciplined writer, heading to the studio every morning and writing diligently for hours. He was not alone in his exploits, however.
Hemingway was a lover of cats. There are between 40 and 50 cats on the property currently (all descendants of the cats Hemingway owned), and during his stay there he had between 50 and 60 cats. Mind you, these were no ordinary cats. There is a unique, rare gene which will produce a six-toed cat, known for bringing good luck. Hemingway was enamored with these cats, and all the cats on the property today still carry this gene, and about half actually have six toes. I will tell you, they look a little freaky.
Like any extremely talented artist, Hemingway was fraught with indecision, instability and unpredictability. He loved many women, four of which he married. Pauline, whom he lived with in Key West, was incredibly devoted. While he was abroad she built installed a pool for him, the first in Key West, for $20,000. When Hemingway came home, he reminded her that the house itself only cost $8,000, then proceeded to pull a penny from his pocket and toss it into the pool declaring she had taken from him his last cent. Pauline, supposedly in good humor, removed the 1934 penny from the pool and had it laid into the cement along the pool’s edge so she could proudly proclaim to all her guests that she and she alone can say she took Hemingway’s last cent.
As you may have guessed, this marriage ended. Eventually (after spending time in Cuba, where he befriended a fishing buddy who eventually became the basis for “The Old Man in the Sea”), Hemingway moved to Montana, married, and struggled for much of the rest of his life to produce more great work. His wife, concerned with his bouts of depression, recommended electro-shock therapy. This sadly robbed Hemingway of his memories, that which was the foundation for all his writing. Soon thereafter he ended his own life staring into the barrel of a shotgun.
After the Hemingway tour the battery in my camera died so we decided to just take it easy. We ate lunch (a cheeseburger in paradise it truly was) staring out into the Gulf of Mexico, sipped pina coladas, and enjoyed our last full day in Key West. This being Sunday and the end of many people’s vacation the town really emptied out. We enjoyed some live music at Hog’s Breath, visited the infamous Green Parrot (the last/first bar on Route 1), and finished off the evening in the outdoor spa of our guesthouse.
And so the end of our stay in Key West is upon us, and we are headed north to Little Torch Key, about 45 minutes north on Route 1. I’ve always been intrigued by Key West, a small little community surrounded by ocean and islands, and I’m glad we made it here. It’s the kind of place with the charm, character and climate that steals a piece of your heart, renting it out to all who are fortunate enough to experience its beauty in person.