There was a long line of cars heading into Key West on Sunday. I turned off Truman and cut down back streets to get to Simonton, where I checked into the Southwinds Motel and learned that my chambermaid was from Zakopane.
I drove back to the art fair I'd seen coming in, and read the artistic statement of one of the exhibitors. "As a lifelong conservationist, the world is a place I have..."
"Let me know if you have any questions," the artist said.
"Would you mind a little grammatical suggestion?" I asked her.
"Are you a teacher?" she asked, after I'd corrected her lead. Her friend told her: "If you change it, I'll bet you'll sell every painting here."
Duval Street was thick with crowds reading shop window T-shirts. "Wish You Were Beer." Down at Mallory Square, a magician told a girl in the crowd: "You're too young for me. Come back in half an hour." The city of Hemingway reduced to puns, quips and dangling participles.
A more sophisticated scene reigned at The Gardens Hotel, as locals and guests listened to jazz (not far from a small pool Hemingway reportedly fell into once). Around 7 I left to stroll up by the cemetery, leaving the crowds and the music and marveling at the lush quiet and moonlit fronds. Though on Ashe Street one front porch held a multilevel platform filled with various modes of transportation - train, steetcar, mountain gondola - and numerous figures that, at the press of a button, took turns breaking into animated song.
Driving home the next day I stopped at Bud 'n' Mary's in Islamorada to see my friends MB 'n' Ron. They gave me a tour of their houseboat with its beer-commercial view of a palm-studded strip jutting into the Atlantic. Then we drove up to Morada Bay for lunch, sitting in the shade eating grouper tacos and looking out at mangrove islands. It rather made up for not having a white Christmas.
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