Happy hour at the Mai Kai to celebrate Don's 50th year in Florida.
"The Mai Kai had white sand all around it then. You walked into this," he said, looking around the intimate, hut-like lounge with its primary color lanterns and water-falling windows (like sitting in a car wash), "and you were in paradise."
Don still savors his half-century home, the fact that it's "bounded on two sides by wilderness: the Everglades and the ocean." In the summer he takes an early morning swim in the latter. "When you're out there you're on their terms," he said. "You're an intruder."
Finished with our rum cocktails, we took a stroll through the garden. None of us had ever seen it in daylight, which took away some of its mystique. Though the tiki replicas got Don thinking of "Jungian archetypes, all the primitive notions that are drummed out of us."