My Key West
My Key West
Rick and I drove over this old Bahia Honda Bridge bridge in August of 1968. It was in much better condition.
I distinctly remember driving to the Keys from Miami for the first time in August 1968 with my friend, Rick who had just returned from his tour in Vietnam with an undiagnosed case of PTSD. We had grown up together in Northwestern Ohio. Rick was one of the easiest-going friends I ever had, until Vietnam. Spending 13 months in the jungles of Vietnam changed him drastically. He had failed a year in middle school and was a little over 19 years old when he graduated from high school. Rick received his draft notice with his diploma almost simultaneously. After basic training, and a few weeks of small arms training, he was shipped off to war in the fall of 1966, with 10,000 others drafted each month.
When Rick returned, he was different – quick tempered, getting in arguments and sometimes fights. He couldn’t function well in a society that had sent him off to a needless misguided war. His mother asked for my help. I really didn’t know what to do but Rick was my friend.
Recent photo of the crumbling old Bahia Honda Bridge.
I graduated from high school early at 17 years old and went to state college for a year, unsuccessfully and was rapidly reclassified and awaiting my own draft notice. We went out drinking, of course, and ended up in a late-night spot hanging out. It was about 2:30 AM and I couldn’t hang any longer so I crawled into the back seat of my 62 Ford Galaxy convertible and fell asleep. I woke up about 100 miles later.
While I had slept, Rick had decided to go visit some Army buddies in Florida. He had driven to his home and picked up savings bonds from his Army tour. We were off to Florida. This was a Friday night and I had to go to work on Monday. I remember calling my very upset father from Jacksonville Beach and asked him to tell the folks at the Ford assembly plant that I wouldn’t be coming to work. I hated that job anyway.
We drove down the East Coast for a couple of weeks. We met someone in Miami who suggested we take a “beautiful drive” to Key West. Growing up in Ohio, neither of us had ever seen anything like the Florida Keys.
I remember driving over the old Bahia Honda Bridge and listening to the Beatles song, “Hey Jude”, which was #1 at the time. We spent a week in Key West, staying at the Santa Maria Hotel for $75 (for the week). We met a friend from Ohio who had joined the Navy to avoid the draft and was stationed in Key West. We spent most of the week hanging out drinking in places other than bars as I was not 21 yet.
The amazing Coffee Butler
Spending over a month in Florida helped Rick deal with his PTSD trauma. We returned to Ohio and he almost immediately found a very nice girlfriend. They fell in love and were engaged within 6 months. I sold everything I owned, and in January 1969, moved to Daytona then quickly to Miami, attending George Baker Aviation School for two years – never to leave Florida again.
I returned to Key West as often as possible but was making a living in the airline business and later worked processing the Space Shuttle for launch. I would continue to vacation in the Keys, loving the weather, the water, and the fishing.
I finally moved to Key West in 2000, taking a huge pay cut. It took several years to convince my wife to join me on Big Coppitt Key. While I still enjoy the weather and fishing in the Keys, I discovered the amazing music. My website skills led to a new digital photography career capturing the many musicians of Key West.
Since 2011, I have interviewed 182 Key West musicians and archived over 20,000 photos of their performances. They have shared some amazing stories with me over the years. Coffee Butler once told me how he met this new folk singer in town and liked him so much that he let him perform for tips while he was taking a break. The new folk singer was Jimmy Buffett. Bill Blue told a story of his high school sweetheart (20 odd years later) walking into a gig at Sloppy Joe’s, and they spent their next 30 years together. Coffee Butler performed at their wedding.
While speaking of the Buffett Effect on the Key West music scene, Gary Hempsey related how he didn’t know any Buffett songs when he arrived. He played the Grateful Dead tune, “Uncle John’s Band” at Captain Tony’s one day and a fan gave him a nice tip, thanking him for that great Buffet song – Jimmy Buffett covered it on his Fruitcakes album in 1994.
Caffeine Carl Wagoner not the guitar he got for Christmas.
The world class guitarist Mike Gillis.
Caffeine Carl related how, in 1980, his mother gave him his first guitar and amp for Christmas, purchased from a Sears catalog. She said “I don’t know why I’m getting this for you. You’ll probably never play it.” Carl switched from the piano to guitar and the rest is history. Until her passing in 2015, she was Carl’s biggest fan.
One of my favorite interviews was with world class jazz guitarist Michael Gillis. He was the consummate teacher from his University of Miami School of Music days. He began instructing me on how to capture, in a photograph, the passion of a musician. Gillis also gave a cool definition of art: “The phenomenon of art is a selective re-creation of reality according to the artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.”
I can hardly wait for the next 182 interviews.
Coffee Butler sold out five concerts between 2016-2019 at the Key West Theater and a Book Release Party at the Studios of Key West in December of 2015, after coming out of retirement.
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