“The Greatest Gift Is the Realization That Life Does Not Consist Either In
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“The greatest gift is the realization that life does not consist either in wallowing in the past or peering anxiously into the future; and it is appalling to contemplate the great number of often painful steps by which ones arrives at a truth so old, so obvious, and so frequently expressed. It is good for one to appreciate that life is now. Whatever it offers, little or much, life is now –this day-this hour.” Charles Macomb Flandrau Ernest Hemingway drank here. Cuban revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Che Guevera drank here. A longhaired young hippie musician named Jimmy Buffett drank and performed here, too. From the 1930’s through today this rustic dive bar has seen more than its share of the famous and the infamous. It’s a little joint called Capt. Tony’s in Key West, Florida. Eighty-seven-year-old Anthony ‘Capt. Tony’ Tarracino has been the owner and proprietor of this boozy establishment since 1959. It seems Tony, as a young mobster, got himself into some serious trouble with ‘the family’ back in New Jersey and needed to lay low for a while. In those days, the mosquito invested ‘keys’ (or islands) on the southernmost end of Florida’s coastline was a fine place for wise guys on the lam to hide out. And this was well before the tee-shirt shops, restaurants, bars, art galleries, charming B&B’s and quaint hotels turned Key West into a serious year-round tourist destination. Sure, there were some ‘artsy’ types like Hemingway and Tennessee Williams living in Key West during the late 50’s when Tony bought the bar, but it was a seaside shanty town where muscular hard-working men in shrimp boats and cutters fished all day for a living. From dawn to dusk they’d set their lines and nets in these warm salty waters where the Gulf of Mexico meets the great Atlantic Ocean. Today the commercial fishing trade is all but gone and tourism has replaced it as the economic backbone of our community. The narrow streets and walkways of Key West are teeming night and day with visitors from around the world and a few will find their way here to Capt. Tony’s. A few meaning those who don’t give damn if the lights are dim and dangerous and the old wooden bar stools are a bit worn and wobbly. A tree grows in the center of the tavern and disappears through the roof. Up above the bar are countless women’s bras, like veritable helium filled balloons’, that have floated up and hang stapled from the ceiling. And then there’s the grimy smoke-stained windowless walls that are covered with license plates, business cards and faded Polaroid pictures of visiting drunk men and women and the dollar bills they’ve left with names and dates and comments they wrote on those George Washington’s. I as a local and a regular at the bar have seen many a tourist pop their head into the darkness here at Capt. Tony’s and quickly move up to Duvall Street and the trendy tourist bar’s that line it. Like a place called Hemingway’s. Sure ‘Papa’ drank in there when it was something altogether different than it is now, but his main watering hole after a long day of deep- sea fishing was Capt. Tony’s. He loved his dark rum and he liked drinking that shit in a joint that was dark and dangerous. I mean, hell, he was Ernest Hemingway. On this balmy Key West early evening, it’s only me at the bar and two college aged guys in khaki shorts and tee-shirts who sit over at table and nurse a couple of Jamaican beers. Other than that, there’s no one else around except a longhaired and bearded man who reads a book by flashlight behind the bar. This mysterious looking fellow in his mid-sixties is my old friend and the night bartender and everyone knows him as ‘Poet.’ Nobody but me and Tony, Gypsy Mama, the cocktail waitress, and a few close friends know his real name, but I gave him the moniker ‘Poet’ and he’s that and more. On any given night, Poet will down a few shots of tequila and launch into some new poem he’s just written. With a commanding presence, he’ll bellow out the words for all the bar to hear and, believe me, they will gladly listen and for as long as Poet wants to speak. I remember just the other night when Poet went on a quick rant and screamed out, “Slay me angel slay me good Cut me tear me like a good girl should Make me fall down at your velvet feet And burn me baby let me feel your heat Strike the match on my funeral pyre Smoke me up and take me higher So torch this scene with fire so hot Please pretty mama please don’t stop…” The cat is a little scary, mind you, but he’s so damn good that nobody cares, and the bar patrons even encourage him on. His badass big voice can arch almost into song as he spits out the words to some incredibly bizarre little number he’ll concoct on the spur of the moment. Most times it’s a good-looking female customer who unknowingly acts as the muse for a sudden burst of maniacal poetic inspiration. And speaking of women, this guy is still a chick magnet. I, for a fact, know that Poet was a very good-looking guy in his youth and long before the silver began to streak the long brown hair that falls well past his shoulders. That same silver also inhabits his unruly beard and together with the long hair it all conspires to conceal some very handsome facial features. Maybe it’s the full, pouty mouth and penetrating brown eyes that still gets to the girls these days. Who knows? But it happens all the time and I see it for myself every night. There’s just something about Poet’s cool demeanor and laid-back character that appeals to the divorced lonely female tourists who sip on fruity rum drinks and look him over with hungry eyes. But, man, let me tell you they go from hungry to famished when his silky, yet gritty voice carries those wild words out into the dark corners of the bar. It’s then and there they want to know him a whole lot better. Much, much better. Did I mention Gypsy Mama? Oh yeah, I think I did. That’s her coming in the door right now so I guess it’s about time to get this party started. The night shift at Capt. Tony’s, that is. “How you doin’ Mama?” I call out. Gypsy Mama’s a little on the hefty size these days and she’s wearing one of her usual oversized colorful cotton dresses tonight. Always covered with beaded necklaces, turquoise rings, and silver bracelets, too. Gypsy Mama is walking slowly over here to the bar and I can feel it coming…. you just never know with this wild and wonderful woman… she’s laying her large leather purse on the counter and my hunch it’ll be the old Victorian English thing tonight. Sometimes she goes French, Italian or even Russian. I really do love the mock English accent when she’s starts spouting that Shakespeare shit. “What ya’ got to say for yourself, mama?” I ask. Gypsy Mama slams her fist on the bar and shakes her wild mane of white hair and…I was right…. “Are not you moved, when all the sway of the earth Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero, I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen the ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, To be exalted with the threatening clouds: But never till to-night, never till now, Did I go through a tempest dropping fire. Either there is a civil strife in heaven, Or else the world, too saucy with the gods, Incenses them to send destruction. Gypsy Mama turns now and walks towards the juke box in the corner of the room and speaks over her shoulder in a Texas drawl, “In other words, my damn dog got out of the yard again and I probably won’t see the son-of- a-bitch til’ tomorrow.” Well, what can I say about our Gypsy Mama? She’s a walking contradiction and I think that entrance pretty much says it all. Mama has been the nighttime cocktail waitress here at Capt. Tony’s for almost forty years now. That’s right, forty years she’s been slinging those drinks to the poor boys, millionaires, angels and assholes alike. Don’t matter who you are, though. Gypsy Mama treats everybody the same and she can quickly see through any crap, too. And Gypsy Mama always gets right to the point if necessary. For instance, I remember one-night last week when two Alabama dudes had been hitting on a really drunk chick and they started getting a little pushy. And I mean literally. They were trying to push the girl out the door, and most probably, back to their little hotel room. Gypsy Mama don’t miss nothing, either. She’s got this scene figured out and calmly walks over to these guys and stands in the front of them and says in her straightforward way.