If you are planning to visit Hemingway bars where he drank when he lived on Key West, Florida, you have two stops to make.
First To Captain Tony’s
Captain Tony’s Saloon in Key West is a dark hole with tables, a guitarist, a bar tender and a gnarled tree pushing up through the ceiling like the one that made a leg for Odysseus’ bed. On the walls, sticky tags from drink bottles and surf wear companies, hundreds of dollar bills and the odd business card are stapled to dark, dark wood. A decent guitarist quietly plays Bob Dylan in front by the door. It’s a dark hold of a place which, before it became Hemingway’s haunt in 1933, was reportedly the city morgue.
Of course we stopped there. We took pictures. And I tried to see if there was any part, besides the tree, that reminded me of Papa Hemingway, besides the picture of him fishing with the original bar owner, Captain Tony.
There might be something. A whisper of age, of history. The faintest odor of the sea which seeped into the boards over a hundred years. The bricks on the floor to the right side of the bar, which might be where the ice was said to melt in a slurry that gave the place its name, “Sloppy Joe’s.” There was also this: the space resembles a ramshackle harbor bar of the type that they say Papa liked to go to, every day, after he finished his 500 written words. He would come to drink and swap stories, stories that might eventually make it to, say, everyone who could read English.
It’s not surprising that it’s bare, since they say that when Captain Tony moved the bar down the street, he took out everything in it, including all the plumbing fixtures. Including a urinal that later turned up at the Hemingway house, where it became a fountain and waterer for cats. This is the kind of story you find when you start sluffing around Hemingway bars.
Then to Sloppy Joe’s
The second bar on the Hemingway pilgrimage is the current Sloppy Joe’s, a much bigger and more crowded establishment. Here a younger, louder guitarist plays more modern songs like “Into the Dark.” That place sells more than just drinks. You can eat a Sloppy Joe, which I did. Apparently this bar was the creator of that well-known, to people my age, school cafeteria staple of the same name. You can also get fish sandwiches. Leo had one of these and said it was quite good. And t-shirts, and mugs, and go-cups. In the gift shop. Hemingway looks down from a framed picture of himself in a fisherman’s sweater. In his gaze are a boisterous company of loud tourists eating and drinking. Waiters wear beards and ball caps. On one wall is a picture of a bunch of men who look superficially like Hemingway, but clearly are not him. When I ask about it, I find that it’s the Hemingway-look-alike hall of fame. Last year 149 men came to compete. I am astounded that it’s so many.
Finally to the Hemingway House Museum
When I tell this to Leo, he snorts. “It’s the only time you can get any positive attention for looking like a fat middle aged guy,” Leo says. He buys me the t-shirt. We get going to the Hemingway House museum. Hemingway bars, I suppose, are all over the world, but we had done the Key West versions.
