Today we went to Key West. On the way we stopped for lunch at Mangrove Mama's where “dinner is a little bit more fancier.” I just love quoting our waitress there. “Don't eat the food here.” “Don't take any pictures.” As you might guess, we disobeyed her at every opportunity.
We liked the ceiling decor.
**
In Key West we started at the Museum of Art and Art History where we saw works by a guy who thought we should experience some of the classics from a different perspective. I really kind of liked this one.
Rita MacNelly and Beezy Bogan made characters, named them, and gave them little descriptions in the American Trophies exhibit. (Oops, no pictures yet.)
There's Arby Gladwell who “has not picked out a single item of clothing for himself since his second marriage.”
I've actually heard of someone who has never bought his own underwear. First his mom did, then his wife.
“Polly is game for anything. She's more than a woman, she's an experience.”
“Herbie has always felt his hair is his best feature.”
“Martha Jean was Miss Hopewell 1987 where she triumphed over an eager field of four, winning with her spectacular flaming baton act.”
“Horace H. Grubbs reads two obits daily with the glee of a man who has won a bet."
There was also a display on Ernest Hemingway who lived in Key West for a bit. (No, we did not tour his house.) I've read
The Old Man and the Sea, which I remember liking, though it was depressing. Well here, I got to read a long letter he wrote back home after becoming injured in the war and, wow, he's a really good writer.
Duh. I know.
I may look into some of his other works.
We also learned that for a while the biggest part of the economy came from shipwrecks. When a new shipwreck was discovered, an alarm was sounded and whoever arrived first was put in charge and got the biggest share of the profits.
First the people were rescued, then the goods were recovered after having been sold for something like ten cents on the dollar.
**
Then we stopped by a cart where Robin tried conch fritters, more fritter than conch. By the way,
conch is pronounced KONK. Don't embarrass yourselves.
**
We saw a mural by a guy who decided to create 100 murals around the world to educate people about sea life.
**
Then we stopped at a shop where I got key lime pie. Key limes are a special kind of lime which are grown in the keys.
My mom makes key lime pie and I wanted to compare. I think the one I tasted was more tart than my mom's.
The place had one kind with whipped cream and one kind with meringue. I asked which she recommended. She recommended the meringue, with rolling eyes, as if everyone should know that key lime pies are made with meringue. Score one for my mom! The pie was also made with regular pie crust rather than a graham cracker crust, just like my mom's.
So, now you also know how not to embarrass yourself when talking about key lime pie.
I love the bicycle rack out front, shaped like a bicycle itself:
**
Then we went on the Conch Tour Train (remember to pronounce it “konk”--I have trouble doing that, so I'll keep reminding you, too).
First we learned that the banyan tree is a type of ficus from India.
We learned about zigzag houses, where the roof has a zigzag shape. Every time you add a new section, you can add a new roof. They used tin roofs so that at the valleys, you can collect the rain water and store it in a cistern. People are no longer collecting all their water like this, or much at all; a pipe has been run from the Everglades in Florida to deliver drinking water to the keys. Still, collecting your own water sounds like a good idea.
I'd always heard that roofs with valleys like this were more likely to leak than those without.
I've also become fascinated with shutters (look again at the zigzag house above for many examples). Real shutters can close and actually protect the windows during a hurricane. And protecting the windows means you're protecting the contents of the house. And, if no windows break, your roof is less likely to fly away, too. We don't get hurricanes, and even if global warming raises sea level, we are still unlikely to get them here during my lifetime. But we can get tornadoes, so shutters still seem like a good idea to me.
I saw shutters on both windows and doors. And I saw many different kinds.
There's also such a thing as an “eyebrow house,” a Key West invention. This is where the roof eaves hang down beyond the windows on the top floor. Good for shade!
We learned that the land mass of Key West has doubled by dredging. When you dredge the ocean to make a deep place for boats to come through, you may as well take that dirt and add it to the edge of the land. “New Town” used to be the Gulf.
The beaches on the Atlantic side are made of imported sand.
The tour guide said that people in Key West were quite rich during the shipwreck era. But then by the Great Depression, the government wanted to evacuate everyone to someplace it was easier to deliver aid to.
The next big industry was tourism (I think). Then there was the hurricane with the 200-mile-an-hour winds. After that the railroad and then a highway were built. Then World War II brought the Navy. And now it looks like we're back to tourism.
**
Here's a stained glass window I like in a shop we dropped by with an ice cream parlour.
**
There are a lot of chickens running around Key West. I heard it's for bug control. I also heard they are considered a pest. They were much nicer than the rooster Robin grew to hate when he had to feed chickens and the rooster would always try to peck his shins to pieces. I liked them.
Back at the ranch, I remarked on how there were so many wooden houses that had obviously survived hurricanes in Key West. It was explained to me that the wood pieces were bigger than those used nowadays and carefully fitted together in ways we don't do anymore.
I also learned that Habitat for Humanity houses tend to withstand strong winds better than regular wood houses because the volunteers use "too many" nails.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
