Nuts and Keys

I was sprawled on the back of a golf cart, eating a grocery store sandwich in the rain, when it struck me that I live, when all is said and done, in a rather feral part of the country. It’s not lushly untamed in a country-roads-take-me-home kind of way or vast and haunting like the desert out West. Rather, in the last hundred-odd years, it’s been railroaded and paved and turned into a never-ending series of tropical strip malls that struggle to contain both the quantity and the quality of the carbon-based bipedal life forms that have madly descended upon them. You can find $2 beers in clothing shops and barefoot people in the Urgent Care and boats for rent, sans any license or training, by the week. In the words of my snaggle-toothed, ponytailed dive instructor, It’s the Keys, man.

It took four days of southbound driving to reach Marathon, Florida, where I was to catch the ferry to my new home on Pigeon Key. Wandering around the town’s grocery store that first afternoon, I realized that I had no idea how to find the boat to the island. I didn’t even know which of Marathon’s many marinas to head towards – never a problem I’d encountered before in my sheltered inland life. I texted my boss and her response was simple: “Look for Captain Billy.” While it seemed to me there were likely several thousand resident Captain Billys in the Keys, I had to give it a go.

Thirty minutes later, when I finally located the vessel in question (if only because of a very nice gift shop employee and the fact that “PIGEON KEY FERRY” was written in large blue letters on the side), a blonde woman wandered up to me and asked if I was heading to the island. When I told her that I was freshly employed there, she laughed.

“I used to date the guy that lived out there in the ‘80s,” she said. “But then he went insane.”

I looked at her, unsure if she was pulling my leg.

“He thought he was a pirate and last I heard he got arrested for firing a cannon from the 7-Mile Bridge. You can look it up.” She chuckled and sauntered towards the pool.

It turned out to be a fitting welcome to the Keys. The islands were officially integrated into the United States in the 1820s. Less than a decade later, Key West was already the richest city per capita in the country, due largely to its infamous shipwrecking industry. Townspeople would wait for ships to crash into the treacherous offshore reef and then rush out to claim and resell the boat and its cargo. The practice was so cutthroat and lucrative that the federal government eventually had to put a stop to it, as the salvagers were no longer satisfied with waiting for wrecks and instead had begun confusing incoming captains with lights and markers. All that’s left of the industry today is a few hardy treasure-hunters and a small museum, but the general spirit of it persists: Key West even tried to secede from the U.S. in 1982. You would be hard-pressed to find a more fiercely independent, opportunistic, and eccentric bunch than those southernmost islanders.

Luckily, our Captain Billy turned out to be a friendly bearded man in jean shorts and sensible sneakers. He provides our main form of transport to and from the island, although if you miss the boat you can hike two scorching miles across the old bridge instead (I once had to hoof it with groceries because the boat crew unexpectedly left early to watch a fishing tournament). Indeed, there is certainly no shortage of proper characters in the Keys; written out, their names could fill the pages of War and Peace and maybe even Anna Karenina too. Some people came down here to fish or dive and never left. Others simply fled the cold and have no urge to return to the wind and wool. In one memorable Uber ride, the driver explained in a pleasant Midwestern accent that he is now so adjusted to the climate down here that he “sometimes aborts the mission in the dairy aisle.” A few weeks later, a man next to me at a Key West bar apologized for his buddy’s rowdy behavior and said that it must take him an hour and a half to watch Sixty Minutes.

I’ve been here for two months now, and much like the Uber driver, I throw on a sweatshirt if it’s cooler than 80 out. I have learned a lot about septic tanks, spearfishing, power washers, lettuce leaf sea slugs, middle schoolers, coconut palms, and weed whackers. Perhaps most importantly, however, I have learned to play corn hole. My supervisors – and Captain Billy, of course – compete in a popular local league. We met one of their teammates, a skinny golf course manager named Spidey, at the local fire academy during a staff safety training that was tough to pay attention to because a pair of wild peacocks kept wandering through the yard. According to the fire chief, they moved in after the station’s chickens were eaten by raccoons and Gambian giant rats. To all of the corn hole competitors, but especially to my boss Chris, Bags n Beers is not a game but a lifestyle. Incidentally, Chris also hunts and eats the invasive iguanas that thrive on the island, fondly referring to them as “the chicken of the trees.” He recently shared that the last time he got a tetanus shot was in an Olive Garden bathroom, and I have no reason to believe that he was lying.

Our island rests straddled by two bridges, one old, one new. When the State of Florida converted Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railroad into the old highway in the late 1930s, the road was so narrow that cars would often lose their wing mirrors to oncoming traffic; it happened so frequently, in fact, that locals nicknamed it the Highway of Mirrors. According to old-timers, questionable men would hang out on either end of the road and offer to drive your car for you for a fee. An elderly island visitor told me that decades ago, his father would scoff at the frightened tourists paying for a drive and charge down the highway, one hand on the wheel, the other clutching his martini. Today, there are wider lanes that make getting on down to the Big Pine Key Boondocks Miniature Golf Course somewhat less life-threatening.

When I think about how best to sum up the nuttiness of my current ZIP Code, one scene comes to mind. A few weeks ago, we had a rambunctious class of fifth graders on the island. As with every group, we fed them mac and cheese and took them to the coral reef. And as with every group, some of them got horribly seasick. On the way back, a handful were still crying and throwing up on the deck when the captain, a dry, weathered Bostonian, unexpectedly began blasting “Low” by Flo Rida feat. T-Pain over the speaker system. Watching twenty preteens spring into action, dancing and singing over every word to a 2007 club floor classic while their classmates openly suffered beside them, brought the staff to tears.

Needless to say, I am equally thrilled and frightened of the things I will witness during my next two months down here. With each day that passes, my muted Mid-Atlantic sensibilities lose more ground to the technicolor, unyielding Florida tide. But I think I’m okay with that.