KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: THE LURE OF THE LIZARDS
Decades before Key West became an accidental haven for iguanas, the island was populated by another breed of lizard: engaging bright-colored critters of all...
KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: TALES FROM THE AFTERDECK
Apparently I wasn’t the worst-ever cocktail waitress at the Afterdeck, the ocean’s-edge bar at the legendary Louie’s Backyard, but I was pretty bad. Yet...
KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: THE PUPPY WITH NO SHAME
Somewhere in Key West’s Old Town, there’s an elderly man cursing the soul of Calico Jack.
I don’t mean Calico Jack Rackham, the infamous Caribbean...
KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: THE BAD BIRTHDAY PIG ROAST
Don’t let a man who claims to play poker with the ghost of Harry Truman plan your birthday party.
That was just one lesson I...
KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: PHIL CLARK WAS ‘THE PIRATE WHO LOOKED AT...
“Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you callWanted to sail upon your waters Since I was three feet tallYou’ve seen it all …. You’ve seen...
KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: IT’S THE JAZZ, MAN
Sometimes in Key West’s beloved “bad old days,” also known as the late 1970s and early ’80s, you could feel a spine-tingling sense of...
KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: ‘I HAVE FOUND ME A HOME’
In the 1970s and early ’80s on Mallory Square, the late afternoon air smelled almost of anticipation, with a hint of salt water blown...
KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: REMEMBER WHEN THE MAYOR WATER SKIED TO CUBA?
A lighthearted water-skiing jaunt doesn’t usually involve Cuban gunboats and 6-foot seas. But the late Key West mayor Charles “Sonny” McCoy encountered both in...
KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: THE DAY MOSES ARRIVED AT DOG BEACH
It’s amazing how far some Key West residents will go in the name of hospitality.
Take me, for instance. In the early 1980s I hung...
KEY WEST BACK IN THE DAY: NEW COLUMN EXPLORES GOOD OLE DAYS OF KEY...
By Carol Shaughnessy
When I came to Key West in the late 1970s, I was a naïve 20-year-old Minnesota girl. I flew down to the...
