Key West Back in the Day

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...

“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...

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...

In the 1970s and early ’80s on Mallory Square, the late afternoon air smelled almost of anticipation, with a hint of salt water blown...

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...

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...

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...