This month (February) marks the 40th anniversary of my arrival – and leaving the road behind – to play music and live in the Florida Keys. Over the course of the past four decades, I’ve seen quite a bit. I’d like to share some of the most consequential things that happened to our Middle Keys community.
U.S. 1 four-lane construction. When I first moved here, the only four-lane stretch of U.S. 1 in Marathon began at the Overseas Lounge and ended at 15th Street. All the rest of U.S. 1 from the Overseas east to Coco Plum Drive was two-lane. The Vaca Cut Bridge, however, was a four-lane bridge even back then. The Florida Department of Transportation (motto: “We Take As Long As We Want”) came in to rectify our lack of highway capacity and basically took over our town for a couple of years. Along the way, there were lawsuits about not enough landscaping and myriad other reasons the project took as long as it did.
Try and imagine the sheer unadulterated hell that U.S. 1 was during the project. Combine local traffic and seasonal visitor traffic with heavy machinery and construction delays on (sometimes) two whole lanes. For many of us locals back then, Aviation Boulevard became the Marathon Construction Bypass, especially when construction was going on in front of the airport.
Locals got used to it after a while (not really). One of my favorite stories from those construction days involved a local guy who rode his bike through town, and as such, beat all the stopped automobile traffic. Visitors would see him riding by, and they’d stop him and ask him what the delay was. “Big train wreck,” was all he would say, and off he went. I don’t know how many people believed him, but he sure loved telling the story.
Closing of the Idle Hour. A long, long time ago, there used to be a signature Marathon watering hole known as the Idle Hour Bar. Way back then, what’s currently the Beall’s Outlet Shopping Center was the Winn-Dixie Shopping Center. Beall’s is now where Winn-Dixie used to be. Just to the right of Beall’s was the Idle Hour. This four-star dive featured pool tables, live music with Freddie Bye (pre-Brass Monkey), and a “sunken” bar where the floor behind the bar was a couple of feet lower that the floor of the rest of the establishment. The bartenders always seemed short until they climbed out from behind the bar.
Eventually, Walgreen’s got an option on the space and out went the Idle Hour. Before Walgreen’s built their own building on 107th Street, they operated out of the Winn-Dixie Shopping Center. I remember the first time I walked into the new Walgreen’s, incredibly impressed that they had somehow managed to rid the space of the smell that permeated every airspace and surface inside the Idle Hour. I had visions of cleaners in hazmat suits ripping out walls and carpets, trying to eliminate the olfactory abomination.
Other bars that existed then were the Reef Bar, now the Seven Mile Fly Shop; a strip club called Fanny’s, now the Turtle Hospital; the Rum Keg Pub at the old Howard Johnson’s; the Compass Lounge at the old Holiday Inn; and the Driftwood Lounge, now Driftwood Pizza and the Curvy Conch. In those days, bars could stay open 24 hours — and they did. We had more 24-hour watering holes than we did 24-hour convenience stores. Captains would often collect crew members still sitting at the bar at sunrise, as most bar windows were painted to hide morning sunlight from drinking patrons.
I have many more stories from the past 40 years, but I’m already out of room in this week’s column. There will be future installments. It’s fun to take these trips back in time to the Middle Keys of yesterday, and my time machine is still functional! Until the next time…
– Catch John live this Wednesday at Dockside, Thursdays at Sparky’s Landing, Saturday at the Fish for Jose Event, and Sundays at the Skipjack Resort Tiki Bar. Find his music anywhere you download or stream your music. www.johnbartus.com • johnbartus.hearnow.com
