A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, film fans were introduced to one of the silver screen’s most infamous bars: the Mos Eisley Cantina. Featured in the original “Star Wars” epic, the dimly lit tavern was a refuge for intergalactic rogues — from humans to extraterrestrials. Yet despite its raffish air (and patrons who occasionally vaporized each other), it had a lawless charm that made viewers wish they could drink there, too.
Serendipitously, Key West became my forever home shortly after “Star Wars” was released in 1977 and rocketed to legendary status. Much to my delight, I discovered the island had its own version of the Mos Eisley Cantina, and it was indeed possible to drink there.
The Chart Room, located at the waterfront Pier House Resort, had already achieved a picturesque notoriety. Admittedly, the rogues who populated the small watering hole weren’t intergalactic (though a few seemed weird enough to hail from another planet or even another solar system).
Patrons did occasionally vaporize each other, but they used lethal sarcasm instead of a blaster or lightsaber — wielded under the amused eye of bartenders who included Chris Robinson and Phil Clark to the lovely Maggie Harmon.
Like the “Star Wars” cantina, the Chart Room was the site of some shady financial transactions — generally involving unnamed contraband or high-stakes betting on backgammon games. (I once won a startling amount of cash at backgammon after defeating a regular patron known as “the painless dentist.”)
The Chart Room wasn’t my only discovery as a wide-eyed newcomer to Key West. I quickly learned that the best Cuban sandwich on the island could be found not at a restaurant or bodega, but at a laundromat. Sandy’s Café at the M&M Laundromat offered an unparalleled version of the meat-and-cheese treat, stacked on Cuban bread, then warmed and flattened in a press.
In those days, few of us had washing machines or dryers (or TVs or even telephones). Going to the M&M and savoring a Cuban sandwich and café con leche, while watching sheets and towels and jeans spin in the laundromat’s supersized machines, offered the opportunity to encounter old friends and meet new ones.
Yet of all the unique encounters that helped define my early days in Key West, probably the most memorable was the one with the beach preacher.
I saw him only once, early on a Sunday morning when I walked from my tiny Simonton Street apartment to the stretch of sand called Higgs Beach. Fronting the Atlantic Ocean, Higgs surrounded Fort West Martello, a Civil War-era fort that never saw battle — my favorite spot on the entire island.
Headquarters for the Key West Garden Club, (now called the Key West Gardens at Fort West Martello), the fort was a tranquil place where flowers bloomed against weathered red bricks, and the voices of long-ago soldiers who served there lingered just out of earshot.
One Sunday, however, the voice I heard was that of an itinerant preacher. His message of mercy and grace rolled sonorously across the sand as he delivered an impromptu sermon to a flock of old men and vagabonds on the beach.
I paused, mesmerized. Even the Atlantic behind him hushed, its water clear and diamond-bright, seeming to stretch halfway to Cuba.
For a moment I could imagine him blessing his ragtag congregation, leaving them ramshackle but renewed, and walking away across the water — secure in the conviction that he could, and that another congregation awaited him on Cuba’s shores.
That unexpectedly sacred moment was worlds away from the revelry of the Chart Room, or the taste of Cuban sandwiches at Sandy’s Café. But all three were part of Key West’s back-in-the-day magic — the magic that, nearly 50 years later, can still be found if you look hard enough.
