Everybody had a nickname — except me. At least, that’s how it seemed in Key West some 40 years ago.
There was Patty Doe, the pretty blonde bartender at the Full Moon Saloon, who eventually married Chiqui (few people knew his actual name, Carlos) and moved to Costa Rica with him.
Patty’s “Doe” designation was presumably to differentiate her from Cudjoe Patty, who owned property on Cudjoe Key, but was a roommate of Patty Doe and Chiqui in a house on Thompson Street.
The house had a large in-ground pool, a rarity on the island back then, so it became a hangout for our crowd and earned a nickname of its own: the Thompson Street Swim Club. Among Patty and Chiqui’s other Thompson Street roommates was my sister Joanne — still referred to as JoWheaties by most of them, since she looked like a female athlete pictured on a long-ago cereal box.
“Swim Club” regulars included Chicken, a.k.a. Marilyn, and Sweet Pete and Marté Parté (who surely had other names, too, but Key Westers didn’t ask things like that).
Chiqui’s older brother was almost universally called Fat, though not for reasons of weight. Many years later, when he became a Key West city commissioner under his real name of Tony Yaniz, people just couldn’t get used to addressing him as “Tony.”
Then there was Roy G. Wildman, a shrimper buddy of my fiancé Phil and a frequent guest in our house, who did everything he could to justify the “Wildman” part of his nickname. One night, thoroughly drunk, he climbed through Phil’s and my porch window and landed in our bed — while we were peacefully sleeping in it.
Roy also occasionally wandered into the Full Moon, the beloved “clubhouse” for most of our crowd, where drinks were generous and scammers could transact their business undisturbed. (To visualize the Full Moon in all its glory, just imagine the Mos Eisley Cantina, the intergalactic dive bar in the original Star Wars film.)
In addition to Patty Doe, bartenders who oversaw the Moon’s action included Greek, a curly-haired woman of Hellenic descent who dressed like a gypsy and could subdue the rowdiest customer with a single glance. Her nickname was such a part of her mystique that most people didn’t learn her actual name until years later, when she became a successful real estate agent.
Other than cocktails and a “renegades welcome” policy, the Moon’s attractions included great casual food — particularly a substantial fried fish sandwich and a cracked conch platter. The closet-sized kitchen was overseen by an eccentric blond guy dubbed Young Rick or Crusher.
As this was Key West in the late ’70s, when privacy was prized and questions frowned upon, we never discovered what (or who) he had crushed to earn his moniker.
The Full Moon’s customers also had colorful names. There was commercial fisherman Heavy Duty; prolific artist and local legend Monkey Tom (not to be confused with Whistling Tom); the sinister yet suave Killer Mike (who was sometimes spotted with Trucker Mike or Mikey Dare); a gold-draped high-roller known as Ping Ping, and a superbly arrogant woman called Murphy who was the former girlfriend of musician Jerry Jeff Walker.
Per Key West statute, the Full Moon served cocktails till 4 a.m. Customers who thought that was an absurdly early closing time generally headed for Club 21, an after-hours hangout in Bahama Village that was run by the charismatic Cecil Bain — but instead of Club 21, it was referred to as Cecil’s School of Dance.
Why? Despite participating in an occasional late-night escapade there, I never knew. Of course, adhering to the unspoken code of the day … I never asked.
