Locals go to Miami Subs for cheap and speedy food. There used to be a place on Caroline Street called PT's, named for Paul Tripp, whose slogan was "where locals go to eat" as though trailing after residents is what visitors should aspire to when considering eating out. If you follow me to Miami Subs you'll eat okay but you probably won't get lucky, unless your date is into stark formica, severe lighting and plastic cutlery.
The wife and I met Robert for dinner a couple of nights ago at Miami Subs, on the Boulevard across from Garrison Bight Marina. The founder of the chain was the son of Greek immigrant who settled in Miami, thus the chain offers foods that include the proper ethnic touches- gyro lamb with yoghurt/dill sauce alongside the burgers, fries and ice cream. His business ethic was a bit shady and he ended up gunned down a couple of years ago in splendidly scandalous style in the streets of Miami. His ethnic chain lives on, and in Key West its somewhere I like to park the Bonneville from time to time for a gyro platter or two.
The wife and I met Robert for dinner a couple of nights ago at Miami Subs, on the Boulevard across from Garrison Bight Marina. The founder of the chain was the son of Greek immigrant who settled in Miami, thus the chain offers foods that include the proper ethnic touches- gyro lamb with yoghurt/dill sauce alongside the burgers, fries and ice cream. His business ethic was a bit shady and he ended up gunned down a couple of years ago in splendidly scandalous style in the streets of Miami. His ethnic chain lives on, and in Key West its somewhere I like to park the Bonneville from time to time for a gyro platter or two..
Robert moved to the Keys in 1976, in time for the bicentennial, and he came as many did (and still do) seeking a nautically based change. He lived on the water and knew many early characters who did the same, and his stories of living in the Keys in the 70's are the stuff of history. His stories have also reinforced my conviction that i was right not to settle in Key West when first I visited in 1981. This was not a genteel resort in transition, it was a dusty, fishing village comatose eight months of the year and raucous for the other four leavened by a heavy military presence and a great many people who could barely function on the level of simple daily living. Boredom writ large in my jaundiced opinion. But the stories make an excellent accompaniment to a meal.
Robert himself has lived a few lives, working at lots of jobs, making the life in the Keys one reads of and dreams of to while away a cold Midwest winter. He worked for years as a commercial fisherman, he captained tourist boats, he opposed the creation of the National Marine Sanctuary and then realising his error championed it, and now works full time for NOAA promoting their conservation rules out on the water. "I get paid to be out boating!" he laughs, setting aside the years of scrounging his way to his current eminence, a canal-front trailer, a couple of spare lots and boats on his seawall. A successful self-sufficient life navigated through the treacherous waters of drink drugs and bankruptcy that trip up so many dreamers in the Keys. He was in a reminiscent sort of mood the other night, after packing away his grilled chicken salad and settling in with a bottomless diet Pepsi.
Robert himself has lived a few lives, working at lots of jobs, making the life in the Keys one reads of and dreams of to while away a cold Midwest winter. He worked for years as a commercial fisherman, he captained tourist boats, he opposed the creation of the National Marine Sanctuary and then realising his error championed it, and now works full time for NOAA promoting their conservation rules out on the water. "I get paid to be out boating!" he laughs, setting aside the years of scrounging his way to his current eminence, a canal-front trailer, a couple of spare lots and boats on his seawall. A successful self-sufficient life navigated through the treacherous waters of drink drugs and bankruptcy that trip up so many dreamers in the Keys. He was in a reminiscent sort of mood the other night, after packing away his grilled chicken salad and settling in with a bottomless diet Pepsi..
"I remember Jimmy, when I first got here. He was anchored out in Boca Chica Bay and he lived aboard kind of sparsely. He was living on a Hobie cat." I tried to picture someone living through the current cold snap on the tramp of a beach cat anchored out. Then i thought of summer rain and mosquitoes and windy, sloppy waves, and all my middle class mediocrity rose up in me.
"He lived on a Hobie cat? How?" I asked, and Robert shrugged, his blue eyes twinkling.
"I guess he needed a place and the cat was just where he slept and no one bothered him." And that was the payoff back in those days. No one bothered you, which is a philosophy that one tries to keep alive in a time of encircling condos.
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Those were the days they came up with Fantasy Fest as a response to a major domestic disruption downtown where a business couple took their knock down drag out fight onto Duval in mid October after a particularly empty summer. Sheer boredom convinced Tony Falcone of Fast Buck Freddie's to start a parade. Or so he told me.
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Robert's Key West was a different one, plugged in not to tourist season or hip bars, but to water temperatures and fish spawns and all the rigging and paraphenalia of a waterbourne life. He toured the country, found Key West and determined never to live north of the Seven Mile Bridge. In a town that promotes water activities and teems with residents who never dip their toes into the bowels of a boat, Robert has set his own clock to the time of the tides and the state of the breeze.
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I remember anchoring next to a couple off Rat Key, he I had known since we had met anchored off St Petersburg a few years before, she was his new interest and he set her up with her birds and her dog in an old wooden motor cruiser (sans motor). The Chris Craft's previous owner, a water rat, had thought to preserve the aging hull with an unconventional choice of bottom paint which was actually roofing tar. This gave the home afloat a rather menacing air, a matt black finish lightly disguised with curtains and a parrot cage dangling in the shade of the cockpit. Unfortunately the tar, owing perhaps to a faulty compound that may have made it cheap enough to buy, failed to set and anyone approaching the boat in a nice white dinghy had to fend off madly and was lucky if they came away only with a couple of fists full of oily tar. Dinging the hull left long dark streaks on anything it butted up against. This was her home for a couple of years afloat and perhaps the execrable state of her vessel led the woman to a new and more stimulating life ashore. Salt water will do that.
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Robert and I go back almost twenty years when we met sailing in the Bahamas, we remember the meerting differently but it was somewhere in the Exumas and we kept meeting along the way. We talked about the old sailing days and what a pain it is to get from here to there under sail, the lack of wind, the wrong wind, big seas, crap waves and all the rest. I expressed relief that I don't have to deal with it anymore, or at least until I want to again, if ever.
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"We can grow old ashore," Robert said, " and we can afford to settle down without regrets. We've done lots of things lots of people only ever dream of doing. This is our life," and I was startled by his philosphy spilling out as we tramped across the parking lot, "and its okay." Sometimes I need reasurance thatenjoying falling into the work-commute-weekend trap is acceptable, when much of the first world treats work and routine as four-letter words.
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I guess it is, when someone as Conchy as Robert says it is.
