Key West. Hemingway. Cats. Chickens.

I never have liked Hemingway all that much. The only time I really ever gave him much thought was in college, when I took a wonderful class about the expatriot American writers in Paris in the 1920's. We read Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Dos Passos and so on. (Wasn't UCSC a great place to go to school?) In that class, we had to try to write in the style of each of the writers. I found out that Hemingway's short declarative sentences are much  harder to achieve than one would think. I guess I do admire his writing style quite a bit, but it's hard to admire a lot of other things about him. However,  today I spent a little time with him, and I quite enjoyed it.

Hemingway's house

The studio

His house is spectacular. It was built in 1851 by a very rich man, and it was so well constructed that it has never been damaged in a hurricane, and it was built so well on the HIGHEST POINT in Key West--at, get this, 16 feet above sea level--that it even has a basement, which is very unusual here because of flooding, and the basement not only stayed dry but was perfect for a wine cellar, and his collection was apparently the only thing he took with him when he left. The rest of the house is still full of his stuff.

An unimpressed cat laying on a display case at Hemingway's house

The thing with Hemingway and his cats is pretty weird. He believed that they were lucky omens, and particularly thought that six toed cats were lucky, and when he had a few of them, he let them roam freely. He had 50 or 60 of them around the property when he lived there, and gave them all the names of movie stars or other real people. There are 45 of their descendants at the property now, and about three quarters of them have six toes.

He was rather famously married four times, and each time he picked out the next one when the other one was still around. One of the fun stories we heard today was that when wife number two found out that while he was off as a war correspondent he had taken up with a journalist who would become
wife number three, she decided to spend some of his money while he was away. She dug up the backyard, where his beloved boxing ring was, and had a spectacular in-ground pool put in there, to
the tune of twenty thousands dollars...during the 1930's! It is still just amazingly beautiful. Near the pool is a drinking fountain for the cats, which he had installed....after he and some friends dragged a ceramic urinal from Sloppy Joe's bar, down about four blocks. He laid it on its side and kept it filled with water. This was partly for the cats, but also meant to piss off the wife. The wife then had it tiled in, and had an Italian olive oil vessel built in above it, and turned it into a fountain. He and this wife went back and forth like this until they finally got divorced. At some point in the story, he threw a penny at her, saying, since you are determined to take my last penny, here it is! She had that penny set into the stone out by the pool. It's still there.

The urinal-turned-fountain

The pool.

His study was very interesting. He produced about two thirds of all the work of his career in that room. His typewriter is still on the desk.

Hemingway's study

Anyway, it was an interesting visit, and worth a few bucks. Key West is an unusual and interesting place.  It seems very relaxed, and everything seems to happen on Island Time, which means it takes us all day to do very little. There are walks to take, and bike rides to take, and naps to take. It's not a bad way to waste time.

There are chickens everywhere, especially roosters. They are walking around all over the place: at the post office, on the street, in the parking lots, walking across the walkway. They too seem quite relaxed, but all day long there is quite a commotion of cockle doodle doo, and I suppose it could get on a person's nerves at some point. Oh well, just have a tropical drink or take a nap, I guess, or just walk the other way.

There are chickens and roosters everywhere

Tomorrow we are taking a daylong trip by boat to Dry Tortuga National Park. The biggest question in my mind is: how I can manage to spend all day outside without coming back as red as a lobster.? Or a
 rooster?