Captain Tony’s
oil on canvas
In Key West, I have three favorite bars. The Green Parrot is number one, when I am there they charge me local’s prices, because I act like a local, not a tourist. If I could live anywhere in the world, Key West would be my first choice. My liver would not survive.
Captain Tony is a New Jersey native. He was a bootlegger, and after a run in with the mob where he was shot at close range with a shotgun and left for dead in a landfill, he headed to Key West, as far as he could get from NJ.
He bought the building that was the original Sloppy Joe’s. Sloppy Joe’s was Ernest Hemingway’s hang out. Like Hemingway, I am guilty of intoxicated writing. I am nowhere near as verbose. And I don’t expect to take a shotgun to my mouth anytime in the near future.
One day, when bills are paid up, I want to visit Havana, Cuba. Walk where Hemingway walked. Drink where he drank. I have been on his boat.
Unless I win the lottery, I will never live in Key West. But I visit whenever I can. I have a goal, and that is to paint the Green Parrot. Their jukebox has no Jimmy Buffet.. but lots of blues. I am sure my liver has enough life left for another week there.