Life and Island Times Jul 8 2016 – Island Superstition

This one is from 2012.

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This island is a peculiar place – chock full of boozers, bikers, bozos, bimbos, and a few believers. Some are creative types bent on reinventing themselves and the island – as often as on a daily basis. What follows is an assemblage of recent photos from around the island that testify to the unseen voodoo cocktail that is Key West.

But before you see them, Marlow admits that the last ten days of this past October were different. There were strange sounds and sights that provoked in Marlow feelings of superstition.

Risqué carved pumpkins at a local gay bed and breakfast

Marlow and the W at Plaid Night party during Fantasy Fest 2012

One very Scary Night full moon

Halloween week road warning sign

Unnamed Conch holding forth at Blossoms Café

with a complete stranger from the mainland

Worst excuse ever for a handicap parking spot sticker (I saw the wild eyed, whackjob haired

rider. He had no limp and may have been riding about with a snootful around 2 PM one midweek

day, when he parked his Harley and spent more than five minutes to affix his Handicap placard.)

Wyland’s repainted mural on the walls of the old Waterfront Market. The

previous Wyland mural had been a very dark take on man’s impact of our reef.

Schooner Wharf Bar’s tribute to the boomer

generation’s high water mark during the 60s – WharfStock

A surprising and unsettling photo of a blue metal
mesh picnic bench during October 2012’s full moon

A bizarre, abandoned chair in Lazy Dog Lane just down from Schooner Wharf Bar

It might have been superstition but some kind of something was going on down here during the late days of this past October. Some say what Marlow heard, saw, and felt was part of an old time tradition when Conches, slaves and sailors went out to play on fall nights on the long ago wooden planks of the Mallory docks.

Stephen Mallory’s piers were the largest public spaces on the island back then. Sailors and slaves were commonly given Sundays off from their work. They were allowed to gather on the docks to drink Cuban rum and dance to Caribbean music. Some oral histories say that the beat of the native drums and wail of gourd banjoes pierced the Sabbath night salt air.

Old timers in Bahama Village say that you can still hear it in the distance. It is said that old Conches up the Keys who live out in the mangroves say a prayer when they sense it in the darkness.

Marlow’s old island ears and eyes were not misbelieving what they heard and saw here and could not turn away. It was all mojo in motion. Newbie islanders and ancient ghosts were dancing in a trance with the snake.

It might be silly superstition . . . but when Marlow hears it again in the night, he’s gonna say a prayer because he respects tradition.

Copyright © 2016 From My Isle Seat