It was good to be back at Willow. Elisabeth-with-an-S was at her elegant and solicitous best; her movements graceful behind the bar as she topped off my first glass of happy Hour white. Old Jim was presiding at his accustomed spot at the corner of the L of the bar.

The Johns- the one with the Old Money-pedigree-and-an-H was in for the long haul, and Jon without was there, his bow-tie knotted with artistic imperfection.

Jon has taken a break from the Lovely Bea, the hot Hispanic lovely, for reasons best known to himself. It was good to catch up with the details of life in the hot-house city. Short-hair Mike anchored the end of the bar with his current flame, an attractive blonde with a placid peaceful visage that contrasts with Mike’s veiled menace.

Jon is a worthy inheritor of the mantle of George Hamilton, and all of us will have better tans and less seasonal affective disorder now that the solar disc is hanging longer in the sky.

Of course, that would mean actually being out in the sun, and not in the dim coolness of the Willow Bar. I will have to get on that presently, but perhaps not today.

It is going to take a few days to get over the trip, the first one in a while that did not have a snow-drift and dementia at the business end of it.

I am about done with winter, both as a concept and a state of being.

It would be presumptuous to pontificate about the Keys, but I will blather for a while anyway. I have no credentials for my opinions, but like North Korea, you have to go with the evidence of your senses.

I got a little drifty at the Willow bar, back up North, thinking about what it was like to round the bend at the Historic Seaport harbor walk, and hear the sounds of an ironic guitar.

My pals were dragging me to see a legend, the anti-Buffet singer Michael McCloud who did not get zapped with stardom, and is still playing in a tourist-town bar with a beer at his elbow and a cigarette tucked into the top fret of his acoustic axe.

An extremely drunk young woman in a tangerine cover-up darkened with the moisture of her still wet bikini was weaving her way to the cigar stand where an aging hippy sat puffing one of his creations.

The Schooner Wharf Bar is a bit of old Key West that adapted with the seasons. Once it was a place where the Navy sailors would get beat up by the locals, and where smuggling was as profitable as shrimping before the industry died.

My pal and his wife are locals, now, and proud of it. They have owned a place there for nearly a dozen years, and I was pleased to be taken in tow to get a sense of the place. Schooner Warf was as good a place as any to start, though it did occur to me that things had started the night before and featured people with green hair and significant attitudes.

Michael McCloud is the stage name of Michael Snyder, and he is exactly where he wants to be. He got my attention through Jake, who has been playing one of his albums for the last fie or six seasons of Terrapin football, lending a certain raffish island charm to the very professional tailgating before the games at College Park.

I mentioned that to Mr. Snyder at the first break, when the fish tacos had been ordered and I surrendered to the imperative to purchase a memory or two of the island. He seemed remarkably unimpressed, or at least indifferent to my story, though either I, or the Captain Morgan and Diet Coke were fairly articulate.

I bought the t-shirt and a different CD to give to Jake for the variety, and sat down again, having achieved the check-in-the-block for meeting living legends.

McCloud is a raffish man, and a bit of a schemer. In 2006, he launched a suit against country singer Tobey Keith, claiming that his 2003 number one hit ‘I Love This Bar” was a lift from his own signature song “’Tourist Town Bar’.”

Keith accused McCloud of being a low-life, a contention which I doubt bothered him very much, since his gig is a steady one, noon to five, daily, and Keith has a heavy touring regimen that does not fit the laid-back island life-style.

After the case was dismissed, Keith vented at the McCloud’s legal raid. He called him “a greedy lowlife opportunist who just wants to get rich.”

“In fact,” the injured artist sputtered, “McCloud publicly bragged this lawsuit would make him a rich man, that I would buy him a comfortable life, retirement, house, car, big boat, and Harvard educations for his children.”

I don’t know about that, but I do know that a founding citizen of the Conch Republic would not let the prospect of easy street go by without a least a lazy grab at it.

After all, this is the land of treasure salver Mel Fischer and other graspers for the moon.

Mel and Captain Tony were not going to be available for consultation. Mel passed in 1998 in Key West, and his company is still fighting a couple nation states over the latest treasure find, the enigmatically-named wreck of the “Black Swan.” They may win, you never can tell.

Captain Tony was not going to be on the menu, either. He has gone on to the next world, though my pals had met him dozens of times. Tony owned the original Sloppy Joe’s, a landmark were Ernie Hemingway used to prop up the bar, and which was on the detailed agenda for later in the day, assuming I was still in condition to walk.

We tested that proposition after a couple sets and several more Captain Morgans. Looking over the rail of the dock, I saw gigantic pet tarpon swirled in the depths off the dock, appearing out of the shimmering green gloom looking for treats.

“Seasonal living is the key,” I said, not meaning the pun. “Imagine showing up sometime after labor day and departing right after Memorial Day to go back up north.”

My pal grimaced. “It is a little muggy, but the best part of the summers is that we have the town to ourselves. “No lines for the best restaurants, seats in the bar, and no obnoxious traffic. It pays to be a local.”

Behind us came the strains of McCloud’s signature tune drifting over the umbrellas and lattice walls of the tourist town bar. “I’d rather be here, just drinking a beer, than freezing my ass in the North.”

“The man has a point,” I said.

“You better believe it,” said my pal with an island smile. “Now, let me show you where the ghosts of Mel, and Captain Tony and that rascal Hemingway hang out.”

“Cool,” I said. “And I am about done with this freezing thing.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com