Living La Vida Local - Part 2

Where were we? Oh yes. The first Sunday of the month, which meant some free stuff for locals. We decided to start with the Hemingway House. Let's see what life could be like if Oprah picked my book for her book club. Tours take off every few minutes so you can just jump in one and tip if you feel generous. The house was built in 1851 by a marine architect and salvage wrecker. We would later learn on the Conch Train tour that most of the houses on the island had been built by men with similar backgrounds and skills which meant that the houses were built to marine standards - e.g., the right woods (like mahogany and certain pines) and with braces that would explain why so many old homes are still standing despite some powerful hurricane hits (half the city couldn't escape a major fire in 1886 though).
Hemingway's house definitely had some unique features: 1) It was built out of the stone it sat on, so was as thick and strong as it was going to get; 2) Because of all that digging, the house was the only one in Key West with a basement; and 3) The basement never flooded because the house sits on the highest point in Key West - a whole 16 feet above sea level (most of Key West is at 5 feet above sea level). The place was also one of the few with indoor plumbing and was the only one to have running water in its second-story bathrooms thanks to the ingenious idea to put a couple of cisterns on the roof ("city" water didn't come into play until 1944).

There are some discrepancies on who bought the home (Hemingway vs his second wife's uncle), whether the furniture inside the house is original, and where the cats originally came from, but what's not in dispute is that the house was bought for $8,000 in 1931, and in 1937-38 Pauline (Hemingway's second of an eventual four wives - none at the same time) put in Key West's first in-ground pool at a whopping $20,000 while Hemingway was covering the Spanish Civil War. And here's the penny that Pauline supposedly stuck in the concrete when Hemingway came back and said something like "You've spent all my money, you might as well have my last penny." So there it is - a 1938 penny still stuck in the patio.
Despite the sweltering summers here, Pauline, who worked for Vogue magazine, hated ceiling fans (electricity came in around 1899), thinking they were gaudy, had them all removed, and replaced every one of them with a chandelier. No - that wasn't gaudy at all.... Or hot. The house was beautiful, with a veranda going round, pretty grounds, and a separate house where Hemingway wrote more than half his books.






Hey - whose book is that on his shelf? I was ahead of my time! Ha - actually that was a book called "How to Make Good Pictures" behind there.

Of course, the main reason we were visiting was to see the six-toed cats. However Hemingway came to have them, we were looking forward to petting a few. Currently, there are 45 cats on the property, with about half of them sporting the extra digit. Can you find the cat(s) in each of these photos? They were everywhere. Love it!



That last photo was of a huge olive jar and a urinal. That's right. The bottom piece is a urinal that Hemingway grabbed from Sloppy Joe's (now called Captain Tony's) during a renovation, thinking it would make a great kitty fountain (while Pauline was away - touché). Pauline was behind the tile work as a compromise and it looks great.  The cats were friendly and maybe a bit overfed...



There were plenty of kitty shelters. And no, the property didn't smell like "cats."

Here you can see the extra appendages:



Then we were off for the Truman Little White House. Michael immediately had to use the presidential restroom.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, important people still use the place and presidents are still invited to stay, so I'll summarize. The house was part of a navy installation (no longer in action) and was built in 1890 for naval officers. President Taft stayed there once, but Truman absolutely fell in love with the place and returned again and again. Over his presidency (from 1946 thru 1952), he spent a total of 175 days there. The furnishings, although dated from the 1940s, looked kind of Brady Bunch to me (so would be 1970s), but that's just my opinion. It was certainly very simple. That said, some very complex documents were written at the small writing desk not only during Truman's time spent there, but JFK as well (during the Cuban Missile Crisis).  Of course, Truman's "Buck Stops Here' table plaque was there, but did you know that the other side said "I'm from Missouri"?

Someone's making a replica - this is their photo

He also had a specially made poker table (that was given to him as a gift) that he used to unwind with naval officers - he did not play for money and he did not smoke. His wife, Bess, didn't like it anyway and eventually a wooden cover was made for the table when not in use. The whole thing was used to sign a major treaty in 2001 when Secretary of State Colin Powell hosted a week of OSCE peace talks with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, resulting in a treaty signed right there. BTW, the table is laid out like that photo, with everyone getting a good hand, but the President getting the best hand - of course...

Truman loved it here in Key West and treated everyone like equals - they called him Truman the Human. He became famous for his Key West "Truman shirts." My elementary school education or my memory failed me on mostly all things Truman and it was quite interesting to hear how he had been a surprise pick by President FDR during a political convention. FDR hadn't wanted a VP (going into his 4th term, he was sick of VPs), but was forced to pick one, so just chose Truman (a quiet senator and former farmer from Missouri) at the last minute. Once in office, Truman met FDR a total of 3 times before FDR suddenly died of a a cerebral hemorrhage just 82 days into his presidency. World War II was going strong, Pearl Harbor was over 3 years old, and just a few months into his presidency Truman decided to drop the atomic bombs (a weapon he had learned about approx. 90 days prior) on Japan. No wonder he needed all that R&R in Florida...

UPI/Corbis-Bettmann/Wikipedia

Most of us have at least seen the erroneous headline that Dewey beat him. What I didn't know was that the paper employees were on strike so management had let some not-so-smart people print the paper. Not only was the headline wrong, but some columns were upside down, and lots of words were misspelled. To this day The Chicago Times will not allow anyone to reprint/reproduce that day's paper - embarrassed (nor are all such details in their explanation).

Obviously you can wikipedia Truman and read the many biographies about him and there are some photos here, but for a quick rundown:

Truman was behind the establishment of the UN, NATO, The Marshall Plan, The Truman Doctrine, the establishment of the Dept of Defense, the CIA, and the US Air Force. He was the first to "recognize" Israel and forced the racial integration of the armed forces (he was ahead of the 1960s civil right's era - and even Democrats weren't interested in such a thing yet, splitting into the Dixiecrats to express their disapproval).

Ok, so he's not Truman but that is
the chef from the White House
at "the desk" (Facebook

He was the first president to face a 2-term limit and did not receive a pension or secret service detail upon his White House departure (even though he had had an assassination attempt made on his life during his presidency). Years later, President LBJ would sign the Medicare act and give the first two Medicare cards to Truman and Bess.

Of course, most of us remember him for dropping The Bomb (opinions will forever differ on the necessity and humaneness of this, so we'll leave it at that). Unfortunately, Truman was also President during the Korean War (even giving a press conference from the Key West grounds of the house where we walked), fired General MacArthur, and got a little too sucked into McCarthyism, which ended up getting him on the "worst president" list for a while until people could revisit him with hindsight. Plus there have been worst presidents since...

Anyway, many of the documents and decisions made above, were written in his second-home-away-from home in Key West. After Truman, Eisenhower used the home once, and JFK twice (during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis - which had a very real impact on Key West thanks to its proximity to Cuba only 90 miles away). Carter came with his entire extended family twice (once off a Disney Cruise), and even the Clinton's once in 2005. The others have used Camp David (or Hawaii) as their get-aways, but the invitation is still out to all. I found it interesting that the place no longer uses pubic funding, but still gets presidential and other political-type visitors anyway. Go Little White House!


On overload? So were we, and yet we kept going anyway. I'll let you rest though and will give you installment 3 tomorrow.