Key West Sunsets and Childhood Dreams of Being a Pirate

"Key West is the place to be 

If you're looking for immortality 

Stay on the road, follow the highway sign 

Key West is fine and fair

If you lost your mind, you will find it there

Key West is on the horizon line"

Dylan

As a boy, I dreamed of being a pirate in Key West. I would imagine fiery battles at sea, cannons and sword fights, daring sword fights, capturing secret treasures, and returning to my secret hiding place with my crew in Key West where we would not be found.

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I knew someday I would go to Key West and would find something special at the southernmost point in the United States.

I have been to Key West once long ago. I went with my dear friend David D. Scott to see our friend Erin Rosskopf who invited us to visit on our On The Road adventure in 1989.

I do not know how Key West has changed over the last three decades.

Back in 1989, I discovered magic in Key West, which has never left me, and the memories are vivid as if it was yesterday.

I will try to put it into words. It was the kind of place you could go and never leave—an escape from America to the southernmost point in the US ninety miles from Cuba.

Ernest Hemingway escaped to Key West, where he lived and wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro. I met the descendants of his six-toed cats where he lived.

Key West draws out the creativity and artist within.

It had a feeling of being at the edge or end of the world.

Robert Frost, Tennessee Williams, and John Dos Passos called Key West home. 

Key West was a haven for pirates long ago. I could feel that ambiance lived on.

I met the most interesting people—adventurers who found Key West a haven or base for their ventures throughout the Caribbean.

I met runaways, castaways, lost souls, dreamers, the forbidden and taboo, inconceivable glory and beauty, misfits.

I met someone who was probably a drug runner who I am sure carried a gun and was not to be crossed. I kept my distance, but I loved the out there at the edge of the law feel.

I met someone who had found bales of drugs washed ashore after a drug raid at sea. The drug runners play a cat mouse game, and if there is a risk of being caught, abandon their loot at sea.

The man who found the bales washed ashore bought a bar/club called the Pirates Den. I studied him from afar. The element of potential danger enhanced the out-there edge.

A vibrant gay scene found its home in Key West.

I was hungry for life and wanted to see and experience all I could as if I might die the next day, so the time to live was now.

Key West had elegant tropical beauty that has attracted artists like Hemingway. It also had a decadent, seedy underbelly never far from the surface.

I was not interested in tourists. I was interested in those who called Key West home, and they were a crazy cast of characters of all sorts.

When I was little, I was fascinated with pirates, and I wanted to be one out at sea where there were no laws to speak of. I imagined secret harbor getaways where my crew and I would hide from Spanish gallons trying to hunt us down.

I remember the sea having a flat still quality reaching far off to the horizon line.

In Key West, I saw the most extraordinary sunsets of my life. Sunsets of such beauty that as the fiery ball of the sun descended beneath the horizon line, those watching would spontaneously applaud.

I had an experience that might seem bizarre but oddly felt normal in Key West.

It was my friend's dog's birthday, which is normal. What was not normal was the birthday party for this sweet dog. I was a designated driver for the adventure to come.

In the front passenger seat was the dog with a birthday hat. In the back were two raving souls on LSD who were way over the edge.

I drove the dog and the two crazies in the back all over Key West. People on the streets would wish the dog happy birthday, and it felt normal.

The dog was quite happy to be honored on her birthday as the focus of this raving mad adventure through the streets of Key West. I think this was the dog's best birthday ever. I could relate oddly with the dog. We were straight sober, unlike the lunatic fringe in the back. Occasionally I would lock eyes with the dog. It felt we were on the same page on some strange level.

In Key West, it felt anything good or bad was possible. You could write a novel and become a famous author. You could be an alcoholic and never escape the islands. You could go crazy and spend all your money and find yourself on the streets homeless.

The cast of characters I met in this beautiful misfit community of souls lost or found could be the source of countless novels.

I was in Key West for three days once in my life and the vividness of each moment lives on.

I knew in Key West I found a place if needed, I could disappear forever from the insanity of the US which was insane in a way that kills the soul turning us into objects to be exploited for every last drop of profit. Profit that has been built on the deaths of countless innocent people across the globe where corporations exploit the poor and oppressed. Profit that has turned this planet into a toxic cesspool on the edge of ecological collapse and the extinction of all species, including our own.

Communism, socialism, capitalism are all based on materialism kill and destroy this planet differently but ultimately lead to the same destructive end for all who call this planet home.

Back then, I felt if the end of the world came, I would want to go under breathing my last breath as the fiery ball of the sun went under the horizon line, and I would go down with the sun and be at peace.

A much better way for me to go out than buying a big-screen television at Walmart.

We each have our path, and I try not to judge others because the more I think I know, I realize how little I know.

Ultimately we walk our life path alone, and others' views of my illusory life are of zero concern. If others think me crazy, I see that as a good sign I am going in the right direction.

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David Penn Trinley Arndt 2022.