Old Town
moved on...
As a kid growing up my parents had a stilt house that leaned out over Florida Bay on one of the keys before you hit Stock Island. This is about 12 miles before Rt.1 ends at Key West. Our main home was on Olivia Street near the KW cemetery but this out island retreat was where we actually spent most of our time. It was cooler out there in the open trades that came from the east.
The place was spare but very livable and had a screened porch 360 degrees around the whole first floor. You entered by a stairway under the middle of the house. No electricity and no public water. We stored water in a cistern and gathered it off the steel roof like was done for hundreds of years in Florida. When it was very dry my dad trucked water in using 55 gallon drums.
A long coral driveway led to this property off another more developed road that ultimately made its way to US Rt 1. We were several miles off the beaten track with no neighbors within shouting distance. It was a great location but vulnerable to flooding if the wind came from the north for too long and pushed water from the bay. This was the reason for the stilts. Not so much hurricanes but normal flooding.
As you would expect my dad parked his car out there when we stayed. One year he decided to sink some telephone poles into the coral and limestone and build an elevated parking spot for our car. In the past we'd rush the thing out the driveway to a parking spot that was elevated when the wind blew or when a small hurricane or tropical storm was coming. This worked but was inconvenient. So dad built his own elevated spot with a ramp and everything. This platform was right next to the house and it really looked funny to glance out the window and see the old Chevy sedan sitting at eyeball level after so many years of seeing nothing but underbrush.
My dad was very proud of his project. He would sit out there at night in his elevated car smoking bad cigars and listening to boxing matches broadcast from Miami. We'd look out the kitchen window at night and see a red glowing dot. That was dad working a cigar and quietly picturing Cassius Clay dismembering some poor, dumb pug early in his career.
Then the day came of tropical storm Anna. She never gained hurricane strength but she didn't need it. About 2 in the morning we were all riding her out in the stilt house. A very solid structure of such cross-bracing no mere Cat 1 could touch her. Same could be said for my dad's parking project. Nothing that night hurt the house or the parking platform. So we were in the house listening to the wind and playing cards. You don't sleep during such times. Way too noisy. We only had oil lamps and they cast a weak light that did not let us see outside the windows.
What happened next we heard. The wind got under the old Chevy and flipped it off the stand back to front. That is, it went rear bumper over the bow. The hard way. That takes some power. We heard a tremendous whomp and the sound of tinkling metal and glass. Dad jumped up from the table. He grabbed a flashlight and shown it out the window. (never open a door when it's blowing 65 outside)
The car had been tossed 50 feet into the shallow water of Florida Bay. All the widows broken, sitting on its roof. Dad said some dirty words. My mother asked him how the tie-downs could have broken. Another light came on.
Tie-downs. My dad never thought of tie-downs. A lifetime in a windy place and he never considered anchoring the foolish car to his nifty elevated parking lot. My sister and me still laugh about that night.
About that house: By 1975 so bad was the smuggling of drugs into the Florida Keys that we had to abandon the property. Almost every night we could hear shooting in the distance and see car lights making their way down trails that led to water. These were grass cars. In time cocaine became the dominant drug and along with it unfettered violence. Shooting deaths were reported in our area every week. Sometimes multiple deaths. I don't think people today who did not live down here can imagine what it was like.
Many a night my dad answered our door with a shotgun in his hands. That driveway was a dead end. No need for anyone who did not know us to be down there. What we were seeing was lost drug dealers. This was no way to live because many of these people were really spooky and would have thought nothing of killing strangers in the dark. Being armed was one thing, but to continue to put the family in that position when he had another home in town was not something my dad wanted to do. So we left for Key West full time. In 1982 the state police put up illegal roadblocks to stop the drugs on Rt.1 going down to Key West. This did not help and the court made them knock it off anyway.
Things eventually calmed down but not before someone burned down the stilt house. Today I have my boat building operation out on that spot. No drug runners anymore. Times have become tame. Not a bad way for them to be.
Old Town
The place was spare but very livable and had a screened porch 360 degrees around the whole first floor. You entered by a stairway under the middle of the house. No electricity and no public water. We stored water in a cistern and gathered it off the steel roof like was done for hundreds of years in Florida. When it was very dry my dad trucked water in using 55 gallon drums.
A long coral driveway led to this property off another more developed road that ultimately made its way to US Rt 1. We were several miles off the beaten track with no neighbors within shouting distance. It was a great location but vulnerable to flooding if the wind came from the north for too long and pushed water from the bay. This was the reason for the stilts. Not so much hurricanes but normal flooding.
As you would expect my dad parked his car out there when we stayed. One year he decided to sink some telephone poles into the coral and limestone and build an elevated parking spot for our car. In the past we'd rush the thing out the driveway to a parking spot that was elevated when the wind blew or when a small hurricane or tropical storm was coming. This worked but was inconvenient. So dad built his own elevated spot with a ramp and everything. This platform was right next to the house and it really looked funny to glance out the window and see the old Chevy sedan sitting at eyeball level after so many years of seeing nothing but underbrush.
My dad was very proud of his project. He would sit out there at night in his elevated car smoking bad cigars and listening to boxing matches broadcast from Miami. We'd look out the kitchen window at night and see a red glowing dot. That was dad working a cigar and quietly picturing Cassius Clay dismembering some poor, dumb pug early in his career.
Then the day came of tropical storm Anna. She never gained hurricane strength but she didn't need it. About 2 in the morning we were all riding her out in the stilt house. A very solid structure of such cross-bracing no mere Cat 1 could touch her. Same could be said for my dad's parking project. Nothing that night hurt the house or the parking platform. So we were in the house listening to the wind and playing cards. You don't sleep during such times. Way too noisy. We only had oil lamps and they cast a weak light that did not let us see outside the windows.
What happened next we heard. The wind got under the old Chevy and flipped it off the stand back to front. That is, it went rear bumper over the bow. The hard way. That takes some power. We heard a tremendous whomp and the sound of tinkling metal and glass. Dad jumped up from the table. He grabbed a flashlight and shown it out the window. (never open a door when it's blowing 65 outside)
The car had been tossed 50 feet into the shallow water of Florida Bay. All the widows broken, sitting on its roof. Dad said some dirty words. My mother asked him how the tie-downs could have broken. Another light came on.
Tie-downs. My dad never thought of tie-downs. A lifetime in a windy place and he never considered anchoring the foolish car to his nifty elevated parking lot. My sister and me still laugh about that night.
About that house: By 1975 so bad was the smuggling of drugs into the Florida Keys that we had to abandon the property. Almost every night we could hear shooting in the distance and see car lights making their way down trails that led to water. These were grass cars. In time cocaine became the dominant drug and along with it unfettered violence. Shooting deaths were reported in our area every week. Sometimes multiple deaths. I don't think people today who did not live down here can imagine what it was like.
Many a night my dad answered our door with a shotgun in his hands. That driveway was a dead end. No need for anyone who did not know us to be down there. What we were seeing was lost drug dealers. This was no way to live because many of these people were really spooky and would have thought nothing of killing strangers in the dark. Being armed was one thing, but to continue to put the family in that position when he had another home in town was not something my dad wanted to do. So we left for Key West full time. In 1982 the state police put up illegal roadblocks to stop the drugs on Rt.1 going down to Key West. This did not help and the court made them knock it off anyway.
Things eventually calmed down but not before someone burned down the stilt house. Today I have my boat building operation out on that spot. No drug runners anymore. Times have become tame. Not a bad way for them to be.
Old Town
