Me, The Florida Keys, and Cuban Refugees (2018)

I packed up my bags and went looking for a story.

I peeled open the pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls this morning and I was struck down by the gravity of Ernest Hemingway. Benjamin Franklin once said something like, “write something worth reading or do something worth writing”… and Hemingway sure managed to do that. The man planted himself in wartime Europe just to see another end of human nature. The least I could do is get out of the house. It took 15 minutes to pack and have the hood of my white pickup truck pointed south. I decided to take a visit to The Keys.

I had planned on camping out in my truck or stringing up the hammock until I became aware that EVERY ROADSIDE south of Florida City read, “no overnight parking”. It’s quite possible that the budget of those signs, if redirected, could fully establish a well organized roadside camping system, or at the very least, a manned mission to Mars.

With the actual campsites full, I scoured AirBnBs and found a nice little place on the east end of Cudjoe Key. My interaction with my host was brief but she seemed friendly enough not to take my life in my sleep. You’ll probably hear from me tomorrow if my gut is right or if the Carnies down in Key West don’t try my life first.

Chickens Scurry behind a hotdog cart in Mallory Square, Key West.

Night 1

Damn you, Melbourne! You’ve distracted me with your groundly small-beach-town things and kept my eyes from seeking into more decorated skies.

Boy I’ve missed the stars… The infinitely many brilliant white specs cascading in the inkly deep curtain of the night sky. I missed the milk that spills out from the clusters of these infinitely massive suns.

A clear night sky reinforces a strong perspective of where we are in this endless universe. You don’t get that kind of thing in a town polluted with your own light.

Morning of Day 2

Sometimes there’s something special about people that blare music out of their cars for the world to hear. Sure you can argue their obnoxious nature. But here they are, with something they enjoy and they’re sharing it with anyone whose eardrums function. This extroverted instrumentation of life seems to be the full case in Key West. Breakfast sandwich pressing consisting of laughter. Fishing charters sang their way along to pick up their laughable breakfasts. And I couldn’t help but wear their smiles as my own.

A parrot fish swims as I eat my Key West breakfast burrito. Out of frame, the scuba and snorkeling boats load with tourists.

Day 2

A good museum plucks you from reality and plants you into the dimension of Highly-Empathetic-Appreciation-Land. In HEALand we become powerfully aware of how unaware we can be.

On this day I was sucked into Ernest Hemingway’s little slice of history in Key West. I learned of the construction of Flagler’s overseas railroad and the rough 700 lives lost during. The hardest hitting loss to me was an account of 100 men in a houseboat who were lost at Sea during the disastrous Memorial Day hurricane; just like that, 100 lives, gone.

But what stung me deeper than all of these stories were the stories of the Balseros. Balsero is the name given to an illegal emigrant of communist Cuba who seeked personal freedom by means of floating to The Florida Keys. Balseros are otherwise known as “rafters”. I can’t even begin to pretend to understand what these people had gone through. 100+ mile journeys incurred-IF they were lucky and caught the right currents. And not only did these people have to brave the seas in whatever skimpy vessels they happened to construct, but then they risked confrontation with the US Coast Guards who were instructed to sink the raft and jail the Balsero. In attempt to better understand what it was like for the Balseros, I asked around the streets and shops of Key West in hopes to meet one. In the Instituto San Carlos I was given that opportunity. The gentleman volunteering informed me that the next day, a living testament of the journey of a Balsero would be working. I booked another AirBnB for that Monday night so I could meet this man.

Second Air BnB

I booked another room for that Monday night so I could meet this man… Upon my arrival to my bed and breakfast, I was greeted by a little Polish woman in her mid thirties, her name was Monika. Monika was there to ensure I had clean bedding to sleep on. She was a friend of my host, who was currently on vacation in Boston. Monika suggested a young guy like myself take to the streets for a boozy Duval Monday night. Apparently a strong blood/alcohol ratio is an unspoken prerequisite for living in Key West. I spent the evening reading through two years worth of entries in the guests’ journal. By the stories I’d read, I really felt as if I’d missed out on my host.

I was awoken by a minute long doorbell orchestra. I checked the clock, 4:00am!

My heart pounded, “Who could want me in this foreign place at 4 in the morning!?”

I figured maybe intruders were checking to see if anyone was home. In my boxers and flip-flops I walked to the door in my room that led to the side-yard. As I laid my hand on the door knob, the far side of the door responded with a rhythmic knock. I echoed the knock from the safety of my room. The door answered with more violent knocking.

With a deepened voice I boomed, “Who is it? What do you want?!”

”It’s your neighbor!”

”The owner isn’t-”

The man interjected, “I have to leave for work! It’s your neighbor and I have to leave for work!”

I felt a wave of embarrassment wash over my body. Poor man had to wake me up and harass my ass just to get out of his gate. I had blocked his driveway.

After a breakfast at Blue Heaven, I’d marched to the San Pablo building on Duval to meet with Juan the Balsero. The institute was closed 30 minutes past opening time.

“It’s island time…” my new friend Annette explained to me. “People will tell you something here and show on their own clock.”

I guess that’s the price you pay for living in paradise. I spent an hour or so in the well air conditioned art gallery she worked in across from the institute, until she had to make a pricey sale and I gave myself the boot. I waited another hour in a bookstore until I met Juan. I hope to share a bit of his story in my next post.

Day 3 (Last Day of the Trip)

Balsero story continued: I checked the San Pablo Institute around 2pm on a scorching Key West Tuesday. A tall and tan middle aged man sat at a foldable desk near the massive doors. It was Juan. “My name is Christian and I’ve stayed an extra night here on the island to speak with you.” Juan took a deep breath and and said it was a very long story. I took a seat and gave the man all my attention.

His fist attempt to float the divide was in 1965 as a child. The police shut his family’s operation down before their raft touched water. For nearly 30 years, trying again was always the plan. Living in Cuba was like putting a handicap on personal freedom, an absolute hell. In 1994, Juan and six others boarded onto a 15ft dingy made of 4x4s and 4 inner-tubes equipped with paddles and a dinky outboard engine. Even with the engine, Juan described catching the right current as a gamble. It just seems to take luck to make it. Thousands of lives have quietly been lost to unlucky currents.

Juan talked of a storm that enveloped them mid-trip. As he described rising to the crests and plummeting to the troughs of the cinematically large waves, his eyes desperately traced up and down the massive doors of the museum we sat in. His wife hid under a blanket to mask the dark surrealism of the storm.

70 miles from Havana, they were plucked from the ocean by the coast guard and jailed in Guantanamo Bay for the next 8 months of their lives. At this point in the story, Juan began to distract himself with items on his desk and I felt the sensitivity of the story. I backed off and thanked him for sharing. I can only imagine the full story.