March 25, 2009: Key West

Today we headed out in the sunshine 4 blocks down Caroline Street to see the Key West Heritage Museum and the Robert Frost Cottage at 410 Caroline Street. This is a home built in the 1830s and was home to 7 generations of Porters.

The last to live in the house was Jessie Porter and it was still decorated with her family’s furniture and memoirs. The dining room chairs were from Italy and recovered from a wreck off the coast of Key West. Apparently, during the late 1800’s there was supplemental income in “wrecking” for fishermen; this meant to savage the contents of the many ships that wrecked on the shoals just off the coast. She also had a set of pewter given to her grandfather by the Dr Mudd who set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln’s assassination. Dr. Mudd was imprisoned on Fort Jefferson on Dry Tortugas (30 miles west of Key West).

Jessie became friends with Robert Frost who spent his winters in her guest house in Key West from 1945 to 1960. His little place opened out onto a beautiful garden that included a huge Strangler Fig tree and was paved with bricks that came from Baltimore as ship ballast. Frost received the Pulizer Prize for a collection of his poems in 1931 and at the age of 87 spoke at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. The poem, The Gift Outright, he spoke from memory for that occasion had never been published but was written for Jessie and the handwritten copy is framed on her wall.

We also saw a similarly styled house on the same street with wide porches both upstairs and down and the historical marker about her grandfather Dr Joseph Porter who lived there. He was the first Medical Health officer for the state of Florida from 1889 – 1917.

We have found some really cool restaurants in Key West and ate at Pepe’s for lunch. This tiny restaurant was the oldest in the Keys and opened in 1909 so it was 100 years old. Our table was in the garden under beautiful blooming tree and the fresh fish sandwich with mango sauce was delicious.

We made a return trip to the pool this afternoon so that the swordfish would not be lonely.

For dinner we checked out Margarettaville, the restaurant that Jimmy Buffett owns. They said he had been in unannounced recently to give an impromptu concert, but we missed it.