Chapter Selection Menu: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 E Next>>
Fort Taylor Pyrate Invasion, Dec 2014 - Key West, FL
Chapter 9: Monday, December 8th The surgeon returns to the fort on the Day After; Discussions with Mike the Skeleton Pirate of Ft. Myers Beach and Ashley, the girlfriend of the Skeleton Pirate of Ft. Myers Beach; Heading for Marathon to retrieve my poster; Chatting with Captain Salazar Wahoo and learning about the golf cart industry in the Keys; Finding out more about the Morris Animal Foundation, featuring more photos of people with Moose, the Morris mascot; An evening with 20 odd (very odd) pirate reenactors at Duffy's Steak House; Rachel with her bike and dog and A walk home with Tink.
Photo: Lady Chaos Carol
Mike the Skeleton Pirate and Ashley (She must
be used to this sort of thing by now, I'd guess.)
I got to the fort around noon and my crew was nowhere to be found. So I went around and talked with some of the people who were to be
Photo: Mission
Mike and Wasabi on Saturday
found, including Mike the Skeleton Pirate and Ashley, his girlfriend. They had come down on the Jet Express out of Ft. Myers and were planning to leave this afternoon on the 5pm ferry. He was intending to sleep, "because everyone sleeps on the ferry back from Key West," but some guys from one of the bands who were entertaining us this weekend were also going to be on board.
"Yeah," Ashley interjected, "You're not gonna get to sleep." When Mike had arrived on Saturday, he was low on funds, so he worked the Mallory Docks at sunset to raise some ready for the weekend. From this I learned that it's $5 to rent 'a small space' and $20 to rent a big one. This means if you were doing your act every day, it would cost you $7300 a year for a large space! Mike dryly noted, "Those are the highest rates I've seen for street performing!"
I wandered about the fort for about an hour, being hugged by one and all – something regular readers know I just LOVE. (Not.) Around 1:30 I knew I had to get moving so I delivered my surgical gear to the UPS store and make the trip up to Marathon to retrieve my poster,
Photo: Mission - Aargh Maintenance and Sales - Marathon's Golf Cart Superstore
which (as you may recall from several chapters ago) was at Aargh Maintenance and Service in Marathon. They fix and customize golf carts, which seemed to be a pretty decent business for the Keys. I would imagine that a lot of locals either don't have or don't use cars in favor of such transportation.
Let's recap for those who don't remember chapter 3. I had met the owners, Captain Salazar Wahoo (so named, he explained to me, because all the women cry "Wahoo!" when they see him coming) and his wife Ericka at the Buccaneer Ball on Friday Night. They recognized the Patrick Hand Original™ Hat I was wearing as being the same one as the guy on the advertising poster they had been given for their shop, so now the purpose of renting the mini-van became even clearer. (Well, maybe not. I didn't actually need a whole mini-van to pick up a couple ounces of photo-paper, but it was nice to have a vehicle of some sort. Otherwise I would have had to try and con someone into taking me 45 miles up the Keys and back just to get my poster.
While I was there, Captain Wahoo (aka Matt) showed me his custom made pirate golf cart with about 8 or 10 seats in it. I had snapped a shot of it on the way in, but he pulled it out into the sunlight so I could get some decent images of it. It was created because their crew – The Pirates of Crossbone Key – had been doing an event a few years ago on Pigeon Key for kids and they decided they needed a pirate golf cart to make the thing official. (Makes perfect sense to me.) So Matt designed one.
 Photo: Mission - Mike in His Pirate Themed Golf Cart |
 Photo: Mission - A Close Up of the Pirate Golf Cart (See the skeleton on the front?) |
Photo: Mission
The Mission Poster at Aargh!
Matt told me he had been servicing golf carts in Marathon since the mid-80s when he had come down from North Carolina. His previous business had been called AFAB (Anything For a Buck), but he decided that that was probably not the sort of slogan he wanted to have to stand behind in the Florida Keys. As he and Ericka were coming over the Channel 5 bridge, they decided to go with "Aargh" because it was piratey and that would put them in the top of the listings in the phone book. (Shades of Acme! Not to get off topic, but a lot of businesses in the 40s 
Photo: Matt
Captain Salazar Wahoo and Ericka
and 50s called themselves Acme ____ because it put them near the top of the phone book. When Chuck Jones was looking for a name for the company that supplied Wile E. Coyote with all those failed gadgets, he chose Acme because it was so widely used and generic at the time for that reason.)
The customer area of the golf cart shop was festooned with pirate flags and knickknacks, posters and images.
In one spot were a bunch of games that Ericka had created for the Pigeon Key event. Some of the games including tossing a ball through a noose, a question and answer game called "Walk the plank". (After each wrong question, you had to take a step further. If you fell off the plank, you lost.) There was also a coral ring toss where the kids tried to get the ring around a lumpy piece of coral. "She has about 20 different games she created."
Matt told me he preferred events in the Florida Keys. "I don't leave the Keys if I don't have to." His shop was very neat and I was glad to have come up there to see it.
 Photo: Mission Some of Ericka's Pirate Kid's Games |
 Photo: MissionBathroom Duck Pirates on a Shelf at Aargh! |
 Photo: Mission An Aargh! Custom Golf Cart |
Tonight an outing was planned to Duffy's Steak and Lobster House by Lily, which is sort of tradition with her for the Day After. Originally, it was just Keith and Lily going to Duffy's on this night. Then a few people joined them. Then a few more, then more... until 28 people were going. We wound up occupying most of the upper level of the main floor.
But I am getting ahead of myself. First I went over to Keith and Lily's to just hang out for awhile and print my boarding passes.
Photo: Kate Bagley - Moose, Lob and Bobbie (Poor Moose, Doubly Cursed)
Keith offered coffee and I accepted and we all had a nice chat. Sophie and Sammie were also present (they are Lily's golden retrievers, seen last night), with Sammie deciding that she liked me. In fact, she showed me just how much she liked me by placing her head through my crossed leg and resting it on my lap.
Lily has been carting a stuffed golden retriever named Moose around with her all weekend and encouraging people to take photos of it. It has a sort of coat on that indicates that this dog is a Morris Animal Foundation Dog, as I mentioned in yesterday's account. Since Lily was now free from her role as camp governess, I learned what this was all about.
The Morris Animal Fund is performing a study of 3000 golden retrievers to try and find out why they are so prone to dying from cancer. Sixty percent of golden retrievers die from cancer and the study was to figure out why this was. As of this discussion, they only had about 2300 dogs recruited, so they are looking for several hundred more. (Sammie is enrolled in the study.) The study doesn't require the owner to do anything, just to report on their dog as I understood it.
 Photo: Kate Bagley Moose Riding Courtesy Don J. & Friend |
 Photo: Poppa RatseyMoose Having a Drink |
 Photo: Poppa Ratsey Nita Treasure Holding Moose |
Photo: Mission - Shakey Jakey
While we were talking, Lily suddenly jumped up and announced, "Oh! I have something for you!" She brought out a little plastic skeleton in a blister pack. Apparently he is a solar-powered dancing toy whose head wobbles one way while his rotund torso wobbles another. (Like the gopher in Caddyshack.)
Someone by the name of Jake had spotted one of these little dancing skeletons on sale in a Publix while driving down to Key West and decided it would be the perfect gift for their pirate friends at Fort Taylor. So he and his wife stopped at EVERY SINGLE PUBLIX on the way down to buy up all the wobblin' skeleton toys they could find. (Why they didn't give one to me, the creator of Bucky and Becky who have given so much joy to all the little tots coming to Fort Taylor to see the pirates is a mystery.) I later learned that he was called "Shakey Jakey" after Jake, who bought all of these interesting little creatures.
Dinner was nice. I had the Yellowtail Snapper "Mission". Er... "Maison" which was most toothsome. Shakey Jakey had nothing and liked it. (We're still doing Caddyshack here...) I sat with Keith and Lily, Scarlett Jai and Deadeye. Deadeye was wearing a heavy coat he borrowed from Scarlett. (It had gotten
Photo: Mission - Yellowtail Snapper Maison at Duffy's Steak and Lobster House
down to 68 degrees. It’s what Key Westers call winter.)
Chatting with Deadeye, I learned that he is engaged in a project to create pressure fitted casements for the fort window so that he can build shutters without altering the brickwork or any of the building's existing structure. He has made three of them but they were located along the back wall, so I unfortunately never saw them during the weekend.
However, these casements turned out so well that he was brought to another Florida heritage fort so that they could talk to him about making such shutter windows for them once he finishes Fort Taylor.
Photo: Mission - Rachel, Her Decorated Bike and Wetbeard (In that order)
Finishing dinner, I went outside to get some air. (I ate far too much.) (But it was so good.) There I ran into Rachel aka Sara who was showing off her three wheeled bike, which had been decorated for Fantasy Fest in a tiki theme. It had a sign on the back, of which she seemed most proud, that said, "One Hula Family."
While those of us on the sidewalk were all standing around admiring the bike, Rachel announced that the effect wasn't truly complete without Wetbeard (her dog). So she pedaled home and got him to bring him back to the restaurant so that we could all coo at him and take more pictures.
Photo: Mission
Tink appeared and apologized for not going with me to dinner at Café Sole. (We had agreed to do this when I was interviewing her yesterday.) I told her it was just as well as it was nice to go out with the crew on my last night. (Plus, let's face it, I had already made two trips to my favorite restaurant on earth. Although this is not a record for number of trips to Café Sole in a week for me, it would be getting close if I made another.)
Tink wanted to walk home, so I decided to walk with her. While my goal in taking her to Café Sole had been partially to expose her to the wonderful food, it had also been to just get the opportunity to chat some more. We had a nice walk and were able to do that. A pleasant nightcap to a lovely evening.
And now I am here writing what will most likely be the last chapter of the 2014 Fort Taylor Pyrate Invasion Journal, unless something fascinating happens on the way home. If not, this is the last sentence of the last chapter. (Note, this was how I finished the text journal. Obviously nothing fascinating happened that required recording because there is no more here. But I liked that ending, even though it is no longer the ending and... oh, never mind. Let's just leave it there.)
 Photo: Mission Our Table at Duffy's: Scarlett Jai & Deadeye, Mission & Shakey Jakey, Keith & Leigh |
 Photo: Mission Blackheart Charlie & Rachel at Duffy's |