LA FLORIDIANA Will and Karen's Cabbage Key and Key West Kraziness, Part Two  by William Moriaty
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE REVIEW "Sideways"  by Mike Smith
ODDSERVATIONS Year-End Oddservations....R.E.M. Trumps U2, Tears for Fears, Duran Duran; releases Best Album of the Year  by Andy Lalino
MATT'S RAIL Happy New Year....Tragedy And Disaster  by Matt Drinnenberg
MIKE'S RANT I'd Like To Thank....Thoughts And Prayers....Andy's Present....Tampa Related....Passing On....Gone But Not Forgotten....Explain, Please....Worst Thing To Happen This Year....Best And Worst Movies....Phillip Smith's Top 5 Movies....Favorite Film Lines....Happy Birthday....Meet The Beatles, Part 49 (final chapter)  by Mike Smith
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Will and Karen's Cabbage Key and Key West Kraziness, Part Two

	While the remainder of the nation was wearing the drab dreary gray skies of old man winter, Key West was clothed in colorful blooms as demonstrated by this Bougainvillea photographed along Truman Avenue on Wednesday November 24, 2004.

EPICUREAN DELIGHTS AT THE CABBAGE KEY INN As described in last week's column, I was determined to finally have a "Cheeseburger in Paradise".

It has been a well circulated rumor for years that Jimmy Buffet's classic song of the same title was an ode to his having had a cheeseburger at the Cabbage Key Inn after a long day of sailing - - others slants to the rumor are that the cheeseburger incident occurred in the South Pacific - - others yet in the Caribbean.

Regardless, determined was I, but it would have to wait for dinner, for the lunch special that day was Stone Crab, a Florida seafood delicacy. The Inn's Stone Crab and mustard sauce was superb! If you ever visit the Inn during the Stone Crab season, you owe it to yourself to indulge in this Sunshine State epicurean phenomenon.

	Sea Oats frame this view of the turquoise waters of the Atlantic Ocean in Key West.

By Monday night on November 22, 2004, most the visitors left the Inn, and Karen and I pretty much had most of the place to ourselves. Come dinnertime, I order the Kid's Menu, which had the famed "Cheeseburger in Paradise". Ah, a wonderful way to cap off the last night of our stay there.

Tuesday morning the 23rd signaled time to leave the island and begin our long drive to Key West. The 23rd of November is also my wife's birthday!

We took the charter boat back to Bokeelia, this time in choppy seas with gray skies because a cold front was moving through. We jumped back in to Karen's 2002 Firehawk "Phooka", and winded our way back out Pine Island, then through the charming and colorful tropical town of Matlacha (pronounced "MAT-LAH-SHAY" in Crackerspeak) and finally onto Interstate 75.

	Attached to native coral rock, this plaque graces the grounds of the exquisitely beautiful Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church in Key West.

As we traveled the large expanse of I-75 known as Alligator Alley through the vast forests of South Florida Slash Pine and Baldcypress that comprise the Big Cypress National Preserve, then through the watery expanse of Sawgrass known as the Everglades, enormous columns of smoke were rising from the northeast of the Interstate. All that I could presume is that the smoke was due either to prescribed burns of the sugar cane fields near Clewiston, or possibly of underbrush by the Miccosukee Indians.

MIAMI NEVER FAILS TO AMAZE
By mid afternoon we had exited the primeval world of the Glades and entered the cosmopolitan urban rush of Broward and Miami-Dade Counties. As we sped southward down to the Sawgrass Extension of the Florida Turnpike (a.k.a. the "Sunshine State Parkway" or the "Ronald Reagan Parkway"), I began looking into the skies to do some plane spotting as we approached the Miami International Airport operations area.

Although I had come to write off ever seeing old four or two engine pistons wing their way in or out of MIA, there are still some first generation DC-8s and a few rare Boeing 707s still operating out of this historic airfield.

A view of the beautiful Geiger-Audubon House.

True to form, Miami delivered again, as around 3:30 P.M., a DC-8-61or 63 appeared at 10 o' clock through the T-tops of Phooka. The plane was at about 3,000' AGL heading west from the Atlantic Ocean on its downwind turn to later take Runway 9L for finals into MIA. About ten minutes later the same aircraft was about a mile ahead of us crossing the Turnpike on its final moments before touchdown I suspect the aircraft was one of Arrow Air's as they are one of the few still operating the classic first-generation jets out of Miami.

At 4:00 P.M. we gassed up in Florida at the last gas station on the mainland before beginning our three hour journey down the Overseas Highway to Key West.

INTERRUPTED JOURNEY
We interrupted our journey long enough to visit a former work associate of my wife's in Marathon. Dean Stoddard was a landscape architect for the City of Tampa Parks and Recreation Department who had relocated with his wife and child down to Key West in order to take a job as a landscape architect for a very upscale private firm in Marathon called the D'sign Source.

We visited with Dean, who we would be guests of come Thanksgiving Day, and his fellow staff members for about half an hour. As we left the building, the setting sun over the Caribbean-like waters of the Atlantic and Gulf were obscured by thunderclouds over Key West, some 50 miles westward.

	Framed on the left by a Coconut Palm, and thrusting above a Royal Poinciana tree, is the historic Key West Lighthouse.

As we passed through Big Pine Key, the black silhouettes of South Florida Slash Pines that abundantly populate the island greeted us. I had planned this trip to take a sixty-mile round trip jaunt from Key West to tour the flora and fauna of Big Pine's Key Deer National Refuge. After we passed Big Pine and headed into Sugarloaf Key, nighttime was total. We counted down the mile markers on U.S. 1, as we got ever closer to the magic Southernmost City in the United States.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
In my three previous visits to Key West, I had seen drizzly rain and sunshine. This time as we made our nighttime entry into town the streets were practically flooded, evidence of the abundant moisture in the thundercloud we saw about an hour and a half earlier in Marathon. It was great to be back in Key West! The Christmas decorations along Truman Avenue finally put me in Holiday mood after a year of natural and personal disasters. The earthen smell after the rain filled my senses and reminded me of those same scents in the summer rainy season in Tampa or Miami.

Karen pulled Phooka a half block east of Whitehead Street's Mile Marker 0 of US 1 onto Fleming Street. She let me out in front of Marrero's Guest Mansion where the stellar and affable host, John was waiting to check us in. John was beginning to get concerned about our lateness - - he also pointed out that the feline resident of the Mansion, the lovely Cheesetta was a little less bashful due to the heavier influx of meal tickets (a.k.a guests). Typically he locks the front door to this beautiful 1880's house not long after that time.

One of the numerous polydactyl cats that roam the Tift-Hemmingway House in Key West is seen relaxing. Polydactyl cats have six front toes versus the typical five front toes of most domestic house cats. It is alleged that this is a result of the inbreeding of such animals due to the limited territory and feline gene pool of this island city.

After we parked Phooka, and brought our bags to our room, we walked about ten blocks west on Duval Street toward Mallory Square had a delicious dinner at one of my favorite of all restaurants in Key West El Meson de Pepe where I had my usual fare of Picadillo Habanero with Yuca. We then walked back to our room, changed into our bathing suits and enjoyed an incredibly relaxing time in the Mansion's Jacuzzi, followed by lounging under a full moon where tropical breezes that had crossed the Atlantic from Cuba gave us a warm caress and welcome.

It just doesn't get any better than this...

Tomorrow I would conduct my own walking tour of the Indigenous Park and take in a few historic houses, and we will cover that in next week's La Floridiana.

Be sure to have a most Happy New Year!