Dean Poling: Trading a beer with the ghost of Hemingway

Jul. 9—I went into Capt. Tony's to drink with Hemingway's ghost and ended up drinking with the memories of Chris and Jim.

Capt. Tony's is a bar down in Key West. Known as the original Sloppy Joe's, Anthony "Capt. Tony" Tarracino operated the bar for decades. A Key West legend, the saloon's website describes the bar owner as a "fishing boat captain, gunrunner, gambling casino operator and Mayor of Key West." He died in 2008 at the age of 92.

The bar was frequented by numerous literary personalities ranging from Truman Capote and Shel Silverstein to Tennessee Williams to Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway has the strongest connection to Key West from the novel "To Have and Have Not" to the tourist attraction of the Hemingway House to the author's face being on the merchandise of Sloppy Joe's.

So, I walked into Capt. Tony's to commune with a beer or two and the spirit of Hemingway.

Even on a bright afternoon, with the double-wide doors thrown open, the bar was dark. Bras left by patrons through the years droop from the ceiling like Spanish moss. Hemingway and Capt. Tony memorabilia hang on the walls.

Cold beer in a dark bar on a vacation weekday is refreshing. I raised my cup quietly to Hemingway's ghost and took a long sip from the plastic cup.

In the corner, near the light of the open doors, a musician played guitar and sang songs. Playing Jimmy Buffett, John Prine, James Taylor and numerous other acoustic tunes from the songwriter age of the 1970s, my soul left Key West and returned to Valdosta.

I was no longer drinking with Hemingway's ghost but the memories of Chris and Jim.

Back in the 1980s and '90s, Chris and Jim played all of these songs — tunes that were already a decade or two old then.

Chris on off-nights, slower evenings when the full band wasn't playing his place, strumming his acoustic guitar, singing in that voice. A singular voice that couldn't be touched by all of the cigarette smoke clouding around the stage. A voice that transcended the small stage and the fat-lighter walls.

Jim whose voice was distinctive in not always the most melodic ways but who could sing and play hundreds of songs, taking request after request, and if he didn't know your request this time, he'd likely know it the next time you saw him playing. Or he may even ask you to step on stage and sing along with him.

Though the Capt. Tony's guitar player strummed tunes made famous by even more famous names, I do not think of those famous folks. I never knew them. I knew Chris and Jim. They were my friends. Their voices ring true across the years. Their versions of those old songs were the soundtrack of my younger years, my wilder nights, of adventures and misadventures, of sailing the world one bottle at a time.

This sensation has occurred numerous times in the decades since the old Remerton bar closed and in the years since Jim and Chris passed. Those old songs from the 1970s seem to endure with guitarists playing bars and restaurants from St. Augustine to Savannah to Jacksonville to cruise ships to Charleston, W.Va., to Key West and beyond.

No matter the current musical trends, one seems to easily find someone, somewhere/anywhere playing John Prine, or Jimmy Buffett, or James Taylor, or Johnny Cash, or Willie Nelson ... easily find it or maybe subconsciously seeking it out.

Finding it has a sweet sadness. A melancholy that can make one smile despite a tear. Because if I could, even here, in Capt. Tony's, in the paradise of Key West, I'd much rather drink with Chris and Jim than Hemingway any day.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.